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18 votes
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How Ben got his penis
15 votes -
A day in the life of a music festival medic
5 votes -
Banning abortions will not stop abortions
9 votes -
A dangerous place to be Latino
3 votes -
Canada eliminates mandatory waiting period for gay men to donate blood
17 votes -
Canada will soon offer doctor-assisted death to the mentally ill. Who should be eligible?
11 votes -
The unvaccinated NHS workers facing the sack in the UK
11 votes -
Do Ask, Tell, and Show: Contextual Factors Affecting Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Disclosure for Sexual and Gender Minority People
10 votes -
Fighters and Failure: Medical words that hurt
2 votes -
Always remember - The Therac 25 incident
17 votes -
Kidney failure, emergency rooms and medical debt: The unseen costs of food poisoning
3 votes -
Belgium wants to make it easier for gay men to donate blood
10 votes -
California’s overflowing coffers hand Newsom ‘every politician’s dream’
8 votes -
Real-time alerting system for COVID-19 and other stress events using wearable data
6 votes -
Why US healthcare workers are quitting in droves: About one in five have left medicine since the pandemic started
12 votes -
California hospitals brace for ‘Striketober’ amid COVID staffing shortages
5 votes -
Women were the unseen healthcare providers of the Middle Ages
7 votes -
Henrietta Lacks estate sues company using her ‘stolen’ cells
12 votes -
Two disbarred lawyers sued a Texas doctor who performed an abortion. Flustered ‘pro-lifers’ are backpedaling
12 votes -
Their baby died in the hospital. Then came the $257,000 bill.
17 votes -
A doctor who defied Texas' abortion law is sued, launching a legality test of the ban
20 votes -
Extended reality is radically changing the world of medicine
14 votes -
Most private insurers are no longer waiving cost-sharing for COVID-19 treatment
16 votes -
Op-Ed: As a doctor in a COVID unit, I'm running out of compassion for the unvaccinated. Get the shot
35 votes -
Seeking Trans liberation through birthwork
5 votes -
Germany fears thousands got saline, not vaccine from nurse
21 votes -
Why right to repair matters – according to a farmer, a medical worker, a computer store owner
17 votes -
‘I’m sorry, but it’s too late’: Alabama doctor on treating unvaccinated, dying COVID patients
29 votes -
PrEP, the HIV prevention pill, must now be totally free under almost all US insurance plans
16 votes -
My slightly unreal pandemic pregnancy
8 votes -
Minority Stress, Structural Stigma, and Physical Health Among Sexual and Gender Minority Individuals: Examining the Relative Strength of the Relationships
6 votes -
Vicious doctors and cruel diseases in 18th-Century Jamaica
3 votes -
Fire in the Blood (2013 documentary)
3 votes -
Should Tildes have rules for healthcare advice?
Sometimes Tildes users give people healthcare advice. Sometimes that advice disagrees with the advice already given by a qualified registered healthcare professional. That might be okay if the...
Sometimes Tildes users give people healthcare advice. Sometimes that advice disagrees with the advice already given by a qualified registered healthcare professional. That might be okay if the tildes advice was compliant with national guidance, but sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's bad, dangerous, advice.
Should Tildes have rules about this?
16 votes -
An English hospital reports a surge in cases
5 votes -
Legislation to criminalise gender affirming care for trans children is dangerous
12 votes -
Insurers in Washington state must cover transgender health care under new bill
20 votes -
California could be the first state to allow adults to add parents to health care plans
8 votes -
The broken front line: What lasting impact will the pandemic have on America's first responders?
7 votes -
Arkansas Governor vetoes ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth
23 votes -
Jump in cancer diagnoses at 65 years old implies many patients wait for Medicare to kick in before they seek care
18 votes -
The Global Transgender Resources Registry
10 votes -
Spain passes law allowing euthanasia
23 votes -
Thinking about death
Up until recently my girlfriend’s grandmother had a relatively good life. She’s taken care of, had some interesting allucinations, slept most of the day and had funny interactions with her...
Up until recently my girlfriend’s grandmother had a relatively good life. She’s taken care of, had some interesting allucinations, slept most of the day and had funny interactions with her grandaughter, some of which ended up on Instagram.
In recent weeks, she started refusing food and spent days at the hospital. The sudden lost in autonomy made her hostile. It’s a struggle to change her diapers. The situation was made worse by the feeding tube up her nose, which she attempts to remove non-stop, and can only be replaced at the hospital. We had to restrain her arm. That is no way to live.
She's made it very clear she does not want to be in this world any longer. Today I heard a hundred year old lady scream, multiple times: "just let me die!".
