Good morning
Any fever within the last 24 hours?
flu like symptoms?
Any contact with COVID outside of Duke? No ma’am.
I remember being highly concerned initially
about some early reports of how easy it was to find COVID on surfaces and floors.
And we didn't know how transmissible it was.
We didn't know whether it was mainly going to be a respiratory transmission
or contact transmission or some blend of both.
That should be not Monday morning quarterbacked as a problem.
I think that's natural scientific learning to to better understand how those sorts
of transmissions occur for a virus that we had never seen before.
But certainly for the first month or two, I would say it was nerve racking.
And as much as it can be nerve wracking for me,
I know it was equally nerve wracking for my own family.
I'm sure lots of front line workers would have said the same thing that they weren't
ever 100% sure of what they were bringing home.
Yeah, that's a bit uncomfortable when you think back on it,
But I'm
proud of the ability of colleagues here to roll up their sleeve
and come up with some incredibly innovative solutions
that, you know, that kept our own staff safe.
We were very fortunate to have such a capable Environmental
and Industrial hygiene group and safety group who were able to be early thinkers
in terms of different management strategies for keeping workers safe.
You know, we have a large vaccine institute that was really well set up to not only be involved
in early trials, but to help us roll out vaccines
when they came and be a resource and an education
that was unique to us.
You know, on an individual level,
the immense satisfaction and joy of seeing someone who's been
sort of critically ill in the ICU,
walking out of a hospital is extraordinary to feel.
I remember a couple of scenarios that just gave some of our colleagues
infinite energy to keep on going.
You know, it was kind of humbling upfront
to have so many people
in awful situations and yet still be single mindedly able to say, like,
whatever I can do to help other
people not have to go through what I'm struggling with.
That's a really amazing thing to hear.
We owe them massive credit.
You know, in hindsight, I wish we had have had a clearer message with vaccination
about things that we would deem a success.
You know, to me, success upfront was preventing infection and data
in the first rollout of vaccine said these vaccines do it brilliantly.
We do also, you know, have now a wealth of three years of intensive research globally
about how coronaviruses like COVID would transmit.
That's a bank of knowledge and awareness that will absolutely help us the next time around
to to give clearer and likely more accurate sort of recommendations upfront early on.
So I would expect we'll continue
to see COVID present in the community.
But for the vast majority of us, this has now become an illness
that sort of its impact has normalized.
You know, we don't see closures.
We don't see airline cancelations like we did 12 months ago.
We don't see your restaurant suddenly shut because they can't find staff.
I see nothing on the medium term horizon that would change that.
As much as there is a clear tragedy
of having so many people sick, die
or still be left impaired because of COVID
and in complicated ways,
you know, I take good heart that at the end of the day,
like on so many community levels, we were able to come together as a community
and actually try and come up with solutions to difficult and evolving problems.
If you want to honor the countless millions of people who've died in the last three years,
it would be done best by, frankly, reminding ourselves that we're not immune to these things.
They're going to keep coming.
I wish that they wouldn't, but they will.
And being at least accepting of that
knowledge and being prepared to roll up your sleeves like so many people did in 2020, when the next thing
occurs, and be respectful of those who are trying
to do their best to handle the next outbreak.
You know, that would be a good lesson and a good way of honoring the struggles that I think
so many families went through in the last few years.