It's pingie thingie time!
Bring Out Your Dead
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
The false positive rate was 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
If a quarantine saves just one child's or one old fart’s life, it's worth it.
TO MASK OR NOT TO MASK
Scenes from the domestic battleground....
Wife made a quick trip to Food Lion, just to top off. By way of background she is the former Chief of Death Investigations for a major east coast Medical Examiners office. Started in NYC, worked at the first AIDs clinic there, at Sing Sing as well, hospitals, etc.
Older lady, outside of Food Lion, keeps pulling her mask off her nose, touching her face. Wife asks her what is she doing? She replies it is too hard to breath. Wife explains doing that won’t protect her. That type of mask was not meant to be worn for long periods, it is used to visit patients, spend some time with them, then discarded.
She explains the PPE training she received, in the day, when first treating TB patients. Your mask has to be individually fitted to your face. You put it on, then they put a hood over you and spray a scent. If you can smell it, your mask isn’t fitted and has to be adjusted. They spray your fingers with a UV liquid. You put your mask on, take it off. They put it under a UV light. If you touched the mask where you shouldn’t you need more practice. Poor lady doesn’t know what to make of all of this.
Then wife sees a Food Lion employee, gloves on, going case to case, touching one thing, then another. Basically transferring whatever microbes are on one thing to another. Touches her face. Wife wants to bash her, wants to tell her that she should be using hand sanitizer not gloves and wiping case handles. But she turns and leaves and doesn’t touch a thing the employee did.
Wife gets home in a rant. Says if they recommended masks it will be a farce. People aren’t trained to use them, it will be worse then just keeping basic sanitizing procedures in place. And don’t get her started on gloving protocol!!! She has pretty much seen every type of death known to mankind up close and personal.
Big argument ensures. I say everyone needs to wear masks. Bot not to protect yourself by wearing one. I agree people won’t use them correctly. But the reason is to have something, ANYTHING, ON THE FACES OF THE INFECTED who are out and can’t get tested or are asymptomatic. Any interference with the release of infectious vapor is better than nothing. She knows we are talking about homemade masks, bandannas or scarves. She can’t believe she is hearing this. It goes against all her medical training and life and death experience. I say when you have messed up so completely, actually inculcated failure upon failure, as we (i.e. CDC, politicians, local governments) have so stupendously with this virus, then gross measures, however inane and in artfully applied is all you have in your toolkit. What a country.
Your view?