With the anniversary of the pandemic, my mood, like that of the world, has been reflective. I’ve had many first paragraphs for this particular editorial—each one with a different tone: anger, horror, sympathy, disgust, frustration. But I’ve decided to go another way: hope.
Vaccination is underway, although there are still too many countries without vaccine and too many anti-vaxxers in countries with vaccine. New, stronger viral variants abound. Unfortunately, my office gets as many calls to reschedule appointments because of new COVID exposures and diagnoses as it does to separate vaccination and dermal filler appointments.
The public expression of hate for everyone “other” hasn’t gone away. Even as diversity becomes a subject line of everything from aesthetic marketing campaigns to academic committees, QAnon conspiracy theories and symbols of the KKK and Nazis have become all too commonplace from politics to social media. Asians in America are the latest targets of violence.
Hybrid meetings are the new norm, with faculty and attendees from the region and those who feel comfortable and are able to travel to the destination attending in person and all others joining virtually.
Some colleagues with fully vaccinated offices have reduced their inter-personnel personal protective equipment requirements and even some patient precautions, and more states are going back to business-as-usual. However, we still don’t know the risk of transferring COVID variants from a vaccinated person to another vaccinated person and then onto an unvaccinated member of their household, so time will tell if these changes are being made too quickly and too soon.
Medicine is, of course, both an art and a science. However, “follow the science” became a politically charged phrase, even among well-educated physicians. I became a physician, in part, because I like solving puzzles and find it reassuring when things make sense. To me, that’s science. From my experience of the pandemic, science is indeed what may ultimately let the world get back to normal, and it’s the distrust in medicine and science that escalated the morbidity, mortality, as well as economic repercussions.
“Wow, Heidi,” I hear you thinking. “This is you being hopeful?” Yes, it is. Because if I am writing and you are reading, then we survived the last 12 months.
It is spring again, a time for rebirth and renewal. I’m in the midst of an almost archeological dig type cleaning and reorganization of my personal office within my office. I can see both desktop and rug and have reached the back or bottom of almost every cabinet, drawer, box, and shopping bag. I feel as though I can breathe better, although that is certainly aided by the inhaler and steroid taper for the asthmatic bronchitis I self-treated until my staff forced me to see a board-certified pulmonary physician in person, as a patient, last week.
As my new favorite tee shirt says: “TEAM FAUCI, because, you know. . . science.”
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