What a telling statement.
They need them. You don’t.
I support leaders who will enact robust public health policy so private citizens can buy products they wish to buy, without having to feel any need to refrain, so as to leave them for the health workers. Like Joe Biden, who as vice president was part of the administration who established a pandemic team in the White House that Trump subsequently disbanded–and whose chief of staff was the “Ebola czar” when Joe was veep.
But I’m not going to be shamed for not doing every last possible thing on a personal basis to contribute to the cause. That’s true about anyone who doesn’t contribute every dime they don’t need for basic food and shelter to a malaria bed net charity. Those who subscribe to Peter Singer’s “drowning child” philosophy may believe this for real, but only the tiniest fraction of us (doubt that includes anyone here) actually lives a life that is blameless by this ethical framework.
Even my (mildly intermittently) asthmatic self was willing to risk the occasional grocery run…until today, when my stepmother in NY tested positive and was hospitalized. She and my dad are both at risk because of age and medical conditions. No idea how she got infected; they had been quite cautious, wearing masks outside, etc. and are both pretty neurotic under normal circumstances. We are all crossing our collective fingers that my 79-year-old asthmatic dad doesn’t get infected.
Now I am not so crazy about the idea of even brief grocery runs. There is going to be a CSA, a lot of vegetable gardening, some ordering of groceries for home delivery, and possibly the occasional round of curbside pickup by Tom Scud at one of the small local grocery stores.
All over the world, people are stepping up and making sacrifices for the greater good. Health care professionals are writing their wills and not hugging their children, lest they infect them. In Iran, an infected doctor continued her work with an IV in her arm and dropped dead on the job and you won’t accept the slightest sacrifice. I’ve been in a lot of crises and in the end, people are divided into two groups: the strong and the weak. You’re the weak, at least now you know.
So it is their fault if they run out due to the massive overwhelming of the health system and the lack of preparedness of the government. Fine. The difference in value to a health professional working to both save lives and avoid additional transmission as they work on the front line of the pandemic, versus you being able to smugly walk down the street with a useless to you mask is insane.
The single best thing you could do to save lives is to carefully package up the unused masks and send them to your local hospital. But of course it is someone else’s fault that they ran out, not yours. So let them stew.
Funny that the phrase “protect me and my family” is something that very quickly identifies the speaker as a US citizen. This isn’t a good thing.
Canadian hospitals are running low on masks and rationing them strictly. Good to learn Canada donated 16 tons of PPE to China in February after slowly destroying its stockpile of 55 million masks since SARS. Masks expire, and generosity has its place. But China still is torturing two innocent Canadian political prisoners, and that’s not right.
I support the political party that supports greater preparedness for pandemics, using government mandates and tax dollars. Like Bernie Sanders, for this reason I do not support the concept of individual charity.
Our masks are not useless to us. We live in an apartment building where we are forced to walk through the same narrow unventilated spaces as hundreds of others. And we have one for each member of the family, that we take very careful care of and only wear for a few minutes per week as we pass through those areas or enter a building to do shopping for necessities. Not while “walking down the street”. There is nothing to “package up”.
But I see the latest argument along these lines is about CPAP machines, which some people believe users should donate to the cause. I actually have a more advanced machine because my apnea is more complex and I graduated from CPAP to BiPAP and then, after my third sleep study, to an actual state-of-the-art home ventilator. But there’s no way in hell I’m donating it. I would go back to having crappy sleep and possibly be in real trouble if I got the virus.
Again, I support Democrats and they insisted on adding hundreds of billions of dollars to help hospitals with much-needed supplies. Good for them and my conscience is clear.
And sure, I am among the “weak” majority. Which is why I never had any impulse to become a firefighter or police officer, but would not hesitate to call 911 if I needed help from either.
It’s one thing not to support individual charity as a replacement for social services, and another not to support helping your neighbors in time of need.
However, having a small number of masks for your family is reasonable, and I don’t think anyone would suggest you should donate them unless you were hoarding a large number.
CPAP machines are not a replacement for ventilators.
You may be interested in this advice from the British OSA Alliance:
Guidance regarding coronavirus (COVID-19) and Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) [PDF]: for people who routinely use continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), their families and health care workers, 20 March 2020
Since I’m considered “essential personnel” I can’t isolate when I go to work.
Outside of work, though, I only go out for essential stuff, which means most of my very very few days off I don’t go out at all. When I am out, I try to keep as much distance between me and others as possible.
