I posted this to Instagram yesterday. It’s part of a book project called Book of Plagues.
#FrontLines, a #pandemicdiary 75. Nothing at Walgreens. Nothing at CVS. Nothing at Urgent Care. Nothing available. System’s overwhelmed. // “Tricky to find,” he says on the phone. County rep fielding COVID questions. “All the test locations everywhere are overwhelmed with requests.” // We’re rationing care. Richest country in the world. Rationing tests. Watching numbers rise. // Quarter million now dead in United States, 1.4 million worldwide. Hospitals filling fast. Maxing out. Ambulances race in, are diverted. Hospitals play hot potato. And there still are few tests. // Trump says cases are up because we test more people. Implies testing is the problem. But deaths are rising. Hospitalizations, too. In Texas. The Dakotas. Utah. Field hospitals sprout to handle the overflow. Freezer trucks store the dead. // We saw this in April in North Jersey. Seeing it again in the southern counties. Seeing this second wave wash over, Wash out the shore line. // “Testing of all people for SARS-CoV-2,” says the National Institute on Aging, “will help prevent the spread of COVID-19 by identifying people who are in need of care in a timely fashion.” // An early diagnosis, says the NIA, means early treatment and isolation, “reduc(es) the chances that they will infect others.” Helps limit severity. Cuts “the risk of long-term disability, or death.” // We need to test more, but there are not enough tests. That’s what the labs say. They have to prioritize. Triage. Not everyone can get one. That’s shortsighted. That’s foolish. That’s deadly.