Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

Not money, but life, quality of life.

My mother communicated almost entirely in facial expressions! What words she said were whispered because she wad physically incapable of raising her voice. She and I wore masks in public at the height of the pandemic and it took away her ability to communicate. She lost the ability to interact with anyone but me, because I was the only one whose face she saw, who saw her face. Good thing I was NOT an abusive asshole, because communicating with health care providers is how most elder abuse is disclosed.

A speech therapist cannot wear a mask while working. "Watch my mouth" was an established sign--tapping your lips with two fingers--because seeing how a word is formed is key to reproducing it.

Children and the elderly with dementia experience more distress and confusion in medical situations if they cannot see the faces of their healthcare providers. Medical PTSD is worsened.

I emphatically and vocally supported masking from 2020 until well after the vaccine was widely available, because the benefits of masking were worth the cost--even the cost to people like my mother. But unless you can show me evidence that staff to patient transmission is a significant risk within medical facilities today, I can no longer support it.

But that’s not an excuse for engaging in covid minimization such as “covid is endemic not a pandemic “ and “staff to patient transmission is not a significant risk “ (it is. I see stories frequently in CC circles of people’s elderly parents contracting covid in a hospital and even dying) but anecdotal evidence isn’t data so here

Here’s a study showing hospital acquired covid infections hindered recovery

And another

Please look into research on hospital acquired infections in general- not just for covid 19. It’s a significant issue.

I know people have trauma from early covid days but kindly that’s simply not an excuse for covid denial. I have been isolated for 4 years with severe long covid I have lost my job and my life to this disease and reinfection could easily render me worse to the point of becoming bedbound. Millions of people have post covid complications and the science on covid is very clear that catching it repeatedly is not safe and we don’t have the longitudinal data on what problems we might have in 20 years because covid is a new virus.

Unless you can procure a study suggesting the harms of not seeing a providers face outweigh the risks of long term damage from covid your argument is shaky.

Abelard voice: "Yuri? On MY Voidship??"

Hold up. Computer. Zoom. Enhance

for example, we have a microscope that is perfectly functional, good microscope, but its software is abandonware because the company refused to maintain it. the company is still in business, still makes essentially the exact same software, but they made all of the old tech incompatible with new software to force people to buy the new microscope tech. it would cost a quarter million dollars to replace this microscope. this perfectly good microscope.