"The sky is falling. I"m not afraid to say it," wrote Cornelia Griggs in an open letter to the New York Times. The opinion piece published this morning paints a grim picture for medical personnel that are fighting tirelessly to combat Covid-19.
"Alarmist is not a word anyone has ever used to describe me before, " said the New York City pediatric surgeon. "But this is different."
New York State currently has the most confirmed cases in the country with 4,152 people diagnosed with the disease
Griggs, who trained in emergency room traumas and did rounds in intensive care units at Harvard hospitals, said: "Panic is not in my vocabulary; the emotion has been drilled out of me in nine years of training."
She writes: "I have moments where imagining the worst possible Covid-19 scenario steals my breath."
Her open letter to the New York Times reveals the sheer terror and uncertainty medical experts face in the fight to contain Coronavirus which has 3,615 confirmed cases in New York City alone (a dramatic increase from 1,339 cases yesterday). Governor Cuomo attributes this sudden spike to increases in testing.
Cornelia Griggs is currently finishing the final months of training to specialize in pediatric surgery, specifically attending to babies in extreme conditions with lungs failing under maximum ventilator support. "Scenarios that mimic end-stage Covid-19 are part of my job," she writes.
It was only two weeks ago that her children were having pizza parties and running carefree though the hallways with other resident children in her apartment complex.
She recalled a difficult conversation that she shared with her neighbor Karen: "Look me in the eye," she said with a lump in her throat: "I make this personal promise to you - I will not let your children die from this disease."
While statistically, Griggs feels confident in her vow to Karen, she added: "There are others to whom I cannot make similar promises."
Coronavirus has already claimed over 9,300 lives worldwide. She writes: "We are living in a global public health crisis moving at a speed and scale never witnessed by living generations."
Working at one of New York City"s largest hospitals trying to contain the rapidly spreading virus, Griggs explained that there has been "movement to redeploy as many health care workers as possible to the E.R.s, new "fever clinics" and I.C.U.s."
She added that it"s become "an all-healthy-hands-on-deck scenario." Currently New York State"s hospitalization rate for the virus is 19 percent.
"The sky is falling," stressed Griggs throughout her opinion piece. "A few weeks from now you may call me an alarmist; and I can live with that. Actually, I will keel over with happiness if I"m proven wrong."
Here is the full article: NYT.
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