Posts Tagged ‘risk’

Seven Days

Tuesday, October 27th, 2020

A diversion

How about a break from anything having to do with COVID-19 or the election? Would you like that? Then let me tell you a story.

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, a 23-year-old, newly-minted, Infantry 2nd Lieutenant airborne ranger with my name spent two-plus years in a little country in Southeast Asia called Vietnam. I think if Donald Trump had foregone the fake bone spurs and taken his chances over there he might have learned a lot.

But that’s another story, and not the point of this one. Couldn’t help myself.

Three months before rotating home to the U.S., I had been pulled from the field, that is, taken out of the jungle, and given a staff job on Firebase Vegel in northern South Vietnam.

With two months to go, I decided to begin keeping a Short-timer’s Calendar.

My Short-timer’s Calendar consisted of the centerfold of the June, 1971, Playboy magazine. My Battalion Commander, Lt. Colonel  Bulldog Carter (that’s right, Bulldog), and my partner, Buck Kernan (who went on to become a Lieutenant General, like his father before him), marked up the luscious photo into 60 puzzle-like areas numbered from 60 down to one. The trajectory of the progression became increasingly lascivious.

Thereafter we held a nightly, candle-lit ceremony in the bunker occupied by Buck and me.

But before I describe the ceremony, I have to tell you about the Macadamia nuts.

During Vietnam  the army  allowed soldiers a ten-day R&R (Rest and Relaxation) vacation. As a two-year guy I got two of them, which I spent in Honolulu, Hawaii, with my wife, Marilyn. One day, during the second R&R, we went to the PX (Post Exchange) at Scofield Army Barracks to pick up a couple of things. While we were there we bought a large bottle of Macadamia nuts for me to take back to Vietnam. In Vietnam, little things became luxurious delicacies.

Back to the ceremony.

Our bunker had a single bunk bed. There was only one bed, because Buck and I took 12-hour shifts in the Op Center keeping the world safe for democracy. One of us would end his shift, wave to the other and crash into the bed.

Every night, at 2000 hours, 8:00 pm to you, the three of us would gather in the bunker. There was a small table to the side of the bed.  I had pinned the centerfold to the wall above the table. At the appointed hour, I would light two candles and place them on each side of the table under the pin-up. I would open the bottle of Macadamia nuts, which occupied a special spot in the center of the table, and hand each of my comrades one nut, taking one for myself. We would then have a moment of quiet reflection, after which I would, with a red marker purloined from the Op Center, X-out the next descending number on Miss June.

We would then eat the nuts.

We did that all the way down to ONE! On that night, we held a special ceremony, inviting the Battalion XO, the other six staff officers and the Battalion Sgt. Major into the bunker, which became almost as crowded as the stateroom scene in Night at the Opera. We gave everyone a Macadamia nut that night, and, in a service worthy of priestly ordination, I passed the bottle of Macadamia nuts to Buck, who, because he still had six weeks to go, later on would replace my centerfold with his centerfold and continue the tradition. We retired my centerfold to a place of prominence on the side wall of the Op Center, where Bulldog could see it every day all day. Six weeks later, Buck’s would be hung beside it.

The next day, I choppered south, boarded a chartered Pan Am plane with about three-hundred other happy guys and flew home to what we called “the world.”

OK. Break’s over

If it weren’t so stupidly tragic and delusional, one might be forgiven for viewing Donald Trump’s campaign swan song as comical. “We’ve turned the corner.” “It will go away.” “On November 4th, you won’t hear about it anymore.” And the list goes on.

But if you really want to know how we’re doing, there are, actually, reliable places to look. Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center and the New York Times COVID Tracker, for example.

And now there is this website, which tracks the Rt factor for each state, daily. Rt represents the effective reproduction rate of the virus calculated for each locale. It lets us estimate how many secondary infections are likely to occur from a single infection in a specific area. Values over 1.0 mean we should expect more cases in that area, values under 1.0 mean we should expect fewer. As of today, only one state, Mississippi, of all places, is below 1. You can see what infection rates are like today, two weeks ago, one, two and three months ago. It confirms what all of us, except the aforementioned Mr. Trump, his minions and cult-like followers, know to be true.

If we’ve “turned the corner” it is only to enter Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell. You remember that one, don’t you? It’s the final, deepest level of hell, reserved for traitors, betrayers and oath-breakers. Up until now, it’s most famous occupant had been Judas Iscariot.

Up until now.

And finally…

Seven days to go.

