I have not been masking up all summer long. This town is very sparsely populated in the summer, and instead of masking I have just been avoiding humanity as much as possible.
That’s about to change. The students are flooding back this weekend, I have advising meetings starting Monday, and I’m expected to mingle with everyone starting next week. I may have to carry a black widow on my shoulder to discourage that sort of thing.
COVID cases are rising again, so it’s a good idea to minimize exposure, so I’ll be wearing my mask all the time starting Monday. I’m also reading about the current backlash — would you believe nurses in the UK are discouraged from wearing masks?
Meanwhile, a hospital nurse in Scotland said they faced abuse for still wearing a mask.
“It horrifies me that if l choose to wear a mask I’m questioned by my colleagues and patients,” they said.
“It’s like the last couple of years and long Covid doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter when it does. I don’t want to wear a mask but l don’t want to spread or catch it either.”
They said they were at their “wit’s end” after almost three decades in nursing.
As well as seeing a rise in cases among their local populations, 40% of nurses reported that they have had Covid-19 themselves this summer.
Of those, 21% said they had attended work while infected with the virus.
In the comments section, many nurses said that the policies in their workplaces and the attitudes of managers meant they felt pressured to come to work even if they had Covid-19.
They also reported that they were discouraged from testing themselves and patients.
A care home nurse in England said that “management is actively discouraging staff from testing due to concerns about a reduced workforce”.
A nursing associate based in NHS hospitals in England added: “It’s like Covid never existed… we get told off for testing.”
Similarly, an advanced nurse practitioner in England said: “I feel that there is huge pressure on staff to work with Covid even if symptomatic which increases [the] risk of spread to patients.”
Wait, what? Nurses are told to continue working maskless with patients while symptomatic with COVID? I’ve been to the local hospital a few times this summer, and I noticed that while they still grill you on COVID symptoms and travel when you check in, no one there is wearing a mask. It would be slightly annoying to come down with a potentially deadly respiratory disease because you went in for your colonoscopy.
That settles it. The mask is back, baby. And I will look good wearing it.
Sadly this is also the case in Germany where nurses are expected to come to work with COVID. Not with heavy symptoms (at least) but after been tested positive. The reason is, as mentioned in the text, that the hospitals are short-staffed and can not do without the workforce – even when this means risking their patients’ health.
I’m reminded of an old newspaper comic I once saw brought up in the early days of Covid: I think it was from the 1919 flu pandemic. From what I heard, the premise of the main character was simple: He’d beat up people for inconsiderate actions that risked harming others. The ones highlighted had him beating up people who refused to wear a mask and mocked people for being afraid of the flu.
I never stopped wearing mine.
You know, I imagine it’s quietly frustrating republishing old comics because they remain relevant.
Remember a grade school field trip to the adjacent historic graveyard, where we got to see all the infant mortality graves and the explanation for so many kid graves. Some unnamed, some just given the name of the previous child that didn’t make it. I’m glad I had it impressed on me just how serious these childhood illnesses were.
Thank you, everyone ever involved in vaccine production and distribution. You shouldn’t have your contributions to society taken for granted like it is today.
In AU we’ve had to attend hospital fairly regularly this year and note that everyone is expected to wear a mask, all the time…!
@5 Good for AU. Now if the rest of the world could follow that example.
I think it makes perfect sense for medical workers to not wear masks.
also:
surgeons shouldn’t scrub before operations.
football players shouldn’t wear helmets.
don’t bother wearing your seatbelt.
avoid using safety glasses when you are metal working.
take food out of the oven without oven mitts.
eat yellow snow.
tug on superman’s cape.
spit into the wind.
mess around with Jim.
Truthout article of 15 Aug. states 3,000 died in floridumb in last 12 months. CDC admits number likely much higher since gov’t is playing ostrich: head up ass not tracking Covid. Now, multiply that by 50 and you get a rough estimate of 150,000 dead in u.s. in last 12 months. We’ve never stopped wearing KN95 masks. In past 2 months 4 people we know got Covid, most hospitalized.
The sheople can crowd together unmasked and murder each other, we won’t comply with that insanity.
My GP insists on patients wearing a mask. I think he’s got some comorbidities, so I’m fine with wearing a mask. A lot of anti-mask sentiment seems to be around face masks being uncomfortable. When did we as a society become so weak, that we can’t wear a mask? That we have to attack those that do?
It’s funny (not really) that you should use that example, PZ. When I got covid, I was at the hospital… for a colonoscopy.
