A "Socioeconomic Disease"

[kpete]

Interesting quote from an ER doctor who literally works at the very center of the outbreak.

Link to tweet

?s=20

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[Wounded Bear]

2. K & R...for visibility...nt

[chia]

3. Quote is from New Yorker article: A New Doctor Faces the Coronavirus in Queens

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/27/a-new-doctor-faces-the-coronavirus-in-queens

"What strikes me is the deterioration of what is normal"

[kpete]

4. chia - Thanks so much for the link

peace & wellness to you and yours
kp

[chia]

7. You're quite welcome, the quote left me wanting more, no surprise it ended up being the New Yorker

Stay well and stay safe, kpete

[dalton99a]

5. Kick

The P.P.E. bags that Elmhurst doctors received at the start of their shifts contained a papery yellow gown, blue gloves, a face shield, and an N95 mask. The mask had to suffice for a whole day, although as recently as February the C.D.C. recommended putting on a new one for each patient. An N95 mask fits the face more tightly than a regular surgical mask, and has a metal strip on top to hold it in place. “The bridge of my nose is bleeding from wearing it all day,” Zikry told me. “I tried to MacGyver it with a Band-Aid, but it’s not working.” The P.P.E. that E.R. doctors in New York have been wearing more closely resembles a poor man’s welding gear than the astronaut-like outfits seen in photos of medical workers in South Korea.

[chia]

6. This socio-economic divide is laid bare by the virus. The difference between privileged and not.

[brer cat]

8. K&R

[Hortensis]

9. It's all so dreadfully true. "Essential workers," so many low pay,

were never given the choice to self isolate at home and have to go to work each day with a grim heroism that's seldom acknowledged.

The note of class resentment, though, is unfortunate and distracting. The virus doesn't care about class, and those who are able to hide from it are not the problem.

Those who didn't vote Democrat in 2016 have huge personal responsibility for what their dreadful mistake has unleashed, but hopefully most won't be repeating it.

[SoonerPride]

11. See, the thing is, their WORK is essential but THEY are not

They aren't paid well.
Many have limited or no benefits.
They are interchangeable cogs in the machine, and can easily be replaced by more cogs.

It would be nice if we as a society changed that. But I won't hold my breath.

[Hortensis]

12. Well, virtually every one of THEM has a vote.

They're society too, after all, and many are both victims and victimizers. Hopefully realizing the Republicans really do consider their lives disposable will change some of their behaviors.

Another post says what's being done to young people is changing attitudes of many.

Our grandparents brought their world to a similar brink of destruction. Many nations fell, but American voters pulled us back and created a whole new deal for themselves. But that only happened when the hurt reserved for lower-paid workers finally reached the middle classes with the Depression. Well, the hurt's reaching well into the middle classes and going to get worse.

So I'm hoping. I think voter rebellion is delayed because today's new ultrawealthy classes came into this era having learned from their 1930s precessors -- divide and conquer the electorate before getting to the heavy-duty sacking and destroying.

[SoonerPride]

13. And THEM having the vote is what scares the republicnas to death

Thus they do everything in their power to keep THEM, the unwashed masses who actually run the country, from voting.

Voter ID laws
gerrymandering
purging voter rolls
not making election day a national holiday
not wanting vote by mail

They know if the masses all spoke, we'd look more like Denmark or Norway instead of this kakistocracy plutocracy we have now.

[Hortensis]

16. Lol, and the washed people too. I don't actually know any masses,

and almost everyone I know bathes frequently, most daily.

You know, everyone has had the vote all along, although we're reached a real danger point where that could be lost. We did this to ourselves, though, and we're going to have to undo it. Or right now will look like the good old days in retrospect. Allowing the insanely irresponsible development of classes so wealthy that they are incompatible with democracy and with our own widespread wellbeing is our doing. And we're going to have to destroy, not just control, them.

330,000,000 of us. 70,000 families of them.

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." – Nancy Pelosi to the nation at the opening of the 116th congress.

We've been a majority of the electorate for a long time. We've included the large liberal majority and leadership of the Democratic Party since the New Deal era. We do need more people to wake up and join us.

[Midnightwalk]

10. Absolutely

Self isolation is about protecting the people who have to be out including truck drivers and grocery store workers. Of course healthcare workers.

Still I’m privileged to be working from home. Others are privileged to be retired.

I wish we were suspending rent and mortgage payments for say 3 or more months, by tacking those months on the end of the lease or loan so that people didn’t have to worry about being homeless at the end. I wish there was an adequate safety net.

I have sympathy for people who genuinely have to be out for economic reasons. The government should be doing everything possible to make it unnecessary to be out so they can keep their residence and feed their families.

I have nothing but contempt for people who have to be out because they are bored or want to get a haircut.

I have been thinking that walking where there are no people is a benign thing, but I’m changing my mind. For one thing it’s getting harder to find empty places. More important I’m realizing that being seen outside makes it seem normal and that’s not a message I want to send.

Maybe I’ll limit any walking to the middle of the night again. I’m also thinking of not walking at all, but I do need some exercise for the body and air for my head.

[Hortensis]

14. Speaking of quiet heroes: "They lived in a factory for 28 days to make

millions of pounds of raw PPE materials to help fight coronavirus"

At his factory just off the Delaware River, in the far southeastern corner of Pennsylvania, Joe Boyce clocked in on March 23 for the longest shift of his life. In his office, an air mattress replaced his desk chair. He brought a toothbrush and shaving kit, moving into the Braskem petrochemical plant in Marcus Hook, Pa., as if it were a makeshift college dormitory. The casual office kitchen became a mess hall for him and his 42 co-workers turned roommates. The factory’s emergency operations center became their new lounge room.

For 28 days, they did not leave — sleeping and working all in one place. In what they called a “live-in” at the factory, the undertaking was just one example of the endless ways that Americans in every industry have uniquely contributed to fighting coronavirus. The 43 men went home Sunday after each working 12-hour shifts all day and night for a month straight, producing tens of millions of pounds of the raw materials that will end up in face masks and surgical gowns worn on the front lines of the pandemic.

No one told them they had to do it. All of the workers volunteered, hunkering down at the plant to ensure no one caught the virus outside as they sought to meet the rocketing demand for their key product, polypropylene, which is needed to make various medical and hygienic items. Braskem’s plant in Neal, W.Va., is doing a second live-in now.

“We were just happy to be able to help,” Boyce, an operations shift supervisor and a 27-year veteran at Braskem America, told The Washington Post. “We’ve been getting messages on social media from nurses, doctors, EMS workers, saying thank you for what we’re doing. But we want to thank them for what they did and are continuing to do. That’s what made the time we were in there go by quickly, just being able to support them.” ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/23/factory-masks-coronavirus-ppe/

[SheltieLover]

15. K&R