Gratitude Monday: those who care

Last Sunday, I attended an event featuring the former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” talking with Anthony S. Fauci, MD. It was a fascinating discussion, all the way from Fauci’s upbringing in an Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn to his leadership of the US scientific and medical efforts to identify, treat and prevent COVID-19 during the pandemic five years ago.

Fauci is a personable guy (as is Siegel) and I was taken by the sense of curiosity and the commitment to service that have obviously shaped his life. (He also spearheaded the American investigation into HIV and AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s that eventually led to effective treatments, changing what was at one time a death sentence to a chronic condition for sufferers.)

Since that interview, I’ve been thinking about how deeply grateful for Fauci and men and women like him—the whole gamut, from pure researchers who want to find out where a microorganism came from and how it interacts with its environment; to the applied scientists who carry that further to develop new therapies and ways to improve life; to the healthcare professionals and public health officials who take it where the rubber meets the road.

I don’t often spend time on all of this—in the same way that I don’t often consider how the engine in my Saab works…until it doesn’t. But when things began to go south in January of 2020, every member of every bioscientific, medical and public health organization did everything possible to contain, mitigate and turn around the most devastating virus to strike the world since 1918. And in the United States, they did it despite active attempts by Republicans at every level of government to deny, diminish and deter the efforts, while maximizing the prospects of making both money and political hay out of it.

I’m thinking in particular the doctors, nurses and support staff at hospitals all over the country who worked exhausting shifts, often without proper protective gear, to treat thousands of patients at the stage where no one really knew what was going to work. I also recall that they died in their hundreds.

The thing is—this stuff goes on all the time: the research, the scientific iterations (and sometimes breakthrough innovations), the medical care. And we don’t notice it, really, until there are problems—a new drug is too expensive to buy, surgery is unsuccessful or the insurance company denies the claim. But today I am in grateful awe for everyone involved in these things, because they all rely on humans who really care about making things better.

We need all of them we can get.

 

 

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