This Covid wave has trapped healthcare workers in a nightmare. I see it every day | Clayton Dalton

Celebrating healthcare workers as heroes' obscures the systemic failures that forced us to fill the gap

The final days of this calamitous year are strange ones. Hope is here," reads a flashing road sign on the highway in New Mexico, where my wife and I live. We now have two coronavirus vaccines available in the United States that are safe and effective. I received my first dose just five days after the FDA issued an emergency approval for its use, a logistical miracle. Nearly 5 million Americans have received a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. The government has secured an additional 100m doses from Pfizer, to be delivered by July. If all goes well, enough people may be vaccinated to enable a return to something like normal by the end of the summer. It's tempting to focus our attention on the future, as the end of the pandemic begins to come just barely into view.

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