trusted sources of information about COVID or the vaccine, the most trusted source of information is consistently their physician. We need to leverage that. There has been so much politicization on COVID. And because of how quickly the vaccines were developed, there are a lot of suspicions out there. Of course, in many communities, this is building on decades of mistrust and marginalization, which are unfortunate realities of the healthcare system. So, we have to be cognizant of that too. But physicians are THE most trusted voice in not only Louisiana but the entire country. We need to make sure our voices are heard. We need to actively quell the myths, and we need to make sure that we rely on the trust people have given us to help get this pandemic over sooner rather than later. I also think we have to champion all vaccines. I think the antivax challenges will only increase from here, but we should not underestimate the power of physician voices in this area. We are the most respected voices on the issue, but we have to show up, and we have to open our mouths. We have to combat the nonsense with facts and anecdotes from the patients and their families that trust us with their care. We have to combat the noise with data, science, and our own expertise. If we don’t, there is going to be a big problem. ON POLITICS AND THE PANDEMIC I think the politicization was the most regrettable part about the pandemic state. This was hard enough to deal with without the infighting and misinformation. I do think Louisiana was blessed with really good leadership from Governor John Bel Edwards. There is nobody who is better in a tough situation or crisis than Governor Edwards. He is so smart. He is so level-headed and data and science- driven. I really admire the way that he was able to cut through a lot of the nonsense and focus on what is needed to keep Louisiana safe. ON THE PANDEMIC AND MULTIPLE HURRICANES AND STORMS It’s already very challenging when you have to respond to any weather event, whether it’s a freeze or a hurricane. But when you have to do it in a COVID environment, the challenges are exponentially multiplied. When we were sheltering tens of thousands of displaced individuals from the Lake Charles area, we had to provide shelter in a COVID environment. We had to do non-congregant sheltering, which is not something we’ve typically done in Louisiana. When we used buses to move people out of harm’s way, we had to space people out and use two to three times the number of buses than we would otherwise. It was very, very challenging, and it was taxing for emergency responders because they were already working really hard withCOVID. I think Louisiana did verywell under really harsh circumstances. Louisianahandles emergencypreparedness
better than any other state, since we certainly have more practice at it. One of the other attributes we have is good working relationships with all levels of government. Parish, municipal, and state governments work very well together here, because we have to. We’re forced to every time we have a storm, and that pays dividends. I think we would have been much worse off during all of this if we didn’t have such a good collaborative framework to work with. ON NEW ORLEANS FROM KATRINA TO COVID I think the resilience of folks has really left an impression on me. We’ve gone through very challenging times and have been able to bounce back for the better. I have no doubt that that’s what’s going to happen this time. I go back and remind myself that for the middle of March 2020, we had the fastest rate of growth of the COVID outbreak than anywhere else in the world to that point in time. At this point, it was largely focused on the greater New Orleans area, but for two weeks in the middle of March, our COVID outbreak was growing faster than it had in China, Italy, and South Korea. We had the worst outbreak in the world at that point in time, and the community responded in ways I didn’t even think possible. I can’t even imagine how bad it would have been if the community hadn’t stayed home, masked up, and distanced. Those things enabled us to flatten the curve, stop the spread, and not completely overwhelm the hospitals. They got very close, but we didn’t completely overwhelm them. We never had to enter a true crisis standard of care. I think this was the same resilience that was shown during Hurricane Katrina to bounce back. To bounce back from something as unspeakable as that shows who we are as a state. We’re a very resilient state, and we all honor each other. And that’s what’s going to get us through this.
I THINK THIS WAS THE SAME RESILIENCE THAT WAS SHOWN DURING HURRICANE KATRINA TO BOUNCE BACK.
stress. It’s okay to acknowledge it. It’s okay to talk about self- care. In fact, you have to or else you end up burning out, and you don’t get to provide the level of care that you want to for your patients. I think self-care and mental hygiene needs to be done on behalf of the patients, because it makes us better physicians. ON MEDICAL SCHOOL IMPACTS AND HOWWE TEACH ABOUT PANDEMICS That’s a great question, and it probably needs to be considered, because it won’t be the last time that we have to brave uncharted waters. We’ve really just begun to scratch the surface of not only how this pandemic will change the practice of medicine and the teaching of medicine, but what the downstream effects of it are. I mean there are going to be all types of downstream side effects of this pandemic. There is going to be collateral damage that we haven’t even begun to be able to articulate yet. It’s going take many years to unpack. ON THE FINAL WORDS YOU WANT TO SHARE… I just want to reiterate how proud I am of my colleagues over these past twelve months. I’ve never been prouder to have the colleagues that I do in the physician community in Louisiana. I think this year has really shown why it is that we do what we do. It has made me very proud to be a member of the physician community. ■
ON FAMILY AND COVID My wife’s been an absolute rock. She works in immigration, and for the past four years, her job was equally challenging, so she knows about stressful job environments. She also knows about having a duty and what it means to be a public servant. She was very supportive. With a two-year- old, I was not blessed with homeschooling. Our daughter went to daycare when it reopened, and that’s actually gone very well. The daycare where she goes has been very conscientious about COVID protocols, and it makes me feel very, very good that she’s in a safe environment.
ON THE ONE THING YOU WISH YOU KNEW THEN
I wish we had known to cancel Mardi Gras. I would have canceledMardi Gras last year. Mardi Gras was not THE cause of our spike March, but it was a cause. No question. We had other importation of cases. We had cases imported to us from conventions that nothing to do with Mardi Gras. We had cases imported from the cruise industry and routine travel. We’ve linked cases back to all of those. But there’s no question that Mardi Gras was an inciting event and made a bad situation worse. ON WHETHER OR NOT YOU’VE HAD COVID I don’t believe I had COVID, but I also had a strong immune reaction to my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. While it’s not definitive, it makes me think perhaps I did have a mild asymptomatic case of COVID. But no, to my knowledge, I didn’t. I never tested positive, and I got tested a number of times. Same goes for my wife and our child.
ON COVID AND MENTAL HEALTH OF PHYSICIANS
We can’t turn a blind eye to how mentally challenging all of this has been. And you know, we, as a community of physicians, had so much public support particularly in the first few months of the pandemic, so much camaraderie, and so much cheerleading from the public. I think it allowed people to power through, but we shouldn’t lose sight of how challenging this work is, especially as it’s gone far beyond our expectations. There’s a lot of us that think that we’re impervious to mental challenges, but we’re not. This is difficult work, and we have to take cognition of that. We have to do things to promote mental hygiene. We have to acknowledge stress in a way that, perhaps, we haven’t had to as physicians. It’s okay to have
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J LA MED SOC | VOL 173 | SPRING 2021
J LA MED SOC | VOL 173 | SPRING 2021
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