When the Pandemic Hit New York City
In March, when cases were ramping up across the U.S., the story of the coronavirus in America was told largely by what was occurring in New York City.
So it’s no surprise that Dr. Stephen Andrew “Andy” McCullough, a cardiologist and an assistant professor of Clinical Medicine in the Department of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, was part of the numerous New York medical squads called to action.
And McCullough just also happens to be a 2008 LSU graduate, who received his bachelor’s degree in biological sciences, with minors in chemistry and music. He eventually went on to earn his medical degree from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
CoS: You’ve been a cardiologist in New York City since 2018, after you completed your three-year fellowship. What does your average day look like?
McCullough: Working as a cardiologist, I see patients two and a half days a week. Then I do stress tests for a half a day a week, ultrasounds of the heart for day, and then read (electrocardiograms) for a half a day. My classroom-based teaching is only about three hours a year, and my time teaching cardiology fellows, who are physicians that have finished internal medicine residency and are training as cardiologists, is nearly 80 percent of my time.
CoS: Did that change once COVID-19 began to surface in the city? What was it like working in medicine in one of the country’s epicenters?
McCullough: We found out Italy was being hit hard in February, and then we didn’t have our first case at my hospital until March 6. Pretty rapidly thereafter the case numbers started to expand. It was a very controlled chaos, and I mean chaos in a good way. I’ll say the major media outlets have portrayed things, I think, in a bad way. Part of my responsibilities was to spend time in an intensive care unit, which is just a part of my training.
Our peak wasn’t until April 14, but my own personal involvement started around March 23 when I became a doctor for our Coronavirus station. So what was it like? It was like being a doctor for any other patient who had a lung disease that required them being put on a ventilator. At our peak, we had 285 intubated patients. I didn’t solely take care of all 285 because in the way that we structured it—that controlled chaos—we would see patients for four consecutive days doing 12-hour shifts, then we'd take a break, and then we'd work overnight to provide coverage for those patients overnight in case there was an emergency.
CoS: So would you say you just took on this virus as you would any other medical emergency?
McCullough: To that, I’ll say, everybody wanted to help, but nobody wanted to expose themselves to a life-threatening virus or disease that you didn't even know how it was transmitted. At the same time, the hospital's telling you—and this I think was universal—“conserve your masks, wear your mask as long as you can,” but you don't know if you can wear your mask as long as you can. So there was certainly a feeling of entering into an acutely life-threatening environment.
And then I was aware of the fact that when I come home at the end of every day to my wife (who also went to LSU) and child, I don’t want to bring this virus with me. I had to question, “How do I protect myself?” after hearing reports of doctors dying in Italy. In a normal day of medicine, you don’t necessarily have these considerations, but it felt like I was an intensive care unit doctor, where people are intensely sick, and you're doing everything that you can to help them, even if the list of things that we had to help them was very short.
CoS: Science is obviously our thing. Do you think that the appearance and intensity of this virus has adjusted the public’s view of science in any way? Are people looking to the scientists and doctors more seriously than ever, in your opinion?
McCullough: The initial response, I think, was, you know, “these people are heroes.” We never felt that way. We just still felt like doctors, but now, I feel like there’s a lot of disdain because if a doctor tells someone that this is the best science or this is the best recommendation, and it doesn’t align with that person’s political views or personal views, then that person’s opinion no longer matters.
I heard a congressman say the other day on the news that doctors’ opinions are a dime a dozen, so just find the one who says what you want to hear. Initially, there was a positive focus that has now shifted as we’ve created evidence, and I might contribute that to the fact that people hate saying, “I didn’t know” or “I was wrong.” But the best doctors and scientists say, “I don’t know.”
And this is what science supports. Along the way, while we learned what may work, we also learned what doesn’t work. It’s just as important to know what doesn’t work. There’s only a search for the truth.
CoS: We’ve seen frustration build when guidelines will say one thing, and then change—or when research takes longer than expected to yield results.
McCullough: That frustration is just what scientists and doctors feel every day. If I can tell you how many lab research projects I’ve participated in that just don’t work, or even if they do work but are unfavorably viewed…the graveyard pile is high. The success pile is small, but that’s just the life in science. And the layperson is now learning what we have to deal with every day.
A failed experiment is not necessarily failed research. It’s just a step toward the truth.
But if you want the best scientific advice available right now, it’s to be masked, especially within six feet of another person. Put your ego aside and put on your mask because if you want things to reopen, if you want people to get their jobs back, that’s what it’s going to take until we have a meaningful vaccine. Vaccine research takes time—the fastest vaccine on the market is the mumps vaccine, and that took four years.
Also, wearing a mask is cheaper than a hospital visit.
CoS: Do you feel like the time you spent at LSU and in the College of Science prepared you adequately for medical school (and for your career that followed)?
McCullough: I was over prepared for medical school in every sense of the word. The biochemistry class (at LSU) was as difficult if not more difficult than my medical school biochemistry class. Then I’m trying to think about how much overlap there was. I mean, the science is the science, right? And so at LSU, we had professors that actually took the time to sit down with students, spend office hour times with students, and go through difficult concepts with them. Those things don’t exist in medical school, and so if you can align your undergraduate coursework with the first few years of medical school coursework, which is virtually unchanged at all medical schools in the country, you can essentially prepare yourself very well.
I truly do feel like LSU over-prepared me. I certainly wasn’t underprepared.