He thinks about that experience as he looks at the tents set up outside his hospital in upper Manhattan. The last time he worked in a tent was in West Africa, he tweeted. , Business Insider's weekly newsletter on pharma, biotech, and healthcare.
"In those same tents, I saw too much pain, loneliness, and death. People dying alone. I never thought I'd have to see or experience that ever again. I never wanted to. Once was painful enough," he tweeted. "We have no other option now." Inside the emergency room, the only patients he's seen have COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
"Working in the ER means walking through a corridor of coughing," he tweeted. "All a slightly different pitch & different frequency, but all caused by the exact same thing."The volume isn't the only new normal hitting Spencer. It's also how severely ill the patients are, often in a state of respiratory arrest that requires being put on ventilators to help support breathing.