Yay vaccines. Boo omicron! Though I feel like someone will surely start calling this weekends emerald city cómicon “omicrom”, no?

I am v relieved because after a rough start the internet here is blazing fast. Yesterday and this morning we were getting 100 kbps. Now it’s 350Mbps. Yes, from K to M. Whew!

Still wading through the onerous medical stuff here, but surviving.

Me too. CT scan done, 45 minutes to bone scan.

May the scans show good results., dcp.

Yes, good scan results, please!

Thank you for validation of my tree fluffing approach.

I'm sure you did! It was some other show in the Decoder Ring feed.

hold a lease to a rent stabilized apartment in Washington Heights.

Laura, that sounds bad

-t, I get nostalgic for actual register running/retail, but between you and askye’s troubles, I think I am content to leave it in the past for now.

My employer just closed elective surgery again due to COVID. For people who don’t know surgery, that isn’t, like, plastic surgery- it is hernias and gall bladders and anything that is not immediately life threatening. I the chief medical officer is about to hold our local population down and just vaccinate them, and this is just based on public facing press releases.

Also much ~ma, dcp.

the chief medical officer is about to hold our local population down and just vaccinate them, and this is just based on public facing press releases.

S/he want any help?

My employer just closed elective surgery again due to COVID. For people who don’t know surgery, that isn’t, like, plastic surgery- it is hernias and gall bladders and anything that is not immediately life threatening. I the chief medical officer is about to hold our local population down and just vaccinate them, and this is just based on public facing press releases.

Yeah, I've read about patients going to the ER with life-threatening (non-COVID) issues like a heart attack who end up dying because all the COVID patients (who are unvaccinated) are taking up all the beds. It makes me really glad that my FiL was able to be treated in the ER for his stroke.

I'm hoping that community spread starts to drop based on the numbers of kids who have gotten/are getting vaccinated. I've only read a couple of small studies that are specifically about kids and the spread of COVID when school is in person, but the data shows exactly what you would expect, based on how kids in school spread every other disease like wildfire: schools are a hotbed of disease transmission. Vaccinating the kids means we might have a fighting chance, if enough kids get vaccinated.

There are no beds and there is such a nursing “shortage”. Because we had the vaccine mandate and there are nurses who refused they lost there jobs. Others left because they could make so much money being traveling nurses because of the nursing shortage. And not to be cynical, but “elective” surgeries are the bread and butter of how a hospital makes money, so the decision to close them down means it is really serious.

Meanwhile, I am recruiting for a program for nursing training that relies on these surgeries for clinical hours…

Because we had the vaccine mandate and there are nurses who refused

When we were doing online research about long-term care facilities for my FiL, one of the metrics reported was percentage of staff that are vaccinated for COVID. And my reaction was pretty much "The FUCK? That percentage should be 100%, god damn it." Not just COVID, either; health care professionals involved in direct patient care should be required to be current on all the vaccines they're eligible to receive. If they don't like it, they might have picked the wrong career.