The number seven comes up a lot in Roman Catholicism. There are seven Cardinal Virtues, called by the church, “Gifts of the Holy Spirit.” They are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.

There are seven Corporal Works of Mercy. They are feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, bury the dead, and give alms to the poor.

And there are seven Spiritual Works of Mercy. They are instruct, advise, console, comfort, forgive, and bear wrongs patiently.

Judge, now Justice, Amy Coney Barrett is a devout Roman Catholic. I’m sure she is also a very smart person and probably a pretty good lawyer, too.

But for a month now, I’ve been bothered by something about her, and with seven days to go, I’m bothered even more.

For the life of me I cannot get over that, at her super-spreader Rose Garden introduction and follow-on reception in the White House, she did not wear a mask to protect herself and others. I understand everyone else who attended had swallowed the Kool-Aid, but she should have known better. And last night, in the White House Blue Room and outside on its balcony, she was still unmasked.

There are only three possibilities for this behavior.

  1. She doesn’t believe masks protect us and others from the virus, which I don’t believe for a minute;
  2. She is ignorant about masks and doesn’t understand their importance, which I don’t believe for a second;
  3. She was influenced by Trump’s behavior, as well as that of everyone else’s, and just went along to get along.

I’m voting for door #3, and that is a scary thought for our future.

Seven days.

 

 

Navigating extreme height, Chinese workers build cliff walks

Tuesday, March 7th, 2017

China has many incredible cliff walks – some for necessity so that remote villagers can connect with the world beyond and some for tourism so visitors can connect with vistas of natural splendor. Check out this 300m glass bottomed cliff walk that is proving popular with intrepid tourists. Even more terrifying – a death-defying hiking trail some people are willing to undertake all to get a cup of tea.

So much for the trails, what about the workers who construct them? We get a short glimpse in this video of Chinese construction workers building a glass-bottom walkway on Laowang Mountain, Jiangxi, China. The clip says workers are in their 50s and work a 10 hour day, earning between $43 and $58 dollars a day. They build about 65 feet a day. Other than hard hats, they don’t appear to have much in the way of safety equipment.

The workers aren’t the only ones braving these heights – look at the extremes these tiny, brave Chinese kids are willing to go through to get an education!

It wasn’t that long ago that U.S. workers were climbing the cliffs of the skyscrapers to build our cities here in the U.S., and safety equipment wasn’t to be seen. Check out this clip of workers building the Empire State Building – not only did they have no safety equipment, they played catch with red hot iron rivets!

Thankfully, safety standards have come a long way in our country since. Fall protection at 1776 feet: One World Trade Center. Although we’ve come a long way in terms of safety, we haven’t come far enough: The high price for fast phones: Cell tower deaths.

If you are a as fascinated with working at extreme heights as we are, you might enjoy more from our prior posts.

Dangerous Jobs: window washing at extreme heights.

You think your job is tough? Climbing Up The Tallest Antenna Tower 1,768 feet

Safety Nets, Hard-Boiled Hard Hats & The Halfway to Hell Club: Safety Innovations in the Golden Gate Bridge Construction

 

Healthcare providers struggle with violence-related risk management

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2016

There’s no question but that healthcare workers face a growing threat of violence from patients while going about their day-to-day jobs. In a 2015 survey, the International Healthcare Security and Safety Foundation reported a 40% increase in violent crime from 2012 to 2014, with more than 10,000 violent incidents mostly directed at employees. High stress, armed patients and visitors, drug and alcohol intoxication, mental health issues and more all contribute to an increasingly dangerous environment. OSHA reports that:

From 2002 to 2013, the rate of serious workplace violence incidents (those requiring days off for an injured worker to recuperate) was more than four times greater in healthcare than in private industry on average. In fact, healthcare accounts for nearly as many serious violent injuries as all other industries combined.

Recently, Susannah Levine reported on the challenge that healthcare facilities face in her Risk & Insurance article, Hospitals Struggle with Security Risks. The article discusses the pros and cons of an armed approach to healthcare security, as well as the insurance implications of various risk management and security measures. Liability insurance may be a determining factor as to whether healthcare facilities opt for armed security or rely on less lethal tools like Tasers and sprays.

“Barry Kramer, senior vice president, Chivaroli & Associates, a health care insurance broker, said that armed security in health care settings is more of a risk management concern than a coverage issue.

“It would be highly unusual for our clients’ liability policies to exclude claims involving security guards, whether or not they’re armed with guns,” he said.

He said many health care risk managers are not equipped to manage exposures associated with licensing and certifying guards or registering the facility’s own firearms.

