Member-only story
I Don’t Miss Covid
It’s been a long time since I saw a Covid patient in the ER, and I couldn’t be happier
I’m an emergency room doctor in New York City, and I haven’t seen a Covid-19 patient in weeks. It feels great having my old job back.
In March 2020, Covid flooded our ERs. At first, it was just a dribble — one or two Covid patients per day. But within a week, the virus had taken over every body in every bed. Every shift in the emergency room brought an endless stream of patients, one after another, all struggling to breathe and in desperate need of oxygen.
The swiftness of Covid’s arrival in our emergency rooms took us by surprise even though we knew it was coming. On the front lines, we watched the virus take our patients, uncertain at first how to best treat this new disease. And once it found its way into our hospitals, Covid infected our friends and colleagues, taking many of them from us forever.
Covid permanently scarred a generation of health care workers. That’s why I’m so ecstatic to see it go.
Our job in the emergency room feels just like it used to for the first time since the virus surged into our hospitals.
