Someone realized I was right about masks.

Dec. 16th, 2022 01:30 pm
blimix: Joe by a creek in the woods (Default)
A friend called me from the hospital. He said, "Joe, you were right. You wear an N95, even when it's not required." His coworker had brought in a respiratory illness, and his surgical mask didn't protect him from getting it. Whatever he caught had progressed to pneumonia.

There are three quick things I'd like to note.

* A mix of airborne illness (flu, RSV, rhinovirus, enterovirus, COVID-19) is running rampant throughout the country.

* Hospitals are overwhelmed. The Emergency Department here at Albany Med has been turning sick people away because they don't have the capacity. ICUs are full, and the ones that report empty beds are because they don't have enough staff to attend to those beds, so they can't be used.

* The best estimate is now that 1 in 38 cases of COVID-19 is actually getting reported, because people are testing at home or not at all. If you think you're living in a "low transmission area" in the U.S., you're living in a fantasy.

I'm watching multiple households of my friends get knocked on their asses from RSV and COVID-19. My many friends with long COVID still haven't recovered. It causes brain damage. It makes any exertion treacherous. It compromises the immune system, giving itself and other diseases easier inroads later. That's why we're seeing such a spike in all of them.

How bad are you going to let it get before you join my friend in saying, "Joe, you were right"? Or, "Hey, it looks like the epidemiologists knew what they were talking about when they asked us all to wear masks"? Will you wait until you're pleading to be seen at the hospital? Until a few more loved ones die? Will you wait until you're bedridden and have no immune system left, before you realize that the next infection will be your last, and you join the vulnerable people asking everyone to mask up?

Or will I just cry, "I told you so" from home while your unmasked loved ones give each other deadly diseases at your funeral?



Those of you spreading easily debunked Fox News and Russian mob bot farm propaganda such as "The pandemic is over" will challenge me for a source. So let's jump straight to the one that is least trivial to look up yourself. "A current case detection rate of 1 case per ~38 infections."
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My neighbors drive drunk. Nobody stops them.

Nov. 11th, 2022 09:03 am
blimix: Joe by a creek in the woods (Default)
My neighbors regularly drive drunk.

They know that if someone gets hurt, it probably won't be them. They find this reassuring.

If someone gets hurt, that person has about a 20%-50% chance (depending on the study) to become disabled (often including brain damage); and about a 1% of death. Though, becoming disabled causes people to die younger in this country: It is not a supportive or accommodating place. So the death toll is really much higher than you might think.

My neighbors figure it'll "probably be okay". Each individual time, they're right: It'll probably be okay. They don't worry about the consequences to themselves or others if it this is the time that it's not okay. Around here, there are no deterrents, legal or social. They engage in this behavior every weekend.

On average, it'll probably be years before they directly kill someone. Until then, they and their like-minded friends are leaving a trail of suffering and grievous disabilities in their wake. Of course, my neighbors are not the only ones doing this around here. Not by a long shot. Once you add it all up, this has become an extremely unsafe place to leave the house. By now, a lot of us know people who have been killed by them or by people like them.

I'm curious: What do you think of my neighbors? I'm not judging. I'm asking you to judge. In their shoes, would you do the same?

Take a moment to think about your answer.

...

I just noticed a typo above. Where I wrote, "drive drunk," I meant, "go maskless in public and at parties". My finger slipped. Let me fix that, so we can read it together correctly.

My neighbors regularly go maskless in public and at parties.

They know that if someone gets hurt, it probably won't be them. They find this reassuring.

If someone gets hurt, that person has about a 20%-50% chance (depending on the study) to become disabled (often including brain damage); and about a 1% of death. Though, becoming disabled causes people to die younger in this country: It is not a supportive or accommodating place. So the death toll is really much higher than you might think.

My neighbors figure it'll "probably be okay". Each individual time, they're right: It'll probably be okay. They don't worry about the consequences to themselves or others if it this is the time that it's not okay. Around here, there are no deterrents, legal or social. They engage in this behavior every weekend.

On average, it'll probably be years before they directly kill someone. Until then, they and their like-minded friends are leaving a trail of suffering and grievous disabilities in their wake. Of course, my neighbors are not the only ones doing this around here. Not by a long shot. Once you add it all up, this has become an extremely unsafe place to leave the house. By now, a lot of us know people who have been killed by them or by people like them.

I'm curious: What do you think of my neighbors? I'm not judging. I'm asking you to judge. In their shoes, would you do the same?

Take a moment to think about your answer.
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