Past Time — Ad Astra per Aspera

Today is Saturday, November 21, 2020. It feels as if 2020 has gone on a very long time and we haven’t even had Thanksgiving yet. It feels past time for this year to be over, if only it would carry the pandemic away with it. I feel this way; I hear my family, friends, teammates and patients voice this sentiment; no doubt many people are tired of 2020 all over Rooks County, in Kansas, across the United States and the world. Before this pandemic can end, though, some things need to happen, and we all need to pitch in to help.

First: we must deal with reality. COVID-19 is real and unpredictable. We don’t have a cure, a 100% successful treatment, or a widely available vaccine (yet). It didn’t go away after the election. It isn’t the flu. It is filling up our hospitals, wearing out our healthcare teams and killing our friends, family and neighbors at an alarming rate. Much of my own frustration is in the unpredictable nature of the illness - one person gets the sniffles, one person feels terrible for a week and recovers, one person is sick and doesn’t return to their baseline after illness, one person has no symptoms, and one person dies. Which is which? More old people die, more young people have minimal or no symptoms…but not all the time! A friend and family physician 10 years younger than I am spent several months in the ICU and rehab. An 80 year old patient didn’t know she had it until it was discovered on routine pre-operative testing. A 28 year old previously healthy medical student died. How does COVID-19 pick? We don’t know. And until we do, it remains potentially dangerous for everyone. That’s real.

Second: we must be thoughtful and accurate in our messaging. I’ve had to thin out my social media contacts this year, which makes me sad. Seeing posts downplaying the serious nature of COVID-19 makes me feel angry at people I care about. COVID-19 is not “just the flu” - I promise. I’ve been a doctor for 20 years and I have NEVER lost seven patients in my community in less than 10 days to the flu; I saw that happen with COVID-19 this year and signed two of those death certificates. Kansas lost 141 patients to influenza during our last flu season (source here); since March of this year, we have lost 1410 to COVID-19 (source here). My math (and yours) tells us COVID-19 is currently TEN TIMES MORE DEADLY than the flu was last year. And we aren’t finished. In the past week, we have seen an average of 2970 new cases a day and 22 new deaths per day. Before you share information on social media or in your conversations with family and friends, consider two questions: is it true? how do I know? Checking the facts before broadcasting stops the spread of misinformation. That’s accurate.

Third: we must do the right things. Even when they are inconvenient or annoying. Do I like wearing a mask every time I leave my house? No. Do I wish I could eat out at restaurants, walk into a store to browse and travel for fun? Yes. Do I miss hugging my coworkers and patients during a work day? So much it hurts. I am tired of having to consider the question of whether doing something is an acceptable risk during these COVID-times. To be honest, I worry someone will judge me for making the choice I did. And I fear I may look back at some point and realize that the risk I took was too great. All of this makes me exhausted. Probably you, too. So I look for the low-hanging fruit…the easy things to do: wear a mask, wash my hands, stay home unless I have an essential need or am essentially needed, order take-out from restaurants, shop on-line and then pick up from local stores, limit my mask-less contacts to a very small number of people, not go to places and events that have a large number of people who aren’t doing these things. If EVERYONE (yes, I do mean everyone, even you) did all of these things, we could beat COVID-19. These are personal sacrifices to protect people you love and people you don’t even know. That’s helpful.

I do have hope. There are two vaccines with amazing efficacy almost ready to go. Scientists continue to learn about COVID-19 at an incredible pace. There are new drugs and newly discovered uses for existing drugs that demonstrate promise. And most of all, I know I live in a place where people care about others. It is time to pull together. Time to do the right things as a community; as a nation. Past time.