More U.S. hospitals are requiring masks and limiting visitors as health officials face an expected but still nasty post-holiday spike in flu, COVID-19 and other illnesses.
While many experts say this season likely won’t prove to be as deadly as some other recent winters, it still could mean hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and many thousands of deaths across the country.
New York City last week instituted a mask mandate for the city’s 11 public hospitals. Similar measures were ordered last week at some hospitals in Los Angeles and Massachusetts. Some hospitals reinstated masking rules for employees months ago, in anticipation of a seasonal rush of sick people.
Sure, it’s not Very Challenging like the right wing loons kept saying, but it is objectively more uncomfortable, having fabric right next to your nose and mouth, getting soggy from the condensation. Having to do that all day, especially four years later when most of society has decided this is over and wants zero reminders of 2020, isn’t going to win a lot of fans. I think it’s human nature that you’d rather just get sick at some point than do something every day, indefinitely, that you [the royal you] find uncomfortable.
Some people have quiet voices, some people have speech impediments, some people have to work in loud environments where they already had to strain to be heard. Asking someone to put up with that all day at work shouldn’t be treated trivially.
I guess, but generally it feels somewhat alien and off trying to converse with someone with a mask. Especially for sensitive medical conversations, it can feel that much more hostile or unsettling.
In a hospital at least. Some of the worst stories I read in 2020 were the ones about people who had to say goodbye to loved ones through a plastic sheet – or who weren’t allowed in the room at all, due to arbitrary protocol. I guarantee 100% of people would rather get COVID for a few weeks if it meant they could say a proper goodbye to a parent.
Sure, they’re effective devices when worn properly. But people aren’t going to want to wear them properly, in year four of this, when they present so many irritating little barriers to normal human life. It’s fatiguing to the mind and spirit having to do this day in, day out, especially if you’ve already got a shot and/or gotten sick already anyway. People in general would rather just take their chances and hope their immune system is strong.
An actual N95, KN95, or KF94 mask does not stick to your nose and mouth and will have an air pocket. I’ve played basketball wearing a KF94 mask and had no problems breathing. And that’s coming from someone with shit conditioning and runs out of breath quickly. A basic cloth or surgical mask was definitely worse because it felt like being waterboarded when it was full of sweat and directly on my nose and mouth.
If you think a mask is uncomfortable, you should try a respirator.
It isn’t just right wing loons propagating FUD because they are so privileged they have never even stood next to someone with BO on a train. So many things in life are “objectively more uncomfortable” and the impact of a (K)N95 is nothing compared to things like perfume, pollen, or congestion because of illness.
And if your mask is getting “soggy from the condensation”: Assuming you are wearing an actual (K)N95 and not just a shitty do-rag you hold up to your mouth: Go see a fucking doctor.
Again, if you are wearing a real mask, yelling is not at all an issue. As for the “close talkers”: Those are the people who probably SHOULD mask up since they need to lean in super close for anyone to hear them.
Also, it isn’t like we didn’t have a year or two of practice in all this…
I can’t speak to every single hospital, but I have only ever seen people being treated and cordoned off in the waiting room during a really nasty earthquake that I was doing volunteer work during. So… not sure how that is at all relevant to sitting in the hospital waiting room next to the people queueing for blood work, the girl with a sprained ankle, and the ten people coughing up a lung.
But also: If you are in a situation where people would need to be cordoned off with plastic sheets… well, I guess some people want to see their loved ones again ASAP.