Divemedic

Childish, Magical Thinking

Watch this, and read some of the comments.

My initial thought was that it can’t be real. Then I reconsidered. This is the kind of childish, magical thinking that my children displayed when they were 8 or 9 years old. My daughter once asked me why I wouldn’t buy some expensive car or another. I replied that we didn’t have money for that. Her answer was, “Just go to the ATM and get more.”

That is the exact level of thinking displayed by this man-child, and the comment that followed. Just who is going to provide or pay for the basic, no frills life that you feel should be provided to you?

I had a similar conversation with my niece less than a year ago. My niece made the statement that people should get things that are necessary for free, because we all have a right to the necessities of life. She used feminine hygiene products as an example.

I pointed out to her that, since no one was paying for tampons, there would be no money to pay the people who worked in the tampon factory, so why would anyone work there for free? Her first reply was, “Wait! There is a tampon factory?”

I said, “Well just where do you think tampons come from? Is there a tampon tree somewhere?”

She replied, “Well, in that case, I suppose you could get women to work there and pay them with free tampons.”

I said, “What would that be worth? If everyone already gets tampons for free, what good is it to pay them with free tampons? So how are your employees going to eat, buy gas, or buy a house?”

She said, “That’s my point. Money is stupid. Why can’t everyone just trade and barter for stuff? Why should we all have to go to work just to be able to afford the things we need to live? The government can just print all of the money we need.”

I tried to explain money to her, but she didn’t get it. She is only 14, so I can excuse that. It’s her older sister, who is 21, that is evidence of an entire generation that doesn’t understand money. All they know is that they think somehow it’s their right to receive a living without having to do anything. This is why they all are demanding a living wage, or whatever they want to call it. It’s why they love socialism. They all want something for nothing.

There is a word to describe people working to provide things to people who aren’t doing a thing to earn what they receive, and that word is slavery.

By Divemedic, ago

They Hate the Nation

Michelle Obama famously said, “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country,” after the Democrats nominated her husband. Politifact gaslighted the nation by claiming that wasn’t what she said, and Michelle had to walk back her comments.

Last week, Tim Kaine’s wife, as part of Virginia’s Board of Education, denounced the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as being responsible for slavery. As a result, the US history that will be taught in Virginia schools is one that seeks to vilify the nation’s founding, then use that as a springboard to vilify the nation today. Of course, the press and her husband are seeking to walk back those comments, not because they disagree with them, but because she wasn’t supposed to say that part out loud.

The left positively hates this country, its government, and everything it stands for. They want to tear it down and replace it with their version of a communist utopia. Never mind that socialism and communism have never worked before. See, the reason that those have never worked before is that people who are as smart as they are have never been in charge.

They aren’t just grooming your kids to be their little sex puppets. They are grooming them to understand and believe that the little people are simply objects to be owned by their social betters. They are teaching children to be subservient little slaves with no capacity for rebellion or independent thought. They want a nation of serfs, of obedient little servants who can be ruled over by the political elite.

This vision of America, a communist one with them as the leaders, is the reason why they want to disarm you. That’s the vision that Tim Kaine and his wife have for us. He wants to disarm and enslave you, she wants to teach your kids that the Constitution and the nation’s founders are evil and should be eliminated.

The Democrat party is evil. There is no other way to say it.

By Divemedic, ago

Teaching Pigs to Sing

A report has come out, showing that math and reading proficiency dropped nationwide during the COVID lockdowns. Maryland students have the lowest test scores in reading and math of any US state or territory, with only 19 percent of Maryland students performing math that is appropriate for their grade level. Some schools in Baltimore had NO students who were proficient in math.

It doesn’t take long to figure out why. The scores are available online. It isn’t that the test is too hard or that teachers in general aren’t doing their jobs- there are schools in Maryland that had 91% of students proficient in math. In general, whites and Asians score higher on standardized tests than do other races, and the more affluent a student is, the higher the test scores.

The 5 cities with the best scores (racial makeup, median household income) were:

  • Bethesda: 88 percent white and Asian, $173K
  • Ellicott City: 83 percent white and Asian, $136K
  • Clarksville: 87 percent white and Asian, $161K
  • Rockville 68 percent white and Asian, $116K
  • Glenelg 88 percent white and Asian $181K

Some would see that and think that there was racism involved. That is what “equity” is all about- looking at outcomes, then trying to make them the same, but that is simply saying that correlation means causation. Instead, let’s look at the correlation and see if we can find the causation.

Parents who make more money do so because they value education, hard work, or some other trait. That doesn’t always mean college- it can mean trade school, learning to run a business, something. Those parents are also clever or intelligent, which is inheritable. The point is, parents who make money tend to impart the values that made them successful upon their children. Parents who are not successful pass their traits on as well. So children in affluent households tend to be successful. The children in poor households tend to be less successful.

How do you fix this? School and teachers can’t. Teachers who are with a student for less than 1100 hours a year can’t fix 18 years bad parenting coupled with the handicap of losing the genetic lottery. All of the programs in the world won’t turn a student with a 75 IQ and no motivation into a scholastically successful person. In that case, you are doing nothing more than trying to teach a pig to sing.

