T H E N AT I O N 5.16–23.

2022

I n the early hours of july 26, 2021, about 200 nurses

began to assemble outside of Community First Medical
Center in Chicago. Inside, the hallways were lined with
patients. But all day, in 90-degree heat, the nurses stayed
outside, on strike. They set up tents and handed each
other water. Patients and other community members came by to
give them food. When the hospital wouldn’t let the nurses inside
to use the bathrooms, nearby businesses opened their doors.
“The whole neighborhood was behind us,” said Kathy Haff, a

r
registered nurse who’s worked at the hospital for 30 years.
The pandemic had exacerbated the already very

e
poor conditions at Community First. After an

t
investment bank bought the hospital in

f
2014, the management started to cut
back on staff and slash bene-

A
fits, reducing the head
count even fur-

a t ’s trik es sp
urred by the

h f s
a w ave o in
Desp
ite l working

W s a r e stil
, nurse
pandemic

Bu unsustainable conditions and hospitals

out
are dangerously

rn
understaffed.
BY BRYCE
COVE
RT

ther as people left. Disin-

vestment led to huge supply
snarls, sometimes leaving nurses
without enough IV fluid or even linens,
Haff said. Over 90 percent of Haff’s coworkers
voted to unionize in December 2019. “They felt like
they couldn’t do their jobs and take care of people,” she said.
Once the pandemic hit, nurses—and patients—were at even
greater risk. There was so little personal protective equipment
that nurses were bringing in their own gowns and masks. Three
of Haff’s fellow nurses died of Covid, including one who told her
daughter that she believed she was going to die because there
wasn’t enough PPE. “She was a real great nurse,” Haff said quietly.
“She was coming in and working nonstop until it got her.” The
Occupational Health and Safety Administration eventually levied
fines of over $13,000 for the hospital’s lack of protections.
So when Community First dragged its feet over the union’s
first contract negotiations, the nurses went on strike. Manage-
ment was “shocked,” Haff said. “It made them realize we were
serious and we weren’t going away.” After the July strike, the hos-
pital kept stalling, so the nurses threatened to do it again, for even
longer. Management finally yielded to the pressure, and the nurs-
es ratified their first contract, securing wage increases, benefits
ILLUSTRATION BY LIAM EISENBERG
 that had disappeared under the new ownership, and safety protocols for Covid.
Haff ties the community’s support for the nurses to the pandemic. “People fi-
nally appreciate our role,” she said. “All these things are now being brought to the
forefront because people never realized all these years how hard it was. Now they’re
seeing it’s always been this way.”
As the pandemic pushed our health care system to the brink of collapse, images
of overworked nurses were plastered all over the media. But difficult working con-
ditions existed long before Covid. What’s changed is that nurses have decided to
fight back, with a wave of strikes and labor organizing sweeping across the industry.
There were 76 strikes in health care between January 2021 and mid-April 2022
alone, including a nearly year-long strike last year at St. Vincent
Hospital in Massachusetts over unsafe staffing, which may be
the longest nursing strike the country has seen in at least three
Overcapacity:
With hospitals still decades. But despite the fierce labor activism and a new public
short-staffed, many interest in the plight of essential workers, nurses are still at a
patients are waiting breaking point.
to transfer from
ambulances to ERs or
n a survey that karen lasater, an assistant professor
unprecedented challenges, we have maintained
good staff-to-patient ratios, adequate PPE in
spite of global supply shortages, and excellent
care,” a representative of San Leandro Hospital
said in response to a request for comment.)
Many nurses, unsure how to protect their
families when they returned home from work,
came up with elaborate protocols. Falguni Dave,
a registered nurse at Cook County Health in Il-
linois, went so far as to move out of her home for
over a month and live in an apartment to prevent
bringing Covid back to her older in-laws and her
husband, who is diabetic. “The physical need to
be able to touch and hold your family members
when you come home from work” went unmet,
she said. At the same time, a wave of acutely sick
people suffering from Covid flooded emergency
rooms across the country. “I don’t even know

