if you (or someone you know!) need some healthy scaremongering
So I didn’t get my crap together in time enough over the past few weeks to get you guys a Q&A today, BUT I kiiiiinda figure it can’t hurt to re-up some of the ghastliest stories about COVID that I’ve essentially internalized over the past year because, guys, it’s bad. This is the winter wave we saw coming, except uh as it turns out we never got it quite under control in the summer and fall either?
So yeah, call this a scare tactic, but if being reminded of any of this — especially the first-person accounts, which has a way of searing your brain in a way that no amount of data and charts can — dissuades you or someone you forward this to from taking fewer unnecessary risks with your health and the health of those around you in the coming weeks, I’m cool with that.
If dredging yourself in horrifying content isn’t motivating or healthy for you, feel free to delete this, obviously. This is just me, as someone who lived in New York during that really scary first wave, sharing stories that have informed my own decisions to not go home for the holidays to be with family (and the world’s most perfect goldendoodle). If you’re still agonizing over your plans, may these links help tip the scales for you, in a scary serious but helpful way:
This WaPo interview with a New York paramedic on what it works like working last spring:
Some of us can’t stop thinking about it. I woke up this morning to about 60 new text messages from paramedics who are barely holding it together. Some are still sick with the virus. At one point we had 25 percent of EMTs in the city out sick. Others are living in their cars so they don’t risk bringing it home to their families. They’re depressed. They’re emotionally exhausted. They’re drinking too much. They’re lashing out at their kids. They’re having night terrors and panic attacks and all kinds of outbursts. I’ve got five paramedics in the ground from this virus already and a few more on ventilators. Another rookie EMT just committed suicide. He was having trouble coping with what he was seeing. He was a kid — 23 years old. He won’t be the last. I have medics who come to me every day and say, “Is this PTSD I’m feeling?” But technically PTSD comes after the event, and we’re not there yet. It’s ongoing stress and trauma, and we might have months to go.
This very early first-person account from the NYT Magazine editor Jessica Lustig, on taking care of her husband, who had COVID in March, and her teen daughter, “CK:”
I run through possibilities. I’m not so worried about CK getting sick. I can nurse her too. It’s if I get sick. I show her how to do more things, where things go, what to remember, what to do if — What if T is hospitalized? What if I am? Could a 16-year-old be left to fend for herself at home, alone? How would she get what she needed? Could she do it? For how long?
Every single story in BuzzFeed News’ Lost Year series is important, but the one about the millennial long-hauler is extra horrifying:
Now, she can barely function. Walking down the block leaves her winded, and buying groceries requires immediate rest. Because of that, she lost her job — her dream job that helped validate all those student loans. She had to give up her apartment, accept financial help from her dad, and replace dates with doctors’ appointments. She’s 35, and suddenly she’s starting from scratch.
A Medical Worker Describes Terrifying Lung Failure From COVID-19 — Even in His Young Patients, from ProPublica
It first struck me how different it was when I saw my first coronavirus patient go bad. I was like, Holy shit, this is not the flu. Watching this relatively young guy, gasping for air, pink frothy secretions coming out of his tube and out of his mouth. The ventilator should have been doing the work of breathing but he was still gasping for air, moving his mouth, moving his body, struggling. We had to restrain him. With all the coronavirus patients, we’ve had to restrain them. They really hyperventilate, really struggle to breathe. When you’re in that mindstate of struggling to breathe and delirious with fever, you don’t know when someone is trying to help you, so you’ll try to rip the breathing tube out because you feel it is choking you, but you are drowning.
This isn’t exactly first-person, but this Atlantic video depicting what it was like inside a hospitals in Milan and this NYT photo essay on the height of the pandemic in Bergamo, Italy….
And finally: this one’s obviously high with the shock value but like…..are you REALLY sure you need to jet off for vacay right now when people have died in their seats?
I know. I KNOW. It’s hell right now, and maybe will be for the next few months. But we have way more science and data and medical innovation than we did eight months ago, and that is Good. We are close to a vaccine; also Good. Let’s look out for each other and hold tight in the meantime, okay?