I'm back and honestly, I'm only madder than I was two days ago because I've had time to mull the bullshit over. Link, for those of y'all out of the know.
It appalls me that any community of people that claim to be marxists, that claim to follow the scientific method in all things that would contribute to the betterment of the world we're forced to share, that claim to be really out here performing praxis and making differences in their communities; it fucking galls me that a community like everything I just described can still look at a still on-going pandemic and still have such a tacit anti-mask stance.
More of you admitted to not masking than I'm comfortable with and y'know what, maybe we could've left it at that. It'd have been a form of liberalism to not dig my heels in on that and take a swing at that mindset because again: I took on a new disability in the wake of a COVID infection. My partner took on a new disability in the wake of their infection. I was put in a hospital bed, my grandparents were put on respirators, so many members of my family and my community were genuinely out of commission and a good number of us really had to question if we were going to make it to see the next morning under those infections-- but maybe, we could've left it at that.
But then, I have to see you people not only trying to justify it, but taking up for smuggards who just think it's all some big fuckin joke, like they're their favorite podcast crackerbro getting to have their own personal Matt Christman moment. I expect "u mad bro" smuglord fuckery out of crackers who can't even be trusted to properly wipe their asses after they shit, or to wash their hands after doing so. And worse, you expect me to not be heated about smug-assed crackers making light of genuinely-disabling infections after the fact.
I stand ten motherfucking toes down on what I said to Cantaloupe Ass and Ghost of Faso; any plague rat motherfucker who wants to take issue with how I feel about people who won't mask can catch the same cases my partners and my family caught. It's a whole lot of you motherfuckers that are so unserious, so emphatically not my comrades that it sickens me seeing you call yourselves so.
Do better. Deuces.
Forever thankful my workplace encourages masking
Your workplace should encourage testing by giving free covid tests and encourage people to stay home when sick.
Let me guess, you have to buy your own masks?
Nah it's a hospital so we already do all that thankfully (and we got over the mask shortage so now there's extra that can be "taken home" as needed) and our public health department is still sending out masking advisories for healthcare staff. Cons though is having to work with patients that actively have covid.
Oh ok, then wearing a mask makes sense, 1) they're surgical masks (not cloth), and 2) there's a bunch of people wearing them properly and changing them often, in addition to proper hand hygiene and overall hygiene, so it further reduces the chance of spread. Nurses and doctors in hospitals wore masks and gloves long before covid, anyway.
That's why hospitals have the N95 or surgical masks. The cloth masks don't offer good protection or have a good seal around the face. The masks I wore were surgical masks ordered from China, but what I'd see most is people wearing a novelty cloth mask, or hand-made one, or a few days old surgical mask, at that point why even bother?
Yeah the N95 is the gold standard and what is used for all of our airborne iso rooms (this includes covid patients) that go into a negative airflow room (surgical masks are okay but I'd never want to be within six feet of someone with active covid without a N95). Still though 12 hour shifts working in close proximity with someone has led to quite a few of our staff getting covid recently which sucks. There's still very much an active covid problem that will likely lead to another surge as people conduct maskless travel again for the holidays (as well as the piss poor vaccine rates).