03/24/2020
Dear Families,
As you know, over the last 20+ years there have been instances where I have made some specific medical recommendations regarding the safety of your children. But unlike in the past, what I am about to say is an appeal, a plea of desperation, to address the critical situation that we are in. I have spent a significant amount of time over the last several days trying to educate myself on the facts and data surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. This is through reading peer-reviewed journals (specifically, very recently published case reports and papers in the New England Journal of Medicine), analyzing data from other legitimate sources (e.g., the World Health Organization), talking to experts in the field (e.g., the Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at my hospital), and to others (a critical care physician/colleague and friend) who is literally in the front line taking care of patients that have been infected with COVID-19. To summarize, we are on the verge of a catastrophic crisis in which there will simply not be enough medical supplies, perhaps most importantly ventilators, to meet the demand. Through my own “unofficial” calculations, if the rate of increase of infected people continues at the current pace, we will be in this situation in about two weeks. In other words, we will reach a point when physicians will have to decide who to treat and who to let die. While states like California have issued so-called “lockdowns”, I am terrified by the lack of compliance I have either observed directly, or heard about through others. The problem is exacerbated (in my opinion) by a lack of an aggressive public relations campaign by our government to instill the sense of urgency and gravity of the situation to ALL members of society (i.e., in multiple languages, as needed) of the situation that I am certain exists. While countries like South Korea have slowed the progression of the disease by performing widespread testing to identify those who are infected so that they can be strategically quarantined, that is not an option in the US because we don’t have enough kits to meet the need (the reasons are multiple, but are at least in part due to failure of our government to recognize and respond to the red flag signs of the impending pandemic). China has effectively eliminated the outbreak there by implementing a harsh quarantine on 60 million people for a prolonged period of time, with very strict enforcement. Based on what I am seeing and what I think lies ahead, in order to avoid this catastrophe all of us may have to sacrifice some personal freedoms (remember what we had to accept after 9/11) in order to effectively implement the only potential away to avert this disaster, i.e. a STRICTLY ENFORCED QUARANTINE. Obviously, a quarantine won’t work if even a relatively small number of people don’t comply. EVERYONE MUST COMPLY!!! At this point I see no other way. Please share this with as many people as you can. ~ Dr. Paul Grossfeld
