Before a recent hospital visit, Christine Link requested that her healthcare providers wear masks because of her autoimmune disease and medications that further suppress her immune system. A phlebotomist initially refused her request, leaving her feeling “shocked, scared.”
Escalating her concern to the Mass General Brigham’s patient advocacy office, she received this response: “While the request by a patient to an employee to wear a mask is not an ADA-related accommodation, it is a patient-centered and trauma informed best practice, and we encourage patients to make this request with the provider who is ordering the testing. The provider would determine if it would be in the patients’ best interest clinically to have staff wear a mask while interacting with the patient. Then they would need to communicate the decision to all staff providing services to the patient, such as phlebotomy staff.”
The patient advocate’s response left Link feeling, “foolish for thinking that Mass General Brigham would actually care enough to follow the law regarding reasonable accommodations. Instead I was gaslit about my needs.” She added, “Each time I have an in-person appointment, I have to go through being made to feel as less than any other human being as a result of my disabilities, bullied, and forced into unsafe care as a condition of getting the healthcare I need.”
Link is not alone. She is one of the many patients who reached out to tell me about how the refusal of this simple ADA accommodation is ruining their lives. One of the most worrisome bits of fallout is that many patients now fear they will get Covid-19 in the hospital or medical office. They are delaying getting medical care, including cancer screening and infusions of drugs, putting off vital appointments. This risks seriously damaging their health.
Fuck this piece of shit country.
While the request by a patient to an employee to wear a mask is not an ADA-related accommodation, it is a patient-centered and trauma informed best practice, and we encourage patients to make this request with the provider who is ordering the testing. The provider would determine if it would be in the patients’ best interest clinically to have staff wear a mask while interacting with the patient. Then they would need to communicate the decision to all staff providing services to the patient, such as phlebotomy staff.
Oh fuuuuuuck all the way off. Love how it pathologizes anyone who dares request masking as "traumatized" with language that's supposed to make them seem sensitive. Also the idea that you need a doctor to decide on a case-by-case basis whether taking basic measures to reduce the spread of infectious diseases is in their patients' best interests. Imagine if they said the same thing about handwashing.
When it's pointed out that covid transmission in hospitals is needlessly killing a lot of people, a common response I see online is: "They were going to die of something, anyway."
We'll ban peanuts on a flight if someone is allergic to them, but won't do shit to stop covid transmission among the most sick and vulnerable people in our society, because scumbag doctors and nurses don't want to be inconvenienced. It's truly sickening.
We'll ban peanuts on a flight if someone is allergic to them
Give it 5 years
Boeing unveils the new PB-757, a plane made entirely out of peanut butter.
Surprisingly, it results in less deaths than the 737 Max.
you mean mandatory cyanide pills to hunt down the non-cyanide-resistant (this is basically what covid is since it's a bioweapon and not a normal virus)
"They were going to die of something, anyway."
"So were you"
pulls out minecraft shovel
let's extend this to surgeries too! let the surgeons decide on a case-by-case basis if they need masks or sterile operating rooms for opening up a person!
May as well say “the provider would determine if it would be in the patients best interest clinically to have the staff wash their hands”
Fuck this evil, rotten country, and fuck Joe Biden for being personally, individually responsible for this nightmare. Trump was the harm reduction candidate, Biden is Pestilence itself.
To be more clear about what I mean by this since what I said was really reductive, Trump is the “harm reduction candidate” solely because of how the liberals react to him and makes them kind of sometimes do what we tell them.
Trump tries to be 100% Hitler and makes the liberals mad and only manages to do 50% of his Hitlering. Biden tries to be 95% Hitler and succeeds while the liberals cheer him on and the conservatives start demanding 120% Hitler.
This happened a while ago, but even Gabe Newell was denied masking accommodations in a packed court. Americans complain about how “even Chinese billionaires aren’t safe from execution,” but in the US even billionaires aren’t allowed basic health and disability accommodation lol
If you schedule a doctor to visit a wheezing, choking immunocompromised infant with a collapsing chest during a respiratory pandemic, they will react with surprise and confusion when they notice the parents wearing masks, and start fumbling around to see if they can find a surgical mask. Every one of them, every time without fail. I can attest to this first-hand!
Doctors are just pill prescribers
I know more about covid than 99% of them
I'm required to go to the hospital twice a year (based on the description, for the same reasons Link is going to the hospital) and yeah, this is pretty much my life. There's one nurse in the rheumatology office that still cared about masks as of autumn of 2023. I've delayed care for my eyes, my teeth, and my general health due to covid denialism. I don't have the privilege of pretending like it's not still circulating.
