Chinese and East Asian Health Care Workers (Thomas Weiss)
Fact-Checked Source:
Atul Gawande "Keeping the Coronavirus from Infecting Health-Care Workers"
On March 21st, 2020 Atul Gawande wrote an article for the "The New Yorker" news organization titled "Keeping the Coronavirus from Infecting Health-Care Workers". This article discusses multiple aspects of the Coronavirus, focusing on successful ways that countries have limited the spread of the virus.To better understand this source, I have researched five different facts in this source to confirm their credibility
Fact 1:In the index outbreak in Wuhan, thirteen hundred health-care workers became infected; their likelihood of infection was more than three times as high as the general population.Looking more in depth at this fact (Gawande, 1), it happens to be correct. Health care workers are at a much higher risk of being infected in their field of work than the general population. This was confirmed in the CNN article (Howard,2020), titled "Health care workers are getting sicker from the coronavirus than other patients, experts say".
Fact 2:
As the city was locked down and cut off from outside visitors, health-care workers seeing at-risk patients were housed away from their families.As I looked into this fact, I noticed the author Gawande states how at-risk healthcare workers were being housed away from their families due to safety guidelines. This specific fact was confirmed as credible on the website for the Center of Disease Control and Prevention. This website instructs "an ill person should stay in a specific room and away from other people in their home, following home care guidance".
Fact 3:
Health officials there did not conduct mass testing of the population to look for infected people without symptoms. They focussed on aggressively searching out and testing only those who developed suspicious symptoms or had high-risk exposures in the community. They accepted that the virus might circulate among people who notice nothingWhen talking about Hong Kong, Gawande quotes that testing was focused on those with suspicious symptoms and high risk exposures. The Chinese Government throughout history has lowered funding to disease control. Testing has been limited to only high risk patients due to significantly lower financial support. This fact was supported in the scholarly article (Ma, 2008) "From A National, Centrally Planned Health System To A System Based On The Market: Lessons From China," which explains how funding allocated to disease control and prevention was dropped from .11 percent in 1978 to .04 percent in 1993 since the modern way economic reform.
Fact 4:
We know that people are less contagious while they have no symptomsThis specific fact mentioned in the New Yorker article cites how people people showing symptoms are more contagious than those showing no symptoms. This was fact checked by an article on Vox New’s website which explains how the virus can be spread rapidly by seriously ill patients, but can also be spread by minimal symptomatic patients as well. The author, Catherine Courage, when talking about minimal symptom patients quotes that "they aren’t coughing as much as someone feeling more seriously ill, but the virus can still spread through talking, sneezing, and coughing (Courage, 2020)." This article highlights how symptoms of sneezing and coughing are high risk factors for spreading the virus, confirming how someone without symptoms is less likely to spread the virus.
Fact 5:
Our early experiences in the U.S. have so far been similar. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the face of limited information, recommended stricter precautions than have been employed in Asia, putting health-care workers on fourteen-day self-quarantine if they are exposed to an infected person for even a few minutes without protection.Mentioned in this quote from the New Yorker is the fact that U.S has been strict with their policies compared to some other Asian countries, China included. The fact that the U.S. has policy to quarantine healthcare workers has been fact-checked when looking at an article by Kaiser Health News. In this article, the author quotes a case in California, stating "In Vacaville, California, alone, one case — the first documented instance of community transmission in the U.S. — left more than 200 hospital workers under quarantine and unable to work for weeks (Gold, 2020)." This quote confirms that the U.S. has been strict when it comes to safety guidelines with healthcare workers.
