Discussion

Reading this book felt eerily close to our experience with COVID-19. There were many similarities between the book and the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of them include: the lack of ventilators and inability to get them quickly, the hospitals being overwhelmed/running almost at full capacity pre pandemic, limited healthcare workers, closing of schools etc. In the book, an experimental vaccine became available much quicker than it did in the actual pandemic. In October Birds, the vaccine was given to people that were at high risk just like we did with the COVID-19 vaccine until it became readily available. One major difference that stood out to me was how eager people in the book were to get the vaccine than they were in real life. I think if everyone had read this book before the actual pandemic, health officials, CDC, WHO and all the entities in charge may have come up with a better plan for this and we could have been better equipped. I would hope that we would have learned from this, but I am doubtful. I would think that there would be more of a stockpile of PPE and ventilators and a plan on how to get them to hospitals if they are needed. Unfortunately, so much of this pandemic was politicized and I think that will affect us negatively if we were to see something like this again.

The situation that stood out for me the most was when the doctors at Memorial Hospital are trying to determine who should be prioritized to have a ventilator. It was heartbreaking for me to think that people may have had to go through the same process during the pandemic. Another situation that stood out to me was the way they triaged the patients in the tents outside; marking them with different colored sharpies to assess what care they should receive.

I really liked that the book took us through the experiences of so many people. The author did a great job with character development and really giving a glimpse into each person’s world. I really like Cassandra’s character and just wish the world had more people like her. I had a love hate relationship with Michael. His character reminds me of people I have worked with in the past. He had a terrible attitude; he was cold and jaded but I felt like I understood him. I appreciated that he stood up to the doctors and tried to share Cassandra’s way of healing people that were infected. Reading the stories of each of these individuals brought back so many memories and feelings of the beginning of the pandemic. I could feel and remember that exhaustion that the characters were feeling, and it made me so sad