sonora2sonoma

Just spent a couple of hours in the doctor’s office waiting room at Kaiser, where I saw several people wearing masks over their faces, presumably out of fear of becoming infected.  Others appeared to be wearing masks to prevent the spread of infections already contacted. I observed one such person coughing into her mask. if more people were to act as she did, contagions would be less easily spread.  It’s more than a little ironic that medical personnel advise people to stay home when they’re sick yet require them to leave home and assemble in waiting rooms to receive medical treatment. Under such conditions, a trip to the doctor becomes the equivalent of playing medical Russian roulette. And the longer one must wait to receive treatment, the more opportunity there is for airborne pathogens to infect new victims.

No immediate solutions to this problem come to mind, but the risk of getting sick posed by going to see the doctor under the current paradigm could be lessened significantly by the addition of more staff, or even more realistic appointment scheduling, aimed at ensuring shorter wait times; either would be a step in the right direction. The fact that such changes would negatively affect Kaiser’s (and other similar organization’s) bottom line provides one good argument in favor of single-payer healthcare.

Tim Konrad