so shit’s fucked in privatized healthcare with covid. The point of this is to illustrate how the bullshit of the personal responsibility narrative goes beyond the usual death by crushing, electrocution, and general incompetence in the american workforce

I work in a private clinic in rural America as a physical therapist. Dealing with Covid out here is a fucking joke.

a) No one gives a shit about masks. People wear them with gaps around the nose, or with their noses hanging out. Others lift the masks to breathe when working out. Some patients just don’t wear them. No one calls them on it. This applies to clinical staff as well. I have one fellow clinician who got covid and now downplays it to every patient which reinforces the pattern. Several of my fellow clinicians work out indoors over lunch with no masks on in a small, hot room. They just fucking breathe all over eachother doing HIIT workouts off youtube.

We're also under high pressure to keep patient volume high, so even if my co-workers did take mask use seriously, no one wants to offend anyone's sensibilities and lose a revenue source.

B) This brings me to my next point. People here are sick as hell. I manage one woman with atrial fibrillation and pulmonary arterial hypertension. A couple have congestive heart failure. At least 3-4 patients on my caseload are on >2L oxygen constantly. These patients are extremely high risk and the gym space is small and crowded. It's a petri dish.

As an aside, old guys basically have a code that’s “I can’t hear you with that mask on” to get you to take yours off. Had one patient walk out of an evaluation for his balance after I refused to remove mine. He had fallen repeatedly, last time was white carrying 40 lbs of wood tripped and fell backwards slamming his head onto pavement. Go figure. I’m under constant pressure for billable units and my boss reamed me out for this.

C)No one disinfects fucking anything. I know surface transmission is rare, but come on.

D) I was exposed to covid and was ordered to come back into work after testing negative 2 days after exposure, which meant literally nothing, since that could well be in the incubation period and could have been a false negative.

Here’s the part where the “individual choice and responsibility” part comes in. I can’t get the fuck out of here. I had a non-compete sprung on me, for 2 years and 40 miles radius, 1 month after moving 2 states over to take this job. May I remind you I live in a small ass town. There ain’t shit around here for 40 miles. I’ll have to move again. Finally, it’s a right to work state, so if I complain or try to get people here to take this seriously, they can come up with any old BS reason to fire me, after which the non-compete renders me fucked. I’m trying to scheme my way out of here, but you just don’t have much power in the hiring market as a new graduate physical therapist.

To sum it up, coming to this clinic is mildly dangerous as a patient now, will be very dangerous if infection rates go back up, and if I say anything about it, I get evicted by default and have to move again.