I guess this belongs in one of the the other Coronavirus threads but they have gotten a bit untidy. I started a new position a few weeks ago. The Hospital that I had worked for (in an Outpatient Clinic) the last 3 years was in financial trouble before Covid and with the pandemic being the final coup de gras is slated to close in February. I found a position in another outpatient Clinic with a Health Network that was originally created to serve the needs of Black Males in the sixties but now is what is a Federally Qualified Clinic, meaning that we get guaranteed revenue from the U.S. Government to provide care to the indigent, and it is located about 1000 feet from my last site. Our area of Chicago is more Hispanic than Black, and we are hoping to transfer in the of the Hispanic Patients that I had been seeing the past few years who are now going to be without their long time clinic as my former place closes. There is some irony here in that in my old place, I would attempt to use my Spanish (more like Spanglish) with the Patients (most are bilingual, even if they don't want to admit it initially, and the ones that aren't tend to come with family members to translate), and my patients would good naturedly mock my efforts, although most of the time I could muddle through if a translator was not available. Now, at the new place, my Spanglish is viewed as a great marketing point.
I had been off work for six weeks between jobs, and it's stunning to see the resurgence in Covid in just that time. I've seen more patients that had thromboembolic complications (blood clots) from Covid in the two weeks since my return than I had put together previously. My new site, unlike my old, does Covid testing and has done 15,000 in the past six weeks alone. People are lined up around the block, no one is enforcing the social distancing in the street, and my number one priority is not learning the new system but trying to stay alive. I wear an N-95 all day, am afraid to remove it to drink water, and it's no exaggeration that at the end of the day I feel faint from dehydration and stress. I can't wait to shower when I come home and have taken to stripping to my underwear on my back porch before I enter the house, leaving my clothes
in a heap until the next day, and I don't give a damn who sees it (it's dark when I come home, and a cold windy Chicago winter is upon us so no one is hanging outside in their yards). My old place, where I stopped in to visit, went back to 100% virtual medicine, and when I had left we had returned to our norm, with social distancing in the waiting room but otherwise business as usual.
So on to the vaccine. The Pfizer vaccine has reportedly been shipped to the University of Chicago Hospital, with whom my new employer has a loose affiliation and where my wife has worked her entire career. My wife and I now receive the same work emails and it is a constant source of discussion between us. For both of us it can't be fast enough. I don't handle vaccinations well, coincidentally ever since I was diagnosed with a mild form of Chronic Leukemia around 10 years ago, and now every influenza, shingles , tetanus, hepatitis, whatever shot knocks me on my ass with headache, fever and chills for a day or two, but I would crawl over broken glass in a blizzard to get the Covid Vaccine. Hell, I would take every company that offers one if I could. If Petrushka can have 42 copies of Mahler 1, I can have at least three Covid vaccines, I figure.
However, this is not the attitude amongst my patients. Most of them, Black or otherwise, think that we are going to be experimenting upon them. The legacy of Tuskeegee is upon us. The tragedy is this is the highest risk population and not only would they benefit from the vaccine but it is important to get them inoculated to eradicate it for everyone. My wife, who works in a Cancer Chemotherapy area with approximately 50 Nurses, reports that most of her younger (40 and under) Colleagues also are skeptical about the vaccine. And studies show that 30% of the American Population doesn't trust vaccines. Thank you, Robert DeNiro, as the cult of celebrity
triumphs reason every time. This is how a great country gets a freaking Reality Show star as their leader.
And now we are raging with debates, reminiscent of board games ( you are on a plane with three people and there are only two parachutes...who would you...). Who should get the vaccine first? Should my wife and I get it? Should my 92 year old mum in the Senior Facility get it first?
What about schoolteachers, who despite the extremely low risk of transmission in a school facility have managed to gut the education of a generation of children-should they be compelled to get it first, so that schools can reopen and parents can return to work?
Personally I hope that with the sheer number of companies developing vaccines and for the demand present, that there is an ample supply so that these Trivial Pursuit issues don't have to be pursued.
I had been off work for six weeks between jobs, and it's stunning to see the resurgence in Covid in just that time. I've seen more patients that had thromboembolic complications (blood clots) from Covid in the two weeks since my return than I had put together previously. My new site, unlike my old, does Covid testing and has done 15,000 in the past six weeks alone. People are lined up around the block, no one is enforcing the social distancing in the street, and my number one priority is not learning the new system but trying to stay alive. I wear an N-95 all day, am afraid to remove it to drink water, and it's no exaggeration that at the end of the day I feel faint from dehydration and stress. I can't wait to shower when I come home and have taken to stripping to my underwear on my back porch before I enter the house, leaving my clothes
in a heap until the next day, and I don't give a damn who sees it (it's dark when I come home, and a cold windy Chicago winter is upon us so no one is hanging outside in their yards). My old place, where I stopped in to visit, went back to 100% virtual medicine, and when I had left we had returned to our norm, with social distancing in the waiting room but otherwise business as usual.
So on to the vaccine. The Pfizer vaccine has reportedly been shipped to the University of Chicago Hospital, with whom my new employer has a loose affiliation and where my wife has worked her entire career. My wife and I now receive the same work emails and it is a constant source of discussion between us. For both of us it can't be fast enough. I don't handle vaccinations well, coincidentally ever since I was diagnosed with a mild form of Chronic Leukemia around 10 years ago, and now every influenza, shingles , tetanus, hepatitis, whatever shot knocks me on my ass with headache, fever and chills for a day or two, but I would crawl over broken glass in a blizzard to get the Covid Vaccine. Hell, I would take every company that offers one if I could. If Petrushka can have 42 copies of Mahler 1, I can have at least three Covid vaccines, I figure.
However, this is not the attitude amongst my patients. Most of them, Black or otherwise, think that we are going to be experimenting upon them. The legacy of Tuskeegee is upon us. The tragedy is this is the highest risk population and not only would they benefit from the vaccine but it is important to get them inoculated to eradicate it for everyone. My wife, who works in a Cancer Chemotherapy area with approximately 50 Nurses, reports that most of her younger (40 and under) Colleagues also are skeptical about the vaccine. And studies show that 30% of the American Population doesn't trust vaccines. Thank you, Robert DeNiro, as the cult of celebrity
triumphs reason every time. This is how a great country gets a freaking Reality Show star as their leader.
And now we are raging with debates, reminiscent of board games ( you are on a plane with three people and there are only two parachutes...who would you...). Who should get the vaccine first? Should my wife and I get it? Should my 92 year old mum in the Senior Facility get it first?
What about schoolteachers, who despite the extremely low risk of transmission in a school facility have managed to gut the education of a generation of children-should they be compelled to get it first, so that schools can reopen and parents can return to work?
Personally I hope that with the sheer number of companies developing vaccines and for the demand present, that there is an ample supply so that these Trivial Pursuit issues don't have to be pursued.
Best wishes.
Let us hope that 2021 is an improvement on the present twelve months.
Yes, RFG. Your extraordinary post moved us very much. We owe the life of a family relative to world-class treatment at the Lurie, & are painfully aware that such is not necessarily available to all in the U.S., except for the interventions of such as yourself. Please keep safe 
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