The Other Pandemic: Addiction

Treating the Unvaccinated COVID-19 Patient with Compassion

“…Health and social care workers must act to protect lives (15,16). They are required to safeguard vulnerable adults and treat patients safely and promptly (17).…”

The Plague Year Revisited

“…Yes, there is so much more that needs to be discovered and unraveled, contemplated and analyzed; no doubt oceans of print and electronic pages will wash over us in the coming decade from thousands of scientists and journalists commenting on the topic of this public health crisis. 2 Nevertheless, I have run the gauntlet of salient subjects within my wheelhouse: The plague year of editorials opened with a primer on public health ethics; the May column studied the duty to care for health care professionals in the midst of the first surge of virus; June examined the controversy around remdesivir and hydroxcholoroquine as medicine frantically sought some way to treat the sick; in July, I took a lighter look at the "Dog Days" of COVID-19 staring my Labrador Retriever mix, Reed, snoozing on his couch on the patio; August celebrated the amazing outreach of the US Department of Defense, US Public Health Service, and US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in service to the community; September discussed the adverse effects of the prolonged pandemic on the human psyche and some positive ways of handling the stress; October lamented the exponential rise in substance misuse as human beings struggled to manage the emotional toll of the pandemic; in December, COVID-19 was the sole subject of my annual Best and Worst ethics column; the new year saw the emergency use authorizations of the first and second vaccines and the editorial laid out the critical challenges for vaccination; in February my esteemed colleague Anita Tarzian joined me in an article explaining the ethical approach to vaccine allocation developed by the VA. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] A reader might aptly ask whether I am laying down the COVID-19 gauntlet because I believe the pandemic is over and done with us. The news is full of pundits opining when things will return to normal (if that ever existed or will again) and soothsayers divining the signs of the plague's end.…”