A New York City emergency room physician with three decades’ worth of experience wrote in an op-ed Tuesday that after being on the front lines taking care of coronavirus patients for weeks, it’s time to reopen the country.
Writing in the New York Post, Dr. Daniel G. Murphy said that he has worked daily at St. Barnabas Hospital in The Bronx daily for the past two weeks, having seen first-hand the devastatingly deadly effects of COVID-19 as it taxed his staff and the hospital’s resources.
After noting that he and two of his daughters — one of whom is a nurse — caught the disease early on, it became clear that Murphy was not simply speaking from the perspective of a frontline provider but also as a former patient.
“COVID-19 has been the worst health care disaster of my 30-year career, because of its intensity, duration and potential for lasting impact. The lasting impact is what worries me the most. And it’s why I now believe we should end the lockdown and rapidly get back to work,” he wrote.
The veteran doc continued:
From mid-March through mid-April, the ER staff at St. Barnabas huddled in groups of about 20 every morning. We asked ourselves what had happened over the previous shift. We generated a list of actionable tasks for the following 24 hours. At first, we addressed personal protective equipment and the management of patients with mild illness who were seeking COVID-19 tests.
Then came the wave of critically ill patients in numbers none of us had ever seen. This lasted for two weeks. The number of patients on ventilators accumulated in the ER and throughout the hospital. We witnessed an unprecedented number of deaths. The tone of the huddles became more somber. We became accustomed to the morbidity; we did our jobs.
It is precisely what I have witnessed that now tells me that it’s time to ease the lockdown. Here’s why.
Murphy says that the wave of coronavirus sick “crested” at 1 p.m. April 7, as the flow of patients with the disease began to fall.
He found that to be “striking” because the patient community he mostly serves is poor. People work in “essential” yet low-wage jobs where social distancing is not easily accomplished. And yet, the wave came, crested, and passed.
“The way this transpired tells me the ebb and flow had more to do with the natural course of the outbreak than it did with the lockdown,” he wrote.
In addition, Murphy says he’s increasingly worried about non-COVID patients who need healthcare but are not getting it because they have been scared into staying away from hospitals.
He said that while inpatient wards continue to remain busy caring for coronavirus patients, E.R. traffic has fallen from an average of 240 per day (before COVID) to fewer than 100 now.
“That means our patients in this diverse, low-income community are afraid to come to the ER for non-COVID care,” he wrote.
He’s not alone in that assessment. Primary care providers all over the country are witnessing similar dramatic decreases in patient loads. Ditto for emergency medical calls.
“A large share of those staying home surely have emergency medical and surgical conditions not related to the novel coronavirus. The growing numbers dying at home during this crisis must include fatal myocardial infarctions, asthma exacerbations, bacterial infections and strokes,” Murphy writes.
There are practically no pediatric patients in the E.R. either, he writes, meaning that kids are likely missing out on vaccines and other care they need — all out of fear, and despite the fact that data has shown from outset of the pandemic children are not at risk of getting this disease.
Murphy also says that the prevalence of the virus is more widespread than many think. He said many New Yorkers have the COVID-19 infection, even, if they’re not aware of it.
“More testing will better establish the numbers among those with mild illnesses and no symptoms,” Murphy wrote. “My professional experience tells me the number of infected people will be high.”
And while testing is important and must continue, “it should happen in parallel to the immediate resuscitation of the economy and getting people back to work,” he wrote.
“We can’t wait months. We must protect the vulnerable and mitigate without destroying the economy,” he said. “Standing up to this virus can’t be the job of essential workers only. We’ve been strong, but we’re tired, and we need the rest of you to help us. By getting back to work.”