I
from ERs to inpatient
rooms. at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, hap- how to describe the amount of people who died
pened to conduct in the weeks right before the pandemic and got sick,” said Maureen Kryszak, a regis-
started in the United States, she found that nurses were tered nurse who has worked at Catholic Health’s
already struggling because of insufficient staffing at their Mercy Hospital of Buffalo for over a decade.
hospitals. Over half said they were experiencing high levels of Across the country, nurses contracted Covid
burnout, and one in four planned to leave their employer. and died by the thousands. Some left their jobs
When the pandemic hit, hos- to shield themselves and their families from the
pitals were caught off guard. Few virus. Hospitals, which had been cutting back on
had adequate personal protective staff for years, couldn’t marshal enough employ-
equipment. “As we were getting ees to care for all their patients.
“I honestly hate ready to fight the virus, we did Without adequate staff and with an exponen-
not understand we were about to tially increasing number of deeply sick patients,
‘burnout’—the word fight an administration, too, for ba- the nurses’ workload became crushing—and it
doesn’t even begin to sic things like PPE,” said Mawata hasn’t let up, even as the country has acted as
describe what you’re Kamara, a registered nurse at San though it can move on from Covid. When we
Leandro Hospital in California. It spoke in early February, Kryszak said her emer-
JAE C. HONG / AP

really feeling.” was the first time in her more than gency room was “so overwhelmed” that patients
—Katie Johnson, decade-long career that she had couldn’t be transferred to other floors. They’re
a registered nurse in Washington
to reuse an N95 mask. (“Despite left in beds in hallways or, worse, in chairs. “We
20
 T H E N AT I O N
are bursting at every seam,” Kryszak said. (JoAn
Cavanaugh, Mercy’s director of public relations,
said, “Mercy Hospital of Buffalo has been chal-
lenged by staffing shortages and supply chain
issues that have affected hospitals and businesses
across the county over the past two years,”
adding, “Mercy Hospital has seen a marked im-
provement in staffing [in March].”)
The conditions are similar at Kamara’s hos-
pital. “It’s like playing checkers,” she said, con-
stantly moving patients into rooms and into
hallways, back and forth, trying to accommo-
date everyone coming in the doors. One patient
with dementia, she said, recently had to be
moved in and out of their room three or four
times because the hospital didn’t have enough
space. Management “create[s] these situations”
by failing to adequately staff every department,
Kamara said. “It’s just poor management in an
environment where it’s literally life and death.”
Katie Johnson, a registered nurse at the
Longview-Kelso Kaiser Permanente medical
office in Washington, said she and her co-
workers are forgoing breaks to care for more
patients and staying late to finish their charts
after they’re supposed to go home and rest. “If
my patient needs medication and I also need
to go to the bathroom, I’m going to pick my
patient,” she said. The nurses avoid drinking
water during their shifts so they don’t need to
use the bathroom as often. When she’s at home,
Johnson struggles to relax. “There’s that feeling
of going home and wondering if you let a pa-
tient down. Even though you know that you’re
giving good care, there’s always a part of you
that’s wondering, ‘What if it wasn’t enough?’ or
‘Did I forget something?’” She has a hard time
decompressing and even sleeping. “We’re just
hanging on by a thread.”
“I honestly hate ‘burn-
out’—the word doesn’t even
begin to describe what you’re
really feeling,” Johnson said.
(A Kaiser Permanente rep-
resentative noted that the
pandemic “has impacted the
nursing profession across
the country,” adding that
the company “is committed
LEA SUZUKI / SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE VIA GETTY IMAGES
to remaining an employer
of choice through market-
leading pay and benefits.”)
Brittany Smith, a regis-
tered nurse at Doctors Hospital of Manteca in
