In mid-February of 2020 I announced my retirement would come at the end of June. Then I went to Austria for a ski trip/CME (quite the privilege for doctors!), then visited a friend in Basel. The day after leaving for Europe, my friend and colleague Frank Riedo, infectious disease expert, received back the results of two swabs he had sent in to the CDC, where he had previously trained. They had delayed while developing a test for the new Wuhan strain of SARS-COV2, the Covid virus, and although he was already certain, these first two swabs confirmed: The nursing home in Kirkland WA, where I had been the Medical Director from the early 80s for 20+ years was having an outbreak of the pandemic, the first community transmission documented in the US. In Europe, no one was paying attention at first, then there was a large outbreak in Northern Italy, and by the time I got to Basel, the Italian speaking section of Switzerland, where we had booked an Airbnb. My hostess begged us to cancel that part of our trip. I also arranged a meeting with a friend who lived in Geneva, to meet up in Bern after 50 years, but she had to cancel as Geneva was locked down. Then, I was awakened at 0230 by both my sons the night then President Trump announced he was closing the US to Europe. After 2 hours of frustration and airfares volume pricing up to $20000 just to get out of Europe to the US, we got a flight on my son’s frequent flyer miles, and skedaddled out, leaving a birthday goodbye note to my friend, abandoning without awakening them after just another one hour of sleep. We got our flight crew’s last flight out of Europe as they were furloughed.
The following Monday, I expected to be exposed to Covid taking care of patients, but going to work with some fear, I discovered my hospital owners had already funneled all the Covid to urgent care and ER, conserving personal protective gear, and also closed all of us in primary care to all routine visits, and shut down all elective surgeries. As I watched them move rapidly to learn how to deal with protecting employees, and treating the sick, I found myself seeing about 1/3 of my usual patient volume. Wow! NO exposure to Covid at work, and much time on my hands. What to do?
What I did do was search the internet for sources of information about the pandemic and find sites that were developing predictive modeling. My son does that for salmon returns for the WA Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, and he was an invaluable aid in evaluating models. I also consulted with top data scientist and SyncMD founder Eugene Kolker about predictive models, and contacted a couple of model builders. Soon I had a reliable selection of tracking sources and started to post my assessment on Facebook, in part for time on my hands, and as a service opportunity for my friends.
Next, I started building a larger Facebook network. Some told me they relied on my posts, as they trusted me and nothing else. Friends from 50 years ago started reposting my stuff. I became an authority for my lay friends, and then a consultant to the Board of Trustees of my church on safety protocol. Friends sent me misinformation and disinformation about Covid, including from some medical colleagues with high levels of credentials in the wrong specialties without the first bit of knowledge of virology, epidemiology, immunology. Fortunately, I was blessed with a BA in biochemistry, a top 25 medical school, and a top residency in the broadest possible specialty: family medicine. It was NOT difficult to sort out the science from the BS!
I started numbering my posts. We’re now past #940. The pandemic has quieted. I personally have found new purpose for my breadth of knowledge, my ability to write simple English for lay people, and encouragement to become in retirement some kind of public intellectual, or popularizer of science in healthcare. More about that in another post.