‘Exhausted’: Tsunami of COVID-19 Cases Pushes Health Workers to the Breaking Point

In this video shared by MSNBC, writer Ed Yong interviews healthcare workers across the country who are on the brink of exhaustion and burnout. Yong bluntly puts it, “In the imminent future, patients will start to die because there simply aren’t enough people to care for them. Doctors and nurses will burn out. The most precious resource the U.S. Health System has in the struggle against COVID-19 isn’t some miracle drug. It’s the expertise of its health care workers, and they are exhausted.” Yong continues to say there are some healthcare workers that are working 36+ hour shifts, and the word “exhausted” doesn’t seem to do it justice.

The toll this takes on people is devastating. Many hospitals are at capacity, and the outlook of how things will look post-Thanksgiving is not good. “Now healthcare workers are facing an influx of unusually sick people at a time when COVID-19 has consumed their attention and their facilities. ‘We’re still catching up on that,” says Choo, an Oregon physician. ‘Even the simplest patients aren’t simple.'”