Katie

by John Scandale

My parents are working furiously on the first floor while I sit through a stream of zoom lectures upstairs. Stocked with food and disinfectant, we abide by the shelter-in-place. The three of us are safe. But it’s not us that we’re worried about.

Big sister and nurse Katie walks into the epicenter of a disease that has rocked our nation. Just thirty miles from the disaster that is New York City, my parents and I can do nothing but fear. Like an omnipresent feeling of concern, we go about our seemingly worthless work and academia. One month ago, we worked and we learned for our own satisfaction. Now, seeing the city skyline from our backyard, we do it for the distraction. For the foreseeable future, this is our new reality.

On March 1st, my family and I were admittedly more scared of COVID-19 than the average American. Although, this was because we had eyes on the front line. Shift after shift, Katie reported for work and recounted the details back to us. At this point, Katie recounts a very different story than does the nightly news. Shortages in protective equipment, hospital beds and ventilators are far more severe than people realize. America isn’t scared, but it should be.

Days crawl by while my family remains tense - silently focused on the unimaginable, inevitable reality. She’s going to get it. At least that’s all we can seem to think. But how likely is she to contract the virus? And how does one even contract it? Scattering to our respective laptops, we each became impromptu epidemiologists. SARS-CoV, or “severe acute respiratory syndrome - related coronavirus, was discovered in the 1960’s and has since been responsible for at least four global pandemics. It’s a zoonotic virus - requiring a “middle-man” organism to transfer itself from animal to human hosts.

But who cares where it came from? It’s already here and we need to know if Katie, and other nurses, will contract it. There is little evidence to suggest that SARS-CoV-2 is airborne. In other words, researchers do not consider the virus to exist as aerosols - particles suspended in the air. The major weapon of transmission is droplets. Sneezes and coughs project droplets of the virus that land on the skin of a new host.

So, distance and personal protective equipment (PPE) seem to be the most ideal solutions. Easy, right? Not so fast. Watching CNN nightly, this nightmare somehow gets worse. New York City is reporting a state-wide shortage of PPE. Masks, gloves and gowns are all in shockingly low supply. For nurses on the front lines, Katie admits what that really means. The nation was blatantly unprepared for a pandemic and it shows. Due to the shortage, health officials are asking nurses to re-use the now infamous N95 masks - the disposable N95 masks.

These masks have been the cream of the crop for modern healthcare workers. Although they are not resistant to oil, N95’s blockade 95% of all air particles at least 0.3 microns in diameter. Since the size of SARS-CoV-2 is somewhere near this 0.3 minimum, initial studies are saying that these masks can catch 90-95% of corona virus particles. In other words, you're not going to get much better equipment than N95 masks to protect yourself from infection.

But what happens when you reuse one of these masks? As expected, their high levels of prevention are depleted once used for more than one 12-hour shift. Furthermore, nurses are asked to remove and store the used masks in a bag next to their things. However, the mask itself has been contaminated. Thus, touching and holding the mask to put it back on your face has now placed the virus on your hands. In a pathetic attempt to conserve these masks, we may be doing more harm than good to our nurses.

As we found out on March 30th, it certainly does more harm than good. In the blink of an eye, COVID-19 arrived at our front door: Katie tested positive. Self-isolated and monitoring her own symptoms, she waits. Bothered by our uselessness at home and angry with the carelessness in government, we spend our days monitoring Katie from afar. This virus is debilitating the globe. And now it’s found my big sister.

There’s not much else to do besides drink fluids and rest. If this monster wants to become lethal, it will. Concerning symptoms like high fever and shortness of breath would rush her to the same hospital wing that she’s been working in for the past month. Only this time, she’s the patient, a COVID-19 patient - one of 1.1 million and counting.