This weekend, I was honored with an award for the following poem:
Tears
There will be no tears shed for authentic grief
Only whiny bitch tears because someone’s got a beef.
Don’t tell me that you are sorry for my loss;
Your freedom comes at a price where I pay the cost.
People I love are gone because you refused to wear a mask,
Refused to believe the truth, refused to get vaxxed.
My immunodeficiency is not why I isolate;
It‘s your lack of empathy, the way you love to hate.
The crocodile tears rolled down your ugly face
When you stood trial for homicide motivated by race.
Real tears are shed in private, not on the public stage
Authentic people feel sorrow, you only feel rage.
All of this grieving,
The tears are not relieving.
But still I keep believing
There are better days ahead.
Today I arrived at a local clinic to find, to my horror, that the mask policy had been lifted there. I have N95 masks, but thought I would be entering a space where everyone would still be required to wear masks, so opted for one of my multi-layer fabric masks instead. I expressed my disapproval of this lifting of the policy to the lab technician, who only offered to put on a mask after I stated that I am immunocompromised. She said, “we put on masks for cancer patients,” and I replied that I am taking cancer drugs for my MS.
While I receive so many texts prior to my appointments with all kinds of advisements, no warning was given regarding the lifting of the mask policy. This is not about covid. It is about immunocompromised people having to frequent the same spaces as people with communicable diseases. Clinics should have always had mask policies. At the very least, there should have always been universal masking in oncology centers. I would go with my grandpa when he was getting treatment for cancer, and while he was given polypropylene surgical masks to wear, no one else was asked to wear one.
The lab tech donned the surgical mask that she said hasn’t been proven to work (though she wears them to protect cancer patients WTF?), and I informed her about how I know the scientific method from my time in grad school and know how the scientists who developed the study that everyone is misquoting have asserted that their study on masks is being misinterpreted (which I discuss in greater depth later). There are degrees of effectiveness, but even the less effective multilayer cloth masks and polypropylene surgical masks have been shown to mitigate the spread of respiratory illness when worn correctly. Before the pandemic, people I knew often avoided doctors offices because, and I quote, “if you’re not sick when you go in, you’ll be sick when you come out.”
The best and worst things that Trump did while president all were in how he handled and mishandled the pandemic. He implemented the first shut down, which likely would not have been necessary if there had been an adequate number of high quality masks available. But he turned down the offer to use government funds to ramp up domestic production of N95 masks. This is why governors were forced to extend shutdowns, and why health officials were left with the difficult position of juggling masking recommendations.
In the early days of the pandemic, it was important to preserve the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline medical workers, but masking always had the potential to mitigate the spread of disease. Various reusable fabric masks were produced, donated, and sold. Some of these were proven to do more harm than good. Some were utterly ridiculous. Some weren’t half bad. Some could be made better with the insertion of filters. However, when everyone wore a mask of some sort, and wore it correctly, it could effectively prevent droplets from spreading. Hence the mask mandates.
As a variety of high quality masks became more widely available, mask mandates for a vast array of public spaces were no longer necessary. As an immunocompromised individual, when I would enter crowded spaces without mask mandates, I wore a high quality mask such as a KN95, N94, or N95. When I would go inside a public place that still required everyone to wear masks, I wore a multi-layer fabric mask with a good fit.
I know that a lot of people who are against masking like to cite this study that came out of the UK that says that masks are not proven to help reduce the spread of Covid-19. This study uses metadata, and much of that did not look at the actual wearing of masks at all. The metadata used looked at some places with recommendations for masking. Unfortunately, these recommendations did not mean that people were actually wearing masks correctly or at all.
There are two really good analogies for mask use: seatbelts and condoms. Seatbelts only save lives when they are worn and worn correctly. Condoms only protect people from sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy when they are worn and worn correctly. Only intact, high-quality versions of all three are highly effective. A mask constructed out of spandex is like a condom with a hole in it or a seat belt that has been chewed on by your puppy. Sure, it might work, but why chance it?
