We now know COVID is fully airborne. We also know how to control airborne disease. So why are vulnerable people still dying of hospital-acquired COVID?
Doctors are just people who went to medical school, and often that was a long time ago. Like in all walks of life, some people are lifelong learners and others aren't. From personal experience, many doctors know less about the latest research on COVID effects and treatments than avid lay readers do. I was just told "don't bother with Paxlovid unless your symptoms are severe".
Hospitals are susceptible to lawsuits for hospital-acquired infections, but ONLY if it can be shown that they ignored protocols. That is the biggest driver behind several related realities:
* Reluctance of public health organizations to acknowledge airborne transmission and efficacy of masking
* Refusal of the CDC to create masking, air filtration, and isolation protocols that would open medical providers to liability if not followed
* Halting of COVID testing at hospital admission, where a negative test at admission would be damning evidence of HAI in court. Without it, plausible deniability.
While I didn't work in health care, I was a teacher (mostly) from 1991 until 2019. Everything you say about hospitals applies equally or more so to schools. God only knows what struggling schools did with their air-quality mitigation money from the federal government. They probably bought cleaning supplies and paid teachers a smidgen more. None that I know of actually addressed HVAC problems.
COVID19 was the nail in the coffin of my career, not because I'm immunocompromised, because I have congenital hypertension and am not willing to jeopardize the uncommonly physically active life I enjoy in the out of doors when I'm not in classrooms. Selfish? You bet.
Thank you for saying so much so well. I'm only sorry that my early retirement budget for subscriptions is spent and it does not allow me to support your work directly right now.
I think people also forget the devastating impact on healthcare infrastructure caused by this new form of COVID denialism. It's incredibly taxing to constantly lose what few healthcare workers we still have (we began the pandemic with a critical shortage, which has only worsened). Not just the doctors and nurses, but ALL the staff that make it possible--the desk workers, the sanitation staff, etc. The clinic near where I live stapped masking for staff and patients as soon as it was legal to do so. The resulting fallout was devastating; there's been such a dramatic loss of staff that the clinic's cut available hours by almost *half.* We're losing providers and staff not just from quitting (either relocating to different clinics or leaving practice entirely), but from sickness and disability. Trying to get healthcare in my area as a disabled adult feels like a SAW trap, where I have to try and navigate a collapsing system to get the care I need to *survive*, while also fighting for myself against my own providers. Even if I make it out uninfected, the moral injury of fighting the very people who are supposed to care about you... takes its toll. I just wish people would care about us. Disability comes for everyone as we age (especially if you're repeatedly infecting yourself 1-3x a year with COVID), please don't wait until these issues start impacting you personally to speak up and help demand better.
We're among the vulnerable, and don't feel at all safe (because we aren't!) going to outpatient medical facilities.
Because society has failed to protect public health, we can't be physically present to participate in anything, but at least that's our choice. MEDICAL FACILITIES ARE ESSENTIAL TO HEALTH AND LIFE, and THEY ARE CHOOSING TO SICKEN AND KILL THEIR PATIENTS.
Every day, every minute, HCWs are violating the Hippocratic Oath.
Hello, Julia. First blog from you since February. What have you been up to? Your stuff is pretty good but I there are very few blogs I actually pay money for. Mine is free free.
A lot of the problem with covid is "don't wanna" attitudes. But the fact is that if people were ordered to do it, and the antivax types dealt with the way they should be, most people would comply.
it is not just don't wanna, and dont wanna spend the money. It is a eugenic mentality. They want to reduce the population generally and especially to wipe out the useless eaters. It is quite deliberate.
"Also implicit is the abandonment of collective care and public health, since the “back to normal” crowd places the burden of COVID precaution on disabled, immunocompromised and vulnerable people alone."
Recently, the NY Times had a story about how, actually, immunocompromised people aren't even at higher risk. False, of course. But that's how this is being justified today to the NY Times crowd, only a year after trying to shame everyone into getting COVID shots to protect those very same immunocompromised.
Honestly, I'm having trouble keeping the official narrative straight anymore. We've always been at war with Eurasia.
thank you for yet another terrific piece. one thing I've noticed recently is that many gyms, schools, and some healthcare facilities seemed to have spent too much money in 2020 and 2021 on "AirPHX," a company selling oxidizing air filtration. It seems to me that the research just isn't there on these systems, and that people would be better off with HEPAs and masking (of course), but I'm wondering if anyone has written about that or done a deep dive? It feels like a disservice that so many people may have a false sense of security because of this.
