Tag Archives: Ragtag Daily Prompt

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After the rains

This is East Beach on Marrowstone Island. After the rains, sections of the sand cliff have come down, with trees in the process of dying and the grass still intact in some piles. There are some seriously large chunks of clay that you would not like to be under when it came down.

New section of fallen cliff

We can see where the tide is starting to break the pieces of clay up and wash out the rocks.

Rocks embedded in fallen section.

So is the land encroaching on the sea or the sea encroaching on the land?

For today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt.

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whiskers

For today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt.

The kittens were both two pounds and a bit when I got them. Last Thursday they got their last set of vaccines for a year and they are now both six pounds. They are growing like weeds. My last cat was a small cat. If the stated age was right when I got them, these two are going to be BIG.

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apparition

We are fishing and playing a little and then we hear something. I stick my head up. Dad does too, and my sisters. What is it? It is making noises! There, on the beach. Something roaring in two tones!

There are two. The smaller one is doing most of the roaring. It is weird. Two tones, a low growly one and a higher one that sings.

It is creepy, that smaller one. I think it sees us. It has a mechanical eye. Dad says, “Dive.” We talk under water. Maybe it is trying to steal our souls or lure us to death on the beach.

We do have to come up for air though. Now they both roar. Dad barks: “STOP” and what do the horrors do? They try to imitate him! Are they making fun of him?

Now the smaller one is just making high song noises. Sort of like a creepy bird. It keeps going back to the double growl, though.

Dad says, “Come on.” We dive and head the other way along the beach. The appartitions are picking up things from the beach. I am very glad they didn’t get us. This time.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: apparition.

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Covid-19: working in healthcare

So, should healthcare workers be required to have Covid-19 vaccines?

Yes.

What is the precedent?

Take tuberculosis, for example. Airborne, very contagious. I was born in a Knoxville, Tennessee tuberculosis sanatorium, because my mother coughed blood a month before she was due and got quarantined for active tuberculosis. Yes, the state could quarantine my mother. I was removed immediately at birth because tuberculosis doesn’t cross the placenta. The antibodies do, but the infection doesn’t. However, newborns usually catch it and die very quickly. I was lucky. My father and grandparents took care of me for 5 months. Then my mother was allowed out (after 6 months total) but was not strong enough to take care of me. So I was taken to my maternal grandparents for the next four months, and did not touch my mother until I was 9 months old.

My mother was taking 36 pills a day at home, because you have to use multiple drugs to kill tuberculosis. It develops drug resistance very very quickly.

Well, so what, you say?

Healthcare workers in the United States are routinely checked with a ppd for tuberculosis. If it is positive, you cannot work until further testing. If you have latent tuberculosis, you are treated. If you have active tuberculosis, the treatment is longer and more complicated, here: https://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/infectioncontrol/default.htm

My cousin then said, “Well, you don’t have to show the tuberculosis test to go in a restaurant!”

Well, not right NOW, because currently tuberculosis is under more or less reasonable control in the US. Remember that guy who came in to the US with active multi drug resistant tuberculosis and knowingly exposed everyone on that airplane? Great. I remember reading about that and thinking what a selfish jerk he was. And then the group of unimmunized people who went to India and all got measles. The US at that time did not bar anyone from returning, but asked them to finish a 3 week quarentine before returning to the US. One person did not do that. There was a measles outbreak in the midwest which cost the CDC (and therefore you and me because those is tax dollars) millions to trace, quarantine and clean up. So there was discussion at that time about whether the policy should be changed and we should not allow US citizens with known infectious diseases to come in on airplanes. We DON’T allow immigrants in with infectious diseases: they are tested for tuberculosis if coming from countries where it is endemic.

So, if we had a huge outbreak of tuberculosis, we WOULD have quarantines and shut downs.

I have tested a patient for tuberculosis, about two years ago. Her son had been diagnosed with active tuberculosis. We tested her with a blood test and then repeated it in three months. Negative, hooray. In residency I also saw a case of miliary tuberculosis. That is where the tuberculosis is growing so well in the lungs that it looks like little grains of rice in the lungs on imaging. Not a good thing.

My cousin: “You shouldn’t have to put something in your body to work.”

If you have tuberculosis, you do not get to work in healthcare, because you can kill your patients. I think that this is a good thing, to not kill our patients.

I am submitting this to the Ragtag Daily Prompt: starspangled. Keep America Healthy, how about that?

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Straddle this place

Straddle this place, where we look at history again and again, admit horror and mistakes and cruelty, and work together to build a future.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2021: Reflecting on Indigenous leadership in labor

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: straddle.