The Myth of the Healthcare Hero
Transcriber: نسيم بكر
Reviewer: Eunice Tan
So my favorite superheroes,
growing up, were He-Man and She-Ra.
My cousins and I used to run around,
pointing sticks into the sky, shouting,
“By the power of Grayskull!”
(Laughs)
and imagining ourselves transformed
into the heroes defeating the baddies.
I know I’m not alone.
We all love superheroes.
Or at least enough of us love superheroes
for Marvel Cinematic Universe to gross
more than 22 billion dollars worldwide.
I can see why we love heroes,
though, especially now.
If you think about just a few
of the things that happened in 2020:
a pandemic that infected
more than 90 million people
and killed more than
two million people worldwide,
wildfires burning
both far and near to home,
and one of the most active
hurricane seasons on record.
It feels like Mother Earth
is screaming for help.
But who is going to come to her rescue?
Here is where the iconic
superhero would beam in
to save the world from self-destruction,
clean up our human messes,
and we would all go right back
to life as we knew it,
living happily ever after.
The end.
How many of us sat through 2020
hoping, wishing
for once for this fairy-tale
happy ending to be real?
As an infectious disease physician,
I specialize in diagnosing
and treating infections
as well as understanding how they spread
through the body,
through a community, and the world.
I started on this journey
as an eight-year-old girl
growing up in Dominica, in the Caribbean,
well before I knew what
an infectious disease doctor was.
And as I learned about
the 1918 influenza pandemic,
I never imagined
that I would one day experience
something similar in my lifetime.
And life inside
this history-making pandemic?
It is unpredictable,
unbearable,
and lonely.
Now a dark cloud lingers over our world,
with millions of people sick
and hundreds of thousands dead
in the United States alone,
with unspeakable devastation
in Black and brown communities.
Now, early on in the pandemic,
people would thank and cheer
health care workers
for simply showing up to work every day.
They celebrated us on social media.
Companies threw discounts
and freebies at us left and right.
Essential workers,
like transportation drivers,
grocery store clerks, custodians,
food service workers -
disproportionately Black
and brown folks, by the way -
these folks were all but invisible
on the front lines.
But we health care workers
were elevated to hero status.
Peeks inside the COVID units
told the terrible truth,
but it all seemed so far away.
As long as we heroes
were putting out fires,
people could feel safe.
Restaurants, gyms, libraries
were shutting down,
but we health care heroes worked nonstop.
We showed up.
We volunteered at overwhelmed hospitals,
sometimes outside of our specialties,
sometimes without adequate
personal protective equipment.
Doing the work to stem the tide
until the hardest hit areas
could breathe again.
We took pay cuts,
collaborated for phenomenal innovation
to preserve personal protective equipment,
like ultraviolet light decontamination.
We showed up on the media
to hold the public’s hand
and educate them,
explaining things as we learned them.
Thousands of health care workers died.
And for many of us,
the emotional toll of this pandemic
has left an indelible mark
on our mental health.
But by the summertime,
the public praise dwindled,
and the discounts, they expired.
Then more people started to get sick
and die through the fall,
and like the Bat-Signal at night,
the call for the heroes returned
without stopping to wonder
how these heroes are doing now,
without truly understanding
that we had never left in the first place.
So what is it like to do a job,
to treat an infection
for which there is no cure
and watch it destroy so many lives?
It’s devastating, disheartening.
Honestly, it’s terrifying.
As a physician,
I have never been more physically,
mentally, and emotionally exhausted.
We see more patients in hospitals
practically bursting at the seams.
The people hospitalized
with COVID-19 are sick,
very sick,
often clutching at straws to live.
And I am haunted by the memories
of the Black, indigenous
and Latino Americans
who have died from COVID-19 at rates
almost triple that of white Americans.
Because structural racism,
a problem that burns insidiously
and perpetually today,
has made it so that systems,
policies, and institutions
perpetuate their oppression,
putting them at greater risk
for severe disease and death.
These folks who died
were friends, loved ones,
family members of people left behind,
many of whom never had
a chance to say goodbye.
Somebody made a comment to me recently
when I said that I was exhausted.
They said that I was burning
the candle at both ends.
The reality is that I and most other
health care workers like me
have long moved beyond
burning the candle at both ends.
