Opinion: We don’t send soldiers to fight a war without weapons. Give doctors what they need to fight Covid-19
My husband has been an emergency physician for 30 years. During that time, I have seen him frustrated because of social problems he can’t solve or depressed from the bureaucracy that medicine has become. I have watched him wander through sleep-deprived days, burnt and crispy from shift work. But I have never seen him truly worried about going to work until the first Covid-19 case was diagnosed in Rhode Island, where we live and work.
Jay has been on the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic. He has worked multiple shifts since it began. Curiously, neither he nor any of his front-line colleagues who show no symptoms have been tested for Covid-19, even though a team of Japanese researchers recently reported that approximately 30% of people infected with the novel coronavirus show no symptoms of Covid-19. Let that number sink in. It means that many of the patients my husband and other health care workers are in contact with who seem “fine” could be vectors for the coronavirus.
