.
I don’t know how things are going in your little corner of the world.
I sure hope all’s well and good for you.
But here in Montréal, the hospitals are (over)filled with patients. Covid is still making its fair share of victims, although no one’s talking about it (because, let’s face it, nobody wants to know), influenza is hitting hard after three years of not being able to spread because of all the health measures in place around the globe, and now pneumonia seems to affect more and more people, and forcing them to seek medical assistance.
On the news, we’ve seen several stories of relatively severely ill people who had to wait for days, lying on the floor, before getting any kind of assistance (besides getting fed very mild pain killers).
I do get that we’re all fed up with everything that happened the past three years… I really do get it.
This afternoon, Chéri’s parents came to spend some time with us. They wanted us to meet at one of Montréal’s major shopping malls, because they’ll be traveling in February, and wanted to buy a couple of things.
As you might know, Chéri and I have avoided big crowds since this whole covid thing. And I honestly thought that the mall would be quite quiet just after the holidays. Otherwise, I would have convinced Chéri to make other plans.
But, as seen on the above picture, I was terribly wrong. It wasn’t quiet at all. It was filled with people just roaming around, maskless. I had my mask on, but I doubt that in such a large petri dish, it made any difference.
And as I type this, I’ve started to have sniffles.
So, yeah. I think it is great that things seem to be back to normal… But is it?
Is it really?
And are we really willing to go for another round, just to have a couple of weeks of back in the days-like times?
I just hope the sniffles will go away during the night, but I have a bad feeling about them.
And I am sorry that we seek normality more than we want to protect society as a whole. As if, because we are North Americans, we are safer than other parts of the world.
Bullsh*t.
We’re all part of this.
But hey! Apparently, We’re now, back to our regular programming… So please stay tuned!
Cyranny's Cove 
One positive is at least the groups in the Mall are trying to stay a bit away from each other.
LikeLike
We have had similar situations with hospitals here in the UK. It seems as if one of the issues is that there are older patients who are well enough to be discharged, however, they cannot return home without some care arrangements or special equipment in place. I was chatting to a patient the other day who is in hospital…the services were he live needed him to jump through some admin related hoops before they were even allowed to make arrangements for him. I was trying to help him with that to speed things up. He is desperate to return home, but we all have to wait until his home is safe for him to return to. Meanwhile, there is nothing medically keeping him in hospital. His health is stable.
I am sure there are many many similar situations across the whole UK. We have had nurses and ambulance workers on strike, and although I believe pay is a factor, they are also citing serious concerns over safety. There are lots of reports of ambulances being stuck outside of hospital for many hours, and taking much longer than the targets to reach emergencies. It’s been on the news regularly for around two months.
There is a lot of misleading information about anti-biotics. For the vast majority of people, their own immune system will fight infections – but it takes time, rest and nutrition. Pharmacy remedies can relieve some of the symptoms associated with the infection. But there was a lot of media attention on around twenty child deaths from Strep A this past winter. People started to panic – and we had adult patients demanding anti-biotics from the Doctor even when they had only been ill for a few days because they felt a but “phlegmy” and we had parents screaming for an emergency appointment because their child had a runny nose and a sore throat. We felt empathy, but when people overload both their local GP service (who are not an emergency service and have a limited amount of appointments available) head down to an A&E department at a hospital when there is hardly anything wrong with them – it means waiting times will dramatically increase. The emergency services have a great triage process to identify who to prioritise on.
Winter is always a demanding season – big rise in flu related hospital admissions – most in the older generation (which some think is because the two years of self-isolating and lack of exposure to harmful antigens, perhaps the immune system for some people is not as sharp as it should be) and Covid is also a factor. From what I have seen with my own eyes, December was a dark month for many – we saw a dramatic increase in domestic violence related injuries and self-harm related reports. I know our local services are seeing many many many people – thousands of scans and tens of thousands of blood, urine and faecal tests just in our area. The colossal amount of prescriptions being issued. There is so much work going on, such an amazing service, but when the demand increases, the media broadcast that the NHS is a failure. I think some of us might be a little peeved about that – because every day we are working hard, going above and beyond, going the extra mile. Everyday, our patients thank us for the service we delivered.
LikeLike
Same thing in Ontario, with a government withholding funding to healthcare and then claiming it has no money for healthcare. Ridiculous.
LikeLike
Same here. I’ve been staying in mostly and do not socialize here in my building because people here do not take precautions. Monday I’m getting my last Covid booster but yesterday I saw an article saying it might be linked to strokes😳
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPad
LikeLike
You all are just starting to deal with this?
For me, this has been the reality for the last 18 months. People everywhere, no one else masked. 18 months ago and before, you’d see at least half of the swarm of people in masks.
It’s insane. But hey, you can’t tell someone else what to do with their lives.
LikeLike