California, cares for people before and after sur-
gery. During almost every shift, she said, there
are more patients per nurse than there are sup-
posed to be under state law. “We are working in
the most unsafe conditions I have ever worked
in,” Smith said. She cares for six to eight people
at a time who have had strokes or heart attacks
5.16–23.2022
as well as others who are having mental health issues or going
through withdrawal, all of whom require frequent monitoring.
Smith typically works three days in a row, putting in 12½-hour
shifts, and in February she couldn’t take a single break, not even
to eat a meal, often not even to use the bathroom. Working like
that takes a toll on “mind, body,
and soul,” she said. “You go home
and your entire body hurts. You get
nauseous because you haven’t eaten
all day.” She frequently gets head- “I don’t even know how
aches and “brain fog” that makes it
difficult to think. “That’s scary for
to describe the amount
the patients, when the nurse can’t of people who died and
think straight because they have no got sick” at the start of
fuel in their body.”
“It’s horrendous—I don’t know the pandemic.
how else to say it,” she added. —Maureen Kryszak,
a registered nurse in Buffalo
(Smith’s hospital did not respond to
a request for comment.)
The load got to be so much for Falguni Dave that she de-
cided to take a pay cut to go from being a charge nurse in the
medical-surgical unit to a bedside nurse in the ICU. “It was
becoming too overwhelming to be the charge nurse and have to
take on a full load of patients,” she recalled. “It felt like I wasn’t
providing the best care for my patients.” (A representative for
Unprotected: Nurses
Cook County Health said that it has hired more than 1,300 at Kaiser Permanente
nurses during the past two years and is “actively recruiting” for in South San Francis-
more than 300 open nursing positions.) co, Calif., rallied for
In the early months of the pandemic, many hospitals post- better standards for
poned elective surgeries. But most have resumed scheduling health care workers
as the pandemic be-
them, overbooking to make up for lost time, and it’s been busier gan in March 2020.
than ever for the elective and outpatient surgeries that registered
nurse Jack Trudell works on at UW Health in Wisconsin. Last
fall, management decided to have people stay overnight in the recovery room be-
cause there weren’t enough beds elsewhere. “It didn’t feel like we were keeping the
promise made to people,” Trudell said. “It just didn’t feel safe.” The stress has taken
a toll on him. Years ago, he said, one of his children passed away, and he had a panic
attack shortly after. He had his second panic attack recently. While driving with his
wife, “all of a sudden things were moving way too
fast,” he said. Trudell pulled over and let his wife
drive. The next day he managed to drive himself to
work, but when he started getting a report on his
first patient, “it was like I didn’t hear the words,”
he said. He ended up missing a week of work, and
he still worries he could have a panic attack on the
job. (UW Health press secretary Emily Kumlien
noted that the pandemic “has put a strain on every
health system and hospital in the country,” add-
ing that the hospital has “always prioritize[d] the
safety of our patients and our staff.”)
The emotional toll of caring for Covid patients
still echoes. Kryszak remembers her first Covid
patient, a man who had been grocery shopping and
came in feeling short of breath. He later died. There are the elderly people who die
alone, people begging her for the vaccine when it was too late. She’s had many sleep-
less nights. Days when she can’t eat. Days when she can’t bring herself to talk to her
family. “You can’t get some of the visions out of your head, some of the people asking
for help,” she said. She’s suffered chest pains and headaches and has experienced her
heart racing. “There’s days you get out of bed and you just don’t know how you’re get-
ting up to go back—other than you know there’s someone else there that needs help.”
Dave recently cared for an unvaccinated Covid patient in the ICU for three days,
21
 T H E N AT I O N 5.16–23.2022

