Please allow me a loving addendum to our common concern with the pandemic scourge of CoV2 virus while we're all so ensnared in the seeming limitlessness of complexity possessed by this oh so simple, as far as viruses go, CoV2 virus : I am collecting and compiling as full a spectrum of literature reviews for physicians and nurses in a clinical Emergency Setting so that movement to ICU from the ambulatory sector can proceed without change is in the protective gear proceeding from urgent diagnosis onto sustenance of life in the loving maternal hands of nurses in ICU or OR. CoV19 is a pathology praisable for only its constant ruse, causing many a hardened soul to weep in frustration. For-- even though everything is antiseptically wiped down to allow moving from one Cov19 Dx to another with change only in filter barrier between patient and caregiver with ritualistic wiping down periodically, using Clorox on every inch of furnishings in contact with that patient as if that eradicated any sign that the admitted unfortunate vessel of deadly Cov2 virus was ever here.....he/she moved elsewhere along with the virus, and we're all safe and clean, ready for the next patient because we're all more than adequately "barriered." But is that bravura justified? Critical to that "Corona, you can't touch me!" mantra that, insolently but in no way brazenly, every healthcare worker tells him/herself while laboring under the illusions that he/she is "protected" (sic!) so long as we religiously believe several myths:

1) that when one wears that "protective" N95 barrier mask that does not demand exertive thoracic muscle efforts to pull and push air out of a caregiver's chest but filters the smallest particles possible without compromising ease of breathing so that even delicate surgical procedures can be performed without need for minimum change in mask parts or positioning. As a retiree now volunteering for bonavolante hours, I am rather in need of fully adequate and affordable protection which allows me to return to my family post-op without fear of having imbibed viable CoV2 units that I would shed onto to my beloved family. While I can disinfect myself externally, just as I would surfaces well enough, accidental injection of particles through respiration or mouth-breathing via my street "civilian mask," could well make me a pariah in my own home. So, since most of my work is voluntary and NOT just in the OR, I need a mask system I can wear all day without suffering respiratory distress in the OR and on the wards. My age and voluntary status limit the caloric efforts I can be expected to expend and my usefulness would greatly deteriorate if I were ever anxious that I am putting my family or colleagues at risk. An N95 mask system with full clear plastic visor and plastic skull covering, including changeable mask filters would be much appreciated and desirable at almost any price. But for an old retiree who has spent his time in research and bonavolante consulting and assisting younger internist fellow physicians, pension, as opposed to salary, tends to limit the funds available for top-of-the-line protective equipment, making maximal protection beyond reach. The issue thus becomes "can I do with good enough?" and not: "what's really the best protection? Any whole-head-covering-gear suggestions that allows up to 12 hrs of constant function amongst Cov19 patients in an depressed area office setting would be most gratefully valued in this crisis era of "must do" with whatever is good enough rather than the best...no guarantees to be expected.

Therefore, any knowledge based or trial-and-error learning that maximizes one's ability to stabilize strangers without later endangering the lives of loved ones through infection transmission given, will be remembered lovingly for the rest of my life, immensely appreciated. After rigorous professional training and self-discipline, we all came to appreciate the exhilarating joy of giving succour to total strangers that are really our brothers and sisters in the eyes of God. As one scheduled to face my own Day of Judgement sooner rather than later, I very much want to practice assuaging the suffering of the so-called "least of us"-- brothers and sisters before the Heavens and victims of the luck of the draw. Nevertheless, my age allows me no safe margin of ignorance or negligence as it would be most likely that I would join he or she that I am desperately trying to care for at any moment of my error. Fatigue, exhaustion and/or confusion because of age will neither negate the need for informed vigilance nor the responsibility to the helpless brethren placed under my care. My need, therefore, is ever for guidance, assistance, a bit of forbearance, and any information on how to be a HEALER-- at best-- and never an AGGRAVATOR out of ignorance, nor an agent of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse through negligence...or through reckless short-cutting in a desperate momentary need for convenience. Here the scientific community's role is critical as it alone asks how and why and doesn't stop until it has clear and solid mechanistic answers. The clinician only asks when? and is it worth the effort? With death taking a short break, though still sitting on my shoulder, I plead to you scientists that have the tremendous advantage of both know-how and understanding under well controlled experimental designs, to please help us clinicians keep that beastly Inevitable at bay through your almost magical discernment as to best practices, best means and best judgements, passing on your sagacious data and logic guided judgement to those who only armed with hunches face the multitude of desperate and suffering victims of just a moment of recklessness, God knows when, that caused them each to be wheeled disabled and in panic before my erstwhile younger colleagues rendered helpless by the stealthful limitless capacities that the Corona virus gained evolutionarily through novelty and simplicity. It imposes on physicians the task of last rites priests rather than life saving, as physicians are all eager to do, being physicians....If really fortunate, maybe both tasks are separated over a despairingly short time period so the young physician be not driven to hysterical self-doubt by his failure to extend the life of his charge. But-- pover and over and over again-- this scenario can devastate a young physician's whole career. The PTSD this might produce is understandable. Afterall young physicians bubbling with excitement are willing to run themselves into the ground at whatever the cost if the outcome is the miracle of pale indigo blue turning to Sweet Sixteen Party pink. One is all it takes and it can fuel a young doctor for a decade. That's what all the hard study, sleepless nights and your girl going out with other guys is all about (actually, most med students are already married by their clinical years to someone waiting, waiting, waiting...endlessly for a love life that rarely comes because the love life of a physician is always put on hold by a life and death emergency; and even after that passes, the probability that the expression of love can resume is negligible as the cause of the delay probably didn't survive so, after patiently waiting so long, the male or female partner of the male or female physician is still on the short end of the stick as how much loving can one expect from a saver of lives that, as is so often the case, struggled so much only to suffer defeat at the hands of the Grim Reaper. othershave to be medically saved by medically saving the fallen ill partner. As one follows the daily computation of the awesome number of Corona death announced daily on TV news, one can't help thinking of how devastated feel the families of the victim-- rightly si-- but how many wonder how the physician who so desperately struggled to keep that patient alive and failed feels. And, how the family of the physician , having finally gotten him/her home-- but only as a listless rag doll is all they get as no physician can accept death, defeat of his/her mission in life. Over they years the manifestation subsides, both for physicians and their families. Yet, in devious Freudian fashion, the failure to save life garnishes a constant tall on a physician's vitality and, therefore on his/her family. By contrast, a scientist whose experiment fails determinedly declares: "I'll get it next time, back to the drawing board!" But before a scientist tries again much study is done into the successes and failures of others. Eventually, "Eureka!"-- science has prevailed because, reviewing one's own experiments, reading related research of others, as the saying goes: SCIENCE MARCHES ON!

