A Harvard professor strikes a chord in poem dedicated to frontline workers fighting the pandemic
HOUSTON โ A Harvard Medical School professor and doctor of internal medicine published a poem as an ode to essential workers fighting the coronavirus pandemic and their families and itโs now circulating widely on social media. Wendy Stead, MD authored the poem โAn Essential Workerโs List of Pandemic Chores for the Kidsโ, written about the children of essential workers who were left home to take care of the chores, from laundry to schoolwork. In the poem published on the JAMA Network, she emphasized that she โis an essential workerโ and called it a comfort of being one โwhile the dead (bodies) piled up.โโItโs OK to lose the game. Sometimes a leader needs to stay calm so everyone else knows it will be OK,โ the poem said. Many of the readers on JAMA Network took the time to comment on her poem, saying it captured the conflict between a mom with her love for her children and her career as a frontline worker.