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California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

californiaglobe.com

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Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#41

Post by Der_Einzige »

justin66 wrote: post #23
schoolornot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the Defense Production Act successful at ramping up production of PPE? It's been 8 months since I've seen a proper N95 mask on store shelves. Hearing that someone close was going through the same thing as your partner, bringing home used masks and having to hit the black market/eBay for respirators with cartridges so they wouldn't become lightheaded when transporting patients all day was shocking. I think what's…

The DPA was not employed to ramp up production of PPE.

We used it for ventilators, which we later found out we wouldn't need because they usually do more harm than good.

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#42

Post by sjg007 »

schoolornot wrote: post #16
quasse wrote: post #3

I can confirm the "used PPE" thing from personal experience. My partner (a nurse at a VA hospital) was given a Tupperware container with holes poked in the lid as "overnight storage" for her N95 mask and was asked to reuse it for up to a month at a time. As far as I know this is still ongoing. I know the cynical take is "you need to stop letting yourself be surprised / disappointed by this kind of thing" but we shoul…

Was the Defense Production Act successful at ramping up production of PPE? It's been 8 months since I've seen a proper N95 mask on store shelves. Hearing that someone close was going through the same thing as your partner, bringing home used masks and having to hit the black market/eBay for respirators with cartridges so they wouldn't become lightheaded when transporting patients all day was shocking. I think what's…

It wasn't used for PPE, just ventilators.

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#43

Post by sremani »

ashtonkem wrote: post #19
j4yav wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider this is basically exactly what I would expect to happen in US healthcare.

As an American, it has been incredibly demoralizing seeing one institution after another fail miserably. I didn’t have high expectations, but oh boy did we fall way short.

"Americans will always do the right thing - after exhausting all the alternatives."

-- Churchill

3 vaccines in record time.. I know J&J is still pending. I want the Healthcare/CDC/FDA pipeline to be improved.. Without American ingenuity the world is a much bleaker place.

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#44

Post by [deleted] »

vmchale wrote: post #29
ashtonkem wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, it has been incredibly demoralizing seeing one institution after another fail miserably. I didn’t have high expectations, but oh boy did we fall way short.

CDC was muzzled by Trump admin. and a lot of that cascaded downwards. But still, horrible to see.

[deleted]

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#45

Post by dpeck »

vmchale wrote: post #26
quasse wrote: post #3

I can confirm the "used PPE" thing from personal experience. My partner (a nurse at a VA hospital) was given a Tupperware container with holes poked in the lid as "overnight storage" for her N95 mask and was asked to reuse it for up to a month at a time. As far as I know this is still ongoing. I know the cynical take is "you need to stop letting yourself be surprised / disappointed by this kind of thing" but we shoul…

Especially since I (the general public) can get an N95 online. If companies aren't protecting their workers they're not trying hard enough.

Where can it be bought from a reputable/reliable retailer? I’d love a link.

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#46

Post by obmelvin »

schoolornot wrote: post #16
quasse wrote: post #3

I can confirm the "used PPE" thing from personal experience. My partner (a nurse at a VA hospital) was given a Tupperware container with holes poked in the lid as "overnight storage" for her N95 mask and was asked to reuse it for up to a month at a time. As far as I know this is still ongoing. I know the cynical take is "you need to stop letting yourself be surprised / disappointed by this kind of thing" but we shoul…

Was the Defense Production Act successful at ramping up production of PPE? It's been 8 months since I've seen a proper N95 mask on store shelves. Hearing that someone close was going through the same thing as your partner, bringing home used masks and having to hit the black market/eBay for respirators with cartridges so they wouldn't become lightheaded when transporting patients all day was shocking. I think what's…

My understanding from earlier reading of HN was that it takes months (closer to 1 year than 1 month from what I remember) to standup a new production line for N95 masks. With the supply chain constraints & presumable demand for such things that could possibly take even longer to set up, I think it is understandable that we haven't seen an increased supply on store shelves.

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#47

Post by eplanit »

Doesn't the California Nurses Union strike almost regularly, anyway? Assuming that nurses have a better understanding of the virus than average laypeople, and given the facts of the number of positive cases, plus the facts which undermine the claims (California seems to actually have a stockpile), it seems unprofessional and unethical in the extreme to strike at this time.

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#48

Post by Spooky23 »

Hospital management will do all sorts of stuff to undermine unions. The conflicts vary from pay to operational practice. One of the issues I heard about is that some hospitals are accused of keeping PPE supplies tight so that they can reuse them and save money. If supplies aren't tight, they cannot reuse.

In a local city in the northeast, a hospital working to break a nascent nurses union took the step of shipping in scabs from Georgia and Florida, housing and feeding them in a hotel, transporting in shared vans, etc in the middle of a pandemic.

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#49

Post by everybodyknows »

babesh wrote: post #7

This can easily be solved with a tiny bit of sense. The state of California has large stockpiles. Now would be the time to distribute some. EDIT: shows the state of Hacker News readership that this is downvoted when the article states this. Furthermore, here is a second source: https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/07/22/governor-newsom-announces-... hitting the downvoted button because it offends their sensibility without rea…

Good link.

> ... Battelle Critical Care Decontamination systems to decontaminate N-95 respirators, allowing for their reuse ...

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#50

Post by cronix »

In 2006, CA Gov. Schwarzenegger spent $200 Million dollars on stockpiling PPE and ventilators. This was on the heel of the Swine Flu in order to leave the state better prepared in case of another pandemic.

The stockpile took about $5 Million a year to maintain after the initial $200M purchase.

In 2011, CA Gov. Brown got rid of the program to save that $5M/yr.

https://revealnews.org/article/california-created-a-massive-...

https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/03/31/...

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