Infrastructure

The other day a bridge collapsed (no, not the one in the picture). Old news, right? The NTSB is investigating, and they’re going to find that maintenance that should have been done, repairs that should have been made, renovations that should have been budgeted for, weren’t. I can say that without fear of contradiction; only the details are yet to be determined.

It’s not the first bridge to collapse, just the first big one this year. There’s other things that fall down when they aren’t supposed to as well. For a long time, we’ve been putting off repairs on our bridges, roads, schools, and other infrastructure, and the bill is coming due. It’s been bad enough for long enough that even Trump ran on promises to put money into infrastructure. This appealed to many of the people the Clinton campaign urged to “be reasonable.”

The Biden Administration did manage to get an infrastructure bill passed, but it’s probably too little and spread out over too many things. We also need state and local governments to get out the checkbooks and say “we need to fix this stuff before somebody gets hurt.” Oh but that will raise taxes. This is one of those cases where an ounce of prevention really is better than a pound of cure.

Regrettably, state and local governments want to argue over whether masks are important and what books should get banned instead of making sure the road less travelled remains a road at all.

Hospital Cat

I remember when this guy and his littermates were kittens. Pretty sure someone TNR’d them, because we aren’t overrun by cats! I do sometimes end up with kitty footprints on my car. More than one staff member feeds them. I have literally seen these cats watch the pigeons with no effort towards hunting. Obviously this picture taken in summertime.

Did the CDC Contradict Itself?

Officially, the CDC says the definition of “fully vaccinated” is not changing. Here’s a source that is unlikely to go away — the CDC likes to “keep its website up to date” and get rid of what it said previously. But here’s what they say about post-exposure quarantine for health care workers (note that I’m adding an image from their site because it will someday “be updated” and disappear):

Source

Sure looks like unless you’re boosted, you might as well not be vaccinated under this guidance.

For right now, the official guidance on how long people who get COVID should stay home is here. This headline puts it succinctly: it meets corporate needs. I get that it’s hard to run an airline or a hospital when much of your staff is sick. Having them come to work while sick and make your remaining staff sick is not the answer. Nurses are concerned, and we’re the ones that make hospital care possible.

I have bent over backwards to both follow what the CDC says, do what they say, and not speak ill of them. My patience wears thin.

Reminder: Omicron may not make you as sick, but it is very easy to transmit. There are millions of new cases; between lack of hospital beds and sick hospital staff that can’t take care of patients, it’s a mess. Keep your hands clean and your mask up over your nose where it belongs. Stay safe out there.

Omicron Thoughts

And so we drag over the two year mark with COVID. More variants, more sickness, more cases. And things will “likely get worse” according to experts. I have seem greater numbers in my facility, and “surprise” cases (we test on admit, thankfully). Objectively, we have more cases now than when we tried to lock down! Notice I said tried, because obviously it didn’t work out as planned.

Nevertheless, the CDC has changed guidelines to make it easier for people to get back to work. Or if you’re more cynical, to make it easier for companies to force people to get back to work. Nurses — both union and not — came out against. Other unions, including flight attendants, came out against. Will that change anything? Not known.

For the record, my company has a policy saying don’t come to work of you have a fever, productive cough, vomiting, diarrhea, generalized rash, conjunctivitis, or have been instructed to quarantine. People who are sick should stay home, period. Don’t try to soldier through, because you’ll both do a halfway job and potentially make other sick. I encourage everyone to follow this sane advice even outside a pandemic.

There is good news, however. The influenza rate is sharply down over the pre-panda era. In my area, we’ve had less than two dozen hospitalizations and (so far, knock on wood) no deaths. In fact, one line of influenza may be extinct!

Keep your hands clean and your masks on, folks. The mask goes over the nose, by the way.

Happy New Year

May it be better than 2021. Seriously.

A lot of you have New Years Resolutions. I think it’s wonderful that you want to do something to improve yourself and/or your life. However, I will point out that if it were really important to you, you would not have waited for an arbitrary calendar date. You’d have started working on it right away (or at minimum, started making plans).

There’s been a lot of talk over the last couple decades about SMART goals: a goal that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time constrained. That R (often mislabeled as “reasonable,” and how is that different from achievable?) can also be seen as your Reason for the goal. It’s the “why it’s important,” and arguably the most important part. Why do you want to have a million dollars or lose 30 pounds or earn your degree? That why is what will get you up in the morning to work your goal.

Picture taken by me at Mandalay Bay. I needed a cool picture to start you guys off. I’m going to try and post more regularly this year.