Mastodawn

I'm wonderign two things, given that my first post about covid is now over six years old:

[1] why did the term "Typhoid Mary" not come back into regular parlance, and [2] where the hell were the unions in protecting their members from airborne hazards in all this:

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2026/03/27/Human-Cost-Failing-Name-COVID-Airborne/

Health Canada classified nCoV-19 a Risk Group 3 hazard, and even without using the magic word, that should have been enough to start protecting workers.
#CovidIsNotOver

The Human Cost of Failing to Name COVID ‘Airborne’ | The Tyee

Safety laws are being sidestepped. One doctor’s nightmare shows how health-care workers pay the price.

The Tyee

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sb arms & legs 21h ago

@harmoniousanger
I work in a very busy performing arts roadhouse. We have everything from local community groups to Broadway to international touring acts come through on a daily basis.

Since the various mask mandates have been lifted, not a SINGLE group has taken percautions by masking. I'm talking about 150 groups per year, 4+ years in.

One group (a folk quintet) came in VERY paranoid about getting sick. Asked if the staff were all feeling well, wiped mic stands and other surfaces with Lysol wipes... No one wore a mask. When I suggested that wearing an #n95 would be much easier and orders of magnitude more effective, I got daggers.

We are an union house, represented by #IATSE. As far as our local is concerned: "what's covid?"

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Emily van Lidth de Jeude 20h ago

@harmoniousanger I hope the reason Typhoid Mary hasn't come back into generalized parlance is because it was a cruel and prejudiced attack on a single Irish woman who, despite being one of about 400 identified asymptomatic carriers of typhoid at the time, was the only one unsupported, forcibly confined, and made a social scourge whose name still provokes disgust to this day. For some if us, disgust with our culture that likes to pick a scapegoat, and it's nearly always an underprivileged woman.