Earlier this month, I came across an article titled "Mask mandates are returning to some hospitals. Should they be there to stay?"
Elizabeth Hlavinka, “Mask Mandates Are Returning to Some Hospitals. Should They Be There to Stay?,” Salon, October 5, 2023, https://www.salon.com/2023/10/05/mask-mandates-are-returning-to-some-hospitals-should-they-be-there-to-stay/.
From the article
While the chance of severe disease is reduced for those who have been vaccinated or who have already had a COVID infection, doctors are concerned about vulnerable patients in hospitals, which are by nature meeting points for all sorts of disease-causing pathogens, not just SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID. Hospitals are also at elevated risk of things like long COVID, which can occur even in the vaccinated, young and otherwise healthy.
"Our elderly relatives, people with serious illnesses — these are the only places they can go to get care when they are in the worst shape of their lives," said Dr. Theodore Pak, an infectious diseases fellow, who has seen hundreds of COVID-19 patients at the hospitals he practices at in Boston, Massachusetts.
"We may give somebody a powerful medication that takes away their entire immune system and then in order to get medical care, they have to go to a hospital where they sit next to people that are unmasked that could give them a disease that could kill them," Pak told Salon in a phone interview. "We don't really think about that or weigh that risk anymore."
Hospitals should've never given up on the mask mandates.
Hospitals are there to take care of people with health vulnerabilities. Many of those people are at increased risk of getting infected by contagious respiratory diseases. Requiring people to wear surgical masks would reduce the spread of contagious respiratory diseases.
Sadly, some people act as if "covid is over" (or even worse, act as if covid never existed) and would throw hissy fits when asked to wear a mask to protect others from contagious respiratory diseases.
Hospitals should stand firm on their mask mandate!
After all, construction sites put HUGE SIGNS saying that they require people to wear safety protective gear like hard hats, safety goggles, steel-toed boots, and more! Those who threw hissy fits over such regulations would be fired and expelled!
If we as as a society can recognize that hard hats are required for construction sites, then why can't we as a society recognize that surgical masks should be required for hospitals?
And why can't we recognize that it might be a good idea to wear a surgical mask in other places where people gather in close proximity (ie schools, malls, concerts, etc)?
And why can't we recognize that wearing a surgical mask would be a good idea when it comes to food service?
This isn't complicated
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I made a 4-minute video speech titled "Hey Anti Maskers, Do Hard Hat Requirements at Construction Sites Trigger You?"
Check it out here, and make the video go viral (pun intended)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rv4g3y6hW8
"Hey Anti Maskers, Do Hard Hat Requirements at Construction Sites Trigger You?"
