In this ‘Golden Age of Social Justice’, I find it altogether illegally remarkable that the healthcare workers on the front lines of this vira-geddon have not been provided a sufficient supply of masks and PPE’s. We have all heard their public and private cries for help. We continue to hear ‘reports’ that the situation in many hospitals has not substantially improved in this regard. We’ve heard of the pressure exerted on doctors and nurses from the top not to speak publicly about sharing masks and are threatened with job action for wearing home-made makeshift protective gear. Since the President has declared these materials ‘scarce’, federal law magically wand-a-riffically has turned their hoarding and price gouging along the supply chain into a federal crime. This has irrefutably resulted in one corporate citizen after another acknowledging their multi-million in number mask and PPE stockpiles. Equally remarkably, no one seems to care. None of the scared straight hoarders have been punished legally, socially, or economically.
But, the truth is that there are public and private hospital networks among us that continue to fail, refuse, and/or are unable to provide their doctors and nurses with adequate protective gear in quantities necessitated by the number of virus patients. How is this possible and where is the disjunction? Is it hospital network procurement? Is it bottom line consciousness? Are there supply chain issues? Why and how can Betheny Frankel get masks … but hospital network procurement departments can’t? Why isn’t the public enraged by mask manufacturers who sold their inventory to foreign country cash payers in the face of a national epidemic?
Where is the CDC, the NIH, and the other bloated bureaucratic regulatory agencies that ‘oversee’ the administration of healthcare in this country? Where is the American Medical Association? Where is the American Nursing Association? The nursing profession largely remains dominated by women. Is their fear to come forward publicly a vestige of a healthcare administration patriarchy? Where are the feminist social justice warriors? Does the lack of a Supreme Court seat in play make their pain, risk, and abusive treatment less important?
Do we really believe that patting healthcare workers on the head with a ‘Hero’ title lessens the risk they daily sustain from the viral shedding of their patients? Is it a strategy to make them resent the rest of us less … or do we just feel better about ourselves as we watch the imminent tragedy unfold? If we really believed in their value … really believed that they are indispensable heroes … we would have their back.
After all … we wouldn’t expect Superman to use his cape to cover his mouth and nose … would we?