Still want to go out without a mask?

[LONDONER]

For those people who don't understand what it means to be on a ventilator but want to take the chance of going out without a mask...

For starters, it's NOT an oxygen mask put over the mouth while the patient is comfortably lying down and reading magazines. Ventilation for Covid-19 is a painful intubation that goes down your throat and stays there until you live or you die.

It is done under anesthesia for 2 to 3 weeks without moving, often upside down, with a tube inserted from the mouth up to the trachea and allows you to breathe to the rhythm of the lung machine. The patient can't talk or eat, or do anything naturally - the machine keeps you alive.

The discomfort and pain they feel from this means medical experts have to administer sedatives and painkillers to ensure tube tolerance for as long as the machine is needed. It's like being in an artificial coma.

After 20 days from this treatment, a young patient loses 40% muscle mass, and gets mouth or vocal cords trauma, as well as possible pulmonary or heart complications.

It is for this reason that old or already weak people can't withstand the treatment and die. Many of us are in this boat ... so stay safe unless you want to take the chance of ending up here. This is NOT the flu.

Add a tube into your stomach, either through your nose or skin for liquid food, a sticky bag around your butt to collect the diarrhea, a foley catheter to collect urine, an IV for fluids and meds, an A-line f to monitor your BP that is completely dependent upon finely calculated med doses, teams of nurses, CRNA’s and MA’s to reposition your limbs every two hours and lying on a mat that circulates ice cold fluid to help bring down your 104 degree temp.

Anyone still want to try all that out? Stay home and wear a mask when you go out! Stay safe and well!

What this article doesn't say, is that the patient can hear everything that is said so if the staff carelessly talks about death, the patient panics. If the sedatives are lessened, the patient panics because he can't breath or talk or, in his case, move. When they begin to lower the pain medications, the patient screams in his head but can't make a sound. When they take out the tubes it's extremely uncomfortable. A trachea may replace the respirator, the patient still can't talk or eat without a tube.

[Tjemka88]

I think the necessity of wearing masks depends on the country and the number of those who are sick.

[marshlander]

I'm with you on that one, @LONDONER , but wearing a mask won't protect us. At best it stops us passing on the virus if we are carrying, but not displaying symptoms. Having said so, I don't go anywhere if there is a chance I am going to meet someone else. To me it seems a simple courtesy now that we know what we know.

I wonder how many people on the Dorset beaches this week were wearing masks ...

[InbetweenDreams]

My understanding is that people wearing masks, or face coverings of any kind greatly reduces the risk of transmission, if I recall up to 90% compared to without anyone wearing one. It is why the US is now seeing huge spikes because very few people are wearing masks. People are politicizing COVID-19, which is ridiculous.

[andy]

That sounds truly awful!

Definitely, stay extra safe if you are in an 'at risk' or vulnerable group!

I always keep safe distance from people when I venture outside so don't wear one in big open spaces with fresh air but definitely when I go into a shop or other enclosed spaces.

I think things will never truly get back to normal even after the pandemic is over... we'll still be wearing masks to avoid catching normal flu like in Japan/China etc.

[CellarDweller]

I have a supply of masks and gloves, and I wear them whenever I go into an enclosed place.

Many of our states are slowing reopening, but there are states that opened too quickly, and there are literally thousands of new cases of Covid-19 here now, so I can't understand why people are so eager to go out without masks.

[Bhp91126]

Hello from one of the new hotspots. New infections have exploded in Florida over the last 2 weeks. I only go out when I absolutely must and I’m wearing a mask wherever I go. So far nothing has happened, but sh.t is creeping closer. My husbands running buddy just got sick and he’s trying to get tested....

[CellarDweller]

All we can really do is keep wearing masks, gloves, and keep washing your hands and face.

[eastofeden]

I try to use my gut and my brain in harmony to make the best decision and that is to listen to medical professionals who know way more than I do.

Once I trust someone - and I don't give trust easily - I pretty much will let them be my guide and they have individually and collectively convinced me masks are a necessary new normal for the foreseeable future and I am OK with it.

I don't see an end coming very soon and I know no matter what I do there are always going to be incidents that may expose me due to my own or someone else's carelessness BUT every day in life we live with the possibility and the eventual certainty of death and we always have so the precautions being suggested seem perfectly reasonable and necessary at this moment in time.

I am a little stunned by some of the people who have a problem with it - they are frightening.

[Raven]

Where did you get yours from? We made our own with just cloth and elastic but would like to buy proper ones.