Climate Change Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Santosh Pandipati, MD

Turbulent times lie ahead (photons reflecting off the author’s father and son, captured by the author off the coast of Southern California, 2017 — the author reserves all rights to this photograph)

At the time of this writing the SARS-CoV-2 virus has killed more than 100,000 Americans — a catastrophic and tragic loss of human life having occurred within just a few months’ time. Many who have had severe infections and subsequently recovered do not make it into this count, but are dealing with residual and significant loss of lung, kidney, liver, and other organ function. These are the silent suffering, the walking wounded. And while some regional hospitals have been inundated with COVID-19 patients, most healthcare facilities have seen a dramatic reduction in patient visits, often to the detriment of those patients, resulting in an additional and unaccounted indirect injury and death toll from fearful people avoiding emergency rooms and hospitals for strokes, heart attacks, and other life-threatening medical conditions.

As a practicing maternal-fetal medicine physician, my professional life has been dramatically altered by the COVID-19 pandemic, from restricting pregnant patients with having their loved ones present at ultrasound examinations and even after their c-sections, to converting to telemedicine consultations whenever possible, to providers and patients all wearing face masks and other forms of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the hope of avoiding becoming casualties in this war against a…