Park Forest, IL-(ENEWSPF)- Park Forest resident Tracy Mick, RN, is a nurse at Palos Community Hospital. She, like her colleagues and thousands of others in the health profession, works with patients suffering from the most dangerous disease of the modern era: COVID-19. She advises everyone to wear a mask in public during this pandemic.
Besides the perils associated with COVID-19 (this Novel Coronavirus takes a “ferocious rampage through the body, from brain to toes” as it kills. – Science April 17, 2020), even if the virus does not kill the person it infects — and most people do recover — it still leaves an inordinate number of those suffering in need of hospitalization. Hence, the reason to “flatten the curve” so too many people don’t get the virus at once, the hospitals become overrun, as they did in Italy, and we lose people in numbers exponential to the losses we are suffering now.
Ms. Mick strongly recommends that everyone wear a mask when out in public, even, or especially, when social distancing. The Novel Coronavirus travels like second-hand smoke, and we put ourselves and others at risk even if we are six or more feet apart.
“I’ve been seeing things on Facebook about people not wanting to wear masks in public or that they don’t help,” Nurse Mick says. “All I’m gonna say is yes, it may not be 100% effective, but any little bit helps.
“Yes, [masks] are uncomfortable and yes, it can be hard to breathe. Try wearing them for 8-12 hours at a time,” she says.
“I’m quite sure all my fellow healthcare works, grocery store employees, and all the other workers who are having to wear them would agree we want this over as much as everyone else does. No one wants to work like this for 8 or 12 hours,” she says.
But then she stresses, “Let’s be smart people!”
We are likely only one-tenth of the way through this pandemic, David Wallace-Wells writes in New York Magazine, and misinformation about the Novel Coronavirus has gone viral.
I am certain that I do not want this virus. I do not take kindly to protesters flaunting stay-at-home and social distancing orders in their states, putting themselves and everyone they come into contact with in danger. This virus is vicious and does not discriminate. Young and old are dying, some who never had preexisting health conditions, even as many recover.
Let’s be smart, people!
Wear a mask.
