Local orthopedic surgeon talks about secondary health care crisis from COVID-19 pandemic (Chicago Daily Herald)
When Surgeon General Jerome Adams recently warned that COVID-19 is our generation's "9/11 moment," it struck me viscerally.
Like most Americans, I vividly recall the day the twin towers fell, but I lived through the chaotic month afterward as a medical provider on the front lines of that crisis.
On September 11, 2001, I was a young doctor, having just graduated a few months prior from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. As fate would have it, I was also one of three surgical interns newly stationed that fall in Manhattan's only intensive care unit for critical burn victims. At 8:46 a.m. on that fateful Tuesday morning, we all stood in horror watching the news as the first plane crashed into the north tower.
By 8:48 a.m., our team quickly realized that we were in for an onslaught of burn victims at New York-Presbyterian.
By 8:49 a.m., hospital staff and I were madly rushing to free up beds in our ICU, relocating every patient that could possibly be transferred to another floor, and moving beds and ventilators into every available space.
Tragically, nearly every injured su...
