Brin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brin_bellway) wrote2021-09-20 10:58 am
brin_bellway) wrote2021-09-20 10:58 am
Assorted postscripts
[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.)
---
[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.
![*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
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.)