1/🧵🎥 UBUNTU is an answer to the #COVID question not enough of us are asking:
Who is my neighbor?
Our response to this question will dictate our #PublicHealth decisions.
What is ubuntu? A type of humanism needed #now more than ever. Listen to Nelson Mandela & Desmond Tutu!👏
2/🎥👇 Nelson Mandela on Ubuntu: “A traveler through a country would stop at a village and he didn't have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food and attend him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu, but it will have various aspects.”
3/ Embracing #Ubuntu means it’s not about you, it’s not about me, it’s about us working together as one! Ubuntu is belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity & transcends barriers, ideologies, cultural diversity and more.
4/ Philosophically, ubuntu is the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all of us together as one. If we think like that, then we will listen to one another better. Bishop Tutu has something to say about ubuntu…
5/ Bishop Desmond Tutu: “You know when ubuntu is there, and it is obvious when it is absent. It has to do with what it means to be truly human, to know that you are bound up with others in the bundle of life.”
6/ In #COVID, Ubuntu can heal. Nelson Mandela: “Ubuntu doesn’t mean people should not address themselves. But are you going to [address yourself] in a way that enables the community around you to improve?”
What’s our collective approach to this Swiss Cheese model & #vaccination?
7/ Ubuntu even makes its appearance in Kolk’s masterpiece, The Body Keeps the Score. He writes: “Trauma breeds further #trauma; hurt people hurt other people.”
8/ Kolk say, “My most profound experience with healing from collective trauma was witnessing the work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, based on the central guiding principle of Ubuntu, a Xhosa word that denotes sharing what you have…”
9/ Kolk teaches: “Ubuntu recognizes that true healing is impossible without recognition of our common humanity & our common destiny. We are social creatures—our brains are wired to foster working & playing together.”
10/ Only now am I realizing that #Ubuntu was the spirit behind my writing #EveryDeepDrawnBreath all along. We have a collective role in each other’s healing. It’s ongoing, too. I can correct a missed opportunity to help you yesterday by choosing more wisely today!
11/fin
The trauma we’re experiencing in #COVID19 “devastates the social-engagement system & interferes with cooperation, nurturing, & the ability to function as a productive member of the clan.” We can get this back. It starts with nurturing #UBUNTU!
Won’t you join me? Thoughts?
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3/🎥 I cared for 9/11 hero Colonel Victor Correa as he died in our @VA hospital years later. His story is told in #EveryDeepDrawnBreath. He carried men out of the Pentagon saving lives. Watch more of his testimonial…
1/🧵🎥 Tennessee has highest #COVID19 case rate IN THE WORLD 🌎‼️
1/3rd are KIDS, & we haven’t even peaked!
Dr. Jeff Balser, @VUMChealth President & CEO, explains our dire situation. Despite 375M doses of #Vaccine is US alone, we have ~50% overall #Vaxxed & need YOUR help.
2/ This surge is different. The children are disproportionately affected – 1 in 3 new cases. Overall, and this is hard to believe, but we are at our ALL TIME HIGH in admissions.
3/ 🎥 Except for immunocompromised patients, almost all in hospital are #unvaxxed. We are re-deploying OR personnel to the ICU and having to curb care for non-COVID pts. It’s just not fair to them. Not getting vaxxed means more suffering for everyone.
2/ Early in COVID, computers predicted “Berry” (for Bari-citinib), an FDA-approved medication for rheumatoid arthritis, could be repurposed to stop SARS-CoV-2 from killing us. Now we proved it! Why did the computers think it would work?
3/ Bari has antiviral mechanism but mainly we thought it would work by interfering with the intense inflammation the virus 🦠 causes, which is what leads to so much lung, heart, blood vessel, & brain damage (#delirium).
By no means do I think the #Unvaxxed patients filling our ICUs to capacity are evil. NO. But I do think there is evil involved in the misinformation leading many good, caring people to that decision. And I listen to each. Please hear me out.
2/ Philosophers define evil as “a deprivation of the rationality that proper human action requires individually and as a member of society.” In that sense, we can discuss choosing not to be vaccinated and “cooperation with evil.”
3/ Thus far, “cooperation with evil” has been used as an argument by some in the #antivaxx culture as a reason NOT to get #Vaccinated. The main argument is that Pfizer and Moderna were safety texted w the HEK-293 fetal cell line.
1/🧵 “Live every day like you have a terminal illness.”
The most important thing I learned @ISICEM, after 3 ✈️ & 4,400 miles to Belgium for this huge meeting of #COVID ICU doctors, had nothing to do w science.
The iconic @JRandallCurtis1 taught me…(pic & story shared w perm)
2/ My friend of 25 years opened his lecture on End-of-Life with, “I have a disclosure of sorts. I’ve been diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease), so this will probably be the last time I lecture at this meeting.”
Then he asked us to PAUSE.
3/ Talk about a Frame Shift.
I already knew, but it all hit me like a thunderbolt⚡️. The Father of ICU EOL #PalliativeCare research & former president of @atscommunity had just told us all that he has a fatal illness, and we could hear it in his speech pattern.
2/ of every human being who comes into my care is such that they feel fully human, fully respected, and that they don’t think they lost part of themselves in the process of critical illness.”
Yet #LongCovid pts are telling me they’ve lost themselves.
3/ my colleague #delirium neuro @doctorShawniqua is haunted by this too. She’s trying to find out what exactly happens to the neurons & synapses in the brain of critical illness survivors so that we can manage people more safely during and after illness.