One of the most distressing things I am seeing is conspiracy-minded conservatives in the US doubting the mortality numbers from the COVID pandemic. I really get upset as these people try to gas light the nation and convince people that COVID wasn’t that bad. And that people are just inflating the numbers for political gain.
I round at a number of dialysis units. At one unit, I cover the first shift. First shifts are popular. Lots of people want to do their dialysis first thing in the morning and have the rest of their day to themselves. I have 20 odd patients on that shift and every couple of months I’ll get a new patient when a chair opens up. This happens when a patient moves, transfers to another unit, gets transplanted, or unfortunately, passes away. Openings on the first shift are rare and they don’t stay open for long.
I distinctly remember going to round at this unit in late May and almost immediately seeing a new face. So I started my routine, new dialysis patient, spiel, “Hello, my name is Joel Topf and I’m going to be your doctor here…”
And then a few chairs down, I saw another new face, “Hello, my name is Joel Topf and I’m going to be your doctor here…”
And then a bit later, “Hello, my name is Joel Topf and I’m going to be your doctor here…”
And once again, “Hello, my name is Joel Topf and I’m going to be your doctor here…”
I met as many new patients on that one day as I typically get on that shift in a whole year. Each of those new faces represented a patient lost to COVID.
We are not lying about the disease.
We are not exaggerating the dead for political gain.
We are counting them and we can barely keep up.