The Life and COVID Death of a Revered Siberian Doctor
In a chaotic and overwhelmed hospital, a physician received the kind of indifferent medical care he spent his life trying to overcome.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-life-and-covid-death-of-a-revered-siberian-doctor
Perhaps the most macabre proof of the dysfunction in Tomsk came when, according to local media, a family picked up the body of their beloved aunt, who, as they had been told, died at Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two. Just before burying her, they wanted to say a last farewell, and opened the lid of the casket—only to see that it was not their aunt at all but, rather, the body of an elderly woman whom they did not recognize. They rushed back to the city morgue, where administrators argued with them that a person can change in appearance after death—before eventually admitting their mistake. The family’s aunt was alive and being treated back at Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two. They found her in a room, flipping through some magazines.