Episode Notes

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support this show and others on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Margaret Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and also welcome back to the show. It's been several months since I put out the last episode and you'll be shocked to know that's because a bunch of stuff happened in my life which is, you know, everything to do with everything that's going on in the world. Um, maybe most importantly I moved and I now live on-grid in Appalachia instead of off-grid and Appalachia, and I'm very happy for the transition. It's pretty cool to have enough electricity to make this show. And also have an oven that works. I really like having an oven. And I also got a puppy, and I got a puppy who is rescued, so I've not—I spent several months where instead of sleeping or getting anything done, I had a puppy. I still have the puppy but now I get to sleep because the puppy is like five months old. So that's where I've been. And, yeah, welcome back to the show. This week I'll be talking with Summer who is my friend who is an ICU nurse in a rural area in in rural Oregon, which is not the most lefty area, and we're going to be talking about pretty much the—the politics of vaccination and some of what they've dealt with during the pandemic. And I think you'll enjoy it. And this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of Anarchist Podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Duh da duh da da daaaaa.

Jingle 1 The Final Straw is a weekly anarchist radio show. It’s fucking awesome, and you’re never gonna hear me say fucking awesome on our show because we’re FCC regulated.

Jingle 2 There’s a black part of my heart that just flutters when you talk like that.

Jingle 1 [Inaudible] talk than more yelling.

Jingle 3 It’s a weird sort of like nice thing, in a way, that also can get kind of frightening at times.

Jingle 1 Thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org

Margaret Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with like your name, your pronouns, and then I guess a little bit about what it is that you do that is the reason I invited you to talk on the show today.

Summer My name’s Summer. I'm a nurse, I live in Rural Oregon. I use they/them pronouns and I've been working in an ICU and have experienced now working in a Covid ICU—full Covid ICU. And I come from a background of radical politics and we're here today to talk about some of that.

Margaret Yeah I guess I wanted to have you on because I've seen some of your social media posts about the hate that you've gotten at the—at the ICU that you work at and I know there's a lot of conversation right now about what do we do about the unvaccinated people who end up in hospital, and you know, combined with the—there's a lot of like news stories about, you know, the ungratitude of the unvaccinated folks and things like that. And I guess I just wanted to talk to you to get more of a firsthand idea of what it's like working at an ICU during Covid in a pandemic. I already set the Covid part.

Summer Sure, um, so to give a little context: like I said, I live in a rural area of Organ. It's predominantly conservative, a lot of libertarian bent, um, included in the state of Jefferson—if you're familiar with that as a concept. And we experienced a huge Covid surge in our ICUs August through October of this last fall—or summer into fall. Maybe even into November really. And so rural area with