Covid links
Does our child need to isolate? Can I use an at-home test on a baby? Your parenting pandemic questions answered.
With omicron exploding throughout the United States, many of the questions that have bedeviled caregivers for the length of the pandemic are taking on a new urgency. If we want our children to stay healthy, and not infect other friends, families and strangers, what should we be doing right now? What shouldn’t we be doing? Because omicron appears to cause less severe illness, does it even matter if a healthy kid catches covid?
Absolute answers are in short supply. With that in mind, we asked experts of different backgrounds to weigh in questions gathered from two dozen parents...
We’re used to stress in the ER. But omicron has made our jobs impossible.
We can’t provide the right care at the right time anymore - and after two years, we’re exhausted from trying
...Depending on how you count, though, we’re currently on our fourth or fifth surge of covid cases. As our health-care system is pummeled by yet another wave, it’s just too much. We never recovered from the last wave. Our bulwarks cracked, and then they were breached. It has become nearly impossible for us to take the right care of the right patient at the right time....
Workers are out sick in record numbers, exacerbating labor shortage woes
The latest surge of coronavirus cases powered by the omicron variant has caused extremely high numbers of employees to miss work because of illness, exacerbating the country’s persistent labor shortages and threatening to complicate the labor market’s push toward pre-pandemic employment levels.
Between Dec. 29 and Jan. 10, approximately 8.8 million workers reported not working because they were sick with the coronavirus or caring for someone who was, according to new data from the Census Bureau.
Those numbers are nearly triple the levels from the first two weeks of December, before cases had started to peak around the country. They were also the highest numbers since the agency started taking the survey in April 2020 - well over last January’s peak of 6.6 million workers out....
Greetings from the pandemic memory hole, where the last two years are one big blur
Even the memory of the time she forgot how old she was has gotten a little murky for Lauren Bendik.
“So, I’m trying to remember,” she says. “Um. I feel like there was a form, or there was something I was filling out, and I had to put down my age, and I had to think about it.”
She was 31, right? No, she was 32. Right. There had been two listless pandemic birthdays that had blurred into one, because two years have blurred into one, and it can be hard to pull them apart.
“I think I, in general, have a pretty good memory in terms of time and events and how long ago things were,” says Bendik, who lives in Los Angeles. But the days have all been the same, especially after last spring when she was laid off from her job as a social worker. Since then, “There’s nothing to mark the time, and you don’t know when the pandemic is going to end,” she says. “You feel like you’re waiting for something, but it’s never coming.”...
From barricaded playgrounds to crowded beaches: Life with omicron around the world--a very good article with brief audio and video clips
This entry was originally posted at https://med-cat.dreamwidth.org/3398669.html. You can comment here, or there using OpenID if you prefer.
With omicron exploding throughout the United States, many of the questions that have bedeviled caregivers for the length of the pandemic are taking on a new urgency. If we want our children to stay healthy, and not infect other friends, families and strangers, what should we be doing right now? What shouldn’t we be doing? Because omicron appears to cause less severe illness, does it even matter if a healthy kid catches covid?
Absolute answers are in short supply. With that in mind, we asked experts of different backgrounds to weigh in questions gathered from two dozen parents...
We’re used to stress in the ER. But omicron has made our jobs impossible.
We can’t provide the right care at the right time anymore - and after two years, we’re exhausted from trying
...Depending on how you count, though, we’re currently on our fourth or fifth surge of covid cases. As our health-care system is pummeled by yet another wave, it’s just too much. We never recovered from the last wave. Our bulwarks cracked, and then they were breached. It has become nearly impossible for us to take the right care of the right patient at the right time....
Workers are out sick in record numbers, exacerbating labor shortage woes
The latest surge of coronavirus cases powered by the omicron variant has caused extremely high numbers of employees to miss work because of illness, exacerbating the country’s persistent labor shortages and threatening to complicate the labor market’s push toward pre-pandemic employment levels.
Between Dec. 29 and Jan. 10, approximately 8.8 million workers reported not working because they were sick with the coronavirus or caring for someone who was, according to new data from the Census Bureau.
Those numbers are nearly triple the levels from the first two weeks of December, before cases had started to peak around the country. They were also the highest numbers since the agency started taking the survey in April 2020 - well over last January’s peak of 6.6 million workers out....
Greetings from the pandemic memory hole, where the last two years are one big blur
Even the memory of the time she forgot how old she was has gotten a little murky for Lauren Bendik.
“So, I’m trying to remember,” she says. “Um. I feel like there was a form, or there was something I was filling out, and I had to put down my age, and I had to think about it.”
She was 31, right? No, she was 32. Right. There had been two listless pandemic birthdays that had blurred into one, because two years have blurred into one, and it can be hard to pull them apart.
“I think I, in general, have a pretty good memory in terms of time and events and how long ago things were,” says Bendik, who lives in Los Angeles. But the days have all been the same, especially after last spring when she was laid off from her job as a social worker. Since then, “There’s nothing to mark the time, and you don’t know when the pandemic is going to end,” she says. “You feel like you’re waiting for something, but it’s never coming.”...
From barricaded playgrounds to crowded beaches: Life with omicron around the world--a very good article with brief audio and video clips
This entry was originally posted at https://med-cat.dreamwidth.org/3398669.html. You can comment here, or there using OpenID if you prefer.