In March 2020, covid was just warming up, and Pine Bluff was about to become the hot spot for the state, discovering patient zero, as he was called, right here at Jefferson Regional Medical Center.
We didn’t know how bad it was going to be. Masks, social distancing, putting mail outside to disinfect in the sun, taking extra care when around others, unable to visit people in the hospital or nursing home lest we infect or be infected by the encounter, seeing friends and acquaintances get sick and then sicker. And, of course, the many deaths, some of them happening to the already weakened and some to the hale and hearty. And when they died, we couldn’t even attend a funeral.
It’s been quite a slog, and that description hardly touches the surface, which included education chaos and economic ruin for many.
But little by little, with the collective effect of the vaccines, society finally finds itself pulling away from the grip of covid, and this week, JRMC employees did a little happy dance as they celebrated the end of the pandemic, which was held in conjunction with the expiration of the COVID Public Health Emergency at the national level.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
That celebration, which took place as part of National Hospital Week — now known as Jefferson Regional Week in Pine Bluff — saw hospital employees having a picnic. There was also a pie-eating contest, tug of war, a lip sync contest, an obstacle course and PPE (Remember when that term was new and when masks were like gold?) race relay and a limbo contest.
The official end of the pandemic, which killed more than 13,000 people in the state, is a good time to consider how our community came together to fight the problem and also how those at JRMC struggled, like so many at other hospitals across the country, to provide care at the risk of the health safety of their own employees.
None of us will ever know the true sacrifices of those health care workers — particularly when some of the people they were caring for had eschewed the vaccine and were lying helpless and dying in the hospital’s covid wing.
JRMC also recognized outstanding Jefferson Regional leaders “who adapted to the covid landscape, and maintained safety and excellence for patients and employees alike during the pandemic.” As we all know, adapting to the covid landscape was much easier said than done.
Congratulations to those folks and to anyone who had a hand in cushioning and deflecting the blows from covid. If we ever thought of a pandemic as something that happens in far away places, we now know a lot better.