January 2021 Newsletter - Momentous Occasion
January Greetings
On December 28th, residents and staff of Life Care Center of Kirkland began receiving the coronavirus vaccine.
It was a momentous occasion. Earlier this year, the facility near Seattle was the site of the first COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, an outbreak that claimed 46 lives.
303 days and 335,000 lives later, finally, there is a glimmer of hope.
In mid-December, the first doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine left the company’s Michigan plant to be shipped across the country. The image of the trucks rolling out of the facility provoked cheers on the scene and tears from many people watching from afar, myself included.
I felt hope.
But as my colleague Dr. Esther Choo said, we have a long way to go before we’ll be able to celebrate.
We must continue to use caution in the face of this virus, marrying it to our hope. On the other side of this adversity, may we be more grateful for togetherness. Until then, let us continue to reimagine the ways we can come together to heal.
I hope you are carrying the light of optimism with you into the new year. There are reasons to be hopeful.
Spotlight: Healthcare Workers
The incredible hardships that frontline healthcare workers have been asked to endure for the past ten months—often with little support—are difficult to overestimate. A new study out of the United Kingdom reveals that healthcare workers have 7 times the risk of severe COVID-19 compared with other professions. On top of the physical risks, the mental and emotional toll this year has taken on the healthcare community will leave long-lasting scars.
The loss of life our community has faced is staggering. In partnership with Kaiser Health News, The Guardian is investigating the deaths of nearly 2,900 healthcare workers who appeared to have died of Covid-19 after working on the frontlines of the pandemic. According to The Guardian, “The number of dead is expected to climb significantly as new data sources are unlocked in the coming weeks. Our data shows that the majority of healthcare workers who have died are people of color.” You can read the stories of some of these lost healthcare workers in The Guardian’s interactive database.
I am proud of my colleagues. I mourn for them. And hope that the new year brings them rest, peace, and joy.
Around the Web
America Is Running Out of Nurses
“At least half of all states are now facing staff shortages, and more than a third of hospitals in states as varied as Arkansas, Missouri, New Mexico, and Wisconsin are simply running out of staff. Ordinarily, an I.C.U. nurse might care for, at most, two critically ill patients at a time. Now, some are caring for as many as eight patients simultaneously.”
“Since the surge is occurring nationwide, health-care workers cannot go to the trouble spots to relieve their exhausted colleagues, as they did during the initial spring crisis in the New York area. Moreover, many are simply exhausted after a very difficult year. Inexcusable shortages of personal protective equipment at the outset of the pandemic forced nurses to improvise, with some donning garbage bags to treat patients. The months of hard work that followed forced many health-care workers to stay away from family members, to spare them from the risk. Some have watched colleagues succumb to the disease, or faced staffing shortages so dire that they had to keep working after testing positive for COVID-19.”
Pulled By Hope And Grief: What It Felt Like To Get The Vaccine
“I cried because I was overwhelmed by grief, but I also cried because of the enormity of the moment. In under a year, scientists developed not just one, but multiple vaccines against a virus that was previously unknown. They used new technology and collaborated across the globe with a single unified vision — defeat the virus. And with the help of brave people who volunteered for clinical trials, they did it. They developed vaccines that are safe and effective and add to our ability to defeat the virus, restore the economy, and allow us to return to some semblance of normalcy. This was not just akin to landing a person safely on the moon. Rather, this was akin to landing a person safely on Jupiter and having them return to Earth to tell the tale.”
Where to Find me
Here are a few of the lectures I’ll be giving in the coming month:
January 21-23, 2021: Northwest Seminars
Topics in Emergency Medicine
January 24, 2021: Emerald Coast Medical Association, Destin Fl
Intimate Partner Violence
Happy New Year
May the sorrows we’ve known in 2020 foster compassion and joy in the year to come.
Love,
Tracy