When it comes to hospitals and other healthcare facilities, it’s baffling that most of the people who have dedicated their careers to caring for their sick and injured aren’t voluntarily masking to protect the vulnerable people under their charge.
Some do of course, but those who don’t, and in some hospitals and offices that’s most of them, absolutely know better.
I never could have imagined that the social norm among physicians, nurses, and other allied health professionals would rank avoiding a minor inconvenience ahead of their patients safety and health.
Yes, COVID is endemic now. We need to adapt. But adaptation isn’t pretending it’s 2019 again. That’s denial. Not to mention that given what we’ve seen since 2020, there’s no doubt our 2019 approach to preventing transmission of respiratory viruses in healthcare facilities was inadequate.
For a more fulsome discussion of what should be the ongoing norm moving forward, at least until we’ve regulated the cleanliness of indoor air and installed the means to ensure masking is superfluous (by way of some combination of ventilation, filtration and potentially germicidal UV) have a read of this op-ed published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
And if you’re a healthcare provider who isn’t masking around patients - do better.
Have a great weekend!
It's a very good article. But one thing - Covid is not endemic by any medical or scientific definition. Please look at the Harvard Medical School Online Dictionary definitions for PANDEMIC and ENDEMIC. We are clearly still in a pandemic. What we call it matters because erroneously calling it ENDEMIC feeds directly into the hands of those who are minimizing Covid's worldwide impact, gutting public-health, infection-control policies and resources. But a very good article nonetheless. Thank you.