Hey there, before we start the show, I wanted to thank you for sharing your stories in our voicemail box.

We are listening and we really appreciate it. We're all pretty weirded out right now, too.

Tell us how you're getting through it. Our number is 202-888-2588. Or you can just tweet at me. I'm at

Mary's desk. One more thing before we get started. Our guest today, she uses a couple of four-letter words. All right, onto the show.

Derek Haas is an emergency medical physician in New York, works the weekend shift. And she can still remember the first time she thought, maybe I need a

mask. Who do you think your first patient with COVID-19 was? I don't know. So this is actually a really

interesting question because I had taken care of a patient on February 29th who I was like, this is a very weird presentation of a fever and a cough.

And I went through this thing in my mind. She had no travel history. She had no risk factors, right? None of the CDC criteria for who should be. We didn't have a test at that point, but even like

who you should flag, she just didn't meet any of those. But she stuck with you.

Yeah. No, and she cost on me. It was the first time I thought I should protect myself from patients.

Dara is one of those people who knows everyone at work. She's always giving out advice, not afraid to

ask for advice herself.

One of the other doctors on shift with her, he'd worked in Africa, gotten Ebola while he was there.

So she called him in to talk this puzzling case out. And he came into the room after she did and

talked to me and he was wearing a mask. And I was like, you're already wearing a mask, but he's like, I don't mess around with PPE. This is literally what he said

to me. And I was like, really? Every patient? He's like, Dara, every patient. And I was like,

okay, Craig, every patient. And then the shift was over, right?

But by two weeks from then, so February 29th to March 14th and 15th, the whole world had changed.

Dara says there's this way a hospital can feel as it tenses up, braces for an emergency.

She felt it on 9-11 after Hurricane Sandy. She felt it again when she returned to the ER, two weeks after that patient coughed on her. That weekend felt the way I think

a lot of other hospitals are going to feel as this happens. There's a calm before the storm that is

really scary because you wind up discharging

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