Yesterday’s adventure took me to the grocery store. Which now has only one entrance, inconveniently and dangerously leading up a step significantly higher than is normal for any curb or a staircase step. The lady in front of me (I was still crossing the drive between parking lot and the entrance) tripped and fell. I called out to her to see if she was OK. She sat there rubbing her knee. Said she was fine, got up, limped into the store.
For Pete’s sake, if you’re going this route, grocery stores and “essential” businesses, at least put the entrance by the wheel chair accessible part of the sidewalk, which cannot even be accessed by those in wheelchairs, or those motorized grocery carts, so people don’t trip! Even people who can walk have trouble getting up that spot on the sidewalk! Especially with a mask on their face which they cannot see around because that’s not something they’re used to. There is a certain amount of reduced access to fields of vision around these masks. I know, as I wore surgical masks day in and day out for many years. And there’s a “learning curve” believe it or not to seeing around them.
I had a cart with me, which I usually try to do, taken from the cart coral. A courtesy I’ve maintained over the years. So I had to juggle to get it onto the sidewalk. Then you get inside and this recording keeps playing. Over and over it’s the same thing about how we are “keeping you safe” with our protective shields at the checkout. And maintain your social distancing. Dystopian brainwashing. I thought I was on some dark futuristic sci fi set. Too bad you don’t care as much about your unsafe roped off entrance! My mood of course steadily improved, keepin’ it on the sunny side. Right. Guess again.
The lady who fell had a mask on. As did many others in the store. There were also glove wearers. Here’s my take on this absurdity, as someone who worked in O.R.s for 43 years, military and civilian, – until I retired in 2011, based on what I was seeing juxtaposed to what I know to be proper usage.
First of all, these things are meant for specific uses under controlled conditions, where everyone involved understands the protocols for wearing masks and gloves. People are trained to do this. There are techniques for donning them and for removing them, so that you don’t add to the contamination problem. None of which the public understands. These practices also occur within controlled environments to which the public has no access, so I am not blaming them. However…
Out there on the street it’s anything but controlled. Homemade masks made of t-shirts that looked like dirty underwear, gloves of the winter variety – not even exam type or food handler rubber or nitrile gloves – were being worn. People will get sick just from having wet filth from their own breath, rolled up around their mouths and nostrils and eyes that grows bacteria in warm, moist growth medium. A fly could crawl through the weave of many of them! The protection these masks provide the wearer is dubious, and their gloves certainly don’t provide any protection for others, after they handle door knobs, car doors, the family dog, grocery carts, produce cans, and cereal boxes! One is better off simply washing one’s hands, or carrying along hand sanitizer. (Oh I forgot, we ran out of that.) Especially anyone who is not wearing gloves so you don’t get a disease from the glove wearers! These uneducated practices are setting up more disease than they prevent. It is also self protectionism without regard to anyone else – due to ignorance.
The postal carrier came by the other day with 2 packages, which she handed me. She had on “exam” gloves, which were filthy with dirt and ink that came from the packages I watched her rummage through before she got out of the mail truck. I pled the Blood of Jesus, and took the packages with a smile anyway. That might protect you, honey. But you’re sure not doing anyone on your route any favors with all that filth on the outside of your gloves. And of course your hands are not getting washed much either, because you are under the illusion that this protects you. But guess what? Your hands are growing their own little animal farm underneath those gloves.
Then I had a friend tell me she wears 2 masks and her winter gloves in the store. I saw a lot of that. Filthy wool or leather gloves. This IMO is due to the fear porn over no one coming up with any verifiable evidence on a consistent basis as to what the coronavirus is, where it came from, its nature, or frankly if it even actually exists. Much nebulosity IMO. Or any viable knowledge about PPE. People are grabbing at straws.
This is all reaction, not emergency response. The best idea is, if you don’t know what you’re doing, then don’t try to help or be part of the solution. Get out of the way! Or better yet – educate yourself on the Internet with mask and glove protocols. And it’s pretty clear no one knows what they are doing! It is fight / flight reptilian brain response all wrapped into one. The fear is palpable. One is likely more at risk from being attacked by the Toilet Paper Snatchers than a disease!
Incidentally, I’d also like to ask why – since there is reportedly a shortage of medical masks – the US government is reported to have sent one million medical masks to Israel, and then our government reportedly turns around and asks our US military personnel to just make do. They are reportedly told that they will have to make their own masks out of whatever they can find. Where’s the respect for our military’s needs, when this thing is being handled like it’s an enemy? Don’t they need the proper “protective shields” that have been given away to this little country, which for some reason reportedly seems to have such a strong say in whatever goes on in the USA. Or outside of it.
One wonders if the war model is always the best solution. War on drugs. War on cancer. War on terror. War on, war on, war on… Well, most of us are war out (pardon the grammar)! But which of these wars is ever won? Yet every time something comes along, it’s the same old modus operandi. Did you ever wonder why that is?
It’s time to cast aside these outmoded models of relating to everything by reacting. Supposedly, it’s reported, we have all these defense organizations designed to protect us. Remember 911? How well did that go? Remember Katrina? How well did that go? You name your favorite disaster… But we have TSA keeping us safe at the airport, right?
Who is running this show from behind the curtains, backstage? We need to stop going to the theater. In fact maybe the “theater of war” needs to be closed down. We’re all fed up with these reruns!
Follow the money. Who benefits from all this bungling in a big way?
By the way, anybody get that stimulus check yet?
Into And Out Of The Blue 