Click here for a Covid-19 Reading List
Hello from Seattle!
People keep asking me how I am, which I appreciate, and I mostly want to yell "SICK OF THIS SHIT." Anybody else?
I acknowledge that a covid-19 reading list may not be what you want right now, but I am hoping that for some of you, the work that I have done will resonate with you and the resources will be helpful.
Read: Seattle Doctors Have Learned the Hard Way about Coronavirus.
In its own terrible way, this is a stimulating time to be working in health care and to see how the system works (and doesn't) up close. I keep seeing the current outbreak through the lens of what we know is deeply broken about health care in America. When we make people afraid to access care because of the cost, or because of how they look or talk, or because of their immigration status, how will we find outbreaks? If we don't take provider safety seriously, and even punish nurses and physicians for advocating for better protection, how can the hospital be safe for anyone? If we don't have a national response, how many lives will be unnecessarily lost?
Questions of inequality, disorganization, and patient and provider safety have always been urgent but have not been the center of the conversation like they are now. I have found the responses of many institutions to be very disheartening, and to place the needs of the budget over the safety of their workers. I am proud of the work that everyone has been doing, but in no way am I willing to believe that this was the best we could have done. My greatest hope is that we will be brave enough to take an honest accounting of our failures. Hopefully then, when we face the next crisis, we will do so together, with tragically won wisdom.
Dearest Rosemary,
It was a limpid dreary day, hung as in a basket from a single dull star. I thank you for your letter. Outside, I perceive what may be a collection of fallen leaves tussling against a trash can. It rings like jazz to my ears. The streets are that empty. It seems as though the bulk of the city has retreated to their quarters, rightfully so. At this time, it seems very poignant to avoid all public spaces. Even the bars, as I told Hemingway, but to that he punched me in the stomach, to which I asked if he had washed his hands. He hadn’t. He is much the denier, that one. Why, he considers the virus to be just influenza. I’m curious of his sources.
The officials have alerted us to ensure we have a month’s worth of necessities. Zelda and I have stocked up on red wine, whiskey, rum, vermouth, absinthe, white wine, sherry, gin, and lord, if we need it, brandy. Please pray for us.
You should see the square, oh, it is terrible. I weep for the damned eventualities this future brings. The long afternoons rolling forward slowly on the ever-slick bottomless highball. Z. says it’s no excuse to drink, but I just can’t seem to steady my hand. In the distance, from my brooding perch, the shoreline is cloaked in a dull haze where I can discern an unremitting penance that has been heading this way for a long, long while. And yet, amongst the cracked cloudline of an evening’s cast, I focus on a single strain of light, calling me forth to believe in a better morrow.
Faithfully yours,
F. Scott Fitzgerald