[zeryx]

Actual access to reliable healthcare is a massive assumption to make, not everyone has incredible health insurance or lives in a country with sufficient doctors/med staff. Most places are in crisis for lack of resources, I'd rather ask chatgpt or Gemini for something urgent rather than wait 5+ hours in ER for the doctor to say "just take some aspirin and go to a walk-in tomorrow"

[TeMPOraL]

Not to mention, going to an ER for something that doesn't turn out to be an emergency carries a high risk of coming back home with something significantly worse.

Last time I was in ER, I accompanied my wife; we got bounced due to lack of appropriate doctor on site, she ended up getting help in another hospital, and I came back home with severe case of COVID-19.

Related: every pediatrician I've been to with my kids during the flu season says the same thing: if you can't get an appointment in a local clinic, stay home; avoid hospitals unless the kid develops life-threatening symptoms, as visiting such places carry high risk of the kid catching something even worse (usually RSV).

[dgacmu]

There are only two places I still routinely wear a mask (n95) these days: Airplanes from waiting at the gate until about 10 minutes after takeoff when the air handling system has had time to clear things out (and the same after landing), and hospital/doctors visits. It's such a high ROI.

We used to observe that our kid(s) got sick every time we flew over the winter break to visit family. We no longer have this problem. (we do still have kids.) Not getting sick turns out to be really quite nice. :-) Hanging out in the pediatrician's office surrounded by snotty, coughing children who are not mine...