The Precious Commodity of Hope

While being smart and remaining vigilant, we must be careful to not engage in information saturation. Simply put, the world has seemingly transformed into a significantly scarier place since the beginning of 2020.  The men and women who report the news, whether in print, on television, on the radio, or on-line, are actually doing nothing other than their jobs in keeping us abreast of the latest COVID-19 developments.  It is not their job to decide for us what constitutes being kept abreast and what constitutes information overload.  It is ours.  We the people of these United States are presently enduring the consequences of living in an "avoidance of responsibility" society.  When we have made it through to the other side of this, here is to hoping that we teach our children and our grandchildren the importance of accepting responsibility for one's actions and decisions...and we finally learn that lesson's importance ourselves. 

Although the overwhelming majority of the news regarding COVID-19's impact on day-to-day life in these United States is somber, it is not exclusively so.  There is a lot of bad news on everybody's doorstep.  There is, however, also some extraordinarily hopeful news. 

Unless you have lived under a rock for the past thirty days (and if you have done so while social distancing and using Purell and Lysol wipes, then keep up the good work), you possess at least a rudimentary understanding of how terribly besieged the hospital system in New York City has been.  The Brooklyn Hospital Center is one of the City's most-besieged facilities.  Since the beginning of March, approximately two hundred babies have been born there, including those born to the twenty-nine mothers suffering from COVID-19 when they delivered the baby.  The physicians, nurses, and staff of the Brooklyn Hospital Center's department of obstetrics and gynecology, headed by Dr. Erroll Byer, Jr., have safely delivered every baby.  To date, neither a mother nor a child born at the Brooklyn Hospital Center since March has died of COVID-19.  

Under seemingly impossible circumstances, consistently excellent results have been delivered.  I commend to your attention this piece that Sheri Fink wrote, which appeared in the April 12, 2020 edition of The New York Times.  I believe that when you learn about Precious Anderson and the other patients of the Brooklyn Hospital Center's department of obstetrics and gynecology, it will bring a smile to your face.  

I know, at least, it brought one to mine.  

-AK