I Was A COVID Doctor. Here's The One Thing I Refuse To Do As We 'Get Back To Normal.'
Huff PostA nurse gives medication to a patient with COVID-19 in the medical intensive care unit at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center on April 24, 2020, in New York City. Health care workers are not OK. As the transition back to “normal” begins, our clinics — echoing the rest of the nation — are moving toward a new stage of the pandemic. A stage where the role of the COVID-19 care provider is dissolved and absorbed into the umbrella of primary care, where a collective problem gets shoved onto the individual, and where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, our nation’s foremost health protection agency, places the burden of risk calculation onto millions of immunocompromised people by advising them to “talk to their health care provider” about masking and what measures they should take to stay safe. Ron DeSantis and his recent mask tantrum in front of high school students, in which he accused them of COVID theatrics.” For two years, I have watched in horror as the people in charge of this country have presided over close to 1 million dead from COVID and counting, as charlatans and grifters occupy the halls of power. As an immunocompromised doctor on my clinic’s COVID team for the past two years, I want everyone — especially our most vulnerable — to live and thrive through whatever this next period looks like.