Nurses should run the country. I wish the very best of their cadre would run for elected office. They might consider starting a third party. A nurse should definitely run for President.
Thank you for the excellent reporting. I pray never to need medical care. That is an absurd, useless and horrific proposition.
I feel for anyone with LC or working under these conditions who knows better.
Governments and organisations have no choice but to "move on" from responding to covid in ways that require the public to change or restrict behavior.
It happened even here in sensible NZ with a very popular govt, laudable restraint by the opposition party, great respect for our free public health system. Covid denialism eventually blew up and threatened to destablise the country. It became a powerful recruiting tool for libertarians, fascists and even outright Nazis. A permanent whackosphere has been consolidated out of every group or sector of society which sees itself as downtrodden.
A conspiracy theory that aligns with a person's financial interests & political ideology is easy to accept and difficult to dislodge. But if it is incorporated into personal identity, it is permanently incurable in most cases. That is what happened, and it spread fast.
There is no such thing as mass deprogramming, and if there were it would be unethical. All that could be done was to stop the flood of new recruits by dropping mandatory requirements.
Hospitals taking voluntary action eg to improve ventilation and sterilise any recirculated air, need to be careful not to create liability by effectively admitting there is a problem.
So patient advocacy groups wanting a safer hospital visit may need to play along, considering legally safe ways that hospitals can improve physical safety. Perhaps it could be framed as an anxiety issue to protect the hospitals.
Consider trans rights activists. If they had kept quiet about trans issues and instead discreetly helped push for schools & businesses to have more wheelchair-accessible toilets, the "bathroom bills" culture war might never have broken out and turned trans kids into weapons.
Juia, are you a healthcare worker? How many 12hr shifts for days, months and years did you work in n95 mask? Did you read OSHA guidance on N95 masks? Or healthcare workers and their physical health doesn't matter at all? You want to stick nasal swab in their noses every day for years consistently only because they work in the hospital? How many would choose healthcare profession knowing they will be masked and swabed daily? How many will quit whatever was left out of our healthcare? I know you won't stop, till last healthcare worker exhausted, but then it will be too late.
Doctors are just people who went to medical school, and often that was a long time ago. Like in all walks of life, some people are lifelong learners and others aren't. From personal experience, many doctors know less about the latest research on COVID effects and treatments than avid lay readers do. I was just told "don't bother with Paxlovid unless your symptoms are severe".
Hospitals are susceptible to lawsuits for hospital-acquired infections, but ONLY if it can be shown that they ignored protocols. That is the biggest driver behind several related realities:
* Reluctance of public health organizations to acknowledge airborne transmission and efficacy of masking
* Refusal of the CDC to create masking, air filtration, and isolation protocols that would open medical providers to liability if not followed
* Halting of COVID testing at hospital admission, where a negative test at admission would be damning evidence of HAI in court. Without it, plausible deniability.
*
While I didn't work in health care, I was a teacher (mostly) from 1991 until 2019. Everything you say about hospitals applies equally or more so to schools. God only knows what struggling schools did with their air-quality mitigation money from the federal government. They probably bought cleaning supplies and paid teachers a smidgen more. None that I know of actually addressed HVAC problems.
COVID19 was the nail in the coffin of my career, not because I'm immunocompromised, because I have congenital hypertension and am not willing to jeopardize the uncommonly physically active life I enjoy in the out of doors when I'm not in classrooms. Selfish? You bet.
Thank you for saying so much so well. I'm only sorry that my early retirement budget for subscriptions is spent and it does not allow me to support your work directly right now.
I think people also forget the devastating impact on healthcare infrastructure caused by this new form of COVID denialism. It's incredibly taxing to constantly lose what few healthcare workers we still have (we began the pandemic with a critical shortage, which has only worsened). Not just the doctors and nurses, but ALL the staff that make it possible--the desk workers, the sanitation staff, etc. The clinic near where I live stapped masking for staff and patients as soon as it was legal to do so. The resulting fallout was devastating; there's been such a dramatic loss of staff that the clinic's cut available hours by almost *half.* We're losing providers and staff not just from quitting (either relocating to different clinics or leaving practice entirely), but from sickness and disability. Trying to get healthcare in my area as a disabled adult feels like a SAW trap, where I have to try and navigate a collapsing system to get the care I need to *survive*, while also fighting for myself against my own providers. Even if I make it out uninfected, the moral injury of fighting the very people who are supposed to care about you... takes its toll. I just wish people would care about us. Disability comes for everyone as we age (especially if you're repeatedly infecting yourself 1-3x a year with COVID), please don't wait until these issues start impacting you personally to speak up and help demand better.
