California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE • Hacker News Board

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#91

Post by obmelvin » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

dpeck wrote: post #65

obmelvin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just don’t see how this can be the reality that we’re living in. These things were $1/per at retail before the pandemic. People are ready to pay many multiples ($10/day? Sure. $20/day? Yeah) of that now, how are the economic incentives not aligned to make these things be extremely common and easy for everyone to buy.

I don't know enough about material science / manufacturing engineering. Obviously, the specific item being talked about here matters. If this was a purely aesthetic item that is trendy the QC matters a lot less. I would assume companies don't want to rush a new line and then be sending out masks with defects - send that to a few hospitals and your business will be done.

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#92

Post by underseacables » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

I don’t think this is a good idea, and it would be disaster out for the Union if people start dying. I hope there are smarter people out there who will break the strike line.

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#93

Post by SauciestGNU » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

webmaven wrote: post #88

Der_Einzige wrote: post #40

If I were a medical worker, and they gave me shit PPE and told me that I'm not allowed to use my own - I'd simply ignore them until I was fired. It's gonna suck dying if I need to go to the hospital, but I don't blame the nurses at all for this

> If I were a medical worker, and they gave me shit PPE and told me that I'm not allowed to use my own - I'd simply ignore them until I was fired. You'd not only be risking your job, but your license as well (as in, future employment in your field).

Yeah, but you'd (probably) be alive. It's an optimization problem, where at some point in the curve it becomes more expensive to follow the guidelines (and die) than be blacklisted from the profession.

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#94

Post by claudeganon » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 4:34 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #79

claudeganon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My coworkers from mainland China were concerned about our well-being and started shipping us KN95 masks My partner’s friend with family in China did the same thing for us. His dad was getting chemo and they had their family send a couple boxes of KN95s over to help protect him. Depressing, given how much America looks like a failed state relative to the two countries pandemic response, but good that interpersonal r…

You can just order KN95s quite easily in the United States and have been able to for a long time, and actually I have for personal use (especially during the CA fires), and they have almost identical nominal requirements to N95, but: https://www.ecri.org/press/up-to-70-of-chinese-kn95-masks-te...

I know. I’ve been ordering my own since May. This was at the start of the pandemic when there was a run on masks.

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#95

Post by wasdfff » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

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…

It blows my mind that these supply issues are happening in CA of all places. Where I can go to Koreatown in LA and buy 10 kn95s for $10 from about a dozen stores.

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#96

Post by wasdfff » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

dpeck wrote: post #13

It is absurd that there aren’t n95, and similarly effective, masks easily available 9 months into this thing.

Kn95 and kf94 are readily available and cheap in Los Angeles. I cannot believe healthcare authorities would rather have workers use a month old n95 that degrades after 72hours of use than a kn95 that is readily available in the area and costs $1.

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#97

Post by webmaven » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 3:36 PM UTC

SauciestGNU wrote: post #93

webmaven wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I were a medical worker, and they gave me shit PPE and told me that I'm not allowed to use my own - I'd simply ignore them until I was fired. You'd not only be risking your job, but your license as well (as in, future employment in your field).

Yeah, but you'd (probably) be alive. It's an optimization problem, where at some point in the curve it becomes more expensive to follow the guidelines (and die) than be blacklisted from the profession.

We'll know next year how much worse the odds of actually dying from Covid-19 were as a nurse in unsafe conditions vs. as an unemployed ex-nurse.

I'm far from certain that deciding to stay on the job isn't a rational choice. It depends on how much losing your job actually lets you lower your odds of getting Covid-19, and whether, once sick, Covid-19 survival rates are different for healthcare workers.

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#98

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

blululu wrote: post #87

justin66 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to rework existing labor law for organized labor and employee ownership to coexist. ESOPs with unions were more popular prior to the Reagan era, but I don't believe they've been made illegal.

True. My last statement should have been split into two separate proposals: 1.) Better legal/financial support for cooperative business models (the laws on the books are prohibitive for capital intensive projects). 2.) Revising the NLRA to allow competition among multiple unions for representation. Right to work laws are too far on this issue but unions should not simply exist as a monopoly, they should have to have…

[deleted]

Re: California nurses union plans holiday strike over PPE

#99

Post by justin66 » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 9:48 PM UTC

blululu wrote: post #87

justin66 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to rework existing labor law for organized labor and employee ownership to coexist. ESOPs with unions were more popular prior to the Reagan era, but I don't believe they've been made illegal.

True. My last statement should have been split into two separate proposals: 1.) Better legal/financial support for cooperative business models (the laws on the books are prohibitive for capital intensive projects). 2.) Revising the NLRA to allow competition among multiple unions for representation. Right to work laws are too far on this issue but unions should not simply exist as a monopoly, they should have to have…

I'm not sure I understand #2. Today, workers can switch unions with a vote, right? If the argument is that the workforce at any given company should be represented by an arbitrary number of unions... I'd have to give that some thought, but it sounds like something that would occur in a post-scarcity science fiction world (a dystopia, or perhaps just an anti-union parody) wherein the future workforce consists almost entirely of lawyers. Maybe it wouldn't be that bad.