The problem with comparing health care workers to soldiers on Memorial Day

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, more than 90,000 health care workers have been infected with the virus, and many have died. To name a few, these have included: a beloved doctor who came out of retirement, a patient transporter in Illinois, a pharmacist in upstate New York, and a nursing home worker. And those are just the deaths from physical illness and don’t take into account mental health consequences.

If you follow the news, you’ll read and hear over and over again that we are at “war” with the virus and that physicians like us, along with other essential workers, are soldiers in battle.

The term “front-line workers,” which has been used to describe those in health care during this pandemic, comes from the military, describing people putting their bodies at the front of the battalion, facing down the enemy. “Redeployment” has been used for physicians and nurses being asked to practice in areas outside of their specialty in response to the demands of the pandemic. Even President Donald Trump has made this comparison, saying health care workers are “running into death just like soldiers run into bullets in a true sense, I see that with the doctors and the nurses and so many of the people that go into those hospitals, it’s incredible to see, it’s a beautiful thing to see.”