Assorted postscripts
Sep. 20th, 2021 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[cw: illness, (hypothetical) injury]
[One man's modus ponens]
Every time I walk on a freshly-mopped floor at work now, a little part of me goes "I bet the risk of brain injury doing this is *way* higher than 0.8 per million hours".
To be fair, I don't think I'm actually significantly more scared of it than I was before: the fear is just *phrased* differently.
(I wouldn't be able to go stealth at work, though: the padding would show through my work-uniform hat. And in any case, it's not like I actually *own* any padding at this time.)
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[The one about 20's music]
Come to think of it, "High High Hopes" does kind of have the 20's sound. A transitional form, perhaps?
(edit: part 3)
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[The life you save may be your own]
A couple weeks ago the Grand River Hospital Foundation sent me a glossy pamphlet in the mail, presumably trying to get me to keep them in my charity-related thoughts. I get the reasoning, but also I only gave them $20, so the printing and postage on that pamphlet was probably an uncomfortably large percentage of the total.
![*You* stepped up to fight a health crisis. *You* made our Region Ready. Thank *you*. [logo of Grand River Hospital, with the slogan 'Care. Never. Stops.']](https://brinbellway.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/region-ready-pamphlet-part-1.jpg)
![Region Ready prepared us to deliver these critical supplies daily: 11,000 gloves, 42,000 masks, 250L hand sanitizer. ¶'It is only because of the generosity of people like you that we have been able to respond as successfully to the COVID-19 crisis as we have.' - Ron Gagnon, CEO, Grand River Hospital. ¶beyondnormal.ca. ¶Grand River Hospital Foundation; 835 King Street West; Kitchener, ON, N2G 1G3; info@grhf.ca; 519-749-4205; @careneverstops. [logo of Grand River Hospital, with the slogan 'Care. Never. Stops.']](https://brinbellway.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/region-ready-pamphlet-part-3.jpg)
Also, "as we [...] ready ourselves to shed our masks", as if I am *ever* letting anyone take my mask away from me again. I mean, *god*, the pollen *alone*. You can take my mask from my cold dead face.
(I am potentially open to negotiation regarding what level of respiratory protection to wear--at least sometimes; not so much right now when we're heading into a particularly nasty respiratory-illness season--but "nothing" is not an acceptable answer unless you're, like, performing dental care on me. (And even then, my dentist had 1 - 2 standalone air-filtration units per room.))
...in *general*, that message kind of reads like it's from an alternate universe where things went a bit better. In the face of the collective challenge of COVID, we *failed*. We did not fail *maximally*, especially in Waterloo Region where the hospitals haven't ever overflowed and 87.7% of the 12+ population has at least one dose of vaccine (81.6% fully vaccinated), but the fact is that COVID-19 is going endemic, no more feasible to eradicate than coronavirus OC43 before it. (Which is to say, I have a glimmer of hope for *both* of those, but it's not in the foreseeable future and we're going to have a hell of a time getting the public will for it (not to even mention the tech).) The great lesson of 2020 was *precisely* that you cannot rely on other people to protect you, not even if you're doing the same for them.
[One man's modus ponens]
Every time I walk on a freshly-mopped floor at work now, a little part of me goes "I bet the risk of brain injury doing this is *way* higher than 0.8 per million hours".
To be fair, I don't think I'm actually significantly more scared of it than I was before: the fear is just *phrased* differently.
(I wouldn't be able to go stealth at work, though: the padding would show through my work-uniform hat. And in any case, it's not like I actually *own* any padding at this time.)
---
[The one about 20's music]
Come to think of it, "High High Hopes" does kind of have the 20's sound. A transitional form, perhaps?
(edit: part 3)
---
[The life you save may be your own]
A couple weeks ago the Grand River Hospital Foundation sent me a glossy pamphlet in the mail, presumably trying to get me to keep them in my charity-related thoughts. I get the reasoning, but also I only gave them $20, so the printing and postage on that pamphlet was probably an uncomfortably large percentage of the total.
Also, "as we [...] ready ourselves to shed our masks", as if I am *ever* letting anyone take my mask away from me again. I mean, *god*, the pollen *alone*. You can take my mask from my cold dead face.
(I am potentially open to negotiation regarding what level of respiratory protection to wear--at least sometimes; not so much right now when we're heading into a particularly nasty respiratory-illness season--but "nothing" is not an acceptable answer unless you're, like, performing dental care on me. (And even then, my dentist had 1 - 2 standalone air-filtration units per room.))
...in *general*, that message kind of reads like it's from an alternate universe where things went a bit better. In the face of the collective challenge of COVID, we *failed*. We did not fail *maximally*, especially in Waterloo Region where the hospitals haven't ever overflowed and 87.7% of the 12+ population has at least one dose of vaccine (81.6% fully vaccinated), but the fact is that COVID-19 is going endemic, no more feasible to eradicate than coronavirus OC43 before it. (Which is to say, I have a glimmer of hope for *both* of those, but it's not in the foreseeable future and we're going to have a hell of a time getting the public will for it (not to even mention the tech).) The great lesson of 2020 was *precisely* that you cannot rely on other people to protect you, not even if you're doing the same for them.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-20 03:03 pm (UTC)And apparently at this rate my COVID vaccination will not be firing on all cylinders anymore by the time the Christmas surge hits, so *that'll* be fun. Maybe I'll be able to score a booster by then, especially as someone who got entirely Pfizer. (Not that that'll help against RSV or paraflu or metapneu or any of that bullshit.)