Kim B

Engineer. Musician. Mom. Independent thinker. Superpower: able to wake up sleepy, snarky teens with a skirl of the pipes.

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

100% true. I had serious complications after having to have lymph nodes removed, and my doctor's office cautioned me over the phone about the specific risk the vaccine posed in my case. Yet they couldn't advise me against taking it - or provide any kind of doctor's note - due to the threat of running afoul of the medical board. My own surgeon, who knew my specific case, unusual complications and my complete health history couldn't advise me without facing repercussions from some administrator who knew nothing about me.

[Justine Bateman @JustineBateman]

Anthony Fauci has been a medical administrator for almost all of his career.
Did you know during the covid shutdown, there was an email sent to many US physicians--actual medical doctors dealing directly with patients, that told them their medical licenses would be revoked if they said anything contrary to what Fauci and the CDC had established?
I'm far more interested in hearing what doctors who have real patients have to say about a virus than some office-bound administrator.
That this man refuses to comment on his careless "guidance" after trying to destroy the very doctors we should have been hearing to begin with is indefensible.

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

I remember when the schools were still closed but they reopened ice rinks for skating and hockey... but ONLY as long as there were no referees (perhaps black and white stripes attract covid). While it was definitely NOT safe to change into hockey gear in the locker rooms, it WAS totally safe if you changed in the lobby. I wondered aloud if maybe we could let the kids go back to school if we held classes at the ice rinks (provided they didn't wear stripes, of course!) but apparently that was making a mockery of a serious situation. Meanwhile grown men stripping down and donning jock straps in full view in the lobby was just science. If it was fiction it would have been funny, but it was real life in WA.

[Kristen Mag @kristenmag]

It was the middle of march and they were like ‘oh no we gotta close the schools’ and then they were all ‘gotta close the gyms and other stuff too’ and get this they even taped up the playgrounds and boarded up the basketball hoops and closed the hiking trails and filled the skate park with sand and omg remember when they arrested that guy at the beach that was so cray and then they told us to stay home and binge netflix in our pajamas and they were all like ‘just two weeks guys’ and they insisted ‘don’t wear masks’ over and over til one day they were like ‘never mind you gotta cover your face with a thin piece of cloth actually’ and later they said ‘cloth doesn’t work and actually you need to shave your beard too’ lol and they were like ‘social distancing is science for realsies’ but they totes made that up and then they were all ‘no you can’t buy garden seeds just essential things like doritos’ and ‘make sure to follow these arrow stickers because science’ and ‘oh btw it’s illegal to hug people unless you wrap yourselves in a shower curtain’ and ‘no it’s way too dangerous to gather for a funeral but it’s totes safe to gather for a crowded protest in fact you definitely should’ and then they finally opened gyms and restaurants back up but they were all ‘nope you can’t come in unless you inject this rando mystery liquid into your arm first’ and ‘be sure to mask up between sips and bites’ and anyway they kept schools closed for months and months and kids were not ok obvy but bars stayed open yay and thru it all they were like ‘oh hey if you question or complain about any of this stuff you are literally a selfish evil grandma-harming white supremacist so you should be censored and banned and fired from your job and locked up at home actually’ and they promised all this stuff that we were complaining about would keep us safe but instead the stuff just ended up irreparably harming us and dividing us and dehumanizing us and you guys we must never ever ever let them do this stuff to us again.

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

I'll never know for sure if I was one of the over-treated or if my life was saved by early diagnosis and mastectomy after my very first mammogram in 2014. I'm willing to assume the latter and be grateful, but the side effects of surgery were significant, unusual, and lasting. More recently, the pushback and scorn I've received for wanting to weigh the pros/cons of dialing back on inconclusive mammograms (after over a decade of inconclusive results on the remaining side due to density) has been... off-putting. If I'm so high-risk, why do we want to keep radiating this tissue only to consistently get results that the very folks pushing (and getting paid for) the test say are inconclusive? Like the author, my faith in the "experts" is not what it was pre-Covid. I find myself bristling at the implication that I should know better than to question protocol.

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

Resuscitation fairly successful.

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

Who can say for sure? It's a mystery wrapped in an enigma. 😂🙈🎺💥

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

Remember that time when our governor declared himself supreme leader and seized power away from the legislature for 975 days, businesses were forcibly closed, kids were locked out of school for a year and a half, you had to show papers to even get a cheeseburger, a brand new pharmacutical product became a requirement for every single person regardless of even obvious contraindications... and all the decent and fair-minded people of Washington rose up with one voice and said, "No Kings"?

Yeah, me neither.

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

Same! I have many friends who cite her as an unbiased news source. I don't understand it... even if you know nothing about politics or the players involved, one look at the adjectives and overwrought language should clue you in that it is anything but unbiased. It's cartoonish.

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

@DrJBhattacharya Abundance of caution

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

@kristenmag Any chance you know how to do this in Facebook? 🙏🏼

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

I have a likely upopular but sincere question for people in WA who participated in the No Kings protests: The most king-like overreach I have witnessed in America in my lifetime happened right here in WA when our governor seized power for himself that rightfully belonged to the legislature for 975 consecutive days. The few people who dared to protest that overreach were openly scorned by many of the same people protesting against authoritarianism now. How can this be explained?

I want to believe there is something more to it than just pure tribalism or jumping in when protesting is popular and gets likes on Instagram, but I'm not seeing it.

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

@MrsMACisback @kristenmag Exactly. I remember fervently wishing that he didn't say schools should reopen at Easter. As soon as the words left his mouth, I knew that the schools in my state would just dig in their heels against reopening. It had nothing to do with the safety of the kids.

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

I wonder the same thing. Alternatively, some people (myself included) have businesses or work in industries that have not recovered, with no sense of when or if they will bounce back. I might have answered that way, because of the point you made above plus the fact that our business is still struggling, likely to close within the next two years.

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

Am I the only one who finds it jarring that so many people can see flaws in one candidate, yet vigorously support the other without reservation?

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

I did not comply. My life was made difficult (understatement). I was outed to my kids' school as unfit to volunteer. I risked expulsion from higher learning/professional advanced school. I was not allowed to eat dinner in public with my vaccinated husband, or go to a movie, by the same people who are now clamoring vociferously that they support women's bodily autonomy with no exceptions. GTFO.

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

I am a woman who did not get the Covid vaccine due to complications from breast cancer and lymph node dissection. Your administration vilified women like me, doing your best to crush us into submission, push us out of our jobs (via OSHA mandates), and threatening us about how we were wearing your patience thin. Your incessant claim that my medical freedom is somehow safer in your hands would be laughable if it wasn't so insulting.

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

@davidzweig The delay in getting pediatric care is at least in part due to medical offices limiting the number of patients they would see, and discouraging them from coming in. My son had a bad infection, and when we wanted to see the pediatrician, they suggested sending in a photo instead.

[Kim B @SurlyPiper]

@KamalaHarris @JoeBiden Wait... now we DON'T dictate a woman's medical choices to her? I'm having a hard time keeping up.
- Signed, a woman who was told good and hard for over a year what I need to do with my body by these very same people.