In The News (23)
China's schoolkids beat American students in all academic categories The academic performance of American schoolchildren hasn't budged in two decades, despite billions of dollars in increased funding. ........... the current performance of a nation's students predicts future economic potential.
What South Korea Can Teach Us About Vaccine Hesitancy There is a danger that coronavirus vaccination becomes just another battle in America’s endless culture war. ........ But online, the fear would not bend to rational explanation. ........ Americans in 2020 exist in splintered realities. A large number of us believe one truth about Ukraine, face masks, hydroxychloroquine, climate change and the results of the presidential election; perhaps almost as large a number of us believe the opposite. .......... in some geographic or social circles, anti-vaccine activists will wreak havoc. ....... making the vaccines free and easy for Americans to get will be a much more effective way of promoting their use than devising some clever public relations campaign.
The Fight to Win Latino Voters for the G.O.P. For 10 years, Libre — an arm of the Koch family’s Americans for Prosperity — has been working to foster conservatism in Hispanic communities. Now, the group is going all-in on Georgia’s Senate runoffs.
Headlines Don’t Capture the Horror We Saw I chronicled what COVID-19 did to a hospital. America must not let down its guard. .......... the experiences of health-care workers, and young doctors in particular: the anxiety, the fear, the overwhelming responsibility, and the ethical burden of hard decisions. Even after the pandemic is over, the weight of these experiences will remain with us for a lifetime. .......... March 26 ....... Upon running to respond to yet another intubation page, she was horrified to see that the patient was one of our supervising physicians. Today, one of our surgeons was intubated. Off duty in my Upper West Side apartment, I hear an ambulance go by every 10 minutes. It’s hard to sleep. My colleagues wonder out loud: Is this chest pain from the virus, or just intense anxiety? ........... When I put on my PPE (N95 mask, goggles, face shield, hair cover, gown, and two pairs of gloves) to enter the operating room .............. Pre-COVID, we were used to seeing patients pass away with at least one family member at their side. ICU doctors are desensitized to death, but even for us, the fact that people are dying alone is devastating to watch. ............... I explained that what they were about to see would likely be disturbing—that their dad might be unrecognizable to them—and asked again if they were sure they wanted to see. They insisted that they did. I slowly went to his bedside and flipped the camera so they could see his face. They immediately started to cry. I cannot imagine how jarring it must have been to see him for the first and last time with a breathing tube, deeply sedated, and in shades of yellow and purple. “That’s not Dad anymore,” one of the children said. I showed them the many machines and IV medications he was connected to. ................... My lesson so far is that this disease, for the subset of patients who become critically ill to the point of requiring mechanical ventilation, is far worse than we ever imagined. It is certainly not pure respiratory failure. .................. None of the experimental drugs will be of any utility in an environment where there are not enough hospital beds, doctors, and nurses. ......... April 22 ....... I push medications to sedate and paralyze them, and then put a tube through their vocal cords. Looking down at them as they go to sleep, I’m the last person they see. And for the ones who don’t survive, I will have been the only one to hear—or rather, not hear—their last words. ............ The main resources we lack are respiratory therapists and ICU nurses. .............. We get through our day in the OR-ICU by compartmentalizing—by ignoring the fact that our patients are people who are deeply suffering. When reality cuts through our fantasy, the job can be unbearable.
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