NRPI - No Real Person Involved

 In Ontario right now, 

"Hospital backlogs in pediatric care could affect children's health for the rest of their lives. Two-thirds of pediatric patients in need of surgery at two of Ontario's largest children's hospitals are being forced to wait beyond the recommended window as a result of backlogs and inadequate resources, putting them at risk for lifelong complications and setbacks. At Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, the surgical wait list soared to 6,509 last week, the longest it has ever been. . . . It's hard to overstate the gravity of the situation. . . . At CHEO in Ottawa, there are almost 36,000 patients waiting to be seen. . . . We're talking about pediatric health interventions that can change the trajectory of an entire life. . . . What we need is a significant increase in resources to be able to bring the wait list down."

We need to fix the entire healthcare system that has unraveled in the hands of conservative governments, but, as one commenter said, we can also quit adding to the backlog by mandating improved "air quality in schools and school buses and prevent unnecessary illness of those attending school and those they bring illness home to."

In the states, Education Week tracked Covid deaths of educators to December 2022. They stopped at over 1,300. 

The first two valleys in Covid hospitalizations, where we almost hit zero, were in the summer of 2020 and 2021. We don't hit those valleys anymore. But we could. And imaging the difference if these 2,000 people a day weren't in the hospital. 

It's so curious to me that, online, I'm arguing about accepting and adapting to the new normal of climate change because we can't turn it around and get back to the kinds of summers we used to have. It's not that we shouldn't do all we can to slow climate change, but that we can't get back to an earlier baseline. This summer may be one of the coldest of the rest of our lives. I got royally trounced for being a fatalist and giving up no matter how many ways I explain that I am not giving up on doing all I can to slow things down, but there's absolutely no stopping it or returning to even 1°C above target. We'll be really lucky to stay under 1.5°C, which we've already dipped past. More on that another day.

But with Covid we CAN get back to a baseline!! And yet so many have given up completely, learning to live with a FATAL, DISABLING DISEASE. We can get much closer to zero if we all wear good quality well-fitting masks in public places, at least whenever the CO2 is over 500ppm. The only tricky part is eating lunch at schools, but once we started letting them leave the room at lunch, tons of kids at my high school chose to eat outdoors all winter. Because of that "nutrition break" in which all kids were forced to eat in their classroom together mid-morning - with nobody allowed to leave while everyone unmasked - we've never really had masking in school. 

Masks don't hurt. The newer models are comfortable enough there's just a slight indent after an 8-hour day. They're a bit annoying, sure, but is the convenience of going without a mask worth the risk to children's lives? I've been saying that since the beginning, and I'm just flabbergasted that people don't get the connection between going for groceries unmasked carrying an unknown asymptomatic case and that kid next to them in line at the check-out getting sick a few days later, infecting their entire class, and someone dying or becoming permanently disabled, unable to sit up for more than a few minutes a day.  

I get that we don't matter to the powers that be. We're all just cogs in the machine. All those tragic deaths? NRPI. Yup. But I'm still struggling with the reality that we don't matter to one another.