For facilities that lack the bandwidth to manage, train and track certifications for in-house security staff, Kramer said,third-party vendors, such as local law enforcement or private security companies, can be contracted, since they have firearms experience as well as liability insurance coverage.”

In February, the New York Times discussed various approaches and philosophies that healthcare facilities employ to mitigate risk. The article by Elisabeth Rosenthal – When the Hospital Fires the Bullet – centers on the case of a 26-year-old mental health patient who was shot by police in a Houston hospital. In the course of the article, Roenthal presents various approaches to security:

To protect their corridors, 52 percent of medical centers reported that their security personnel carried handguns and 47 percent said they used Tasers, according to a 2014 national survey. That was more than double estimates from studies just three years before. Institutions that prohibit them argue that such weapons — and security guards not adequately trained to work in medical settings — add a dangerous element in an already tense environment. They say many other steps can be taken to address problems, particularly with people who have a mental illness.

Rosenthal contrasts the approach of Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, where the strongest weapons its security officers carry is pepper spray to that of the Cleveland Clinic, which has its own fully armed police force and also employs off-duty officers.

Guns in hospitals

Meanwhile, as risk managers struggle with the dilemma of whether to arm or not to arm, patients and visitors are often armed, enabled by state and local gun laws – just one more factor that healthcare facilities are coping with. At of the beginning of the year, Texas law allows for guns in state mental health hospitals. Campus Safety Magazine reports on how Kansas College Hospitals are preparing to allow guns on campus to comply with a new law. Gun laws in health systems vary by state – while a federal law bars guns from schools, there is no such law about firearms in hospitals.

Healthcare Violence Prevention Resources

OSHA: Worker Safety in Hospitals – Caring for our Caregivers

OSHA: Preventing Workplace Violence: A Road Map for Healthcare Facilities

OSHA: Guidelines for Preventing Workplace Violence for Healthcare and Social Service Workers

Mitigating Workplace Violence at Ambulatory Care Sites

Emergency Department Violence Fact Sheet

Healthcare Crime Survey 2015

Prior related posts

More perils for healthcare workers

Violence in healthcare: 61% of all workplace assaults are committed by healthcare patients

Report on violence & aggression to Maine’s caregivers; Injuries include bites, kicks, being hit

Health Wonk Review: Post-Turkey Day edition freshly posted at InsureBlog

Thursday, December 4th, 2014

Hank Stern has posted a lively Health Wonk Review: Post-Turkey Day edition at InsureBlog – and rest assured, it’s not leftovers, it’s stuffed with meaty issues! This biweekly best of the health policy blogosphere is a good way to keep up with the wonkery.
Hank is one of our long-term hosts. He and I were waxing nostalgic over his first time at bat back in 2006. To check out other past editions visit the Health Wonk Review archives
Also, as long as you are making the blog carnival news rounds, check out last week’s Cavalcade of Risk #222 hosted by Van Mayhall at Insurance Regulatory Law. We were goofing off over a long holiday weekend, so we didn’t get around to posting it yet, but it deserves a look-see. .

Risk Roundup x 200

Wednesday, January 22nd, 2014

Jeff Root of Rootfin hosts Cavalcade of Risk #200. I repeat, 200! That’s a lot of risk covered over the year. Kudos to Jeff for a great issue and also to Hank Stern of InsureBlog for steering the ship for these many years. It’s no small task. These topical blog “carnivals” — as the roundups are sometimes called — are valuable because they expose readers to new blogs, new writers and new topics.
Hats off to Jeff not just for content curation but also for a very attractive and well-designed blog. Jeff’s area of expertise is life insurance and he appears to be doing the social media thing right – check out his Google+ page and we also find him over on Twitter talking about how he just got his Google glass invitation – so we expect a future risk report on the pros and cons of Google glass!

First Cavalcade of Risk for 2014

Wednesday, January 8th, 2014

It’s the first full week back to work for many, but some are stranded by the frigid temps gripping the nation. Whether you’re at home or at work, grab a cup of the hot beverage of your choice and hunker down with a fresh Cavalcade of Risk #199 (posted by Michael Stack at Workers Comp Roundup) – it’s a good way to catch up with what’s been happening in the blogosphere over the last few weeks – and to take a peek at what’s in store for 2014.

