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SAN FRANCISCO – Nearly a year into a life-altering pandemic, many Americans are fed up with wearing masks, desperate for a return to normalcy and numb to the relentless stream of grim numbers, such as the 500,000 COVID-19 deaths the USA surpassed Monday. Health care workers don’t want to hear any of that. They have been working endless hours amid constant death and suffering, forsaking time off and exposing themselves to the disease, leaving them exhausted and with no real indication of when the pandemic will relent. “There’s definitely some tangible fatigue on the health care workers’ side, being sick of COVID and sick of people disregarding public health guidance, getting sick and expecting us to defer another vacation or put off something else,” said Eric Cioe-Peña, an emergency room physician running a COVID-19 field hospital in Staten Island, New York. ....
Laura Ungar and Samantha Young Kaiser Health News California mom Megan Bacigalupi has had enough. She wants her kindergartner and second-grader back in their Oakland classrooms. But the coronavirus is spreading too quickly to open schools in Alameda County, based on current state standards. And the local teachers union hasn’t agreed to go back – even after teachers have been vaccinated. So she expects her kids will be logging on to school from home for a while. “The impediments to opening are just too great,” said Bacigalupi, who is lobbying California lawmakers to establish firm, statewide health metrics that, once met, would require schools to open. “In the end, it comes down to a lack of political will to get the kids back in the classroom.” ....
USA TODAY In late December, the idea that safe, effective vaccines against COVID-19 had been created in less than a year seemed miraculous – a triumph of science and American ingenuity. It took only six weeks to tarnish that image. Pride in the remarkable feat has been replaced by confusion, accusations of unfairness, frustrating waits and the nightmare of vaccine vials gathering dust while tens of thousands of people die of what is now a preventable disease. Even people leading the effort are at a loss to explain how and why things took such a bad turn so fast. I would love to understand it, said Moncef Slaoui, head of the vaccine development effort under the Trump administration and an adviser to the Biden administration. ....
In Alamogordo, New Mexico, Florence Nightingale is known for being a bit cantankerous. She’s an older, bigger lady and when she stops working, she often needs some gentle coaxing before she’ll start again. The coronavirus pandemic has pushed her to the brink, and working so much overtime depleted her tank. She spent the holiday break getting some much-needed pampering. Flo, as her friends call her, is a 40-foot Winnebago turned into a mobile nurse s station. She s Alamogordo Public Schools most lauded health care provider, purchased with CARES funding. Her most frequent passenger? School nurse Lisa Patch, who is also the health services director for the rural school district just 80 miles from the Mexican border. ....