12 hours each day, who kept telling gar, a professor at Cornell University’s School
her they were scared. On the last of Industrial and Labor Relations who has
day, the patient had to be intubated studied health care. One study found that pa-
“This staffing crisis is and then died holding Dave’s hand. tients in unionized hospitals in California were
“I came home and I cried, because 5.5 percent less likely to die from heart attacks.
not because we don’t there was nothing I could do, even Another found unionized hospitals outperform
have enough nurses. though I did everything in my pow- nonunion ones on 12 of 13 patient outcomes.
er to possibly help,” she said. “It seems like nurses are finally realizing that
It’s because nurses they’re important and they have rights and we
can’t work in these he extreme workload are a force,” said Haff, the Community First
conditions any longer.”
T
—Brittany Smith,
a registered nurse in California
and physical and men-
tal anguish nurses are
experiencing is a potent
combination that has
led to a number of strikes, protests,
and union-organizing campaigns.
All the nurses I spoke to said the main motivation was to secure
nurse. “It’s about time. It should have been like
that a long time ago.”
Yet despite these bold actions and even a
number of unionization and contract wins,
most nurses I spoke with said little has actually
changed. Even those who secured concessions
and agreements from management through
better staffing to keep their patients and coworkers safe. Their strikes said that they have yet to be implemented.
own pay and benefits, while important, were secondary. Even after the contract victory in late 2020,
Kryszak had never been on strike before the pandemic, nor had staffing is still too low at Kamara’s hospital,
many of her coworkers. But when they couldn’t make any progress she said. The Friday before we spoke in early
On the picket line: on lowering nurse-to-patient ratios in their new contract, they February, she worked her shift from 3 am to
Nurses at St. Vincent went on strike in October for over a month. Though everyone 11 am, and her team was so shorthanded that
Hospital in Worcester, worried about being able to pay their bills and keep their health she didn’t have a single break. When it was time
Mass., went on strike
for nearly a year, insurance during the strike, 96 percent of the union voted in favor. to leave, only one nurse out of four showed up
likely the longest Other departments struck with them. “We took an entire hospital for the next shift. She said her manager tried to
nursing strike in at out,” she said. It worked. The contract they eventually signed gives guilt-trip her into staying. “This is your job, to
least three decades. the hospital a year to meet staffing goals across all departments, make sure that the emergency room is staffed,”
making theirs the first union contract outside of California that Kamara remembered thinking. Still, it’s “moral-
enshrines nurse-to-patient ratios. That “will set a precedent for ly distressing” to leave patients and coworkers in
hospitals across New York and beyond,” her union said. that situation, she admitted. “It makes me angry.
Dave hadn’t been on strike before, either; it had been It makes me want to keep fighting even more.”
decades since nurses at her hospital had walked out. But when management failed Haff’s hospital still hasn’t committed to
to address staffing in contract negotiations, her union decided to walk out in June. staff ratios, and the things the union did secure
It was only a one-day strike, but it was “empowering,” she said. Within 24 hours, in the contract are being implemented only
management met with the nurses and agreed intermittently. The strike and
to many of their demands. subsequent contract were just
In late 2020, while Kamara and her co- a first step: “We have to hold
workers at San Leandro in California were them accountable,” Haff said.
pushing for staffing ratios in their new con- “We’ve got a long way to go.”
tract, management tried to get rid of a nurse (In response to a request for
advisory group. “We felt disrespected, we felt comment, Community First
unheard, we felt gaslighted,” Kamara said. So chief operating officer Faisal
they went on strike for five days in October of Master and chief nursing of-
that year. During all five days of the strike, “the ficer Dina Lipowich said the
picket line was full,” she said. In the end, they contract “literally tracks the
got what they wanted: “We walked away with language of the Illinois Nurse
a contract with no takeaways.” Staffing Improvement Act of
Many nurses decided to unionize during 2021,” but noted that the hos-
the pandemic. Doctors Hospital is small, and pital’s budget is “generally tied
before the pandemic, Smith said, “it felt like to the financial state of affairs
a really family-like environment.” That family started talking to each other in the of the State of Illinois, because a large per-
hopes of improving things at the hospital. Last September, 94 percent of the nurses centage of the hospital’s funding comes from
JOSEPH PREZIOSO / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

