Topic: Is the Corona virus the elephant in the room?

[Beatrix]

Meanwhile, in Cincinnati OH. ..

Apparently my county in IN and the surrounding counties are worse than say hammond and gary Indiana for spreading..
I'm doing the best I can by staying home and giving myself chemical burn when I work the grocery store at night.

[smokester]

This just got real on me.

My niece who works as a cardiac nurse down the road from in St Thomas's hospital, has just been deployed to work on the Covid19 wards. Some of her friends there had already been deployed and they say it's truly unbearable due to the amount of people, young and old, that don't get out of there alive.
 
She is also terrified that she will be one of them.

It made me think what a huge ask it is to deploy people to a place where their own lives are at risk. I get it if you are a soldier, but a nurse?

To be honest, the thought of it is moved my heart to my mouth.

[6pairsofshoes]

To heal the sick, right?  I've seen several medical professionals respond by saying "this is what I signed up for." 

Still, you have to have iron guts to jump in and deal with this directly.  I hope your niece will be ok.  A good friend's daughter is a nurse and she's dealing with similar things. (I've known her since she was a baby.)  It's hard not to worry for them.  None of us knows how bad things will get and how long this will last.

You stay safe, Bea.  It also takes courage and determination to go out into this and work a retail job helping people get food with young ones at home.  I always go out of my way at the grocers to thank the clerks for being there for us.

[goldshirt*9]

To heal the sick, right?  I've seen several medical professionals respond by saying "this is what I signed up for." 

Harsh but true !!
All Birmingham Medical students (son was at the same Uni, could be UK wide ?) were employed and started work in local hospital straight away due to covid.
Wife is a bed coordinator in Main covid Hospital in Leicester and they are about to run out of body bags, had 4 left Saturday.
Nurses and doctors dying all over doing their job. PPE  is still in short supply but getting better, Glasses are the ones in demand as people have different features and struggle to get them to fit comfortably (wearing for 12 hours or more) Gave my wife a selection to choose from (borrowed from work) and people were crying out for the style as you can tilt the lens to suit.

[smokester]

My wife left the NHS on the 31st of March. It had nothing to do with the outbreak, is was because of problems at work (yeah, they never ceased, goldie) and she has some health conditions that made it difficult to perform at the levels expected of her. She was due to start a new job on the 1st of April but they have had to delay that. They are still honouring her contract, but I think the best they can do is ask her to take all of her annual leave before she even starts as, because of a quirk in the rules for the coronavirus furlough payouts (she had to be in her current job in February), she's entitled to nothing.

About healing the sick: we have infectious diseases hospitals (at least we used to) that are high risk. I don't expect anyone who becomes a nurse could ever imagine their own lives might be on the line without it being their own decision. I mean, I realise that even if the public were asked to do something on a ward where the risk of contracting the virus rose exponentially, they'd probably do it (I would). The key word in that comment is "asked".

The odd thing is she came to see us when we had our first "super spreader" who was actually quarantined in St Thomas's. She was desperately ill with a cough and we joked about the coronavirus and stood well back. This was months ago when no one was in a panic, but I'm now hoping she really did have it back then.

[6pairsofshoes]

My sister retired earlier than she had planned to because her job caused her to have to enter cruise ships on a regular basis.  She decided she couldn't take the risk of bringing home the infection to her husband.  This thing is really screwing people in unpredictable ways.  I'm sorry about your wife's new job.  Within one week of my having to work from home, I got laid off.  So we have money to worry about too.

As for your niece, I'd hope that she'd be given a choice as to whether or not to work with Covid 19 patients.  But even if she avoided that, I'd expect that hospitals are risky places to work at this point. 

I'm grateful for any medical professionals even in regular circumstances, as they have hard work to do and they deal with people at their worst.  This contagion separates people from their families and there's no predicting whether once one enters a hospital with it, they'll ever come home again.  We can only hope that the vaccines will be moved up as fast as possible.

[8ullfrog]

Not only are they not getting a choice, they're re-using oral thermometers, and the sensitization of said pieces of poo is less than ideal.

