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I'm angry and almost 62 and going in for (minor, routine) surgery on Friday, but life is uncertain and I have bad lungs. We're in a pandemic, so I need to get some things off my chest, if I can't later. Here it goes: We have a hell of a job ahead, recovering. 1/x
My wife is a children's hospice nurse. (Fortunately, her work is closed; this pandemic mostly spares children.) But everyone like her, on the front lines, is delivering care while cutting corners to preserve personal protective equipment (PPE) that keeps them safe. 2/x
It's worse than that, in the U.S. If you're a doctor, with $340,000 of student loans that your parents co-signed for, and you die because you emergency-intubated a patient to keep her alive, your parents owe that money. Without a doctor's salary to help pay it back. 6/x
Almost everyone else like her is going to work and risking their lives, and risking the lives of their roommates and spouses and dependents, to deliver care. Because that's what they do. The least you can do in return is to stay home, wear, a mask and wash up. 3/x
So, at the end of this, hospital workers who've risked (and sometimes ruined) their health to keep us alive, will lose their jobs. It's: "Thank you for your service. Also, uh, you're fired. And now that your lungs and kidneys are shot, you're losing your health insurance." 5/x
This virus, and our clumsy, horrific response to it, is a hammer blow that will show us the awful cracks in our society in the U.S.
And we're much, much worse-positioned than any other developed country afterward. (with 4.4% of world population, 38% of new cases today.) 8/x
And we're much, much worse-positioned than any other developed country afterward. (with 4.4% of world population, 38% of new cases today.) 8/x
Oh. And this facemask? That I wear to the grocery store as required by my city to keep me alive? Well, good f***ing luck wearing that, if you happen to be black. You'd have to actually weigh staying coronavirus-free or getting shot by cops. 7/x
The U.S. is run terribly during this pandemic, at the national level. Germany is run by a quantum chemist trying to manage to improve public health. The U.S. is run by a former reality TV show host trying to pump the stock market and get re-elected. 8/x
Here's the thing. A bunch of them, at the end of this, are going to get laid off. See, US hospitals cancelled elective surgeries. Everyone not Covid-19 is avoiding ERs. And when other people lose jobs? Health insurance lapses. So: massive layoffs of all hospital workers. 4/x
