A doctor's plea: We need your help to reach a Hollywood ending to pandemic

Zombie movies are predictable. A virus infects people, people eat other people, some characters die, relief is found and all is well. Our current predicament felt similar at its outset (without the people eating each other part). A virus infected, people died and relief seemed to be found. Except this is not a movie, and the formula is not being followed.

Our loved ones are dead. There is no "all is well." There are more Americans dead from COVID than were killed in World Wars I and II, Vietnam and all our military conflicts of the 20th century combined. The worst of what we thought the pandemic could do was done, right? Yet, here we are, back in the trenches, and I do not see an "all is well" soon.

Too often the pandemic is compared to dystopian fictions of the past. We need not investigate the works of Orwell, Huxley or Cameron (Terminator 2 for those unfamiliar) to learn something about where society might be headed. We are there. We have become incapable of the simplest measures possible to protect each other.

As a physician caring for COVID patients at Stroger Hospital, I am sad. Sad for the circumstances we are seeing across our country. Sad for the patients with abject fear in their eyes as they know their fate better than any prediction tool available to doctors. Sad for families holding out hope but knowing they will never have their dying loved one at the dinner table again. Sad for the non-COVID patients unnecessarily getting tests postponed, surgeries canceled and care delayed due to hospitals' resources being consumed by COVID patients. Sad for the health care professionals stretched to their limits: physicians, nurses, physical, respiratory and occupational therapists, clerks, transporters, janitors, food service employees, security and all the other professionals whose work goes in to caring for one patient.

I am sad about where we are as a community.

The ask was simple. Get a safe and effective vaccine, put a mask over your mouth and nose, avoid large gatherings and put hedonism on hold for just a little while to help stave off one of the major mortality milestones in human history.

I am asking again. Personally. Please help us. Get vaccinated. Get your booster - it more than doubles your body's ability to fight COVID. Put on that mask. Do not treat this New Year's Eve like it's normal. It's not. Skip the big night out this year. The "Auld Lang Syne" of 2021 should be forgot, but the old acquaintances we lost to COVID should not.

You might be fine if you get COVID. In fact, your family and friends might be fine. But others will not be fine. Your city and your county are not fine. Your hospitals and their employees are not fine. Your neighbors are dying.

This zombie movie is getting tiresome and it is time we ended this horror story.

• Dr. Michael Alebich, of Chicago, is an attending physician at Stroger Hospital, Cook County Health.