This is a *wonderful* post.
We're among the vulnerable, and don't feel at all safe (because we aren't!) going to outpatient medical facilities.
Because society has failed to protect public health, we can't be physically present to participate in anything, but at least that's our choice. MEDICAL FACILITIES ARE ESSENTIAL TO HEALTH AND LIFE, and THEY ARE CHOOSING TO SICKEN AND KILL THEIR PATIENTS.
Every day, every minute, HCWs are violating the Hippocratic Oath.
Hello, Julia. First blog from you since February. What have you been up to? Your stuff is pretty good but I there are very few blogs I actually pay money for. Mine is free free.
A lot of the problem with covid is "don't wanna" attitudes. But the fact is that if people were ordered to do it, and the antivax types dealt with the way they should be, most people would comply.
It is as I make out in my own piece here, https://timrourke.substack.com/p/a-bad-time-to-be-old
it is not just don't wanna, and dont wanna spend the money. It is a eugenic mentality. They want to reduce the population generally and especially to wipe out the useless eaters. It is quite deliberate.
"Also implicit is the abandonment of collective care and public health, since the “back to normal” crowd places the burden of COVID precaution on disabled, immunocompromised and vulnerable people alone."
Recently, the NY Times had a story about how, actually, immunocompromised people aren't even at higher risk. False, of course. But that's how this is being justified today to the NY Times crowd, only a year after trying to shame everyone into getting COVID shots to protect those very same immunocompromised.
Honestly, I'm having trouble keeping the official narrative straight anymore. We've always been at war with Eurasia.
So so so grateful for this piece--sending to everyone I know. Thank you 💓
thank you for yet another terrific piece. one thing I've noticed recently is that many gyms, schools, and some healthcare facilities seemed to have spent too much money in 2020 and 2021 on "AirPHX," a company selling oxidizing air filtration. It seems to me that the research just isn't there on these systems, and that people would be better off with HEPAs and masking (of course), but I'm wondering if anyone has written about that or done a deep dive? It feels like a disservice that so many people may have a false sense of security because of this.
Nurses should run the country. I wish the very best of their cadre would run for elected office. They might consider starting a third party. A nurse should definitely run for President.
Thank you for the excellent reporting. I pray never to need medical care. That is an absurd, useless and horrific proposition.
I feel for anyone with LC or working under these conditions who knows better.
Governments and organisations have no choice but to "move on" from responding to covid in ways that require the public to change or restrict behavior.
It happened even here in sensible NZ with a very popular govt, laudable restraint by the opposition party, great respect for our free public health system. Covid denialism eventually blew up and threatened to destablise the country. It became a powerful recruiting tool for libertarians, fascists and even outright Nazis. A permanent whackosphere has been consolidated out of every group or sector of society which sees itself as downtrodden.
A conspiracy theory that aligns with a person's financial interests & political ideology is easy to accept and difficult to dislodge. But if it is incorporated into personal identity, it is permanently incurable in most cases. That is what happened, and it spread fast.
There is no such thing as mass deprogramming, and if there were it would be unethical. All that could be done was to stop the flood of new recruits by dropping mandatory requirements.
Hospitals taking voluntary action eg to improve ventilation and sterilise any recirculated air, need to be careful not to create liability by effectively admitting there is a problem.
So patient advocacy groups wanting a safer hospital visit may need to play along, considering legally safe ways that hospitals can improve physical safety. Perhaps it could be framed as an anxiety issue to protect the hospitals.
Consider trans rights activists. If they had kept quiet about trans issues and instead discreetly helped push for schools & businesses to have more wheelchair-accessible toilets, the "bathroom bills" culture war might never have broken out and turned trans kids into weapons.
Juia, are you a healthcare worker? How many 12hr shifts for days, months and years did you work in n95 mask? Did you read OSHA guidance on N95 masks? Or healthcare workers and their physical health doesn't matter at all? You want to stick nasal swab in their noses every day for years consistently only because they work in the hospital? How many would choose healthcare profession knowing they will be masked and swabed daily? How many will quit whatever was left out of our healthcare? I know you won't stop, till last healthcare worker exhausted, but then it will be too late.