The Healers: Futility and Hope

“We were posted for Covid duties even before we got our degrees under emergency grounds. The day we officially received our degrees, my best friend’s mother died under my watch. We tried everything in our arsenal to save her but I could see life ebbing out of her. It was one of the darkest days of my life as a doctor and as a friend.

Despite our best efforts, we have been losing patients, not because we are not competent but because there is nothing we can medically do to save them. The situation is analogous to a mall being attacked by terrorists. Instead of using a sniper in defense, you decide to use a bomb. The bomb will kill not only the terrorists but also innocent civilians. It is the same thing that is happening in our body with this infection. Our immune system mounts an exaggerated response that affects not only the virus, but also the healthy tissues in our body. And at that stage, it becomes difficult to treat the patients. But this technicality is hard to explain to a family that has just lost their loved one.

Indeed, we were not prepared to deal with the current pandemic. The massive push to use certain drugs such as Remdesivir has created havoc, but this drug has no effect on mortality. Another drug, Tocilizumab and its less expensive variant, Itolizumab, have random effects on certain patients which are hard to predict and often can lead to…