A few weeks ago my mother had a serious surgery in a county hospital. The following sign appears all over the hospital on the pillars in the patient wards (hospital acronym blacked out):
at” src=”https://images.americanthinker.com/cj/cjqexvbfj8gcojaggfyq_640.jpg” />
Sure, these signs were put up during COVID and are no longer vigorously enforced, but they certainly haven’t been taken down. Numerous hospital employees — from doctors to janitors — are still wearing masks, although many lower them while talking. Hand gel dispensers are everywhere, and both medical professionals and visitors seem to be using them. I couldn’t help but notice that hundreds of unsanitary hands would be touching and depressing the exact same surface to dispense the gel, making you wonder whether hand gel dispensers only make things worse.
Eleven days after the surgery, my mother was transferred to a skilled nursing facility in the city for rehab. I went to visit her. At the admittance desk, the receptionist was sitting behind a huge Plexiglas barrier. Not in the mood to try to talk through the plexiglass, I positioned myself just past the right edge of the Plexiglas and asked for access to my mother’s room. We had the following conversation:
Receptionist: “Sir, please stand behind the center of the glass.”
Me: “COVID is over!”
Rec: “No, actually, it isn’t.”
Me: “Where’s your mask?”
Rec: “I have it right here.”
Me: “You realize masks don’t work.”
Rec: “Yes, they do. Maybe I’m the one who is sick, and it’s protecting you from me.”
Me: “I’m willing to take that chance.”
Rec: “Sir!”
I stopped there because I didn’t want to risk getting banned from seeing my mother. I then was instructed to position myself past the left edge of the Plexiglas to insert my driver’s license into a machine so another machine next to it could print out a pass, all while the receptionist was vulnerable to my unprotected breaths from the same distance as before. The irony was lost on her.
Recently, I visited my ENT’s office. It too had Plexiglas at the front desk. And a sign on the wall to the left of it read, “While no longer mandatory, masks are highly recommended.” You get the idea.
Come to think of it, my bank and my cleaners still have Plexiglas, but the allegedly science-based medical establishment should know better, and its insistence on maintaining these protocols is the very reason non-science establishments still follow them. I recall reading that even Plexiglas likely is counterproductive, because it prevents air from circulating, so if contaminated air gets behind the Plexiglas, it is more inclined to stay there.
COVID as a serious threat is over. Not only that, but all of the protocols have been debunked with solid scientific studies (e.g., on masks) or otherwise exposed as baseless (e.g., social distancing). Maybe some medical professionals actually believe that the protocols work (despite the CDC’s own pre-COVID coronavirus handbook stating that they don’t based on decades of research). Or perhaps the wokey-woke American Medical Association is at least implicitly still threatening medical providers with sanctions if they fail to put up at least a façade of compliance with them. This would explain why these protocols are followed even in conservative regions.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want this charade to go on forever, being inconvenienced by these silly protocols only a hair away from becoming mandatory again. There is a simple way to make this nonsense disappear immediately. Trump’s NIH director, hopefully Jay Bhattacharya, will announce that as we know, the evidence is overwhelming that these protocols don’t work, so we will (get ready for it) Follow The Science™ and eliminate them. Then the new administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, be it Mehmet Oz or someone else, will announce that any providers enforcing or displaying COVID protocols (patients are encouraged to call the hotline) will get a reduced payment for their Medicare or Medicaid services. Then it’s all over, in the time it takes a Manhattan cabbie to beep his horn at you when the light changes from red to green — the shortest time interval known to man.
W.A. Eliot is a pseudonym.
Image via Pxfuel.
This article was originally published at www.americanthinker.com
