Week 0: A Long Five Years
Yash D -
“Thick darkness has gathered over our squares, our streets and our cities. It has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void that stops everything as it passes by; we feel it in the air … We find ourselves afraid and lost.” – Pope Francis2
2020. A year that changed our lives. The Covid-19 pandemic had taken us all by surprise. The pandemic took the lives of more than 1.1 million people in the United States overall with 330 thousand people being from Arizona over the course of 4 years.1 What’s worse is that our hospitals were not prepared for the massive surge of Covid-19 patients and could not contain the spread of the virus leading to rapid infection within hospitals, the place we consider as a place to get treated and become well again. What went wrong? Was it the staffing shortages? Was it the lack of medical supplies? Was this due to the lockdowns that had been in place to contain the spread of the virus?
In my internship, I hope to answer these types of questions and provide a detailed, concise report on hospitals, the healthcare system, and public opinion on this matter as well. I will also interview medical professionals later on in my research and understand their opinions on hospital preparedness in Arizona.
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References:
1 Statista. (2023, August 29). Number of deaths from COVID-19 in the United States as of March 10, 2023, by state. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103688/coronavirus-covid19-deaths-us-by-state/.
2 Reuters. (2020, September 28). Selected quotes as COVID-19 pandemic reaches new milestone. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/selected-quotes-as-covid-19-pandemic-reaches-new-milestone-idUSKBN26K0E4/.