Burden of COVID-19 'breaking our health care workers,' Fairbanks radiologist says

Dr. Jessica Panko, a Fairbanks radiologist, wrote the following post on Facebook about what life is like for health care workers right now in hospital rooms where sick people are fighting to breathe. She says it’s far more difficult than those of us on the outside can imagine.

Read what she has written. It’s not about the internet experts who discover conspiracies on every corner. It’s a sincere plea for help.

Her central message is that the stress on our health care system in Fairbanks is overwhelming. The same is true in Anchorage and elsewhere in Alaska. The wave of sickness means that anyone who needs hospital care because of any illness or accident is at risk because hospitals can’t keep up. They will do their best.

Dear friends,

This is not a cut and paste. This is my daily lived experience. I did not do my “research” on the internet, this is happening around me every day. I mean, I’m fine. I mostly work alone in a dark room. But the people around me are not fine.

Every day these days I see humans being RAVAGED by COVID-19 on chest CT after CT and x ray after x ray, one after the other, acute pneumonia, pulmonary emboli and permanent lung fibrosis. (I haven’t seen or even heard of ANY vaccine complications.) And our hospital is at the point of only being able to offer scarce resources like Icu beds to the people who are more likely to survive. This disease isn’t likely to kill you. Your odds of doing ok are high. But the numbers are so high that the burden is breaking our health care workers and our ability to provide the rapid high quality care you are used to getting in America.

This is a societal problem, not an individual problem. Unless you work in health care, you have no idea how important it is for you to get vaccinated, to not get COVID, to not spread COVID and to keep yourself out of the hospital, whatever it takes. Please take this disease seriously and please support your local healthcare workers. If you want good medical care for your dad’s heart attack, your car accident or your kid’s appendicitis, please for the love of all that is holy, please be part of the solution.

Jessica Panko, MD, radiologist, Fairbanks, Alaska.