While we correctly seek to achieve maximum social distancing and hygiene best practices, doctors and nurses and many other frontline workers are running into the fire to help treat an outbreak of an illness that none of them have seen before.
People who work in clinics, hospitals, and care facilities are the courageous heroes of this historic moment in our nation’s life, knowingly putting themselves at risk to save lives.
In China, it was a young physician—an ophthalmologist named Li Wenliang—who first sounded the alarm in Wuhan about the virus. He was also among the first wave of people to die from it. Liu Zhiming, a neurosurgeon who was the director of Wuhan's Wuchang Hospital and who led its coronavirus response, also succumbed to the virus.
Doctors and nurses there and around the world have worked tirelessly, some dying of fatigue and exhaustion as well as from the infection.
A health professional and leader dear to Carver is contributing to our local fight against this pandemic with the mighty strength of his counsel and support based on many decades of being on the front lines in the battles waged against HIV/AIDS, SARS, MERS, and every new flu virus.
Dr. Norman Weinberger is a past Carver board member and is our ongoing health advisor for Carver programs. He is the Medical Director for both the Norwalk and Westport Schools, and he serves on Norwalk’s Board of Health as a Mayoral appointee. Dr. Weinberger has been a Pediatrician at Optimus, a federally funded clinic in Bridgeport for the past 15 years, where they have already been testing patients, adults and kids, in a tent before they enter clinic for treatment.
We also owe our gratitude to EMT, police and fire professionals; ambulance drivers; food bank staff and volunteers; the bus drivers delivering free food to all Norwalk students; the cashiers in our grocery stores that are staying open — and so many others who fear no difficulty in contributing to this battle in their own ways.
Carver has many heroes for whom we are deeply grateful, and today these heroes are at the top of our list.
There’s a reason that in-flight safety presentations always instruct us to secure our own oxygen masks before assisting fellow passengers. We can’t help others effectively unless we first protect ourselves.
Nowhere is that notion more important than for this workforce involved in the global COVID-19 response. These workers are bearing a disproportionate burden of this pandemic, due to their constant contact with the virus, which is more contagious than the flu.
The many unknowns this health crisis is presenting underscores the challenge that public health and other frontline workers face in prioritizing their own wellness in the face of limited resources, often brutal hours, and seemingly endless demands on their time and energy. We need to make sure these heroes can put on those proverbial oxygen masks first so they can go on to assist others.
All of us can help combat the spread of this new virus for ourselves and the front line workers by taking simple steps to protect our health and boost our immune systems. It’s imperative that we prioritize well being in our own lives as well as for the health workers—building healthy habits around sleep, movement, nutrition, and hydration that help us mitigate stress, avoid burnout, and truly recharge. Ultimately, these are the most important disease prevention steps all of us can take for the benefit of everyone.