To mask, or not to mask is never the question

Recently the CDC came out with a new masking guidance.

And that is to wear a mask if you are unvaccinated. Or in an area with a high covid transmission rate. Or, as most of the population of the US, never, never, never. Except for some of us. And then they doubled down and said that hospitals don’t have to wear masks.

And a lot of hospital type folk are not happy about this. Especially as covid is still killing thousands a week.

And others are throwing a ticker tape parade. And think that this is yet another sign that we are getting back to “normal”.

uh, huh.

And if you think that the world is going back to what you considered normal nearly three years ago, there is some lovely ocean front property in Arizona. George Strait says so.

Of course, the way the seas are rising, it shan’t be long until that song is deemed prophetic.

But the Golden Gate Bridge is not for sale.

We are facing what has been deemed to be a very rough flu season. Australia is often seen as the canary in the coal mine around flu, as their flu season starts nearly 6 months ahead of ours. Not to mention the sheer amount of people dying of covid monthly.

Or the hospitals that still have covid patients. Including nearly every hospital in the system I work for. Admitted numbers are down, true. But everyone I know on Med-Surg, or the ED, or the ICU is bracing for flu season. Our admitted for other reasons number never has gone down. The hospital is holding in the ED more often than not. The ACU is holding post op patients weekly. Traditionally in the summer the numbers moderate a bit. But not this year.

Do I still mask up when I go places? Yes.

Am I vaccinated? Yep. Twice, and boosted twice, including the bivalent vaccine that just came out. But the life I save may be someone else’s.

As of noon today, there have been one million, sixty thousand, four hundred seventy-eight deaths.

Tell me again, grandpa, how covid is gone away. I like fairy tales as bedtime stories.