Headlines Don't Capture the Horror We Saw - The Atlantic

[Nevilledog]

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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/new-york-doctors-know-how-bad-pandemic-can-get/617302/

You likely know that the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 is surging across the country. But headlines from distant states do not capture the horror of a hospital without enough intensive-care beds. I was an anesthesiology resident in a large academic medical center at the peak of the pandemic in New York City this spring.

During a time when journalists had little access to what was happening inside New York hospitals, I wrote regular email updates to friends and family. These messages—edited for length and clarity below—showcase the frightening reality of what care looks like in an overwhelmed hospital. (Where I describe individual cases in significant detail, I’ve obtained the consent of the patient or family in question.) The emails relate the experiences of health-care workers, and young doctors in particular: the anxiety, the fear, the overwhelming responsibility, and the ethical burden of hard decisions. Even after the pandemic is over, the weight of these experiences will remain with us for a lifetime.

These messages form a chronicle of what COVID-19 has already done in America and a reminder of what it could do again this winter.

THURSDAY, MARCH 26

A senior anesthesiology resident holds the stat intubation pager, which goes off when a patient anywhere in the hospital needs a breathing tube right away. My co-residents and I first noticed that things were changing when the pager started to go off every few hours, and then every hour. When the hospital ran out of ICU beds, my department swiftly converted our operating rooms into a giant ICU. A co-resident and I spent Tuesday pushing beds and anesthesia machines around to plan how to fit up to four beds in an operating room. The “OR-ICU” fits multiple COVID-19 patients into one operating room, ventilated via the anesthesia machine’s ventilators. Their daytime doctor, an anesthesia resident in PPE, doesn’t leave their side until their nighttime doctor—another anesthesia resident in PPE—comes to take over.

On Tuesday night, one of my co-residents did 17 emergency intubations. Upon running to respond to yet another intubation page, she was horrified to see that the patient was one of our supervising physicians. Today, one of our surgeons was intubated. Off duty in my Upper West Side apartment, I hear an ambulance go by every 10 minutes. It’s hard to sleep. My colleagues wonder out loud: Is this chest pain from the virus, or just intense anxiety?

*snip*


Long, but well worth the read.

[crickets]

1. K&R for visibility.

[Delphinus]

2. Thanks for that link.

I am reading ... and it takes my breath away.

[Hekate]

3. Hospitals need to start allowing cameras into the wards & ICUs. Cities, but small towns especially

Small towns and rural states thought this was a big city problem that would never touch them, because reasons.

Wherever there’s an overflowing hospital in crisis — cameras need to be inside there. No pixelating, either.

Privacy concerns can be taken care of by family permission, and if someone has been sending out their personal vids to the world from their bed, consider that permission to film them being intubated.

Conspiracy theories going around (crisis actors, no cars in the parking lot, that shit) need to be vigorously debunked.

You can’t reason with some people, but I think most of the really ignorant can be educated if you do it with enough pictures.

Grimly,
Hekate

[Silver Gaia]

6. I agree wholeheartedly.

People need to SEE and HEAR what is happening. Keeping it insulated as it has been is creating an air of secrecy and unreality. This is helping to fuel conspiracy theories. We need to break through this barrier wherever and however possible. SHOW people the truth.

[plimsoll]

4. I don't think things will turn around that quickly.

In addition to the dangerous propaganda spewed from the trump administration you had a year of not working logistics and infrastructure to support testing and eventually vaccination. Deliberate and willful undermining of both the information presented and the means of protecting the US. I hope he’s just grossly incompetent, the alternative is a truly evil man leading willing and dedicated followers to inflict the most damage possible on those who defied him.

Sound kind of familiar.

[SammyWinstonJack]

10. It's the alternative, though he certainly is grossly incompetent also.

[certainot]

5. this motherfucking trump could not have done this without limbaughs help and the 1500 radio stations

that follow.

trump has been coordinating w limbaugh since before the primaries (paying hiim?) and if trump had wanted people to wear masks so would limbaugh. the fact limbaugh kept calling it a hoax after trump had to pivot to look like he was doing something means that making it worse, essentially getting more people killed, was the real strategy. they learned in 2014 with ebola that limbaugh and rw media could weaponize a disease and used it to get 9 senate seats. the hype started iin oct and ended right after the election.

those two are stupid enough to think they could use covid like ebola and media needs to investigate and ask if the people around trump heard any references to that. they need to ask limbaugh questions about it, and keep asking.

[peacebuzzard]

7. this scenario describes the projected waves destined for rural areas.

In Tennessee it is starting to crest, and this rural area is almost out of hospital beds. There is a daily crescendo of death counts.
And, yet, idiots still run around with no masks.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. We didn't have to create this horror show, which was brought to us by insane Republicans.

[SMC22307]

9. The people who need to hear this (MAGATs) aren't reading The Atlantic.

Or maybe they are, like that callous asshole from Floriduh - Sabatini? - who thinks this is all a big joke.