there voted to join the California Nurses Association. the State of Illinois.” They claimed that the
For Trudell, the UW Health nurse, trying to persuade his coworkers to union- investment bank’s ownership “ultimately saved
ize has been a way to cope with the emotional distress he feels. “It just felt like I’m over 1,000 jobs” and that the supply shortages
taking part in something that’s taking that control back,” he said. “Whether I never were not specific to the hospital.) Johnson, the
got a raise again, having my profession back, my voice back, and that kind of respect Kaiser Permanente nurse, said that there are
back, I’d take that.” still hundreds of open, unfilled positions at
Their patients are also likely to benefit. “There’s a substantial body of evidence her hospital. Despite hiring benchmarks being
to suggest that nurses’ unions contribute quite a bit to quality care,” said Ariel Av- enshrined in her union’s contract, Kryszak
22
 T H E N AT I O N
believes that staffing levels are actually worse
than before the strike thanks to people leaving,
and that the hospital won’t meet the deadline of
January 2023. “The more short-staffed we are,
the more people leave,” she said. “Something
has to be done somewhere.”
he nightmarish conditions
T nurses have faced during the past
two years are a heightened version
of the tough conditions they’ve al-
ways endured. They often work
long shifts, sometimes at odd hours. They face
high rates of violence at the hands of patients.
But one factor tops the list and has been get-
ting worse for decades: a simple lack of enough
staff on hand to adequately care for all of the
patients in a hospital. Kryszak has worked
at her hospital for over 10 years. “Staffing
has always, as long as I’ve known it, been an
issue,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like noth-
ing more than an assembly line.” Unionized
nurses have a way to push back when given
patient loads that they feel are unsafe: signing
Assignment Despite Objection forms codify-
ing their dissent, which shifts responsibility to
management in the case of adverse outcomes.
Even before the pandemic, signing them had
become a nearly everyday occurrence for many
of the nurses I spoke to.
The health care industry blames a so-called
nurse shortage. But that explanation warps real-
ity. The number of people passing their nursing
licensing exam has grown steadily since 2002,
with 184,500 in 2021, an increase of 13,000
over 2019. It’s “a false narrative that nurses
are leaving the profession,” said Lasater, the
University of Pennsylvania professor. “What
is happening is nurses are saying they plan to
leave their employer.” The nurses I spoke with
said the problem is that hospitals aren’t offer-
ing working conditions and benefits that keep
people on the job. Without more support from
management, Smith said, there’s been a “mass
exodus” of nurses from her hospital. “This staff-
ing crisis is not because we don’t have enough
nurses. It’s because nurses can’t work in these
conditions any longer.”
Staffing levels fluctuate wildly among fa-
cilities; in some, nurses are assigned as many
as 10 patients at once. Better staffing levels
would help alleviate the workloads, but that’s
FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
not the only benefit. “Bad working conditions
lead to bad patient care,” said Avgar. “Better
working conditions lead to better patient care.”
One study found that each additional patient
assigned to a nurse increased the likelihood of
a patient dying and also increased the rate of
burnout among the nurses. On the flip side,
hospitals with more nurses have lower rates of
mortality and fewer readmissions.
5.16–23.2022
But with the ever-spiraling costs of US health care, many hospitals are “un-
der tremendous financial strain,” Avgar said. As they have become increasingly
focused on their bottom line, it’s fallen to nurses to demand safer, better care.
“Hospitals are often very short-sighted in their thinking about this,” Lasater said.
“They only see nursing as an expense rather than [appreciating] everything they
do to save money and increase efficiencies in care.”
The irony is that while there’s an up-front cost to hiring more nurses, the
investment pays off in the long run. One study found that if hospitals in Illinois
stuck to a ratio of four patients to each nurse, they would not
only avoid nearly 1,600 deaths but also save over $117 million
First responders:
a year thanks to shorter patient stays. In New York, according Nurses cared for
to a similar study, that would save 4,370 lives and $720 million thousands of sick
over two years. “In truth, nurses are the revenue generators of and dying people in
hospitals,” said Lasater, who was the lead author of these stud- the early months of
ies. A study in Australia found that increasing nurse staffing the pandemic, and
many say the stress
more than paid for itself in savings. still lingers.
“By virtue of choosing this profession…nurses make an ethi-
cal commitment to patients,” Lasater said. “Hospitals have taken
advantage of that and have long put nurses into these impossible
working conditions because nurses
will continue to show up.”
The dynamic is inseparable from
gender. More than 85 percent of
registered nurses are women. “Nurs- “Bad working conditions
ing is still viewed as women’s work,”
noted Lisa Huebner, a professor of
lead to bad patient
women’s and gender studies at West care. Better working
Chester University in Pennsylvania conditions lead to
and the author of Catheters, Slurs,
and Pickup Lines: Professional Intimacy better patient care.”
in Hospital Nursing. “The notion of —Ariel Avgar,
a professor at Cornell University
a nurse being naturally caring—it’s
because we’re thinking women are
naturally caring.” In her research, she found that hospital admin-
istrators and managers saw care as something inherent to nurses’
personalities, not an important facet of their professional respon-
sibilities. “If we are constantly talking about care as just some-
thing [women are] naturally good at, it’s not going to require
23
 T H E N AT I O N 5.16–23.2022

