Many Died Poorly Protected to Protect Us

How many more can we afford to lose?

***Piece created during the COVID-19 Pandemic, memorializing healthcare workers worldwide***

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THIS PIECE

Healthcare systems worldwide were ill-prepared to cope with the particularly infectious and pathogenic coronavirus that causes COVID-19. As a result, the disease killed many healthcare workers, and continues to in mid-2020, in part due to lack of adequate personal protective equipment and protocols. This work honors the doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers who “ran towards gunfire”, and were then cut down, in humanity’s fight against COVID-19.

FULL DESCRIPTION

History will show that thousands of healthcare workers died starting in 2020 from the same disease they were trying to treat us for and protect us from: COVID-19. Worldwide caregiver deaths will almost certainly be underestimated; we’ll never know the exact toll. This data-driven artwork memorializes these workers.

The horizontal scale spans the year 2020. The vertical scale represents worldwide healthcare worker deaths from COVID-19 on a 0 – 1000 scale with gridline increments of 100. (The original vertical scale was 0 - 500 in early April. The rapid rise in mortality forced me to double the scale before completing the work.)

The black-to-blue curved line depicts the exponential rise in fatalities starting in March such that they exceeded 1000 well before mid-year. Bifurcation of the ascending blue line is adapted from the 911 memorial Tribute in Light in New York City. COVID-19 struck New York particularly hard.

As deaths escalate, the line casts multiple shadows. Surviving workers may not be able to attend co-worker funerals. Survivors are forced to ask: “Am I sufficiently protected?” “Am I doing all I can to prevent spread of COVID-19?” “What if we lose more people?” “What if I get it?” “What about my family?” These specters loom larger with ongoing loss of healthcare workers to the pandemic.

The snake and staff, known together as the Rod of Asclepius, symbolize medical care. The rod's fractured and disjointed appearance represents the functional fragmentation of healthcare systems worldwide, and in particular within the United States, before the pandemic. This fragmentation delayed and weakened humanity’s response to the contagion, again, particularly in the US.

The snake wears a mask, which symbolizes:

1. The complexities, limitations, and expense imposed by the need to protect healthcare workers from the pandemic, and

2. The medical community’s limited tools against COVID-19: they don’t yet have use of the “fangs and venom” of medications and a vaccine, so they must “constrict” the pandemic with public policy guidance.

All healthcare systems were ill-prepared for the pandemic. Also note that healthcare systems in general are tuned to operate near capacity to optimize efficiency. The pandemic quickly exceeded that capacity in hard-hit areas.

The virions at right represent healthcare worker deaths on the six affected continents. Those continents are indicated by their two-letter abbreviations. Virion size represents relative mortality per continent. Likewise, surface area of the healthcare provider images on the left correlates with the relative number of deceased in three categories, from top to bottom: doctors, nurses, and those from all other categories (see DETAILED SPECIFICATIONS below).

Chinese ophthalmologist 李文亮, Dr. Li Wienlang, holds a preeminent place among COVID-19 caregiver casualties. In December 2019, he noticed a spike in patients with a severe respiratory disease in Wuhan Central Hospital where he worked. This disease turned out to be COVID-19 at the very onset of the pandemic. He called co-workers’ attention to the nascent contagion. Chinese authorities learned of his warning, accused him of lying, and forced him to sign a letter of retraction. During this time, Dr. Li and many other Chinese healthcare workers contracted the disease. He died from it on 7 February 2020. The Chinese government later acknowledged Dr. Li’s martyrdom after his story generated planetary outrage. Had his government responded appropriately to Dr. Li’s warning with early and aggressive action to contain the outbreak, the pandemic could well have been prevented.

DETAILED SPECIFICATIONS – Data updated as of 19 May 2020

Percent of healthcare worker COVID-19 casualties by category:

Doctor 58%

Nurse 20%

Other 22%

Percent of healthcare worker COVID-19 casualties by continent:

Africa (AF) < 1

Antarctica (AN) 0

Asia (AS) 8

Europe (EU) 51

North America (NA) 32

Oceania (includes Australia; OC) < 1