Even as we speak, the little lady is teaching her class from home.
I saw some posts earlier and intended to reply if I had a slow night at work. Nope. I had two patients med out to higher acuity facilities. Insane! ...And it's not the nurses choice. I don't want to describe the situations because I try to be extra careful about patient information, even though I'm anonymous. I guess I have at least one person here who knows where I work, but I trust them implicitly and I doubt they frequent this part of the sandbox anyway. Still, have to respect privacy. ...But if I could tell!
Anyhow, I appreciate the pushback. Always interesting to read people's views. Even Gromnir's, and he's about the only person who manages to get under my skin from time to time. The only thing I want to mention is the hamster mask study from... Hong Kong? I can't remember, but it entailed putting fabric between cages and blowing a fan through it. I've never denied that masks help stop droplet transmission. I think a one time use mask donned for single patient encounters is manifestly wise and evidence based practice. My point is that the way that people wear the masks makes them considerably less useful than suggested. When the cages sprout hands and start readjusting their masks, I'll buy into the theory. I don't have a lot of 10 year bets, but I'm betting the usefulness of masks will be proved considerably less effective over time when we identify all of the variables in actual practical use of a mask over extended periods of time. I know medical professionals, nurses, therapists, and doctors, who wash their outside masks like once a week and it's *impossible* not to need to adjust a mask multiple times over that period. As it is, the studies keep coming and I think we need time to sift through them and see which ones are best. After all, another of my ten year bets was that this preoccupation with surfaces was silly, and time is bearing that out already, although 10 years is 10 years. Gotta play by the rules I set when I made my bets.
Hopefully I have the time to read through all the posts I've missed, but I couldn't even catch up on the stuff up to now. So, if you have a really clever mean thing to say, wait until the weekend!