76 Time December 21/December 28, 2020
For the nursing staff, that pace was sustainable
only for so long. During a COVID-19 lull in the sum-
mer, they reupped previous requests for hospital ad-
ministrators to bring on as many as 50 more nurses
to meet the anticipated fall surge. The two sides were
at an impasse for weeks and then months, with the
nurses even going on strike for two days, starting
No v. 17. They still have not come to terms, and the
nurses continue to plead with management as they
watch their wards fill up with COVID-19 patients.
“This time I think we all have a little PTSD,” says
Gentile, “but we’re laser focused.”ElsEwhErE, hEalth workErs are feeling not just
a lack of appreciation, but open hostility. In the U.S.,
Fauci and others who have warned of the dangers of
the virus and the importance of social distancing have
been falsely accused of scare mongering and even exag-
gerating the pandemic to turn the public against the
Trump Administration in the run-up to last month’s
election. Calderone, the doctor in Turin, recalls the first
wave of the pandemic when physicians were cheered as
heroes, with songs from balconies and pizza delivered
to their wards. No more. “Some people think that we
are the ones who exaggerate, and therefore the cause
of the restrictions,” she says. “It hurts and upsets me.”
In Russia, frontline health workers are battling
the rancor and mistrust of not just the public, but
also the government. In the spring, the governmentinsisted that the country had few cases relative to
its geographical neighbors, and promised to provide
doctors “high-quality and effective protection.” An-
astasia Vasilieva, 36, the head of Alliance of Doctors,
an independent medical trade union, has traveled to
11 hospitals in Russia, video taping the poor work-
ing conditions and posting evidence of their govern-
ment’s misleading claims on the alliance’s website.
“Chief doctors force medical workers to treat patients
without wearing PPE,” Vasilieva says, “and forbid
them from speaking out if they have symptoms of
the virus. I want to cry sometimes when I see what
conditions medical workers are used to.”
The government branded Vasilieva a liar, and on
April 2, the police beat and detained her overnight
while she was trying to deliver PPE to a hospital in a
small town north of Moscow. Since then, the police
have continually shown up at hospitals the alliance
has tried to enter, sometimes detaining members and
pushing them forcibly away. Vasilieva insists she will
not relent. “If the government wants to harm me,
they will,” she says. “I’m not afraid.”
Inevitably a pandemic becomes a matter of
social justice, as it has in America’s Black and
Latinx communities, with marginalized groups
suffering the most. In the U.S., this is especially
evident in Native American communities, where
risk for both infection and hospitalization is higher
than among any other group in the country. EarlyANASTASIA
VASILIEVA
Doctors’ union
leader; Moscow
An eye specialist
who leads a
medical trade
union, Vasilieva was
beaten and detained
after criticizing the
Kremlin’s handling
of the pandemic.