Standing outside a north New Jersey hospital fighting a fever while enduring chest pains on a forty degree, wet, dreary Monday morning near the American epicenter of an unprecedented global pandemic can put life in a totally new perspective. "Six feet apart, please!" being yelled by the brutish doorman repeatedly is a phrase in a tone I won't soon forget. I'd never seen tents full of people connected to a hospital before. This shit is DIFFERENT.
Of course, I'm on edge. I'd been experiencing sharp pains on the left side of my chest for a couple days and had a million thoughts running through my head as to why. The possibilities seemed endless...especially after consulting the infamous WebMD. I knew I'd be taking a risk by going to the emergency room in a climate with such a contagious virus looming, but I guess I'd rather risk it than do nothing and something catastrophic happen by the time it's too late. So I stood there shivering in the cold wondering what's next. While I waited to be checked in I noticed some things. The people around me were stumbling and staggering, coughing profusely, seeming drained of energy and stamina. I watched as wheelchair after wheelchair went into what seemed like Fort Knox...the hospital entrance. Everyone, wearing masks and gloves, seemed to be moving in slow motion. I noticed a woman in her upper 50's coughing violently while leaning up against a gate looking totally dejected. Doctors and nurses were moving frantically with solemn looks on their faces.Everyone is scared. Nobody here is safe. "Six feet apart, please!"
It was at that very moment that I contemplated the entire American healthcare system. Being the proud cynic I am, I began reevaluating the purpose and intents of big pharma. I mean, let's not sugar coat it. It's all about the almighty dollar...the Benjamins. Every transaction is rooted in shady for-profit businesses and insurance companies overcharging desperately ill citizens for meds that do not directly cure anything, dancing the greenback boogie in private while publicly selling the grand illusion that the betterment and safety of the American people come first. Lies. If that were the case then the actual test for the COVID-19 virus would be free whether a person is insured or not. But it isn't...even close. The notion that even during an economic shut down in which workers are being laid off by the thousands, 90% of people are quarantining (the other 10% are extremely disturbing), and the number of deaths due to the coronavirus is skyrocketing, an actual dollar amount has to be paid just to find out if you've got it. What about those who are homeless, between jobs or just plain broke and have no health insurance? If the goal is really to flatten the curve and save lives, shouldn't they be tested for free?
There's obviously not enough resources for the overflow of patients who are suffering. Why else would there be a line of feverish people winding around the street corner of a hospital parking lot? So, if there's a shortage of resources, who gets chosen? It's like an evil game of musical chairs being played with hospital beds and medical supplies. Once the music stops, someone's bound to be literally left in the cold.
The look of fear in the eyes of the doctor as he walked intently into the tent, protected in his all white body suit, sweating frantically as he stuttered and stammered to say my vitals and heart rate were decent and that I was "mmm-much much safer at home than in THERE (pointing toward the hospital door)" gave me all the get out of dodge vibes I needed to head out expeditiously. Wow! As loud, piercing coughs permeated the tent, I thought to myself, he really doesn't know what to do, and since I'm not totally falling apart, he really doesn't have time to care. The only option he sees is to push me out of this environment as quickly as possible after testing me (he'll bill me later), tell me to hope for the best, and to only come back if it gets unbearably worse. Talk about a really weird evaluation. This shit is DIFFERENT.
After a week of excruciating headaches, waking up in cold sweats with chills, exhaustion, nausea, unyielding fever, stiffness in my lungs, and an overall nervousness from not knowing what's truly wrong, I received a call informing me I had tested positive for COVID-19. Damn. No real, in-depth instructions or information. Just an "are you having trouble breathing? No? Well then hopefully you'll be fine waiting it out". That's it.
I thought to myself how fortunate and blessed I am to have a strong enough immune system and set of lungs to handle such an aggressive infection. I recapped how often I'd washed my hands, wiped everything in sight down with disinfectant wipes, carried hand sanitizer and obsessively whipped it out after touching any door handle and/or object. I thought about the handshakes I had avoided, the hugs I'd shied away from and all the times I'd refused to even leave home.
After all of that, I still got it.
America is a place where people take pride in our freedom to come and go as we please. Some are even entitled enough in their thinking to ignore the authorities calling for all to stay at home. But the concept that's getting lost in this defiance is that our healthcare system is not constructed to handle a nationwide crisis. It's structured to make a profit. When seeking profit, a sound business firm will do its best to avoid overhead expenses as much as possible. So spending money on things like hiring and training extra workers, building extra spaces, and manufacturing extra equipment "just in case" are not only non-priorities, but there's a concerted effort made to never do so. And that simple fact doesn't bode well for masses of people at risk to such a uniquely contagious virus the medical world is ill-prepared to tackle. The trickle down effect is bound to leave those in the economic lower class in shambles, if not for dead.
So the concept of social distancing isn't just some inconveniencing way to personally avoid getting sick. It's the most viable method of giving our healthcare system and the government it depends on to support it the time it so desperately needs to restructure itself into a form of what it should have always been since day one...a system built to prioritize lives over money. Otherwise, there will be millions more feverishly endangered patients lined up outside their local hospitals awaiting their fate enduring the same coarsely yelled phrase..."Six feet apart, please!"