Thanksgiving Risks

Wednesday, November 27th, 2013

Louise Norris had posted a Thanksgiving Cavalcade of Risk at Colorado Health Insurance Insider. The ACA rollout issues play heavily in the topic list, but there are also posts about disability insurance, remembering our vets and corporate social media risks. Don’t miss the outstanding winter landscape photos illustrating the issue, nice!
Have a safe and risk-free holiday – if you plan to fry up a turkey, William Shatner has some advice for you. And unless those turkeys are on your plate, watch out for those pesky birds!
Warm Thanksgiving wishes to all!

Cavalcade of Risk #191: Your Daily Shower Can Kill You

Wednesday, September 4th, 2013

We’re happy to be hosting Cavalcade of Risk #191. Risk is a topic that we think about a lot, so a recent post about risk on the group blog Metafilter caught our attention. It pointed to Jared Diamond’s excellent essay, The Daily Shower Can Be a Killer. The author shares a risk management lesson that he learned in 50 years of field work on the island of New Guinea: the importance of being attentive to hazards that carry a low risk each time but are encountered frequently. He notes:

“Studies have compared Americans’ perceived ranking of dangers with the rankings of real dangers, measured either by actual accident figures or by estimated numbers of averted accidents. It turns out that we exaggerate the risks of events that are beyond our control, that cause many deaths at once or that kill in spectacular ways — crazy gunmen, terrorists, plane crashes, nuclear radiation, genetically modified crops. At the same time, we underestimate the risks of events that we can control (“That would never happen to me — I’m careful”) and of events that kill just one person in a mundane way.”

The Metafilter post also included a link to this fun video on the topic of risk management. I nominate it as the Cavalcade of Risk official theme song.

With that preamble on risk management, we delve into this week’s submissions.
Life Insurance – First up to bat, we offer a nod and shout out to Hank Stern of InsureBlog, our fearless leader who has been managing the Cavalcade’s biweekly efforts for close to 200 issues now. Kudos and thanks, Hank. He poses the question: What if you’re diagnosed with cancer while buying new life insurance? Well, as it turns out, there may actually be a decent chance of obtaining coverage. Read how in Underwriting Cancer.
ACA spin vs. reality – Louise Norris of Colorado Health Insurance Insider is on the front lines when it comes to implementing ACA in the real world so we always take particular note of her opinions on the matter. In her post
Early Renewal Provides a Good Alternative for 2014, she takes on some of the misinformation and spin from both the right and the left that can make things confusing for consumers. She cites misinformation about the Aetna plan as one example of spin not matching reality.
Technology – Our colleague Bob Wilson can always be counted on to offer a unique and often humorous take on things at his eponymously named blog Bob’s Cluttered Desk. He notes that mobile technology is making tremendous advances that will speed treatment and lower medical costs, which is critical for those of us paying the bills and managing claims — but he questions the wisdom of having Siri as a Medical provider, and whether she can be trusted to stay on the straight and narrow.
Oral Chemotherapy Parity – David Williams knows his stuff when it comes to the ins and outs of the business of healthcare, and if that is on your radar, there is no better guide than his Health Business Blog. This week, he talks about the oral anticancer parity law, noting that while it’s not necessarily a bad idea to require health plans to charge the same out-of-pocket costs for oral anti-cancer drugs as they do for infused products, the law has unintended consequences, including rolling back co-pays on generic chemo meds used for other indications
Investing – At the blog Mom and Dad Money, Matt Becker says that investing in the stock market carries with it a very large risk, one that is rarely talked about in the financial media. In his post The Real Risk of Investing in the Stock Market, he challenges some of the conventional wisdom about investing, noting that success and failure may not be the only outcomes we should measure.
Risk of incarceration – Here at Workers’ Comp Insider, we recently assessed the risk of jail time for workers comp lawbreakers and advise any claimants with felonious intent to steer clear of Wyoming. Corporate malfeasants, not so much…
That’s it for this week’s Cav. The next host — two weeks from today — will be Nancy Germond at Insurance Writer Blog.

Cavalcade of Risk: Surviving the Mayan Apocalypse Edition

Friday, December 28th, 2012

Did you survive the holidays? You may have thought that your calorie count was your biggest worry, but actually the Mayan Apocalypse was looming. We dodged that bullet, but what’s around the corner? Van Mayhall of Insurance Regulatory Law talks about assorted risky matters in Cavalcade of Risk: Surviving the Mayan Apocalypse Edition.

Risk Roundup and Top 10 Forklift Accidents

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

Michael Stack and Rebecca Shafer make their debut in hosting Cavalcade of Risk, #172 at the Amaxx Work Comp blog. Check out this biweekly smorgasbord of risk!
And speaking of risk, here’s a compilation of the Top 10 Forklift Accidents from the “what not to do” school of risk management.