Tag: masks

Thirty Six, Four, and One

Image courtesy of Pexels

This morning we came back from a long holiday weekend. The weekend’s lab results were waiting for me. These included:

  • Thirty Six cases of influenza, mostly Flu A
  • Four cases of RSV
  • One case of COVID.

Several facts struck me about this haul. One is of course that these all have vaccines available to prevent them — your insurance might even cover them at no charge to you. I must of course make the caveat that these vaccines are not available to everyone. There are restrictions based largely on age. Some of them work better than others, but all of them are “better than nothing.”

Another interesting fact is that although COVID is still with us, RSV and Flu were far bigger problems. Before you start saying “oh come on, it’s just the flu!” I’d like to point out that every year thousands of people die of influenza. RSV is also a potential killer, mostly in children on one end and older adults on the other.

Not so fun fact, we’re just barely getting to the middle of “flu season,” so you can expect even more of this lovely stuff wherever in the Northern Hemisphere you may be.

But the thing I found saddest is the number of children who passed through our Emergency Department and Freestanding ED (FED in hospital-talk). The saddest part is that most of them got sick after Christmas. It’s very likely some selfish relative who just had to see the kids/cousins/niblings/grandkids left an unintended extra gift this year: getting sick enough go to an Emergency Department for a respiratory illness panel. And that makes me unhappy.

My job is literally preventing infections. Please, do your part. Stay home if you’re sick rather than “power through it.” In particular, show love for the kids by not going to visit them when you’re sick. Wear a mask when appropriate. Keep your hands clean — literally the number one thing you can do to prevent all illness. And it’s still not too late to get vaccinated against preventable illnesses.

A few words about masks

Masks in public has become the new normal. So let’s talk about this for a few minutes.

Masks are a whole lot like condoms: they do work; they only work if you use them, and use them correctly; they don’t work with holes cut in them; and they are not foolproof — you and the people around you are safer if you’re all doing something to prevent the spread of disease.

Nor are masks a substitute for things like quarantining the sick, isolating those who are known to have unprotected exposure, washing your hands, or social distancing. Hand hygiene is still the number one thing you can do to keep from getting almost any disease — it will even stop you from accidentally making somebody else sick. That last point is really important, because people can spread COVID-19 two days before they feel sick, and worse yet they can spread it and never feel sick at all.

Again, just like condoms, masks are only one tool to prevent the spread of disease.

We haven’t got a cure or a vaccine for this thing yet. Prevention is literally all we’ve got to prevent more people from getting sick and possibly dying.

Now for those of you who like actual research results: here’s the Mayo Clinic; Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA); some research from Hong Kong; and The Lancet. For those of you who are total data nerds, here’s some more fine studies.

Wear the damn mask, people. There’s nothing “unconstitutional” about it. Your “rights” end when you interfere with the rights of others, such as when your selfishness accidentally spreads disease.