“The medical profession hasn’t changed. Our credibility hasn’t changed. Our commitment to care for you – to adore you, to grieve your diagnosis and what it means for you and your family – hasn’t changed. Our advice hasn’t changed. I’m grateful fo…
Category: COVID
The COVID vaccine is a life raft. I’m not your life raft to get out of it.
It began with a seemingly innocuous text from a friend of the family. “Hi, Richard. I hope you’re well. I need to speak with you. Can I call you?” The last time we spoke was at my brother’s long-postponed “celebration of l…
The death of empathy
You used to come to us struggling to breathe and begging for our help, and while we stood over you preparing for intubation, we would feel all the feels while looking into eyes that we knew might never open again. We would break down and cry while tell…
Emotional epidemiology of disease is as critical as clinical epidemiology
At this point in the COVID vaccination campaign, nearly all American adults who want the vaccine have gotten it, and are gratefully snapping up their boosters. Those who decline vaccination are largely impervious to public service announcements, commun…
Don’t be anti-vax in name only
The following article is satire. “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and than…
Attack COVID like the terrorist it is
More than 1,100 in the U.S. are still dying every day from COVID-19. Every three days, we are losing more Americans than the number that died on 9/11. Just because we don’t see it sneaking up on our families does not mean the COVID terrorist is d…
My frustration pot has overflowed
I wake up feeling exhausted. This seemingly never-ending nightmare of mutating coronavirus keeps sucking the life out of me. During this past summer, we were receiving some signs of hope that COVID was in decline; this hope was ripped out from under us…
The 12 days of COVID: year 2
Please also see the original 12 days of COVID. On the first day of COVID, the ongoing pandemic gave to me, An insurrection in Washington, DC. On the second day of COVID, the never-ending pandemic gave to me, Two backordered gloves. And an insurrection …
10 things this nurse is f-ing tired of saying
Musings of a primary care triage nurse: 1. “Isolation means you aren’t around others. No, you shouldn’t be eating dinner with your family or watching TV with them.” 2. “You’ve been sick for the past week but didnR…
COVID-19 monoclonal antibodies are a bridge to vaccination
Attention-grabbing headlines suggest that our crucial COVID-19 pandemic tools—monoclonal antibodies and vaccines—are incompatible. Beyond the controversy rests an evidence-based reality: monoclonal antibodies and vaccines are complementary aspects of p…