I don't know what to make of it.
Edit: I'd like to thank everyone's answers. I wasn't really looking for a solution since the legal situation in my country does not allow for any wiggle room. But it is always nice to read the smart people of Tildes passionately explore their ideas, sharing knowledge with compassion. Sometimes it is enough to feel less alone. Thank you and good night.
15 votes -
Irish children's hospital assured of indemnity over puberty blockers
9 votes -
COVID-19 in Belgium | February 2021 edition
Today, Belgium announced no changes in current protection measures. After a fairly successful handling of the first wave (all things considered, especially the fact it was actually unprecedented...
Today, Belgium announced no changes in current protection measures.
After a fairly successful handling of the first wave (all things considered, especially the fact it was actually unprecedented at the time), Belgium's handling of the pandemic has been getting progressively worse. All countries have suffered their fair share of incompetence during this crisis, but today, we'll talk about Belgium (and a bit about the EU), because I live there.
Context and restrictions
Belgium works a little bit like a miniature version of the USA: Three regions (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels) which function somewhat independently as states, with a federal government overseeing all three. Flanders is primarily flemish (dutch-speaking), Wallonia is primarily french, and Brussels is a mix but mainly french.
Excellent article detailing restrictions: https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-coronavirus-lockdown-rules-restrictions-overview/ -- Some highlights below.
- A 10PM curfew is in place since October 2020 in Brussels and Wallonia; Midnight for Flanders.
- Bars, cafes, restaurants are closed to non-takeout business since October 2020. All alcohol sales prohibited after 8pm.
- Museums, swimming pools, hairdressers, are currently open.
- Remote work is mandatory.
- Belgium is currently forbidding non-essential travel outside of the country, much to the EU's dismay.
- There is a complicated social bubble system which tells you how many people you are allowed to see every week.
The "long lockdown"
Like most other western countries, Belgium experienced its first wave between March and May. We strictly locked down in March, reopened in June. The lockdown was successful at reducing the number of cases for all summer. A new lockdown happened in October but this time, driven by the fear of being "too strict", Belgium instead adapted a long checklist of a variety of measures, evolving more or less weekly, so that some things can be allowed. Most importantly, Belgium did not close schools at all.
The effects of this by comparison can be marveled at here: https://twitter.com/NikoSpeybroeck/status/1365257345941520385/photo/1
In essence: Belgium plateau'd high. So for October, November, December, January, February and now March, the country has been suffering nearly all the casualties of a normal lockdown… instead of a 10 week, slightly stricter lockdown (like countries such as South Korea are able to achieve), we're getting what looks to be a 24+ week, slightly less strict, highly-damaging lockdown.
The importance of consistency
The #1 complaint from everyone I've talked to about the rules are their inconsistencies. Because when you impose rules that affect people negatively, their first reaction will be: "Why are you forbidding X, which affects me, but allowing Y, which is worse and doesn't?"
You all know I'm a skater. For me it's the swimming pools: I'm at a loss why safe ice rinks are closed, but swimming pools are open. Something something chlorine. But there are plenty of examples that affect the general population; the one I hear most often as a comparison point is: "Why are we allowing people to be packed like sardines in the metro and in buses?" (And yes, people really are packed up in there at peak hours, I'm sure it's one of the primary transmission vectors)
Or: "Why are you forcing me to work remotely, when you are keeping the schools open? " -- Most countries did notice how much of a transmission vector schools and campuses are, especially with teenagers not exactly being incentivized to take precautions. Belgium, throughout the whole soft lockdown, has kept schools open for nearly the entire time they were going to be on a normal year.
Inconsistencies drive people to distrust the rules, and those making the rules. They make the rules feel arbitrary, which makes them feel irrelevant as a whole. It gets people thinking: "If this is not logical, then the explanation is that they don't know what they're talking about, and I can't trust what they say about COVID".
The importance of simplicity
What are the current measures? (official government website)
Now, I think info-coronavirus.be is one of the better-organized and well-marketed successes of Belgium's handling of the pandemic. Unfortunately it also nicely showcases how complex the rules are when there are sections such as "Can dog groomers remain open?" and "Can hunting continue?".
Belgium's social bubble system is easily the most complicated part of it and the people I know who do follow the rules, don't actually necessarily understand them and end up accidentally either being too strict, or breaking the rules. I can't tell you what it is myself without looking it up, as the rules around it change regularly; what I know is that you're more-or-less allowed to see 4 people per week. There is a "cuddle-contact" rule that dictates how many people you're allowed to be intimately close with each week. The rules are different based on your age, based on whether you live alone, based on whether you tend to people in certain groups…
Over winter, the rules got utterly ridiculous and I've written about this before, with a checklist of exceptions, ifs-and-buts for Christmas and New Years, dictating different rules for whether you're outside, inside, how many people can go to the toilet in your home, etc.