The other thing that I would like to point out is that the response to COVID had an effect on an entire generation of students, who lost learning opportunities that will hurt them in lost learning gains, thereby affecting them for their entire lives. The knowledge gap that they have as a result of missing a year or more of school will cause them to play catchup for years.

By Divemedic, ago

The Left Suddenly Cares About Soldiers?

Leftists on Twitter are all upset because there was a Pat Tillman tribute during the Superbowl. Although the left is all in favor of going to war against a nuclear armed Russia, wars that are started by Republicans are bad, so the facts of his death have to be viewed in that light. The reasons that the left is giving for being upset are:

  • Tillman was supposedly opposed to the war in Iraq, according to some rando who claims to have been in his unit (of course he was killed in Afghanistan, so I don’t see how this matters)
  • Tillman was not killed by the enemy, but by friendly fire when a part of his platoon mistook Tillman’s forward position for an enemy one, and fired on it. (friendly fire or not, he was killed in a firefight with enemy combatants. If a cop dying a week after J6 can be pinned on the right, I think we can chalk this one up to a combat death.)
  • Tillman supposedly said (again according to a rando who claims to have heard a guy who claims to have been in Tillman’s unit) “If something happens to me, I am afraid they will parade me in the streets. I don’t want them to parade me through the streets.” (Even assuming that Tillman actually said this, he couldn’t possibly have been referring to the Rangers who were killed and then dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, and not wanting that to happen to him, could he?)

So if the US winds up in a shooting war with Russia, I expect all of those bloviating leftists to rush down to the recruiting office to sign up.

By Divemedic, ago

Changes, part 2

As I said last month, we are searching for a new location to be closer to my wife’s job. I am also tired of things where I work:

  • I was suspended without pay for a week because of a pending investigation when a delusional patient accused me of trying to kill him.
  • An incident just after New Year’s day where a patient threatened violence.
  • Three different incidents in January where patients either attacked or threatened to attack me.
  • My hospital claims to want 4 to 1 nurse to patient ratios* in the ED. That is rare. Now it’s usually 6 to 1. On one recent shift, I had 5 patients, but 2 of them were on ventilators. One of the other three was a sepsis patient who went into cardiac arrest just after EMS brought him in. The work load there is just too high.

So I also want to change jobs. Career specialists say that you should change every 2 to 3 years, so I think now is a good time to do so. I think we are close to answers on both.

We found a builder that will build us a 5 bedroom, 4 bath, 2900 square foot house for less than $190 a square foot. The place is gorgeous. Here are a couple of pictures from the model:

Master Bedroom
Living Room

Construction should take a bit. In the meantime, my wife’s job is moving in the fall, so if the house isn’t done by then, she will have a 45 minute commute. We are negotiating terms now.

On the job front, I just negotiated with a potential new employer. I spoke with people I know who work there, and they say it’s a good place. It looks good:

  • Patient to nurse ratios in the ED of 3:1, with occasional jumps to 4:1. I confirmed with friends that they aren’t blowing smoke with this claim.
  • Better neighborhood, so less of the violent psych and druggie patients.
  • A $12 per hour raise over what I am making now
  • Getting a $10,000 recruitment bonus for a 2 year contract doesn’t hurt (payable in 4 semi annual installments)

The downsides are twofold:

  • Because this hospital is properly staffed, there are no shift bonuses for pulling extra shifts. Of course, my hospital stopped paying them in September, so no real loss.
  • I can’t be PRN at the new place. I have to work full time for the time being. That’s OK, this will enable us to pay for this new house in 8 years and still keep the one we live in now as a rental.

The new hospital has sent the offer, and I have conditionally accepted for an August start date. (when the wife’s new job location starts) I should get the actual contract to look over some time in the next week. If it looks good, I will sign on. Hey, closer to the new place, less workload, and more money.

Explanation of the importance of patient/nurse ratios:

For those who don’t know, each patient needs to be assessed at intervals, plus needs medications, tests, and other related things coordinated. For “routine” patients on a medical floor, a nurse can handle as many as 6 or 7 patients at a time. The more things that are wrong with the patient, the more time it takes to care for them, so task loading becomes an issue- a nurse can only do so much without increasing the risk that they will miss something important, or make a mistake because they are pressed for time and rushing high risk tasks like selecting and dosing medications. For this reason, the sicker the patients, the fewer that a single nurse can effectively handle.

Some patients are so sick that they take up all of your time. A patient on a ventilator is one of those. In general, having two patients on a ventilator is all a nurse can handle, because those patients are also usually receiving a list of medications that are high risk, and this combination means spending a lot of time with that patient. This is why the more acute the unit, the lower the ratios need to be. In the ED, patients in general shouldn’t be more than 4:1 to the nurses, unless you want to compromise patient safety by not monitoring the patients closely enough. For that reason, the ICU is usually 2:1, the “step down” unit is normally 3 or 4 to 1, and so on.

This is why the ED usually has a unit called “fast track” where patients are less sick with things like toothaches or broken fingers. In fast track, you will see ratios of 6:1 because the patients require far less of the nurse’s time. Fast track is usually a separate subunit within the ED, usually staffed with a nurse or two and a midlevel practitioner (a PA or a nurse practitioner), and the goal there is to clear out as many low acuity patients in as short a time as possible, thus leaving the sicker patients (who take up more time and resources) for the doctors and the nurses with lower ratios.

By Divemedic, ago