Deja Vu
This week, I’m going to borrow the words of a health care reporter I admire. Caroline Chen covers the coronavirus pandemic for ProPublica and recently wrote a first-person account titled “The Enraging Deja Vu of a Third Coronavirus Wave.”
Chen shares that although we’ve learned a lot about COVID-19 since March, she’s “exhausted and infuriated” to conduct many of the same interviews and hear many of the same stories for a third time as part of the current surge.
“I don’t want to hear the same stories in a fourth wave, a fifth wave, to feel like we are trapped in an endless spiral, unnecessarily repeating our own mistakes. But we don’t have to wait until then. The best way to help our medical workers isn’t to stand at our windows at 7 p.m. cheering or to give them thank-you water bottles. It’s to stay out of their ERs and ICUs by keeping ourselves and our neighbors safe.”
Wishing everyone a safe, healthy Thanksgiving,
– Elizabeth Fite, health care reporter, efite@timesfreepress.com