I don't know who needs to hear this but even when healthcare workers are exposed to COVID+ patients, we aren't quarantined if we're asymptomatic. In fact, we're working and spreading to other patients bc we keep working unless we get symptomatic.

And symptomatic is defined differently from facility to facility.

Plenty of HCWs are exposed to it, have mild symptoms, but since they have no fever or cough, are still working with patients.

We can't get tested. We aren't allowed to get tested. We use PTO to quarantine.

You wonder why these HCWs in NYC are getting sick? Repeated exposure with no reprieve does something fierce to your immune system.

We aren't protected by our facilities.

We can only protect ourselves.

Listen to the HCWs speaking out.

This is fucked.

Hospital systems that make billions of dollars don't want to test their employees. They don't want to get them PPE. They don't want to pay for them to isolate post exposure. They'd rather people work themselves to death and memorize them later.

Some hospitals are stepping up but hospital systems are still a business and this pandemic is proving to a lot of us just how expendable we are in the grand scheme of things.

We need supplies, equipment, and protection to do this work safely. http://www.getusppe.org 

Because one thing that I've heard from coast to coast is this

A lot of admins are telling their staff that the reason why it falls on the staff that they contract COVID in the hospital is because, "if you used your supplied PPE appropriately, you would not have contracted it"

so how in the fuck is it appropriate to reuse an N95 between numerous patients, wipe it down, and put in a paper bag considered appropriate use of PPE?

This is the reality, y'all.

Admins are blaming their staff for their exposures. It's fucked.

and of note is that a lot of patients that are not presenting classic COVID symptoms are being tested due to incidental findings on imaging and then later resulting positive.

the staff has no idea they're exposed unless they call for follow up. lines of communication are broken

and even if you try to say that you've been exposed and are symptomatic, unless they do a temp check at work and see you're running a fever, admin will claim that since it's in the community, it's not a direct workplace exposure.

so there goes your workman's comp

no one is looking out for HCWs except other HCWs and y'all asking what you can do to help us.

so help us amplify how fucked up this all is. how the hospitals are seeing this as a business. how they're seeing staff as expendable.

there are so many more people with COVID than we can possibly test for. we don't have enough tests in many regions to keep up. the reported cases are a severe under representation of how many people have it.