Perspective essay
First Responders of the Outbreak: China's Health Care Workers Perspective
In today’s youth, there is a significant amount of students that desire to have a career in the healthcare industry. Many of those young students will have to ask themselves if they would be able to properly carry out their jobs in the case of a large pandemic such as the current COVID-19 virus. Would you be able to successfully care for infectious patients such as China’s healthcare workers? When looking at this national pandemic, there are thousands of different point of views to be accounted for. We have learned in society how important it is to look at other peoples perspectives. I believe looking at the perspective of the Chinese healthcare workers is incredibly important due to the precedence they are setting for other countries. In this essay, I will analyze the perspective of China’s healthcare workers during this COVID-19 pandemic. As a general consensus, this perspective is tasked with caring for roughly 100,000 COVID-19 patients as the “first responder” country.The COVID-19 virus matters to them because they are in charge of caring for the sick community while protecting themselves and their families. China’s current healthcare system in simple terms was underprepared and undervalues its population. As of reports in 2003, only roughly 9% of China’s rural population, which accounts for over 50% of its total population, is covered by health insurance (Ma, 2008). Due to its growing population, China has adopted privately owned, for-profit hospitals since their economic reform in 1978. These privately owned hospitals account for 13% of its total hospitals in the country. Despite their enormous, growing population, it’s reported that their current system lacks health promotion and disease prevention, resulting in it’s large, low-income population to rely on “self-treatment” without consulting a physician for many of their issues. This lack of health promotion has resulted in many citizens having unhealthy living conditions and improper self care.
China’s health care workers care about protecting their community and value the health of their country. Their immediate obvious goal is to provide care for the thousands of sick individuals who are flooding their hospitals. In addition to this, China’s health care workers also value their own health as well as their family’s health, taking preventive and protective measures to reduce the spread of the virus. This includes wearing N-95 respirator masks during their long work hours and continuing to practice isolation during time away from work. Many hospital leaders have also assured that the healthcare worker’s family will receive proper care should they become infected (Beckman, 2020).
Despite this growing protection, healthcare workers are reported to be hit more heavily by this COVID-19 virus than other individuals at similar health risks. Although the elderly population and those with preexisting conditions continue to be at the highest risk, health care workers and being affected heavily by the infection which increases their concerns for themselves and their families (Howard, 2020). In times like these, China urges that individuals continue to understand that their duty trumps their safety, highlighting the idea that while they are putting themselves at risk in the hospitals, it is essential for the greater community that they continue to perform their jobs.
The intended audience of the Chinese healthcare workers continues to be the sick patients in their hospitals. They are tasked with reaching out to patients in need during this time of crisis in their country. Reaching out entails properly conducting their jobs in the hospitals and protecting the public from spreading this illness, putting their duty as top priority (Beckman, 2020). The important facts that matter to the healthcare workers are the symptoms and the epidemiology of the virus, how it spreads. The healthcare workers are concerned with identifying the symptoms of an infectious person to be able to care for them while limiting the spread of the virus.
They are concerned with the information about how to protect themselves while handling sick patients, how to protect their families, and how to prevent the public from continuing to spread the virus. The healthcare workers possess important knowledge about caring for the community that the general public lacks. They are the special forces unit, setting them apart from the basic infantry in an army. These workers are the ones that are knowledgeable and resourceful enough to care for the sick patients. In return, they depend on the financial and material support from their government. Without the proper safety equipment, these workers wouldn’t be able to properly care for sick patients without catching the virus themselves and spreading it further. They rely on the safety masks and gowns to protect themselves during this outbreak.
As a general consensus, I believe that the Chinese healthcare workers have a sense of distrust towards their communist government. Despite their enormous population, China continued to not practice good health promotion and care for the low-income (Ma, 2008). This resulted in the virus being spread more rapidly and aggressively throughout its community. Healthcare workers would look towards the Chinese government to blame for its lack of care for their people. This could potentially bring them in conflict with the hospital leaders and higher officials of the government. Although this time of pandemic is a period where collaboration between government and healthcare workers is crucial, many measures were neglected to be taken pre-outbreak and post-outbreak that could lead to distrust in the government.
It is important to analyze the perspective of Chinese healthcare workers since they are the first responders to this outbreak. They set the precedent for how this virus should be properly handled for the rest of the world. Their perspective on this outbreak is important to look at through the eyes of the workers themselves. Despite fear for themselves and their families, they continued to prioritize their jobs and the sick people of their country. This perspective is one that should be modeled after in other countries to properly care for the needy, protect the healthy, and prevent further spread of this virus.