It’s not negligible.
You should cancel.
You can’t see who is and isn’t infected and in the pre-symptomatic-but-infectious state.
It could be you. It could be one or both of the other two people.
You make it sound like the choice is between “some people die and the rest are perfectly fine”. It’s not. Even a “mild” case of this - largely defined as “does not need to be in a hospital” - can be a pretty nasty illness. Also, there are people who seem to have a “mild” case who suddenly die in their homes. In part I suspect this is because our medical system is already so overloaded that both the people doing the evaluating are overworked and are making mistakes, and also because people who ordinarily would be admitted a hospital for observation are being sent home for lack of room for even sicker people in hospitals.
Because the people elected to be in charge of this country are in a massive state of denial. Absolutely air travel should be shut down. Public transportation should be restricted to just essential personnel going to and from work.
This does leave the problem that there are people who don’t own cars and need public transportation to get groceries and medicine, but if the government was competent enough to shut down transportation I’d also assume they were competent enough to ramp up delivery services to such people.
The reasonable and responsible approach:
Hunker down. Stay inside. Don’t visit ANYONE you aren’t already living with. The only exception is if you actually must go out for food/medicine. If you do, keep your distance. Wash your hands.
Anything else and you risk getting and/or giving the virus.
No, I’m not kidding.
If I didn’t have my job to do I’d be inside for the next two weeks barring one or two absolutely mandatory trips outside. I might even forgo laundry (for which I must leave my apartment) and wash underwear in the sink.
Yes, we really are at that point, at least until the new cases come down and the hospitals can handle the influx again.
Except, of course, for the people in this very thread who did just that…
It’s like at work when someone young shows up at the “senior shopping hour” - it’s not the “senior shopping hour”, it’s the “seniors and high risk shopping hour” and people at risk can be any age. I see people wearing N95 masks at work and I don’t say anything because some people do have legitimate need for them - before this we had two regulars at the store wearing them due to suppressed immune systems.
We can’t tell from posts who has a medical vulnerability and who doesn’t. Let’s be careful about making assumptions.
Ouch. Quoted for truth.
(I’m a US citizen - I teach undergrads a class on World Cultural Regions. When we get to the US, I tell them about our off-the-charts incarceration rate, our ecological footprint (though that’s no longer so unusual, and we’re slowly getting a bit better), our drug consumption, and our larger (and growing) economic inequality compared to most developed states — and ask them to find a common thread. We then discuss “individual” vs. “community” — while acknowledging that all cultures struggle with balancing these, the US geography and history is rather unusual in its emphasis on the former).
Brilliant, no-nonsense post! Will it be heeded?
I guess this is the thread to post this to.
Finland and Sweden are interesting to compare.
Sweden decided early on to be relatively loose on their restrictions and to stress individual responsibility.
Finland did too, but to a specifically lesser extent than Sweden.
Article: Sweden’s coronavirus approach different from Finland
Both are in the same phase of the pandemic. Sweden crossed the 10 confirmed cases mark on March 4, Finland on March 6. (Both have a restricted testing policy and have acknowledged to have many more infections in reality.)
Today: Sweden has EIGHT TIMES the number of deaths and five times the number of serious cases relative to the population. (Sweden has twice the population.)
Wonder what they will think of “overreacting” to the pandemic or “questioning” the restrictions when all this is over.
FM, that’s super interesting.
Unfortunately we will be able to do similar comparisons in the US between cities/states with differing levels of mitigation.
OK or Not OK: Happy hour with the neighbors in my front yard, 10 foot minimum distance, BYOB.
OK, in my view, as long as you’re truly staying at least 10 feet away from the neighbors. One issue I’ve read about (which may or may not be relevant to your situation) is if there are kids involved – even if the adults are being careful and maintaining distance, kids (especially little kids) just aren’t able to do that willingly.
So, if it’s just adults, probably fine. If kids are in the equation, it might well be asking for trouble.
NOT. OKAY.
Have a Zoom Happy Hour instead.
No. My area, while not in denial, is not very observant yet. Until yesterday, I had enough fingers to account for every confirmed case in my county plus all the adjacent counties. If I added my toes I could add the counties adjacent to those counties. This area is one that Trump wants to get to work while the numbers are low. Rural, agricultural, heavy industry in spots. The governor may have shut us down, and the populace is restricting itself, but the mindset is I’m doing it because “they” are making me, not because I want to or even agree with it.