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another downstream cost of the pandemic
Well, not the pandemic itself, but the way people are responding to it.
Forwarded through some intermediaries from Reddit, one long-time doctor's explanation for leaving the field:
(Heavy content warning)
We can tell, almost without fail, which ones will die when they come through the door of the ICU, but we do everything in our power to keep them alive - BIPAP, ECMO, ventilator - knowing we are stretching out the inevitable. We use paralytics with ECMO and ventilators, then ease them off to see if they can function. And as the drugs wane, the look of terror emerges, the tears. We try to calm them, to swallow our desire to scream at them: This is your fault! This didn't have to happen! Often, their spouse or their uncle or neighbor is nearby, dying along with them. And we work hard for those rare cases where we can pull them back from the edge.
I could deal with all of that. What I can no longer handle is the screaming, not from the patients, but from the families. [...]
He begged me to bring in his family. A nurse called them, because they had never come to the hospital. They refused to wear masks, and so would not be admitted. The nurse told the wife that her husband was likely dying, and was begging to see them. All she cared about was masks. She would only come if she and her daughters didn't have to wear any.
The nurse came to me and told me the wife wanted to speak to me. I got on the phone and she ordered me to cure him with ivermectin and vitamin C & D. I explained to her, those do not work, they have been extensively studied and the amount of ivermectin needed to treat even mild COVID would kill a human being. Once again, I was told I was ignorant. [...]
I stepped outside, went to the wife, and identified myself. I told her that I was sorry, that we had done everything we could, but her husband had passed a few minutes earlier. I did not manage to get the words of the sentence fully out of my mouth when I felt the fist strike my face and heard the screamed words "You murderer!" [...]
I started looking for a new job the next day. I will never treat a patient again.
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No shirt, no shoes, no service. This is not a new thing. Even if these people won't wear a mask anywhere else, this is a hospital. And how [expletive deleted][1] hard is it to wear a mask for a short amount of time to see your family member in the hospital?
My mother recently died (not of Covid), and I am grateful for every visit that I had with her. I can't imagine refusing to visit because of a mask. (Actually, although she was at home, and I was fully immunized (as was she), I kept my mask on mostly, taking it off to kiss her goodbye.)
[1] There were a lot more expletives that I deleted in this paragraph, but it was overwhelming my comment.
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For that matter, people have been required to get certain vaccines in order to attend schools and summer camps for many years. Why would Covid be any different?
I have an anti-vaxxer cousin (the crunchy-granola kind, not the Trumpist kind), but at least she's consistent: her teenaged children have never gotten any vaccines, and have therefore never attended public school; I'm not sure what they'll do about college. She was livid when my mother and other relatives persuaded her 82-year-old mother to get vaccinated, finally, last month.
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Yeah, it really does not make sense. Way before the pandemic, it was normal to have to wear masks to visit someone in the ICU -- I've done it. And sure you might think you know more than you do and get angry when doctors won't listen to you, but assault?
And then there's the coda to the story: the doctor isn't pressing charges out of fear. Fear for family, fear for other medical professionals, fear of inciting even more violence.
The victim is afraid of inciting. That's, uh, not how that works in civilized societies.
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