Covid-19 in New York City, A Rapid Response

I’m currently a nurse practitioner and normally work in an emergency department or urgent care setting. I work as a contractor, so I go from facility to facility and am used to a somewhat unstable work environment, as I don’t really have a “home base.”. I’ve been a contractor for about three years. Prior to becoming a mercenary nurse practitioner, I was a registered nurse working primarily in emergency department settings.Before that, I was a patient care technician in the hospital, mostly in the ICU and ER settings. I’ve also worked in the pre-hospital setting as an EMT-B at various points during my career.

The COVID-19 (coronavirus or novel coronavirus, colloquially) pandemic has been apparent and “real” to the general public here in the US for several weeks. I live in Madison, Wisconsin ; I am writing this journal on March 26th, 2020, as a point of reference for the following timeline. Our state governor declared a state of emergency on March 12th. The next day (March 13th, a Friday), he declared schools statewide would close the following Wednesday, which was later revised to immediate closure. About 10 days following school closure, on March 25th, a shelter-in-place order went into effect, along with closure of all non-essential businesses. Today, March 26th, Wisconsin has 707 confirmed cases and eight deaths. For comparison, New York City currently has over 21,000 confirmed cases and 281 deaths.

That comparison of the major coastal cities like NYC to Wisconsin is the primary reason I decided to seek out a disaster relief contract in a hard-hit area. The facilities I work at in Wisconsin are currently experiencing very low volumes, as most people (wisely) don’t want to be in our waiting rooms during a pandemic. It’s clear to me that Wisconsin is not where my skills are presently needed, andI want to go to a place where my skills are useful. I’m also a healthy person under 45 years old; if I do contract the virus, I’m statistically very unlikely to become seriously ill, so it’s better someone like me get sick than someone in a higher-risk group.