BE PREPARED: IT’S MORE THAN A BOY SCOUT MOTTO WITH THE COVID

Be prepared! It sounds like a threat to some people.

“Prepared for what? What’re you gonna do if I’m not, huh? What?”

It sounds like there could be consequences, like, “Be prepared, or else.”

“Or else what? You tell me like you know something I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t think so, bub.”

While no one is ready for everything, why not gear up for the obvious, even when it’s not as obvious for some as it is for others.

Like the covid virus.

What makes the biggest difference in preparedness?

Experience, education, and most important, the ability to listen and learn.

In this life I’ve seen prepared people. The most prepared are General Contractors. If they can’t do everything from the start, they learn, and they learn fast. Why?

Because they have a foundation of knowledge to build on.

Who else? Nurses, that’s who. If you’ve seen the scope of materials and procedures they have to know you might call them Medical Contractors.

Architects design, contractors build; Doctors evaluate, nurses follow through.

This is where you come in: are you a designer or a builder, an evaluator or a worker?

When it comes to covid defense on an individual basis, you need to be all four.

Covid Defense Plan, Part 1

The architect creates a detailed model after working it out on paper, then hands the plan to the contractor.

Call it a Blueprint.

The contractor reads the blueprint and goes to work on the plan by prioritizing materials and manpower on a timeline.

If you’ve ever picked up a blueprint and paged through without your head spinning, you’re one up on this writer.

One of my buddies lived in a deteriorating barn with power supplied by an extension cord from a nearby house. He was a good guy with a secret.

Instead of the hippie he lived like with all sorts of weird stuff collected and displayed in the barn, he was also a construction superintendent.

When I visited his construction site trailer at a project on Portland’s east side he was a boss instead of a goofy guy in a barn. He had the blueprint, the schedule, and the deadline.

My brain was spinning watching all of the activities and decisions and non-stop deliveries.

What if we looked at COVID like a large building project? What would be the first priority?

Get vaccinated and wear a mask.

Covid Defense Plan, Part 2

Evaluate the problem and work toward a solution.

What’s the main complaint? Covid.

What’s the solution to the Covid problem?

Get vaccinated and wear a mask to curtail transmission and stop the variants from creating one deadly wave after another.

To get vaccinated and wear a mask you don’t need four years of undergrad followed by four years of med school with additional years of internships and residencies.

You also won’t carry hundreds of thousands in debt to get vaccinated and wear a mask, but you can still play doctor.

Or be a nurse if playing doctor is too complicated.

For this you won’t have to build experience in nursing homes, get burned when your nursing school suddenly locks the doors, scramble to graduate from another program, and get the dream job with hundreds of applicants.

Just get vaccinated and wear a mask.

Be Prepared To Show Up

You don’t need a covid permission slip to do the right thing any more than you need your cousin Rooster’s ideas on what to do.

Doctors and nurses commitment to medical education is more than watching a YouTube video of chunky guys dressed in Army surplus saying it’s all a hoax, it’s all a scam, it’s all fake.

A professional commitment is harder to walk away from than quitting a negligent church group, a misguided gun club, or the seat of honor at an all you can eat buffet.

Some people think of others more than they’d like, but healthcare on the wards does that. Doctors and nurses remember their wins and losses whether they want to or not. They have a human connection, which is becoming more rare with the noise from the anti-mask and anti-vax crowd.

One more story featuring some pig-headed man spitting his truth about mask mandates, followed by a doctor’s interview a week later about what the man said with is last dying breath in a covid ICU, is one too many.

You’ve seen the meme about covid starting as a virus and turning into an IQ test?

No one needs another covid student passing that test just before passing on.

“What were his final words?”

“Man, I’m in a tight spot. This shit is real.”

What would Dr. Gatsby say?

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Talk about timeless relevance, this is it. Can we turn it around?

Be prepared to find out.