Links: Moral injury, and ongoing pandemic info

[sonia]

Moral Injury Is an Invisible Epidemic That Affects Millions by Elizabeth Svoboda published Sep 19, 2022 in Scientific American. If I were still writing articles, I would write one about this. Great article about the moral injuries of working in healthcare and being unable to provide good care.

Moral injury treatments are a needed safety valve for people battling guilt and ethical vertigo. Even so, as old hands on the front lines note, nudging the morally injured toward self-repair goes only so far. Therapy can help you move on from past choices, but unless your employer hires more staff or supplies more resources, chances are you’ll have to keep making decisions that violate your ethics, compounding your trauma. A lot of problems that cause moral injury “require systemic solutions on a much broader level,” says Andrews, the California public defender.

Relatedly, COVID-19 Update for July 2023: Risks Are Low But Rising, and Too Many Are Ignoring Longer-Term Risks by Augie Ray. Lots of good info, including a link to Walgreens Covid dashboard, which I didn't know about.

We are currently seeing a rise in infections from a low base, as evidenced by COVID in wastewater. The US CDC reports COVID is wastewater is rising at its fastest rate of 2023. And the Walgreens COVID dashboard shows the positive rate has increased almost 50% in the past month.

via dewline

Additional Covid dashboards from comments (thank you!)
NY Times hospital zone map (paywalled)
WasteWaterScan, drills down to county level

Comments

[asakiyume]

I didn't know that term, moral injury, but absolutely yes, thinking of how many people deal with that. I feel like I did, a little, when I was employed--as opposed to the years I was volunteering--at the job. But much more than my own experiences, I'm thinking of a friend who works caring for the extremely mentally challenged in group homes. He struggles tirelessly to do an ethical, good job, but it's so, so hard. Practically impossible. And his health does suffer because of it.

Thanks for the Walgreens dashboard link, too.

[sonia]

I'm sorry to hear about your and your friend's experiences. I think capitalism forces morally dubious choices on all of us, but definitely some jobs have it more acutely.

Glad the dashboard is helpful. People are adding more in comments - I should edit the post!

[soniasulaiman]

That quote is quite a gut punch.

[sonia]

Yeah, and the part at the end is attributed to the California public defender!

[elainegrey]

I've been looking at the NY times hospital zone map, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/north-carolina-covid-cases.html , the CDC waste water surveillance, and some NC state specific data every week to understand risk. I like the hospitalization and the waste water surveillance because they seem a little more concrete than testing results which can be affected by different region's needs and requirements for testing. Looking at the data i've been observing, i've been watching the Charlotte urban area look very threatening, but understand where i am in the state to have the low base. It's slowly increasing, and i'll need to come up with where i go back to masking. (If i was going to Charlotte, i would be masking.)

[sonia]

Thank you!

[thistleingrey]

Good to know about the dashboard. I've been glancing now and then at this one, which drills down to county level.

[sonia]

Thank you! It differs from Biobot's curve, although it has more of an upsweep at the end than the last time I looked, even though the collection date is the same.

[thistleingrey]

Maybe they extrapolate differently somehow?