The reality is,
today, most health care workers
are simply engulfed in flames.
Nevertheless, we persist,
we show up.
Regardless of how we feel,
sometimes at the expense of our physical,
mental, and emotional health,
we show up.
You know, that persistence,
that always showing up bit,
I think this is why people
have referred to us as superheroes.
Merriam-Webster says
a superhero is a mythological
or legendary figure of divine descent,
often endowed with
great strength or ability.
Heroes have superpowers.
They’re inhumanly strong,
infallible,
and indestructible.
When a bomb goes off in their face,
they flip away to land
a perfect superhero three-point landing,
smiling into the camera
to brush off the dust.
(Chuckles)
The thing is, though, health care workers?
We’re not superheroes.
We are human -
normal people who happen to have jobs
where we care for other humans
when they’re sick.
Pandemic fatigue is real,
even for health care workers.
Sometimes we don’t have
the strength to keep going,
and yes, sometimes we don’t have
all the answers.
But erosion of public trust in science
has compromised our safety.
And now health care workers are spending
as much energy tackling misinformation
as delivering health care itself.
Yes, recommendations changed and evolved
as new information emerged
early in the pandemic.
But the science is clear now.
Yet poorly researched tweets
and sensational headlines
have ignited a blaze
of panic and misinformation
as catastrophic and dangerous
to public health
as the effects of the virus itself.
So now, health care workers
have taken to social media
to re-educate, to hold the public’s hand,
to beg and plead for safety,
to save lives.
But are people listening to us anymore?
Our message is clear:
Your heroes are struggling,
and we cannot save the world on our own.
Vaccines bring hope, thankfully, yes,
but we are not out of the woods yet.
We don’t want or need to be called heroes.
Right now, our love language is action.
We need your help,
and we cannot save
the world on our own.
So what’s the best action
to show love and appreciation
for your health care workers?
Right now,
that action is the way that we show
love and appreciation for you.
One:
Wear masks when interacting
with people outside your homes.
This will help to protect you
and those around you.
Two:
Avoid large gatherings
as these are likely
to help spread the virus.
Three:
Wash your hands
as often as possible.
Four:
Let your local leaders know
that everyone deserves access to care.
And five:
Do your fact-checking
before sharing information,
and listen to the health experts
who have expertise in their fields.
Please don’t tune out because
you’ve heard this a thousand times.
Let’s be clear:
In a public health crisis,
it is easy to grow tired,
to tune out, to not care
or think that this is no big deal.
I am here to remind you
that we’re all on the same team.
We’re all human, and we all want to live.
We all want to get through this
in one piece, and we absolutely can.
You know, the classic quote
from Spider-Man,
“With great power
comes great responsibility,”
does not belong only to Spider-Man,
or to superheroes, for that matter.
We humans, as ordinary as we are,
can be extraordinary
by using our power to do what’s right.
And right now, that means
wearing a mask and avoiding crowds
to stop the spread
of a virus in the community.
I believe the reason
why superhero stories are so powerful
is that fundamentally,
we as humans prefer to let others
deal with challenging
and uncomfortable situations
rather than ourselves.
Maybe we don’t think we’re strong enough,
or maybe it just feels easier or safer
to let other people deal with it.
Assigning someone else hero status
means that it’s OK if we feel powerless
and absolves us of the responsibility
to sacrifice for the greater good.
This is not just about COVID,
and trust me, I don’t have anything
against the word “hero” -
I still love superhero movies.
But I do think we need to exercise caution
in how we use the word “hero” in real life
because we are the only ones
who can save us.
Whether it’s COVID-19 or another pandemic
or a natural disaster
or an act of terrorism,
there will always be times
when we all need to pitch in.
And health care heroes -
health care workers -
will still be here doing our jobs,
hopefully with a little bit of help
from our friends and our communities.
Because “by the power of Grayskull,”
He-Man and She-Ra are not real.
As much as I want to fly with Wonder Woman
and fight with T’Challa,
they are not coming to rescue us,
because there’s no such thing
as health care heroes,
just good people doing the right thing.
So, no more waiting for heroes to save us.
Now it’s time for us to dig deep
and together do what we need to do
to save ourselves.
Thank you.