Dispatches from a Pandemic (MDs and Nurses from Wuhan)

[saidsimplesimon]

Along with gratitude for everyone supporting our medical communities, I wanted to share this piece of excellent journalism (imo). It was an emotional journey, from start to finish.

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/what-the-doctors-and-nurses-who-beat-back-the-coronavirus-in-wuhan-want-you-to-know-about-their-months-in-hell-2020-04-08?mod=newsviewer_click

Dispatches from a Pandemic

Opinion: What the doctors and nurses who beat back the coronavirus in Wuhan want you to know about their months in hell

Published: April 8, 2020 at 12:24 p.m. ET

By Tracy Wen Liu
…snip(MD)
The scene stayed with him. He couldn’t get it out of his head when he was awake. When he managed to sleep, he had nightmares. He was overcome by a sense of helplessness. While the state media were portraying health-care workers as heroes, he was devoting his time and energy to treating patients who would not recover. “We’re hardly heroic,” he says.

Li has continued to message and call me about once a week since our first long conversation. “I’ve been slowly improving,” he told me on March 11. Still, he continues to suffer from insomnia, and he is reluctant to tell friends and family in China how he’s really feeling.

The situation at work has taken another demoralizing turn. When the outbreak was raging, he explained, some of the hospital’s administrators cowered in their offices, too afraid to venture out into the wards. But now that commendations are being handed out, the bosses have been the first in line for bonuses.

“It’s much more profitable to work in the financial industry,” he laments. “Do you think I might still have an opportunity to work in that profession?”
…snip (Nurse)
While serving on the front lines, Wang saw many of her colleagues break down and cry in the hospital’s lounge. She sent me a video of a nurse curled up in a corner weeping and proclaiming hysterically that she wanted to quit. I asked Wang what had happened to that nurse, but she told me that such episodes were common. As soon as a patient rang a call button, the nurses would pick themselves up and hurry back to the ward.

On Jan. 27, Wang was diagnosed with a coronavirus infection. That judgment was based solely on her CT scan, even though the standard for confirming a coronavirus case at the time was to use a test kit. Within two weeks, China would formally loosen its criteria for counting cases, allowing for more diagnoses based on characteristic symptoms.
…snip
In any case, she told me that she was not interested in that kind of compensation. What she really wants is a post-mortem investigation into “the government and hospital officials who covered up the outbreak.”.
…snip