23 Nov An open letter to the people of Wisconsin
Wisconsin, we love you. Many of us grew up here, others chose to live here. We all work to serve you. We will do anything we can to take care of you. You are our neighbors and our family.
Sometimes you have to have hard conversations with family.
Inside our hospitals, we have patients gasping for breath, needing a ventilator to survive and too often dying. Many of them were walking around healthy just days before. Some tell us they didn’t think COVID-19 was serious. Others say they just wanted to live their lives and get back to normal.
Outside our hospitals, we still see big gatherings with no masks. We hear about Thanksgiving dinner plans that will send even more people to our already very full COVID-19 units — units full of patients who might not survive a fight with this virus.
Wisconsin is in a bad place right now with no sign of things getting better without action. We are, quite simply, out of time. Without immediate change, our hospitals will be too full to treat all of those with the virus and those with other illnesses or injuries. Soon you or someone you love may need us, but we won’t be able to provide the life-saving care you need, whether for COVID-19, cancer, heart disease or other urgent conditions. As health care providers, we are terrified of that becoming reality. Read more …