This is a poisonous plant, as depicted by my 8 year old.

Bear with me, but I find it an apt symbol for #COVID19.

1. The flower is what we all see and fear.

The critical illness, the patient unable to breath, the intubation, the hospital stay.

At its center is (in my son's words) the "polin stuff", that draws us in. It is the buzz, the news of the day. It commands attention.

Lest we forget: the flower does not exist in isolation.

2. Below it is the stem. These lower grade illnesses are serious, but not as horrific. They are the patient who perks up with an inhaler and some tylenol, whose O2 sat is ok, who can go home.

Those whose disease I pray does not bud.

3. Then the leaves. These are what make the growth of #covid19 possible.

It's the ankle sprain who doesn't yet have a cough.

The visitor who walks around and breathes on my nurses.

The appendicitis who develops a fever - tomorrow.

(If we had adequate testing, we could strip off the leaves, and the rest of the plant would wither.)

4. At the bottom, though, are the true roots of the problem.

The deeper seated issues that are exacerbated & uncovered by #covid19 - and that facilitate its spread.

We *must* talk about these roots that feed this pandemic. For example:

Lack of adequate testing/contact tracing
Unequal access to healthcare
A mismatch between the profit motive & community health
Systematic underfunding of our #publichealth infrastructure

And on a still deeper level:
Deep- seated societal distrust of science & of expertise
The slow, intentional destruction of a competent social services system
Huge structural inequities in jobs, income, power
Politicization of facts.

I see these roots, every day, in my emergency dept, in the context of #covid19.

Patients who run out of life- sustaining meds not because they *have* #covid19 - but because their pharmacy closed, and they can't get to a different one.

The patient who puts off a visit too long, because they lost their job & their health insurance, and are scared about the cost.

The grandma whose stroke was undetected until too late, because of #SocialDistancing

(I could go on, but you get the picture. These roots run DEEP.)

And - if we want to rid our country of this deadly nightshade, clearing out our ERs and ICUs is not enough.

No one weeds a yard by picking flowers.

We must dig it out by its roots. //