Health and Sanity category archive

A flightless marauder.

The stupid.

It burns.

For example.

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Sam and his crew discuss the implications of overwhelming the capacity of hospital staff and beds in these viral times.

The writer of a letter to the editor of the Portland, Maine, Press-Herald has it figured out. A snippet; follow the link for some examples.

Many of those refusing to wear masks fail to realize that all freedoms have limits.

. . . in these viral times, at least in Minnesota.

From Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids to Rice Memorial Hospital in Willmar to Regions, ICU beds are filling as quickly as they are opening up. Statewide, 79% of available ICU beds are filled, and 26% filled with COVID-19 patients.

The state’s capacity of open ICU beds has declined about one percentage point per day the past two weeks — raising the probability that some of the 408 ICU surge beds might need to be activated in unused hospital and nursing home wings.

And, yet, I know at least one person in my small circle who has fallen into the well of believing that COVID-19 is a hoax.

Via The Bob Cesca Show Blog.

Michael Ungar, writing at Psychology Today Blogs, strives to understand the mentality of anti-vaxxers. He suggests three factors to account for their denial of scientific and medical evidence. Some excerpts; follow the link for a detailed exploration of each.

• First, let’s deal with trust in science. . . . . when it comes to vaccinations, there are those who think they know more than the microbiologists who have spent lifetimes studying the minutiae of viral and bacterial infections. I can only attribute this mistrust to arrogance . . . .
• Second, anti-vaxxers have broken the social contract. Our individual resilience is always dependent on the resilience of the support systems we depend on.
• Third, anti-vaxxers are manipulating others to make themselves feel omnipotent.

Methinks he left out a fourth factor.

We are a society of stupid.

It’s also poor public health policy.

Witness what’s happening in the Dakotas, where the populace and the governments at state and local levels have repeatedly turned blind eyes to the pandemic:

(Emergency room nurse Jodi–ed.) Doering said she has covid-19 patients who need 100%-oxygen breathing assistance who will also swear that they don’t have the illness that has ended the lives of nearly a quarter-million people in the United States since February.

“I think the hardest thing to watch is that people are still looking for something else and a magic answer and they do not want to believe covid is real,” Doering told CNN in an interview Monday.

“Their last dying words are ‘this can’t be happening, it’s not real,'” Doering said, adding that some patients prefer to believe that they have pneumonia or other diseases rather than covid-19, despite seeing their positive test results.

More disquieting tales of denial at the link.

At the Hartford Courant, Bonny Horwitz tries to wrap her mind around the maskless. A snippet:

Despite daily media coverage of the disease and its unsuspecting victims, some people will not wear a mask. This boggles my mind. People are dying every single day, and those who can help prevent the spread of this perplexing virus choose not to?

Aside:

Someone I know has recently recovered from a two-week struggle with COVID-19. He says the doctors called it a “mild” case. He made it clear that it didn’t feel all that mild while he had it. He said that the measure of “mild” must be not having to be put on a respirator.

Afterthought:

I guess that, for the Maskless Marauders, freedom means never having to give a damn.

Via Mock Paper Scissors (by a somewhat circuitous route).

Spocko does the math.