Originally published at: Public health collective reacts to hospital dropping its masks | Boing Boing
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Can we please, please just make wearing a mask a normal thing in healthcare settings?
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Even before the pandemic why the heck weren’t masks mandatory at hospitals anyway???
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Not happy about this. Have hospitals improved their ventilation systems so as to reduce the need for masks? I don’t know. Maybe some of them have. The pandemic may be officially over, but SARS-Cov-2 is now endemic and that wasn’t a desirable outcome. If they drop masks, healthcare workers should be required to test frequently. There should be a COVID risk sign like a fire danger sign what the daily COVID risks are posted at hospital entrances. And they should only allow it in areas of the hospital where sick patients aren’t.
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Are they also advocating for a return to smoking in hospitals? For freedom?
The world population is expanding, we’re still encroaching on more wild spaces. We’re going to have more pandemics. I wish there were grown-ups in charge of this.
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Prior to the COVID pandemic masks were required only in the Operating Room and when dealing with patients diagnosed with highly infectious diseases. Both cases also required the wearing of gowns, gloves, and shoe coverings before entering the room to perform any procedures.
As to why they are dropping the mask mandate now it could be because at least in Massachusetts “Department of Public Health officials say infection control experts and other leaders at some of the state’s largest hospital systems have been the ones asking them to end the mask mandate. “This decision is aligned with CDC guidance … and was made following extensive conversations with health care experts,” said a state spokesperson, noting that most other states have already lifted their mask mandates for healthcare settings”.
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My wife’s hospital dropped masks a few weeks ago - they no longer require them and leave it to personal choice. This same hospital also handed out formal write-ups to those who wore masks in public areas at the beginning of pandemic. They’ve also done away with testing for covid. She works at a teaching/research hospital for crissakes!
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Here’s what I don’t get though. If you’re dealing with the public / ER, you’re potentially dealing with undiagnosed highly infectious diseases. A mask is easy. Why not default to wearing one?
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FTFY
Creepy indeed. Ghoulish even.
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In short? Because surgical masks are about protecting other people from you. To protect yourself, you need an N95. Those can be quite uncomfortable to wear over long periods of time. But really? This is about aligning with the “the pandemic is over, time to get back to normal” mindset, without dealing with the simple fact that normal has permanently and irrevocably changed. There is a dangerous, deadly and for way too many, debilitating virus spreading through a population that is just exhausted with thinking about it. It makes me sad, but I am grateful that no one else seems to be competing with me for the N95s anymore… 
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The practice and hospital* where my wife works dropped their requirement a few weeks ago as well. She still wears a mask around patients (by her own choice), but the sick patients don’t have to mask up around her. Guess who’s been stuck at home with Covid for the last several days?
*At one point early in the pandemic, said hospital was dealing with the highest number of Covid cases in the entire nation.
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That’s awful. I hope she recovers quickly, and that you don’t catch it too.
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Thanks. She’s at the tail end of her home quarantine, so we seem to have dodged the bullet as far as passing it on to the rest of us.
We’ve been fairly vigilant and managed to avoid Covid in our household for three years. They drop the mask requirements at her office, and we have it within a couple weeks.
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