The shortage of quality PPE along with the misinformation coming out of the Trump White House cost over a million American lives, and that is completely unforgivable. This is the worst thing the man did while in office.
The best things he did were issuing the subsidies (even though they lead to inflation), and Project Warp Speed, which while it didn’t produce the life-saving vaccines, it helped pharmaceutical companies get these on the market sooner. Trump gave away more money than President Biden had, and it was hugely popular until markets caught up with the influx of cash injected into the economy. But there was something else that happened by virtue of the pandemic that lead to inflation.
Even though there has been no increase in the federal minimum wage, wages went up because the silver tsunami (referring to the mass retirement of Baby Boomers) hit early because of the pandemic. The combination of shutdowns and increases in unemployment compensation essentially created a paid strike. A worker shortage ensued, and employers desperate to fill positions finally raised their wages. The $15 minimum wage that so many people had been fighting for became a reality throughout much of the US, not because of a change in policy, but because workers finally had leverage.
While I am unabashedly Liberal, I have always warned that raising the minimum wage would lead to inflation, because the people at the top will justify increasing the price of goods and services as they are forced to increase wages. I have recommended a wage ratio system as a better pathway to a more just economy, but few elected officials ever consider this, and those who do often use coded language to talk about it.
For those who are tired of inflation, it is not only slowing but it looks as though we may be headed for the ultimate resolution of inflation: a recession. We are seeing layoffs in certain sectors, and that is likely to increase. This is not good for workers. A recession will bring down prices and make things marginally better for people on fixed incomes, but for all the workers complaining about paying more for gas and groceries, be careful what you wish.
I have always been pro-labor. I am still pro-labor even though I am no longer in the workforce, but I am not for all of this quiet quitting bullshit that is going on. I have been the victim of human service workers doing the bare minimum and delaying services that would improve my safety and health outcomes, and I am not alone.
I take the incompetence of others personally. This is because I often struggled to find work. I realize that was a different time, but I do hope that incompetence and underperformance catches up with people and that eventually the people who need to lose their jobs get sacked. Especially when it comes to people in human service type jobs. Incompetent teachers, social workers, and medical professionals bring shame to these professions. I’ve heard people say that a good teacher is hard to find. That is far from the truth, but the bad ones make everyone look bad. It’s the same for all of these types of professions.
My main point in talking about this topic today is to ask for equitable treatment. I filed a complaint with the clinic. I intend to contact the CDC. I will be calling on disability advocacy groups to push for mask policies at clinics, and especially in oncology units. I know many people who only wore cloth masks during the past three years who have never caught a cold, flu, or covid in that time. They don’t understand what’s so hard about wearing a mask. They find not getting sick to be preferable. Inside a space that is not likely to be filled with people who are sick, I get not requiring masks be worn. But clinics are where sick people go. Unfortunately, those of us who are immunocompromised have to go there too. Does the medical establishment, despite the severe staff shortages, really want people to get sicker? Is this all about their bottom line? At the very least, Medicare and Medicaid should balk about the lifting of mask policies at clinics because it is sure to drive up costs. The immunocompromised are often considered as those with invisible disabilities. This terminology is used because people often cannot tell we are disabled by looking at us (although with my increased need for mobility aids, this is becoming less the case with me). I think it is more that we become invisible. We are forgotten and disregarded by so many.
For more on this, read this Washington Post article.
I hope that your complaint works and people in clinics start wearing masks. It was so weird moving from a place where everyone wears a mask (most people wearing N95s) to a place where no one wears one. During the pandemic, people kept wondering why Japan had so few fatalities and infections compared to western countries. When I came here and saw the difference, it was obvious.
I've been a victim of "quiet quitting," too. The people in my leasing office did the absolute minimum when it came to stopping the second-hand smoke problem in our complex. The worst part was that they kept promising they would. Now, we're moving, but we would've moved sooner if they'd just been honest and said, "We know we're in the wrong, but we're not going to do anything about it."