any other resources, time, staffing, expertise. It should just naturally happen,”
Huebner said. It’s easier, then, to cut back on staffing and resources for nursing if
it’s assumed they’ll keep doing their best to care for patients.
Johnson’s hospital implemented a “lean model” as far back as 2018, she said.
“We went into this pandemic in a shortage that we already had by their mak-
ing,” Avgar noted that the same is true throughout the industry: “What we’re
seeing in health care during the pandemic is the price of not investing in the
system well before the pandemic.”
ndividual, hospital-by-hospital organizing can chip away at poor con-
(continued from page 17)
Border Protection officers to “except Ukrainian na-
tionals at land border ports of entry from Title 42.”
No such authorization has been issued for asylum
seekers from anywhere else in the world.
“The disparate treatment is striking,” Erika
Pinheiro of Al Otro Lado, a nonprofit that provides
legal and humanitarian assistance at the border,
told The Guardian. “The Europeans are treated like
human beings and the Black and brown migrants

I ditions and inadequate staffing, but the problem is too big to leave to nurses
alone. One way to take the burden off nurses would be for the government
to step in and require hospitals to have enough staff to ensure good care. But
only one state, California, currently mandates staffing ratios.
Some states have tried to join California, but they’ve met stiff resistance
from the health care industry. “The stakeholder group that has actively lobbied
against safe staffing mandates are
are screamed at and told to get back, told to just go
away, and others are sometimes told to wait.”
Senator Rick Scott and 13 of his Republican
colleagues, in a letter protesting the Biden adminis-
tration’s decision to rescind Title 42 on May 23 for
all asylum seekers, notified DHS Secretary Alejan-
dro Mayorkas that any relaxation of such restrictive
hospitals,” Lasater said. In Massa- measures “threatens to overwhelm our already
chusetts, voters shot down a ballot strained immigration system and…exacerbate a di-
measure that would have enshrined sastrous situation at our southern border.” Warning
nurse-to-patient ratios in law af- of an expected surge in illegal border crossings, the
ter a campaign backed by a hospi- Republican senators—joined recently by a number
tal association spent $24.5 million of Democrats—wanted to know how the DHS
opposing it. New York considered planned to protect our borders: “Are you prepared
staffing-ratio legislation, but after to request that additional U.S. troops, including
hospital associations “pushed back members of the National Guard, support border
really strongly,” Avgar said, law- patrol agents in advance of this surge?”
makers ended up only requiring The Republican senators’ letter might offer a
hospitals to form committees on the clue as to why the Biden administration has been
issue. Illinois has also considered dragging its feet on admitting Ukrainian refugees,
a safe staffing bill that hasn’t yet even though a majority of Americans are in favor
become law. of doing this and, given the current labor shortage,
A national solution could be achieved relatively quickly if the political will were the American economy would benefit from an in-
there. Medicare already requires the hospitals that it reimburses—which is nearly fusion of workers, skilled or unskilled. Could it be
all of them—to meet quality standards. It could use that same that the administration fears that its belated offer to
authority, Lasater argued, to require that they meet staffing resettle Ukrainian refugees will highlight the racial
levels that ensure quality care. “But they don’t do it,” she and religious prejudices that continue to inform our
said. A Senate bill that would immigration policies? Or that relaxation of some of
require all hospitals to comply the more egregiously restrictive immigration laws
with specified ratios hasn’t got- for these white European Christians will stoke re-
ten any traction this year. newed agitation to do the same for refugees and
“It seems like nurses Avgar said he senses a “pos- asylum seekers from Africa, Central America, and
sible change in the air” after the elsewhere? Let’s hope so.
are finally realizing that last two horrific years. Accord- The American immigration system is broken and,
they’re important and ing to Lasater, “the pandemic more than that, a disgrace to the nation, its elected
they have rights and we blew open the doors of hospitals
in a way that hasn’t happened,
officials, and its people. What is required is a com-
plete revamping of our laws and a comprehensive
are a force.” really, over the last several de- immigration policy based not on political expedi-
—Kathy Haff, cades.” Public awareness of the ency, falsehoods, and fears but on humanitarian
a registered nurse in Chicago
importance of nursing is higher concerns and the recognition that this is, has been,
than ever. and should remain a nation of immigrants in fact
But Avgar also fears that the country will have a short rather than fantasy.
memory. The public enthusiasm for essential workers As Mark Hetfield of HIAS reminds us, “the fact
that inspired people to bang on pots and pans in the early that people are saying [the Ukrainian refugees] look
days of the pandemic has long since faded, and the federal like us…should not be held in their favor or against
funding for Covid testing and treatment for the uninsured them.…This is an unprecedented crisis, no matter
and for antibody treatments meant to keep patients out of what complexion Ukrainians have.… Anybody could
hospitals has expired, raising the risk of even bigger surges be a refugee at any moment. And we have to show
in cases. “There’s a narrow window of opportunity,” Avgar empathy no matter who they are.… Any one of us
said. “Can unions, policy-makers, [and] workers capitalize can be subject to this level of vulnerability, no matter
on that to create sustainable long-term change?” N where we are right now in society.” N
24
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