I've never liked oral thermometers, but they used to beat the alternative!

Now with the laser or ear ones, they should be relics of a bygone era.

I don't have a link to the article, but the specific nurse who refused the oral thermometer was immediately terminated. Oh yeah, it was reddit legal advice.

[8ullfrog]

I know it's impossible, but he should get a klingon discomendation by his medical staff.

That's the one where they dramatically cross arms, then turn their back on you. From then forward, you are unpersoned to the empire.

[6pairsofshoes]

Those are pretty funny.  I liked the first and last ones the best.

I went to the grocers today.  Got some produce, milk and a pound of flour.  The flour is wiped out.  It's so hard to find.  I'm baking a lot and am almost out.  It's sad to read news on a daily basis of people who have passed.  We went for a walk wearing N95 masks.  They get hot as you exhale into them.  I think that if this continues into the summer it will get even harder and harder to maintain these isolation protocols.  I'm amazed at how clueless some people are who don't maintain their distance.  I just walk into the street to stay away.  No skin off my nose.  I can use the exercise.

[8ullfrog]

I had to run a receipt to mom when she went to CVS, and it was like a game of tag, dodging dipshits in the parking lot. No masks, no gloves.

I got her the receipt, and I got home. Nothing dramatic, she just wasn't wearing her glasses and bought the wrong poo, but still, people are being complete chickens with heads cut off morons.

We've got flour, but I just realized I haven't checked it in a while. Things you never want to do that suddenly become vital. I hear YEAST is becoming difficult to get if you don't buy it in bulk, but apparently the Bay Area still has a good supply.

Despite a long family history, I'm poo at baking. I've always wanted the Portal Cake for my birthday, and it looks like another year will come and go without it.

Apparently the bakery where the actual cake comes from charges $65... and while that's a bit nuts for someone on my budget, I could see paying it once, for the lifetime experience.

[6pairsofshoes]

You don't roll out of the womb as an accomplished baker.  You have to work at it. 

Kind of like the "how do you get to Carnegie Hall?" joke.  Once I ran into some elderly German tourists at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.  They were having trouble dialing a number of a friend/relative w/whom they were supposed to stay in Queens.  They did not speak English. 

After  a while, I figured out that there was one additional numeral in the number they had written down, and after deciphering it, I took the man to a phone booth to help him dial it.  In the meanwhile my non-German speaking friends sat with the wife in the museum cafe.  Being genial sorts, they attempted to entertain her and converse the best they could.  Apparently, there was an exchange in which the wife surmised that I played the piano at Lincoln Center.  How the conversation took that turn is God's own mystery.  The point being, you never really know your own capabilities, so why not take a stab at it?

[smokester]

My neighbour 6 doors up has succumbed to the virus.

He was elderly and not well but had been taken to hospital after a fall and, unfortunately, contracted the virus while there.

His wife has been in pieces for weeks worrying this might happen, and I can't even see her to check she's alright (she's a pensioner). She couldn't even see him at the end after spending their entire lives together.

Tragic.

[6pairsofshoes]

That's so sad. It's the one thing I dread, being separated from my husband or other family when one of us is terminal and on life support.  I can't imagine how your neighbor's wife is dealing with it.

Is it possible to bake her something or take over a food care package and leave on her doorstep?

[smokester]

Much clapping at 8pm this evening. Even our lot and we're usually knee deep in dinner.

Have to say, brought a tear to my eye. Seriously.

[6pairsofshoes]

Much clapping at 8pm this evening. Even our lot and we're usually knee deep in dinner.

Have to say, brought a tear to my eye. Seriously.

We did the same here at 7 p.m. on Sunday.  We have an ER doc on the street and he's a saint.  Says "this is what I signed up for, no thanks needed."  He sends regular updates and helpful info via the block email.  I hope he stays safe.  I feel like a wimp being afraid to go grocery shopping and this guy hurls himself headlong into the crisis on a daily basis.  He's a better man than I and I feel obligated to do something.  I took a box of masks to the local grocers for the checkout people.  They were only dust masks but they seemed happy to get them.  The store can't get them as they're back ordered everywhere.