Tonight I walked to the sea in the dark. The city streets were empty except for a tomcat clawing at a wooden lamp post. It turned and padded off as it heard my steps, its shoulders rolling, leonine.<\/p>\n
When I came to the shore the air was still, the city\u2019s lights amber diffusions in the ocean\u2019s surface stretching out towards the islands marshalled in the bay. As I sat there I thought of personal crises I\u2019d been through, small things now, that made it seem to me that the world for days or weeks creaked and turned askew. And then I thought of this moment, and this external threat, when the world really is altering before us.<\/p>\n
The sea\u2019s surface had the sheen of glass \u2013 a dead calm. I imagined the water suddenly retreating, the shingle of the ocean\u2019s floor hushing as it was revealed, fish flopping where they lay, the water gathering itself into a giant wave, a dark curtain throwing the skyscrapers of the city into shadow, its angry upper lip broiling with white foam.<\/p>\n
Over nine hundred dead in Italy today. Five of them doctors and nurses. 9% of those infected are medical personnel.<\/p>\n
What do we do in the face of this wave? Give in to hopelessness?<\/p>\n
Someone posted a photo of my graduating class from medical school in Ireland the other day. Young faces then, kids \u2013 Asian, Indian, American, Canadian, Australian, Irish, Norwegian. I think of them seeded through the world, now senior doctors, readying themselves for what is to come.<\/p>\n