Thorin is home

[dreamshark]

 He drove himself. I was a little dubious about that, but the nurses said it was okay. Laparascopic surgery - what a great invention. It's like taking your car to Midas - you drive in and drive out an hour later with a new exhaust system. 

Comments

[minnehaha]

Excellent! I am glad for all. Are you quarantining him?

K.

[dreamshark]

We've been talking about it, but really aren't in a position to do much of a quarantine since we all share the main bathroom. He spends most of his time in his room anyway. I asked him to keep his own set of towels and hygiene equipment in his room and wipe down the bathroom after he uses it. Other than that, not sure what else to do. I had him ask at the hospital and they had no guidance to give on that topic. I can find NOTHING online on recommended procedures for people returning from hospital for non-COVID related procedures.

Fortunately the hospital he went to (Methodist) was not dealing with a rush of COVID patients (or any kind of patients). They apparently do have some, who are being served on a separate floor or wing. But the question that no hospital can be counted on to answer honestly is whether they are over-scheduling their staff and moving them randomly between high and low exposure areas.

[minnehaha]

If they have enough PPE then things should be OK...?

K.

[dreamshark]

Except that after weeks of a steady drumbeat of official "information" stating unequivocally that masks DO NOT PROTECT THE WEARER I am having a hard time believing that "PPE" accomplishes much of anything. Maybe N95 masks, but not if they are being worn for days at a time. And WTF on hospitals begging for people to make them the same homemade masks that we were told time and time again DO NOT WORK? I was pretty sure that the original information was bullshit, but now I'm wondering if the original information was correct and the current line is bullshit. Clearly one or the other is bogus. Since there is no way to know which one, I'm reluctantly wearing a mask when I go shopping, but I feel kind of like a gullible idiot.

[quadong]

The answer must be that each kind of mask provides *some* amount of protection in each direction, but no one is quite sure how much in each direction for each kind, and anyway when boiling down information for public consumption, they believe we can only understand "works" and "doesn't work".

Frustrating, but you shouldn't come away with the conclusion that therefore nothing works at all.

[dreamshark]

My conclusion is that the CDC has been deliberately lying to the public for reasons that seemed so morally right to them that they overrode the usual scientist's commitment to the truth. Clearly, masks were thought to be effective enough at protecting the wearer that they needed to be saved for the people who needed them most. So the general public was told that they were COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE so they wouldn't hog them. But this resulted in a cascade of lies and half truths so confusing that I don't think anybody knows what's real now, least of all the health care workers that they were trying to protect. So now we have nurses running out to Home Depot and buying dust masks for use in COVID wards - surely that isn't going to work, is it? But it probably works better than homemade masks made out of t-shirts. Or maybe not. Who knows?

[quadong]

Well, The Bulletin agrees with your conclusion.

https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/another-victim-of-the-pandemic-trust-in-the-government/

[laramie]

I saw a lovely graphic yesterday showing progressive degrees of protection.

Wearing a mask is better than not wearing one. Both people in an encounter wearing masks is better than that. If they are both also six feet apart, it is better yet, and more distance is better still. None of it is as good as staying home and having no encounter at all.