Great times make great men and women. And with the world gripped by a rampaging pandemic, they are beginning to show themselves.

One leader who is meeting the moment is Dr. Craig R. Smith, the chair of the surgery department at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center.

New York City has become the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., throwing Smith and his fellow Big Apple medical professionals into the whirlwind. Smith is in the thick of it every day, but leadership isn’t only about action but also inspiring action in others.

In email sent daily to his colleagues, Smith is warning of the trials ahead -- he expects “peak COVID-19 volume” to arrive in mid-April -- while also encouraging his colleagues to rise to the daunting challenge.

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to apologize profusely in a few weeks for having overestimated the threat,” he wrote on March 20. “That would mean we never exceeded capacity, and that mortalities and morbidities rarely seen in non-pandemic circumstances were avoided. The next month or two is a horror to imagine if we’re underestimating the threat. So what can we do? Load the sled, check the traces, feed Balto and mush on. Our cargo must reach Nome.”

Balto? A reference to Jack London’s classic novel “The Call of the Wild”? Nope. Balto was the very real Siberian husky that pulled a sled carrying life-saving medicine to Nome while the small Alaskan town was in the grip of a diphtheria outbreak in 1925. New Yorkers can find a statue of the heroic canine in Central Park.

Smith added: “Remember that our families, friends and neighbors are scared, idle, out of work and feel impotent. Anyone working in health care still enjoys the rapture of action. It’s a privilege! We mush on.”

But just a day later, there was nothing more about the possibility of underestimating the threat. New York City health officials had been forced to stop coronavirus testing for people who didn’t require hospitalization, because testing requires personal protective equipment, which is in short supply.

Smith wrote in his March 21 email that he “realized that only planning, cooperation, execution, personal sacrifice and maybe a little luck will allow us to avoid being overwhelmed within a few weeks.”

He pointed out that there had been a “10-fold increase” in cases in New York in a matter of days. He added that “No one is standing still, wringing their hands,” and listed how volunteers were stepping up to the front lines, patient floors in the hospital had been reorganized on the fly and managers were figuring out how to coordinate health-care providers “strategically to minimize the chance of incapacitating all or most of one subspecialty because of illness and quarantine” of doctors and nurses.

Smith closed the letter: “101 years ago Lenin said ‘There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.’ This has been one of those weeks! A more modern revolutionary (John Wooden) said ‘Failing to plan is planning to fail.’ That will not be us.”

Smith’s department has begun sending out his daily letters on its Twitter account, @ColumbiaSurgery, earning him fans far beyond his professional circle.

“Thank you for the honest picture!” offered one typical reply.

Added another: “I gain confidence that we have smart people working towards a plan, solving, providing care and making best of the hand we have been dealt with.”

Along with inspiring those on the “front lines” in New York City, Smith’s example just might serve other health-care managers well as the coronavirus continues to wreak damage across the country and the globe.

“Amazing leadership in these unprecedented times!” a California doctor tweeted, before adding in a reply to @ColumbiaSurgery: “Can I get on the email distribution list for Craig’s daily emails?”

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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