I mean, penicillin wasn't publicly available until 1941. So at that time, we barely had healthcare that was even worth paying for. I can understand why they deprioritized it.
I think people forget we've had truly modern healthcare for less than a century
I had such high hopes for Wu. What a fucking disappointment.
I don't mow my lawn.
Fully invested in the no lawn movement, I've been slowly replacing my grass with "no-mow" fine fescue grasses that fall over when they grow long instead of standing up straight. They grow slowly and are meant to not be mowed most of the summer season, just a couple times in the spring and cut down low in the fall.
Between that and using shredded leaves as mulch in my flower beds or lasagna mulching to create a new flower bed, my neighbors definitely think I'm a bit off.
The biggest problem, I've found, is that elderly people who are hard of hearing to begin with struggle so much to understand you with a mask on. Through the whole pandemic, I was losing my voice from what I affectionately call "shouting at old people" all day. Especially with ventilation fans and monitor alarms and people talking in the hallway.
When my hospital finally lifted their mask mandate earlier this year, I initially thought I'd never go back. Then the creeping convenience, "well let me just pull the mask down because Meemaw doesn't understand me, just this once." It's especially helpful with dementia patients who really need that nonverbal communication of facial expression.
I still mask vigilantly if I have any patient with respiratory symptoms, even if they're negative for Covid/fly/RSV because I learned the hard way that viruses were don't test for still exist. And of course, with the recent (completely manageable) influx of Covid patients, I'm religiously wearing my N95.
So that's kind of the what we're dealing with when considering to mask or not to mask.
I talk to you folks lol. I use this pretty much the same way I did Reddit. Something kinda brainless to scroll when I'm standing in line. And the more you comment, the more you have to read/do on here, so when I'm particularly bored, I talk more. I also don't have any other social media.
I have a couple phone puzzle games I play. If I know I'm gonna be sitting like in a waiting room for a while, I'll take a book with me. For the longer moments sitting at home, podcasts and music.
The situations are always comparable. I'm a nurse in the process of unionizing at my hospital and I'll say to you the same thing I've said to some of my colleagues who voiced concerns about potentially losing our jobs:
If providing adequate pay and safety regulations is enough to push that employer out of business, do you really want that job anyway?
Might as well try to fix things and see how it shakes out. Because if you can't force them to fix these problems, then that's not a good job anyway. And if you force them out of business, it sounds like you're doing the public a favor.
(And for the record, $10/hour is shamefully low anywhere in the US for that kind of work. You have people's life in your hands! As a member of the public, I would expect you to be paid significantly more than that.)
I'll just copy my comment from another post of this article:
History lesson time: This wasn't done on purpose. It's an artifact of decisions made by Congress during World War II to support war production.
So many young men were away at war that it created a labor shortage, even with some women entering the work force. This led to spiraling increases in wages that were threatening the viability of critical war manufacturers.
In an effort to protect this manufacturing sector, Congress capped wage increases. But those corporations were still competing for workers and now they were no longer able to offer them higher and higher wages. So instead, they started offering them "perks" like health insurance, pensions, and paid time off.
THEN:
"In 1943 the War Labor Board, which had one year earlier introduced wage and price controls, ruled that contributions to insurance and pension funds did not count as wages. In a war economy with labor shortages, employer contributions for employee health benefits became a means of maneuvering around wage controls."
Emphasis mine. And guess what? When those young men returned from war and re-entered the work force, they wanted those perks too. So which company was going to be the first to deescalate the arms race and NOT offer health insurance?
And those perks being so ubiquitous meant the government never had an incentive to provide health coverage directly to anyone of working age, so we only have Medicare for retirees.
History lesson time: This wasn't done on purpose. It's an artifact of decisions made by Congress during World War II to support war production.
So many young men were away at war that it created a labor shortage, even with some women entering the work force. This led to spiraling increases in wages that were threatening the viability of critical war manufacturers.
In an effort to protect this manufacturing sector, Congress capped wage increases. But those corporations were still competing for workers and now they were no longer able to offer them higher and higher wages. So instead, they started offering them "perks" like health insurance, pensions, and paid time off.
THEN:
"In 1943 the War Labor Board, which had one year earlier introduced wage and price controls, ruled that contributions to insurance and pension funds did not count as wages. In a war economy with labor shortages, employer contributions for employee health benefits became a means of maneuvering around wage controls."
Emphasis mine. And guess what? When those young men returned from war and re-entered the work force, they wanted those perks too. So which company was going to be the first to deescalate the arms race and NOT offer health insurance?
And those perks being so ubiquitous meant the government never had an incentive to provide health coverage directly to anyone of working age, so we only have Medicare for retirees.
Then the people have to be organized enough to keep the food going! It's not magic, the world doesn't just run without any planning or direction.
And I'm just saying be careful of who and what you support and make sure they're planning to have these things covered.
Tl;dr - a large percentage of the list are birds from Hawaii that clearly didn't survive the introduction of cats. And several more are fresh water mussels probably lost to the zebra mussel invasion.