I cannot stress how much this has negatively impacted the population. It is neither learned nor widely followed, but as an ever-present high-impact rule in people's day to day life, is a constant reminder of how arbitrary the measures are.
Simpler rules, whether they're stricter or looser, will be followed more widely and will be overall perceived less negatively.
The importance of a risk-impact balance
For every single additional rule created, people's patience is tested. Of course, stricter rules are a tougher test to go through, but the more rules, the more you test their patience as well.
So there is a careful balance to strike: When introducing a rule, it has to actually be useful. You want to maximize how much you are reducing hospitalizations, with as few rules as possible. Getting to zero is not the goal, getting to a manageable number is.With some exceptions, people don't have an understanding of the impact most rules on the final numbers. So it's rare that people take into account how useful the rules are when evaluating whether they should respect them. More to the point, a good amount of people will take an "all or nothing" approach, where the moment they stop respecting some rules, they'll stop respecting most or even all of them.
So it is critical to limit the rules to those that have the highest impact in the final numbers, and enforce those; rather than have far looser enforcement of a lot of rules that may, on paper, be more effective.
People aren't machines and will not function perfectly. I have yet to hear experts and politicians take the simplest questions into account:
- Will this rule be respected?
- Will people who stop respecting this rule cause them to stop respecting other rules?
- Will people distrust vaccines as a result of distrusting rules?
- How does this affect the numbers when taking the above into account?
Something to keep in mind when taking arbitrary decisions such as forbidding outdoors lake skating when, after a winter of sports being inaccessible, lakes finally freeze in Belgium.
Vaccinations
Yes, vaccines, let's talk about them.
Now it's no secret that the EU has really botched vaccine supplies. And yet, Belgium is proudly and loudly "slightly ahead of the initial vaccination timetable".
You'd think this is good news, but what it means is that Belgium's vaccination timetable is horribly pessimistic. Distributing vaccines is the one thing getting us out of this mess, and it's being prioritized like a 4am car alarm. One example, which was eventually backtracked on, is how COVID nurses and caregivers were going to be in the second phase of vaccinations, only given the shot after all care homes had been vaccinated. Which means that in that awful timetable, they'd start receiving their shots… next week, as of the time I'm writing this.The US quickly figured out that Pharmacies need to be involved. Now, here's a fun fact you can throw out at parties: Belgium has the most pharmacies per capita in the world, sitting at around ~5000 pharmacies in total for 11.5M people.
Guess which country has yet to even talk about involving pharmacies in the distribution of the vaccines?
I talked about this with my MD this week. He was on the floor. He keeps telling government officials: "Give me a box of 20 vaccines per day, I'll have them distributed to patients and I can follow prioritization strategies". They refuse.
There are 73% non-respondants to vaccine invitations in Brussels. The Heysel vaccination center alone is wasting 750 vaccination slots per day, instead of taking a page from what airlines learned and overbooking to keep all slots as close to full as possible.
This disorganized mess is costing millions of euros every day. It's lengthening a stressful period which will have lasting effects on the population. It causes distrust of governments, distrust of systems, distrust of scientists. The butterfly effect of fucking this up is unfathomable.
Masks
And now we get to the latest fuckup. Masks. One of the most effective, highest-impact, easiest-to-comply-with measures.
Belgian government says to stop wearing the free cloth masks they distributed ‘as a precaution’
Last summer, Belgium distributed free reusable cloth masks to the population. And yesterday, they warned that nanoparticles of silver are present in the mask and can be breathed in, warning to stop wearing them as a precaution measure.
I have no word for the amount of distrust this causes. Not just in Belgium but worldwide. Criminal incompetence.
And again, we are not talking about that. We're not talking about the fact that anti-maskers now have these huge talking points and are easily able to convince a fed-up population that COVID is harmless, wearing masks is a bad idea, vaccines are evil, and we should all just say "fuck it".
In the midst of such an enraging news, the Belgian government has decided that things are fine as-is, and measures should not be relaxed.
15 votes -
Norway is offering drug-free treatment to people with psychosis
17 votes -
US hospitals still ration medical N95 masks as stockpiles swell
4 votes -
No, that British hospital didn’t ban the word "breastfeeding": The ultra-viral story is an outright fabrication made by the institutionally transphobic British press. It worked.
22 votes