Public health worker here in the epicenter. I am no hero, going into places with infected people has always been a part of the job. Family member is an NP at one of NYC's largest hospitals, again, just doing the job as normal. The social media fools are mostly the same crowd that have been too terrified to really do their jobs, but this 'look at me dancing, I'm such a hero!' behavior is right up their alley.

I went along with the two week quarantine, seemed reasonable. As we've steamrolled the curve and the hospitals never hit capacity, we've been screaming for weeks now to reopen everything. Instead Governor Party Tits keeps getting more restrictive. This shit is starting to look like it will never end, all the good news is ignored. At least I am still getting paid, but I'm already expecting a furlough come summer time as the taxes that pay my salary have evaporated.

Truckers work longer hours, have greater consequences to their mistakes, make less money and have significantly lesser social power.

An old cowboy once taught me to never pet a horse for doing its job.

First I don't know anything about these dancing videos. I'm too busy with my work and family for that kind of crap. I am a doctor and what you've said is offensive. I don't think you're trying to be but you don't understand. I'm a resident which means I'm done with med school and a "doctor" but am not board certified in a medical specialty yet. We all signed up for this gig for a lot of reasons, but I don't know anyone who signed up for pandemic managment. My opinion of all of this is a little different than the general opinion of this board (my politics are not), but I'm also a doctor and have real world first hand experience with the patients who have this diease. The public has many fundamental misunderstandings about doctors and medicine. As a resident I make about 50k per year but I'm more than 550k in debt. I'm not doing this for the money, but as you've indirectly pointed out, the money is necessary. If you had any idea what my job is like, you wouldn't have made the glib and dismissive statements you made in your post. I worked as a roofer durring the summers in college. I know a little about what blue collar work is like. I also know what it's like to be poor, living in my wife's salary of around 20k per year through med school. I've never been a truck driver and while I can imagine what their job is like I also know it's impossible for me to understand things like the loneliness of the road, the stress of deadlines, and so on without doing it. When you've had to look a young girls mom and dad in the eye and tell them their daughter, that you've been working on all night, is gonna die and you can't do anything to change it... Nothing can prepare you for that. And you never forget it. I see things on a daily basis that most people don't see in a lifetime. It's not why I went into this, but it is a consequence. When you're the one in the icu I work in dying, the work I do suddd ly becomes the most important job in the world. This is not me with a gob complex of thinking I'm done big shot... But residents especially are abused by the medicsl system (all physicians are) and we are tired of the general public thinking they understand our job and backyard quarterback ING what we do because you've got Google and WebMD. The reason why some of us are scared is not illegitimate. If you catch this bug at Walmart and are young and healthy, you'll probably have a mild illness. Most of the reason for this is that the "dose" or viral load you were exposed to was low. However, when I'm in a busy er or icu intubating people (3 people were intubated on my first hour last night), the viral load I and my colleagues are exposed to is astronomical. That is why at least 3 medicine residents (1 in Michigan, 2 in ny) in their 20s and 30s apparently healthy have died (and were confirmed positive BTW) . That is very very unusual. I don't know that I've heard of that happening before. The hospitals were very large centers and do not want this info being reported, which is why it mostly hasn't been on the news. Go to the student doctors forum or residency reddit if you want more info. We have a very dangerous job right now and it is compounded by longstanding systems problems in big health and politics (mostly lack of ppe but the total list is very long). I was and am still an advocate for heard immunity (everyone gets it, virus can't spread when everyone's had it) with potential recommendations for the dock and elderly to hunker down for a while. We need to open back up and get back to work. Outside of giant cities like NYC and Detroit, the risk of running out of Healthcare resources has been low. The tenor of this entire post is irritating and offensive to me. I don't pretend to know and subsequently judge and compare other occupations. Doctors are subjected to do much bull crap from hospitals, government, insurance, regulations.... It becomes demoralizing. When I see that kind of crap brewing among the public, it's too much. If a terrorist took out my states power grid, I would hope I would think better of the engineers and techs working overtime to fix it than what was conveyed here in your post about doctors

Amen! Well said. Perfect.