Most advances in human healthcare have come from understanding the critical principles at issue though "jaw, jaw, jaw!" by scientists, redoing experiments with new designs and just re-evaluating the data. Thirty more Norwegian Hooded rats to get the answer seems to bother few (like PETA) but the discovery, the understanding, raises all boats in the great sea of HOPE and the research goes on. The meticulous step by step achievement of understanding in science leads to fascinating lectures at which protagonists dazzle their audiences with the hows and whys of their year of research. No one, except for PETA, remembers all the animals whose lives it took to systematically overcome the flaws in experiment after experiment so as to come forth with "scientific truths" honored in history books. This cannot be said of CoV19, for it is a disease that is mathematically modeled based on human affliction and death. Every affliction and especially every death is a catastrophe and still, we really don't know why some people die and other don't. Nothing can make a physician look as stupid as he/she might look if asked why a certain patient died. A little bit of data is stolen from "basic" science, a bit of epidemiological modeling is manipulated, but no patient who goes into a doctor's office, Congressman who goes to the CDC for a mode, nor Pharma rep promoting a drug have any answers. Life and death are passed off as "the will of God," unlike the deaths of rats in a lab....the latter are scheduled and for a specific purpose. How and why people die of Corona virus is a total mystery and so how many will die is too. "Scientifically" we know a hell of a lot about the CoV2 virus, but clinically we know nothing about CoV19, except that it is the disease one gets from CoV2 virus because we said it is!

So, for a physician, The contemplative brilliance of detached scientific minds will do more to get us homo sapiens through yet another virus invasion of our realm, hopefully conquering once again yet another horrid offspring of the SARS family once again. We clinicians gladly and humbly bow to your scientific wisdom, beg for your forbearance in face of our myopia and ignorance, and on our knees plead for your showering us with the ultimate problem solving skills in this our hour of shameful helplessness. We will strewn palms and shout Hosannas to you endlessly in mankind's victory parade thanking you in limitless gratitude for once again teaching us how to win yet another victory over misery and death. Your leadership and wisdom-- though too often unappreciated by most of us clinicians who fight monster after monster and their kith and kin at bedside-- we fully recognize at times like now....even if, alas, or vane memory is short so we tend to pompously forget your Promethean spectacularity shortly after the demise of the monster that threatened us all. Yet we are fully cognizant that medicine went from ritual to science only by fully supporting rigorous scientific experimentation, much of which at first seemed pragmatically pointless to our myopic eyes, only to find ourselves kicking eachother in the rear for our neglectful disregard of how scientists bring forth the miracle of understanding, something no one else can achieve with such a degree of true comprehension, you being the disciplined masters of observation and experimentation, thus over and over again, healing of our rather reckless species as recorder by Cleo, the Muse of History time and time again!

So, please, deliver us from the evil of Chloroquine and Clorox and the imbecilities of the ever roaring orange orangutan so that we may so that we may save a seemingly useless generation of slaves of the iPhone as a means of contagion now but, after disciplined education will become the scientists of tomorrow to outgrow the commercial infantilities of of curren MIllennial's manias, answering the call instead of the homo sapien's struggle to master huis/her own fate, each in his/her own way as INDIVIDUALS and not a "can you hear me now" pastoral flock in Silicon Valley. BUT NOW, FIRST AND FOREMOST, YOU MUST STRUGGLE IN USE OF THE WONDERS OF THE SCIENCE YOU WILL PEDAGOGICALLY MASTER TO BRING OUR SPECIES IN HARMONY WITH MOTHER EARTH.