Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/29/doctor-on-the-front-lines-in-n.html
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He’s clearly exhausted.
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Wait until you see what the doctors all look like three weeks from now. 
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Lots of
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Tell me about it. I have an aunt, an uncle, a first cousin and two sisters who are all doctors.
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I have no words.
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Are we ready as a Nation to enact Uni. Care for every US citizen?
And dump that asshole tRump on Nov. 3rd. !
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Soon we’ll be able to recognize medical workers just from the distinctive callouses their faces develop from constantly wearing protective masks, much like the Fremen of Dune could be recognized by the callous a stilsuit’s moisture reclamation tube would leave beside the nostrils.
And instead of hailing these people as the heroes they are, Trump is now accusing them of stealing masks because the demand “somehow” increased tenfold over what hospitals normally use.
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He suggests wearing a mask if you go out, any mask, not to prevent exposure, but to remind you to keep your hands off your face!
Also to prevent exposure. I’ve been reading some things that suggest that mask-wearing may be even more important than hand-washing, in terms of preventing exposure. But in the US they seriously downplayed wearing masks because they didn’t want everyone rushing out and buying one and preventing medical workers from having what they needed. They were more or less successful in preventing mass panic-buying of masks, but medical workers still don’t have what they need…
Jesus fucking Christ. I’ve never wanted to kick someone in the teeth as much as that guy.
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[quote=“Brainspore, post:8, topic:166724, full:true”]
Soon we’ll be able to recognize medical workers just from the distinctive callouses their faces develop from constantly wearing protective masks, much like the Fremen of Dune could be recognized by the callous a stilsuit’s moisture reclamation tube would leave beside the nostrils.
And instead of hailing these people as the heroes they are, Trump is now accusing them of stealing masks because the demand “somehow” increased tenfold over what hospitals normally use.[/quote]
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I can think of worse things to do. Much worse.
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I’ve been reading some things that suggest that mask-wearing may be even more important than hand-washing, in terms of preventing exposure.
What things? From where? This sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory to me. My father works for the Northwest Kinney Center in Seattle, WA one of the hot spots right now. They have had multiple of their patients die of Covid 19. They talk to the CDC daily and “have them on speed dial”. He said almost the exact same thing as this doctor. Specifically that Covid 19 does not spread via aerosol (like tuberculosis does) as was once thought but rather only the larger droplets caused by sneezing and coughing. These droplets only stay in the air for a few seconds hence transmission via proximity requiring prolonged contact in a confined space as this doctor mentions. The droplets do land on surfaces however. Touching these contaminated surfaces is a much more likely source of infection.
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So if you’re one of the medical workers tasked with intubing people who need a ventilator (or even tending to patients who have a cough) then you’d damn well better have a mask.
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Uh… yes as the doctor mentions, if you are doing a procedure like that than, indeed, wear a N95. But even medical professionals seeing patients, as long as they are not doing one of those procedures, do not need an N95. Which is to say we don’t need them when we leave the house. We should only wear a mask (not N95! leave those for the med professionals doing critical procedures!) to remind us not to touch our faces. Heck it could just be a bandanna.
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Right. Because everyone always gets plenty of advance notice before a patient coughs.
As I noted above, my sisters are doctors. One of them now has a very ill nurse who is intubated on a ventilator herself because she picked up the virus. It’s likely that this nurse would have been able to avoid getting sick if the hospital had the resources and inclination to have their medical staff in proper PPE a couple of weeks ago.
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Not to mention that the nurse who was actually prohibited from wearing PPE by the medical office quite likely spread it to others before she was symptomatic. The PPE works both ways.
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Normally I wouldn’t go this far with an internet argument but this is some important stuff. “It’s likely that this nurse would have been able to avoid getting sick if the hospital had the resources and inclination to have their medical staff in proper PPE a couple of weeks ago.” is a pretty tenuous anecdote. Unless she was part of those specific procedures the science seems to say it is pretty unlikely they were infected because of a lack of a mask. Its much more likely that they got Covid from touching their face.
Note that I too am quite concerned about medical professionals having proper PPE in this time of great need particularly since my dad is 64. I am also frustrated, like it sounds you and your sister are, that not nearly enough was done on an institutional level weeks and months ago when we were very aware of the dangers of this disease.
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You seem to be arguing that N95 masks aren’t important for medical professionals who are in direct contact with COVID-19 patients except perhaps during intubation. I’m siding with the medical professionals who believe otherwise.
If you’re wrong, then unprotected medical workers are being needlessly exposed to a deadly disease. If I’m wrong, then some medical workers may be wearing more PPE than is strictly necessary.
How is taking the “no masks for most medical professionals” approach the most sensible approach in these circumstances?
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Worse, and yet also more earned.
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I suppose it’s more of a visceral reaction, like flinching from a hot surface - I see Trump speaking, my instinct is to kick him in the teeth. I’d like to see him spend the rest of his life in prison.
It was specifically a set of studies done on the effectiveness of various “Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses,” which came out of SARS research and applies here as well. Apparently wearing gloves or hand-washing more than 10 times daily was 55 percent effective in stopping virus transmission, but wearing a mask was 68 percent effective. Some infectious disease aerobiologists were recently taking exception with the WHO’s position on this, saying that there’s not necessarily a cut-and-dried distinction between aerosol transmission and droplet transmission, that there’s some middle ground.
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