key: cord-0726026-dnyhn4bt
authors: Alpert, Joseph S.; Juneman, Elizabeth B.
title: We Will Never Give Up
date: 2020-08-01
journal: Am J Med
DOI: 10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.07.002
sha: 3ad99cbefa104770a7822f9bc17e5a84a9cfa5a1
doc_id: 726026
cord_uid: dnyhn4bt

nan

As noted in an earlier commentary, we follow in the footsteps of Dr. Bernard Rieux in Albert Camus' novel, The Plague. 2 Dr. Rieux felt compelled to fight the plague because, as he stated, it was a question of human decency and it was his job. For the last three and a half months, we have been two of the foot soldiers in the war against the COVID-19. We have not been working directly on the four COVID wards in our university hospital, but have been battling just behind the front lines on our internal medicine and cardiology care unit and inpatient services. 3 We chose to continue working as inpatient doctors for the same reasons as Dr. Rieux, and we are still spending most of our days on the inpatient services of our university hospital. We are trying to lead our students and house staff during this pandemic so that they may learn from our compassion, dedication, empathy and perseverance. 4 As many of our readership know,

Arizona has now become one of the major hot spots for the COVID-19 both in the US and in the world.

The war against COVID-19 drags on. The hoped-for influenza-like course has not developed, and many opine that we will be fighting this scourge for many months or even years to come.

The battles are being bravely waged by a variety of "health soldiers": Clinicians and other healthcare workers, basic science and clinical investigators, and public health personnel. The "health soldiers" are from across the globe, not joined by nationality nor ethnicity nor uniform, but rather joined by an ethical oath to care for those in need. Like the English referred to in Churchill's quotation, we will continue to fight on many fronts and will never give up or surrender to the COVID-19 forces currently raging among us.

During this pandemic, we have received many emails from clinicians throughout the country recounting their personal experiences. The information and knowledge gained about COVID-19 is being passed on, from country to country, state to state, hospital to hospital, as "health soldiers" are fighting to keep patients safe. Every morning when we wake up and prepare for another day dressed in surgical scrubs and wearing N-95 masks, we remember Joan Baez singing "We shall overcome some day". This folk tune from the 1960's was sung in support of the civil rights movement of the day and the political forces arrayed against US involvement in Vietnam. Currently, this song represents our expectation of eventual victory over the COVID-19 pandemic.

We are aware that there are individuals in the US and abroad who mistakenly feel that the COVID-19 "war" is some form of political trickery. During World War II, there were also many Americans who opposed our involvement in that conflict. To these misguided parties, we offer only our own witnessing of the four COVID wards in our hospital filled with desperately sick and at times dying patients. Just like the Nazi Third Reich, the COVID-19 also represent a real and present danger to the life we have all come to enjoy. Make no mistake about it, if we are to defeat the COVID-19 then we must all rally behind our health "generals" such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, and not let ourselves be misled by naysayers.

We are confident that in the future when we have conquered SARS COVID-19, and conquer it we will, many stories will be told of the 2019-20 pandemic and our various roles in the conquest. For those us born during and after World War II, the current struggle will be "our finest hour".

As always, I love hearing from our readership at jalpert@shc.arizona.edu or on our blog at amjmed.org.

The Splendid and the Vile. A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance during the Blitz

The Plague

Life Imitates Art: The Physician in a Time of Plague

Leading the Compassionate Charge. Circ Heart Fail