As the public pushes off COVID-19 restrictions, physicians are feeling uneasy and increasingly turn to their places of work for safety, writes Danielle Ofri, MD, who practices at New York City-based Bellevue Hospital in The Atlantic May 22.
Dr. Ofri argues that hospitals are now the place where she feels most safe, despite their high danger in the beginning of the pandemic. Those who work in hospitals have never stopped wearing masks and have a high respect for the severity of COVID-19, unlike the general public, she says.
After two years of treating the disease and being severely affected by the extreme damage it causes, she argues that she is just not ready to move on from COVID-19 like the general public.
"Patients cast far longer shadows in our professional lives than statistics, and seeing a disease recede into ordinariness feels almost like a betrayal of those we’ve cared for and lost," Dr. Ofri writes.