- 04 Aug 2021 23:42
#15183929
At the beginning of the pandemic, probably around March or April, I was browsing the forums of studentdoctornetwork. Shoker, I don't only come to this forum. Anyhow I was horrified by the post of one of my collagues over there. His point was that "he didn't sign up for this". Let me explain a bit more, he is a critical care doctor and was freaking out that he was putting his life on the line. From his perspective, this guy delayed gratification through highschool to get into a nice college, delayed parties during college to get into medical school, certainly not much free time during medical school or residency (where you are expected to work 80H week) and then another 3 years of fellowship, which is as hard if not more than residency, 80h+ you also got to spend some of your free time doing research and traveling to conferences and shit. Now, this guy, probably on his late 30's or early 40s, probably with 300k+ student loans, with 300k+ mortgage and a wife and 2 small children is scared out of his mind because he might catch covid from one of his patients.
Mind you. This post was early on. News were going back and forth about nurses dying, about doctors dying, about no PPE.
The guy made a post that sicken me to my core. His premise was that "I didn't sign up for this" and short getting a huge bonus he really didn't want to do the job that he trained for anymore.
My reply was nothing short of scathing. Many of the people that founded the field of medicine died due to exposures to diseases, René Laennec died from tuberculosis, he is the Dr and inventor of the stethoscope, he spent a lot of time listenting to TB patients, do you think it was a coincidence he got it himself and died at the age of 45? I pointed some of these, the interventional cardiologist and the radiologists that expose themselves to X-rays on a daily basis, the ID doctor that exposes himself to a handful of weird pathogens and infectious diseases, the surgeon that operates on the HIV and Hepatitis patient and could puncture himself when performing the operation.
My arguments were many. Mosts other posters seemed to agree with my perspective.
But now this is different... we have people willingly choosing this path, a deadly one. And while we are all used to the patient that self-inflicts damage on himself/herself (smoker, obese, sedentary, etc) we have not seen this degree of idiocy and selfishness before to this degree. The mumps and rubella is perhaps the closest thing that we have seen, and it is miniscule with what it is to follow.