Ryan Mulhern
Wayne County Public Health
Do you feel like you have “COVID Fatigue”? Are you tired of the ever changing guidelines and rules you’re being asked to follow? Are you upset with the idea of having to make changes to your normal routine or holiday plans because of the current pandemic?
You are NOT alone, because SO ARE WE.
Take a moment to think about every action that takes place for every case our county sees. Think about the active cases, specifically, knowing that for every active case our staff must put in long hours to directly reach out and do a thorough investigation. For every case, contacts must be identified, and they too must be contacted by phone. Some of our employees are working 12 hour days, 6-7 days a week.
Think about the time and energy our staff, and all of the health care workers connected to COVID response have had to put in. Imagine the mental, emotional, and physical toll this is taking on workers who have been non-stop, 7-days a week, for more than 3 months now as our cases surge to levels multiple times higher than they were in the spring. Think about how we spend so little time with just our families at home, even just to recover, because others couldn’t postpone getting together with friends for a party.
Take a moment to consider how the simplest of requests: wearing a mask, considering smaller gatherings (especially for the holidays), and being mindful of if you should get together with others actually makes an impact on cases and our workload in all of healthcare.
Think about how everything we share, from data, to precautionary measures, to executive orders limiting gatherings or certain activities are ACTUALLY impactful when they are followed. Think about how that impact could relieve some of the burden we experience every day.
If only it were possible to have each and every one of you see, and experience, and feel what we do and have for every day since March, maybe you would consider taking a moment to read or listen and understand all of those orders and asks. We wouldn’t share them if they weren’t CRITICAL to changing things for the better. We wouldn’t ask you to do all of these things if we didn’t KNOW they would make a difference.
We wouldn’t be here, at this point, where cases have quadrupled over the last month and a half from where they were for the first 7 months, if everyone would simply work together on one team; a Wayne County team.
Our job is to protect every single one of you with PROVEN measures. Our job is to keep watch, ever vigilant against disease and poor health for each and every single resident of our great county. There is no mistake why the Public Health motto is “Prevent. Promote. Protect.” We will prevent disease and burden on the health of every resident as best as we possibly can. We will promote facts and information that have been proven with REAL science. We will protect the health and wellbeing of every resident possible.
But the actions you take today, affect us all tomorrow. The impact of efforts against COVID-19 do not show up immediately, and they do not last long, unless they are used by every one of us, every single day, until we get through this.
So now we ask: who can say they have listened, considered, and done what we’ve asked, so that someone, anyone, may finally watch over us too?
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