Lehigh County Health & Medicine Summer 2021 - 17

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Things are just different
BY ALLENTOWN HEALTH BUREAU
E
veryone thinks it is settling down for those
of us in public health. The days of 300
plus a day reports of positive cases in the
City of Allentown are over. The days of
1400 people in line for vaccine are over. A person
could easily think that things really ARE settling
down, but they are far from it.
Things are just different. Not easier, not harder,
not slower but different. There is a hybrid going
on - trying to reinstate clinics that have been shut
down while still COVID case investigating and
contact tracing.
We have a syphilis outbreak, a tuberculosis
outbreak, untreated sexually transmitted diseases,
and a group of over 1000 children who cannot
return to the classroom in the fall unless they get
vaccinated - typical things for public health but
something is different...
We cannot get out of our thoughts (and prayers
for some of us) much of what we have seen and
learned during the last year and a half. When the
clinic opened at AGRI-PLEX I drove there every
morning hoping we could handle the day ahead.
Spotty vaccine delivery, increased demand and
decreased supply, people who were both excited and
scared, snowstorms and unpredictable information
that could break at any moment and change the
events of the day. And we handled it. We handled
it thanks to the cooperation of the Allentown paramedics,
the EMTS and paramedics of the Eastern
PA EMS Council, the volunteers in the Allentown
Volunteer Medical Reserve Corps (AVMRC) and
the Lehigh County Citizen Emergency Response
Team (CERT) members. They joined our public
health staff and made every day of vaccinations work.
I remembered looking up at one point and seeing
an OB/GYN doctor observing staff in the post
vaccination area while a retired infectious disease
physician vaccinated. A family doc wrote out
SUMMER 2021 | Lehigh County Health & Medicine 17
vaccine record cards as a clinical nurse practitioner
vaccinated. Engineers, architects, and pharmacists
banded together to assist us in getting to where we
are today which is 50,000 shots in arms. It was a
sight that to this day gives me goosebumps to think
about. There were no egos or titles - just shots.
But attached to those shots are the eyes that
continue to haunt me - the eyes of the woman who
wore the pendant with the face of her husband she
lost the week before to COVID. " I am terrified, "
she said. " I am afraid of the vaccine, but our
kids can't lose both of us. " The eyes of the man
who buried his wife of 60 years who said, " I
just cannot accept that I wasn't there to hold
her hand when she passed. " The grandfather
who brought his four sons while the fifth was
on the ventilator.
Those patients are yours now. There is a
great likelihood that you will see them -
for everything from the vague illness that
can come from depression to the severe
illness that results from a lack of self-care.
They need understanding. They need
a longer visit and a platform to share
that pain that is not over.
In public health, we will see them
too - in the increased number
of suicides, of substance abuse
disorders, in overdose attempts
and completions, in vaccine preventable
disease outbreaks and in
so many other ways. So, for all of
us, COVID is not settling down
- in so many ways our work has
just begun. And together we need
to go to work hoping that we can
handle the day ahead. They need us
now more than ever.
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Lehigh County Health & Medicine Summer 2021

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