1. I want to share some thoughts about how I’ve been feeling lately, in part because I suspect that many of you are feeling the same way and, for me at least, there is comfort in solidarity. #COVID19 #academic #AcademicChatter #medicine #healthcare
2. This has been a tough week, and I’m afraid that it is only the beginning. We are on spring break and I had a long list of tasks I’ve needed to accomplish but it has been difficult with everything that has been going on.
3. It isn’t just the trip cancelations and the challenge of having to move two highly interactive seminars into some sort of online format. It is the growing recognition that we are in the midst of an outbreak...
4. that is not just going to have major social implications for our society, it is going to have personal implications for us all. In three weeks it is very likely that many of us will know someone who is sick...
5. or who has died because of an outbreak that represents not just a colossal failure of #planning and #preparedness, but an outright hostility to science and to the idea that it is the purpose of #government to safeguard the health and welfare of all the people.
6. There are a couple of reasons it has been difficult to stop thinking about these things. One is that it is part of my job. In Italy right now there are so many cases of serious respiratory distress that their health care system is overwhelmed.
7. As a result, providers are having to make triage decisions—decisions about which patients should receive life-saving ventilator machines and which patients should be allowed to die.
8. They are opting to put their resources toward saving the people who are youngest and healthiest, in an effort to maximize the number of lives they can save with the resources available to them.
9. This is the sort of thing I talk about in my bioethics courses. Part of what I say is that our leaders have a profound social responsibility to plan and to prepare so that we do not wind up in this kind of desperate situation.
10. But the point I want to make now is just that what is happening in Italy is a glimpse of what is likely to happen in the U.S. because we are about 3 weeks behind them on the epidemic curve.
11. What this means, in other words, is that if we don’t take steps to isolate ourselves and to slow the spread of the virus, our health care facilities will also be overrun and we will be in the same situation as Italy and Wuhan.
12. In plain terms, it is highly likely that in three weeks many of us will know people who are sick. Before this is over, it is likely that many will know someone who has died from the virus or someone who las lost someone they care deeply about.
13. This has also been on my mind because I have a lot of friends and colleagues who are health care providers and this disease has taken a terrible toll on #caregivers.
14. So it is an emotional experience to have emails from close friends or former students saying that they hope that they, or someone that they care about, survives what is about to come. Don’t get me wrong—I value these disclosures immensely...
15. ... because they symbolize a profound bond of trust and a deep, personal connection. It is not the sharing of these sentiments that is difficult. It is the sturring of something primordial and profoundly human, namely, the tumult of feeling involved in preparing for loss.
16. I hope that we can #flattenthecurve and stave off the worst case scenarios. I am proud that my university has suspended in-person classes and is taking steps to allow students who can’t return home to remain on campus.
17. I am proud of my friends who face their #morality every day in the service of others and who will do so tomorrow and tomorrow. In some ways it is sad that it takes tragedy to crystallize some of these feelings...
18. ... about what is important, what ultimately matters, and what is worth standing up for. I’m trying to be better about this when there is no crisis. Talking about what matters, for me at least, is a way of coping and preparing.
19. It is a good idea to reach out to the people you care about and let them know how you feel. You have nothing to lose and the world to gain.
20. In the meantime, realize that in staying home you are contributing to a public action of profound importance. Everything you can do to reduce social contact erects a barrier to transmission and makes these worst case scenarios less likely to occur.