Everyone should be wearing a mask indoors right now. The thing is, it’s not just Covid (Covid is massive, in excess of 1 million new infections per day in the US currently, and we’re having a double wave, KP.1/2 and now KP.3.1 et al, there is hardly any immunity after infection now), whooping cough, mycoplasma, measles,TB are also rampant. And don’t believe the lying CDC when they try to tell you that Monkeypox clade 1b is mostly sexually transmitted. This disease, currently rampant in the DRC in Africa, has so far this year infected 14000 and killed 500, but mostly children under 15, so I don’t think sexual transmission is an issue here. We knew this already from the original smallpox,that this virus is also airborne in a significant way. So mask up, be careful, the government will not come to your help, they will lie all the way to their corporate profits, and you as an individual are expendable.
The abdication of infection control measures by health care workers is a whole different story, and I’m just at a loss as everyone else of how this could happen.
@5,
“In AU we’ve had to attend hospital fairly regularly this year and note that everyone is expected to wear a mask, all the time…!”
This is simply not true, what hospital are you making this claim about? Australia is out there with the worst countries wrt the most dead and disabled health workers.
I’ve been on the receiving end of hospital treatment recently. Routine monitoring of a chronic respiratory illness suggested I had TB. An antigen test was positive and I was left to sweat it out for six weeks of follow up tests and a visit to the chest clinic at my local hospital. When I was a child I used to have the Mantoux TB test every two years aa part of a government screening program. People with the disease were forced into quarantine for year or more in dedicated TB hospitals. This time there was no alarm and no quarantine and fortunately after 6 weeks they determined I didn’t have it. Roll on a few months later and my chronic asthma was getting worse with coughing episodes causing me to pas out. I made my way back to the hospital and while in triage had an attack and passed out on the floor. Instant admission. Although my medical records flagged TB as a possibility I was admitted to a respiratory ward shared with 5 other similarly ill patients. Two days later they moved me to an isolation room complete with airlock because tests showed not TB but whooping cough. None of the nurses or doctors wore masks but I assumed they all had been vaccinated. I wouldn’t wish whooping cough on my worst enemy. 3 months down the track and I’m still coughing and suffering dizzy spells. Its no wonder babies and very young children die from it. Get vaccinated folks.
@13,
“Two days later they moved me to an isolation room complete with airlock because tests showed not TB but whooping cough. None of the nurses or doctors wore masks but I assumed they all had been vaccinated.”
The current whooping cough epidemic seems to be not due to lapsed vaccination rates, but rather mutation in the bug and general population immunocompromise after Covid infections. And there is a generally cavalier attitude to getting infected in society now, nobody seems to care anymore.
rorschach @ # 11: … mostly children under 15, so I don’t think sexual transmission is an issue here.
Are you sure? How many priests do they have running around unmonitored there?
So frustratingly difficulty to find current covid prevalence data. And now that the government has failed to continue making vaccination affordable that data is even more important to know when to mask.
A herd of likely hosts coming into a small area makes masking seem like an excellent precaution.
@ rorschach, #11
Yeah… the fact that most of those infected/killed were under 15 in no way suggests that “sexual transmission [isn’t] an issue.” Sexual violence against children is a problem everywhere, but the DRC has been particularly bad in that area for quite a while now.
I’m not an antimasker and I despise that masks are starting to be banned in various places. I’m currently unmasked, but will get the updated COVID vaccine and flu shot eventually this fall. I think that could be timed better, especially for recent infectees. I’m thinking more into October or so.
I have masks. I just no longer have sufficient motivation to wear them. Sorry. Last time I wore one was to get tested for COVID and flu earlier this year at an urgent care center. I was negative for both and took some Claritin D for allergies.
I’m more concerned with getting an mpox shot since I’m not currently in any of the categories of people who qualify. Are the health departments sticklers for being in one of those categories like men who have sex with men? I really want an mpox shot!
And I’m hoping H5 shots become a thing. If or when mpox and/or bird/cattle flu become a crisis I will mask up again.
Part of me wants to get COVID as a boost, if I haven’t had it already. Almost everyone at work has had it once or twice over the past years. Maybe I’m the Omega Man or have been very lucky so far.
As someone who has not yet stopped (and at this rate likely will never stop) masking up indoors in public and in crowded outdoor spaces (basically any time I have to be around other people) and also still not yet caught COVID at all, I guess all I can say is…
Welcome back to the fold. :)
autobot silverwynde @ 3 Same. My sister is immunocompromised, so everyone in my family masks inside grocery stores or other big box stores. I am a volunteer at the local animal shelter, so I wear a mask all day when I am there and not outside walking dogs. The only places I don’t mask are in the homes of a few friends.
The reality with Monkeypox is, transmission is by various ways, sexual, fomite/surfaces, and aerosol/respiratory. Shedded virus will sit in clothes, bedsheets and carpets forever, but studies clearly show virus is always present in upper airways of those infected.
@2 Recursive Rabbit – Based on your description, I believe that comic strip was The Outbursts of Everett True.