Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day. It was also my 3 year anniversary in my current hospital job. The pandemic, for me, became real on the 17 March 2020 when I changed jobs for what, I thought, would be just a few weeks. This week is my third year in the job, albeit now part time.
It’s worth putting how this happened into context. In mid-March 2020, a friend shared a post that they were looking for doctors to help with specific areas related to Covid testing. For those who don’t know, doctors in training often take research years. Mine had been 10 years previously, and was post-doctoral work in molecular biology and global health. Or to paraphrase: But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career… Turned out that what was needed was far different than I imagined would be needed. But the skills were relevant diverse ways, including beyond my research and clinical practice: if you followed me through that period on social media – you will remember that I posted extensively explaining the science of viruses, epidemiology, mRNA, vaccination, immunity, anti-virals, clinical studies.
This weekend, I began to sort and archive some of my contemporaneous reflections. My notebook from that period that I kept on my desk at work is still in my drawer at work. My emails and messages from friends. I am worried that my own memories may become less trust-worthy as time passes, which happens. And while my musings are hardly worthy of publication or a literary prize, it’s worth preserving for my own family, for myself.
And there is a reason I’m thinking about this, beyond the date: there is now a movement both here and abroad, to revise the history of pandemic. There are real risks in falsely equating where we are now with this variant, this current level of knowledge about the virus and how it acts, and with new vaccines versus where we were with the original variant, so much unknown, and no vaccine. There are real risks in forgetting or minimising the scale of human loss and suffering, much of it still ongoing (long covid). These discussions are getting more attention from Dr. Eric Topol’s correction of Prof. Luke O’Neill’s misinterpretation of his [Dr. Topol’s] recent paper., to the explanation in the Washington Post, to Dr. Aoife Doyle’s excellent editorial in the Irish Times.
Below are some of the starker reflections I shared that first year: March 2020 – February 2021. It surprised me, even having lived through it, how much I had forgotten the intensity of what we were facing. The darkness of some of my writing now seems foreign, as if someone else wrote it.
Lá Fhéile Pádraig Starting my new Covid job was the most surreal St. Patrick’s Day ever.
A day in the life of a covid doc April 2020
Our New Normal May 2020
“T. and the Very Rude Germ”; A story of childhood anxiety in Covid And the origin story of SokCorona. May 2020
There must be someway outta here…. June 2020
You know nothing Jon Snow! No, not that Jon Snow…but that phrase is still relevant to the story. October 2020
This Is Our Shot January 2021
Prayers in the time of Covid January 2021
Should doctors be held accountable for profiteering off of misinformation? This conversation is still overdue. January 2021
“I hate Covid” Seriously. February 2021
Skrik! The Norwegian for shriek is oddly relevant. February 2021
The photo attached to this blog post was from a series of videos and posts I did in a personal capacity, not as part of my socia media project, about vaccine and covid fact-checking. In the photo, I’m demonstrating that masks do not affect oxygen saturation.
0 Comments