Once upon a time there was a pandemic, a rare disease outbreak that shook nearly every corner of the globe, crippling health systems worldwide. Yet it brought out the best in people, people who put their lives on the line for the sake of the sick and dying.
But to this day, I still hear and read about the “deniers,” convinced the COVID pandemic was blown out of proportion, that contracting COVID was “not that bad” and that vaccinations were and still are unnecessary.
Even worse, we have at the helm of the Dept. of Health and Human Services an anti-vaxxer himself.
Let’s remind ourselves of some statistics*: from early 2020 to 2024 over 7 million died from COVID worldwide, over 1.2 million in the United States. At the pandemic’s peak, the number of deaths exceeded 20,000 per week in the U.S. alone.
Despite those who retrospectively downplay COVID’s impact, the pandemic massively depleted resources and exposed workers on the frontlines to tremendous risk of catching and dying from the disease.
Hospitals nationwide and worldwide were overwhelmed with COVID patients, many on ventilators, most of whom died. Our three area hospitals were completely full and turned away patients; they often could not receive transfers even for non-COVID serious illnesses.
Here’s a real, personal example: One night on-call, the transfer center from one of our hospitals called me about a patient with a deep neck infection at a small hospital ER 200 miles south in Oregon. A deep neck infection can progress and obstruct the airway, spread up towards the brain or down into the chest. These patients must be admitted for IV antibiotics and often need surgery. There was no ENT in their location, their ER had called over 20 other hospitals in Oregon, Washington and California, all were full and could not accept her. Our hospital also could not take the transfer, but was the first to place her on a “waiting list.” I offered to accept the transfer and admit her should a space open up; in other words, someone either had to die or be discharged, the latter highly unlikely since our ERs were also packed and overflowing with patients waiting for a hospital bed. That patient never made it to our facility, at least while I was on-call. I hope someone else was able to treat her, otherwise she risked dying of that infection. That’s how bad the pandemic was.
By the very nature of our profession, ENT doctors are intimately close to a patient’s face, a high risk for contagion, despite specialized masks (which were in short supply), goggles and impermeable gowns. I still came into the hospital or ER for emergent cases, such as tonsil or deep neck abscesses and unrelenting nosebleeds, some of whom had COVID. Controlling nosebleeds in COVID patients proved challenging; those few not on a ventilator required me to remove their oxygen mask, perform as much as possible in the nose, and quickly replace the mask since oxygen saturations dropped quickly, and repeat the process until I could identify the bleeding site and control it. The same risk came when draining a tonsil abscess. The patient might cough or sneeze during these encounters, spraying blood and saliva and virus right into my face.
As doctors, we couldn’t refuse to see a sick patient; we swore an oath to care for the sick. Though not directly stated in the Hippocratic Oath, many doctors find implicit is our duty to the patient despite risks to ourselves. Once the COVID vaccines were available, healthcare workers were the first to receive them, and most of us eagerly got the vaccine so we could safely continue caring for patients and reduce the risk of spreading the virus to someone else.
Despite the claims of anti-vaxxers, the vaccine saved lives, did not create a danger to all its recipients, and allowed us all to continue the hard work of tending to patients.
It was only through herd immunity with the large mass of the world’s population getting vaccinated that rendered the disease much less virulent and far less deadly. The deniers ignored all the science and proven information readily available--from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the numerous other health and medical organizations--believing instead that we all were complicit in some elaborate conspiracy to spread harmful vaccines or over-exaggerated the disease’s impact. These deniers also claim vaccines for other diseases (already proven highly effective and safe) are also harmful and unnecessary.
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In 1897, a New York newspaper called The Sun published an editorial in response to a letter from 8 year-old Virginia O-Hare, who asked if Santa Claus was real. She was troubled that her “little friends” were Santa-deniers, claiming the jolly old elf didn’t exist. Her father (a surgeon, ironically) could not provide a satisfactory answer, and so she wrote to the paper, for “If you see it in The Sun it’s so.”
In a brilliant piece of writing, the editor, Francis Pharcellus Church, replied in The Sun that “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist,” and prefaced this by saying the unbelievers “have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.”
Though not
literally true, the editorial nevertheless struck home with its readers. It’s enduring message was inspirational and
unifying, and it spoke to our better natures.
It became so popular, it was re-published by other newspapers and other
media outlets for generations, and has endured long after The Sun closed
in 1950.
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Contrast this to our current day-and-age, where easy access to social media allows anyone to spout untruths and dangerous misinformation that is divisive and inspires harmful behavior. These “influencers” ridicule and condemn proven and long-established therapies, and their opinions, not based by fact, only serve to drive a wedge between the medical community and patients.
For all those innocent Virginias out there, yes there was a pandemic that brought out the best in people, yes vaccines saved countless lives, and yes there is hope for humanity despite what the conspiracy theorists and false prophets say. And I offer myself--along with the millions of healthcare workers worldwide who risked contagion and death—as a an eyewitness to that awful period in our history, and as a vaccine recipient still alive and in great health.
*https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/deaths
©Randall
S. Fong, M.D.
For more topics on
medicine, health and the weirdness of life in general, check out the rest of
the blog site at randallfong.blogspot.com
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