Five years ago, the virus that was in the news, mostly in West Africa, but occasionally

here in the U.S. was Ebola.

It was a frightening time.

Ebola caused fevers and hemorrhaging and had an average fatality rate of 50%.

And it was during that outbreak that I had dinner with a journalist I know,

and I met his wife, Dr. Celine Gounder.

Celine is an infectious disease expert,

and she'd been doing volunteer work in Guinea.

And I was really struck by how unflappable she seemed,

even though we were talking about this terrifying disease.

The reason I was not scared with Ebola is because I was going with an American aid organization.

I knew we were going to have the personal protective equipment we needed. And I knew how Ebola was

transmitted. So I knew that as long as I was careful, that it was relatively within my control.

That kind of control she's talking about has been hard to come by in her work on the coronavirus, both in terms of how easily this virus spreads and also what she can do to protect herself.

I work at Bellevue Hospital in New York. I see patients there. And we have been in rationing mode

since the spring. You have to go to this window, show your ID. They give you three N95 masks for the

week. You know, so that's being rationed. I have been using...

Wait, still in November? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. And I have been using the same

face shield since March. I just wipe it down at the end of every day and put it in a paper

bag in my locker. The fact that we would have allowed ourselves to get to that point in this country is just unacceptable.

This week and this point in the pandemic feel particularly fraught.

Cases are exploding. The holidays are looming.

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