Green Bay doctor: My kids don’t like COVID-19 limits either, but at least they listen to lifesaving advice – Green Bay Press Gazette

Jason Hoppe, For the Green Bay Press-Gazette Published 7:19 a.m. CT Nov. 24, 2020

My 10-year-old daughter was playing with her friends in our yard as I arrived home from work at the hospital the day I wrote this.It was a beautiful fall day and they were climbing a tree, not social distancing or wearing masks.

Between daily requests that we get a new dog, I try to remind my 10-, 11-, 12- and 15-year-old to social distance and wear masks with varying degrees of success.

I thought about telling them how this pandemic is similar to what polio did to children and young adults in the 1950s, and that social distancing was also necessary at that time until widespread polio vaccination which has nearly eradicated this disease that once closed beaches and pools and kept children from playing with their friends at all.

Jason Hoppe(Photo: Courtesy of Jason Hoppe)

I thought about sharing the coronavirus math: COVID-19 kills roughly 10 times as many people as influenza and we dont have a vaccine for it. Children have to social distance and stay out of school and sports to prevent bringing it home to their families and making them sick. I think they know this, but it doesnt make it easier for them to stay away from their friends.

I thought about telling them of what Ive seen in the hospitals.That Ive never seen or heard of anything like this since I started practicing medicine over 25 years ago.That Ive never heard of transforming a state fairgrounds into a Field Hospital or of a local hospital in Green Bay using industrial plastic dividers to allow a single patient room to fit two patients.That Ive never routinely had to keep patients in the ER after I admit them because there were not beds for them in the hospital.

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I thought of telling them of the elderly couple who wanted to move from their home of countless decades to an assisted living facility how less than a week later my patients husband died of COVID-19 after contracting the illness there an all-too-common mode of transmission.

But I dont have to tell them these things or scare them.My kids listen, at least to this advice.They get it: They wear masks when I remind them, without complaining.They follow social distancing guidelines even though they would rather not.They actually do these things more consistently than picking up their clothes, doing their homework or a multitude of other things my wife and I ask them to do, as Im sure other parents will attest.

My prayer for our city, state and country is that we listen to good advice.That we wear our masks, work or go to school from home whenever possible and get the influenza vaccine now and COVID-19 vaccine when available. I pray that we transcend politics and leave that to the electoral process.Germs do not have political parties.

I know that united together Wisconsinites and Americans will defeat this pandemic.The basic tools we have to prevent this infection by wearing masks and social distancing, looking out for one another and following the Golden Rule are much more powerful than all of the remdesivir, dexamethasone or convalescent plasma I could ever give the very sick patients Im seeing at this time.

Jason Hoppe, MD, is a primary care physician at Prevea Clinic and internal medicine specialist and hospitalist atSt. Vincent, St. Marys and St. Clare's hospitals. He lives in Green Bay.

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Green Bay doctor: My kids don't like COVID-19 limits either, but at least they listen to lifesaving advice - Green Bay Press Gazette