It wasn’t until residency that I realized access to diabetes management was a luxury. Before I became a doctor I would ignorantly say stuff like “just take your meds” or just “follow the prescribed diet.”/1 At Bellevue hospital I would see young adult patients come in regularly with diabetic emergencies, “non-compliance” listed in their histories. Some had insurance coverage, some did not. All of them had difficulty paying for insulin./2

What I find most revealing is how many of my unvaccinated patients, who are now ill with COVID19, continue to express hesitancy over the vaccine, but quickly accept experimental treatment… …Treatments that have limited data compared to the massive amount of information we’ve gained on the benefit of vaccines…

When I see these reports of hospitals becoming full it reminds of my clinical time in Queens, New York. I get post traumatic stress when I remember how, in March, we first tried to separate the ER into “COVID & non-COVID” complaints. We had no idea what was to come. - a thread. We soon learned this would not work, as the patients we examined and admitted for acute appendicitis later tested positive for #COVID19. It felt like every patient had it. That’s when fear really set in - we realized there was no sure way to safely isolate high risk patients.

I’m trying my best to be a calm, educational resource for my friends but then I wake up, watch ‘insta stories, and see that people are rarely taking #socialdistancing seriously. We need to WAKE UP and pay attention. We don’t have enough tests to try and confine this virus. We must focus on mitigation.