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tern

tern
@1goodtern

Sep 23, 2022
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I've been thinking about this a lot for the last three days. I've been thinking through what has been happening in hospitals in the last 3 years and what might cause moments like this. A long and rambling heartfelt🧵

My 87 year old dad had a minor stroke, hospital purposely put him in bed next to a Covid patient! We took him home at visiting time, Now he and I have Covid !! First time for both of us 🤬 my brother , sister and I protected him for 2 and half years and this is what they do !
I think a latent toxicity has reared its head in some sectors of the medical world. It's been there in the background and has appeared at times before. It has arisen at times in individual people. But I think it has broken out in whole groups now.
One big element of the toxicity is the two headed beast of confidence and arrogance. Confidence is driven into doctors and nurses: They know best, the patient doesn't.
That works until... they don't know best. The vast majority of medicine deals with the known. Fungal infection? Antifungal. Broken leg? Set it and cast it. Fever? Antipyretic. Faulty valve? Stent. Cancer? Poison it or cut it out. Doctors are trained to have THE ANSWER.
Most of the time they do have the answer. And most of the time they do know more than the patient. Especially specialists. They know the problem, and they know the established solutions.
That's fair enough. Most of the solutions are already established. *Most*.
There are surprisingly few new problems in the world of medicine. There are new solutions. But *not many* new problems. Most of the problems have been with us from the dawn of time. Knife wounds. Heatstroke. Blunt trauma. Burns. Piles. They make up the bulk of medical work.
Occasionally new problems arrive. Here's an example. It's a big one. HIV. Oh boy. Did the medical world handle it well? No. No no no.
But on top of the new problem of Covid, the last three years have included other factors that put extreme psychological pressure on healthcare workers.
Healthcare workers have been abandoned to Covid. Hospital workers, local doctors... they've been given pitiful PPE, poor conditions. The majority have been infected. Many have been disabled. Some have died. They've been locked into hospitals while we've been locked into homes.
A lot of people who have been infected have flipped straight into denial that the virus is dangerous. The same used to happen with people infected with HIV. It took massive campaigns of education to help people accept their own mortality and frailty in the face of AIDS.
I think that denial applies to lots of people, some doctors and nurses included.
And healthcare workers have been massively undervalued. They've been denied pay rises. GPs have been blamed for delays. They've done massive hours, got sick, done more hours, then got sick again.
They've been mistreated by the people they've been trying to save. Abused, criticised by the media, shouted at by patients and patients' families.
They've been traumatised by a level of sickness and death far beyond what they trained for. And they've had no respite or recovery period.
That trauma has been distilled and bottled up, ready to pour out in unexpected and toxic ways.
They're exhausted. They're really truly exhausted. They're fed up.
I think some HCWs and some institutions have flipped. They've been treated like spit for years, and worse for the last three. They've had to have covid, so now you do too. They had to get exposed to covid, so now you do too.
I think that's what's happened in the story at the top of this thread.
The confidence has tipped over into arrogance. They know what's best for you. It was what was best for them.
But they don't know. Some doctors are so used to knowing the answer. They've been trained to know the answer. They have been taught the art of projecting confidence that they have the answer.
But now, with this still novel virus, they don't know. No one knows. No one actually knows what Covid is doing to us. While some doctors are willing to say "I don't know, but I know enough that we should all be careful", others are projecting confidence without any answers.
There are plenty of healthcare workers with true genuine humility. They admit that they don't know enough to save or heal the people who are sick. They admit that they don't know the answer.
They don't mind losing face. They don't mind saying that the virus is currently cleverer than they are. They say that it's better to do whatever you can to avoid it.
But some are so desperate to project confidence that they pretend they know the answers. And it's sentencing people to death and disability.
I feel like a bit of an idiot for writing all that. If you've made it this far, thanks for sticking with me. Please ponder whatever is useful and true and throw away the rest.
Because the truth is that healthcare workers have been abused by governments and populations. They've taken this pandemic full on in the face. They need to rest and heal.
And they can't do that without our support.
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