There was the muscular firefighter who commented that he was afraid of needles, the newly pregnant patient who was worried the vaccine would make her infertile, and the young man who had partied on a weekend bachelor party trip, then lied about his inoculation status to the control nurse when he appeared at the hospital.
Welcome to the new pandemic of the unvaccinated: the patients we love to hate.
Anger among frontline healthcare workers remains professionally hidden behind the masks and oaths we take to our patients, as well as to the profession. We will continue to do our best for everyone who comes to the hospital. But that doesn’t stop the complaints whispered outside the exam rooms and in the hallways as we prepare to take care of our neighbors.
Again.
We are sick of this. You should be too.
We return to the use of face masks indoors and the distance of six feet. Frustrated parents have to cope with changing back-to-school rules. Restaurateurs and airline executives, as well as cruise ships, hyperventilate as conservative governors act and provoke.
And as our COVID culture wars drag on, the virus thrives, regardless of whether you wear a trucker hat or an embroidered kitty hat.
There’s so much to be put off: conspiracy theories, misinformation, Florida, Texas. But from time to time there are also hopes for unexpected places.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, suddenly becomes a hero to those of us caring for unvaccinated COVID patients, screaming for disobedient children like the already unfiltered grandmother after having a few drinks: “ What does it take for people to get immunized? I don’t know, tell me. They are supposed to have common sense. But it’s time to start blaming unvaccinated individuals, not normal people. It is the non-inoculated population that is letting us down ”.
I love her. He is telling the truth. And maybe because she’s not Fauci, some who hesitate to get vaccinated are listening. The daily inoculation rate recently tripled in his state.
Vaccine doubters happily point out that even those who received the antigen have been infected with the Delta variant, and that is true, albeit in much smaller amounts than those not immunized. But for the most part, they are not the ones who make it to the hospital, and 99% of those who have recently passed away were not inoculated. Vaccination remains our best weapon in this war.
There is no cure for COVID, just as there is no cure for smallpox and polio. But now we have gotten rid of those diseases: since they were eradicated by vaccination campaigns. So if Gov. Ivey wants to continue testifying, the drinks are on me.
Even Lindsey Graham knows that her COVID “would be so much worse” without the antigen. You’ve been wearing a mask anyway, so we’re toasting you here too, Senator.
Right-wing America, are you finally listening?
It’s hard not to feel sympathy for the very sick. The people I work with start out wanting to help, and our training fosters empathy about judgment. Blaming patients for their illness is terrible medicine: once it rings, that bell destroys access to essential history and trust in the doctor, nurse, medicine, or procedure necessary to cure or alleviate suffering. This is why nurses brush disapproval with their dirty gloves and why doctors sometimes cry in closed on-call rooms.
We know that COVID patients who are anti-vaccines suffer from this disease, and not only physically: in our patients, we see real anguish and regret for not having been inoculated.
We observe patients who feel really bad explaining why they refused to take protection. Some cry and regret is not simply nostalgic sadness in someone who cannot breathe.
The very sick, those heading to the intensive care unit (ICU), seem terrified. Stories of “fake news” no longer appear to be. And those of us who treat the unbelieving sick are not pleased with their new insights. Seeing how people who denied the existence of COVID realize that it is a very serious matter turns out not to be much fun.
That and the great difficulty of the work ahead of us explains our anger.
In the part of the ER with the sickest patients, each of them unvaccinated, we put on our best faces, but patients know from the way we move around them, from the direct and frank discussions that happen when ventilators or oxygen tubes do not work and roll over on a bed. By the way a nurse holds her hand.
They’re scared; we are angry. And it all could have been prevented with a free and safe vaccine.
It still can be.
This is important: every COVID case is a roll of the dice, a possibility that a new variant will be created that kills children or defies all of our antigens and returns us to the unthinkable: lockdowns, isolation and economic disaster.
We must stop these waves.
In places like Los Angeles, where I work, enough people are vaccinated now, making it unlikely that we will run out of hospital beds during this surge. But with 11 million Californians still unprotected, even here we will suffer. Please be scared, focus, and if you are not inoculated, get the antigen. Do it secretly if necessary. But protect yourself.
In places like Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia and Wyoming, where fewer than 40% of people are vaccinated, and where they have few hospitals and are smaller and more distant, real problems are looming. They could face the same kind of healthcare collapse that we saw in Italy and New York City last year.
But there is more hope.
The people there are finally hearing the sounds of this war getting closer and closer. They’re watching friends get sick, hearing local hospitals and leaders like Governor Ivey mention that the illusions provided by isolation and misinformation need to be discarded, like our frustrations over anti-vaccine excuses, don’t help fix the problem.
Inoculation rates are starting to rise even in places where such a thing seemed impossible a month ago.
So there is an opening, something to do more than tear garments. If you know, as I do, friends or relatives from the east or south, or even across town or state, now is the time to communicate.
This is the time to forgive, forget, encourage and train our fellow citizens, it is an opportunity to open the minds of our friends and family to finally rid ourselves of this virus.
Reach out, offer a ride, ease a fear, make an appointment. Avoiding the following variant could also prevent the death of someone you love.
Mark Morocco is a Los Angeles physician and professor of emergency medicine.
If you want to read this article in Spanish, click here.
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