I'm sorry, but what? The ostensible benefits of AirTags is that they're extremely easy to use and track with an iPhone. Why is it concerning that the author feels too tired to go to the hospital (during covid-heightened restrictions), but not too tired to use her iphone? Is going to the hospital for pediatric care generally easy? Is actively calling her husband easier than passive notification via the Find My app?
> “I’m worried,” I told my husband. “I want you to take her to the hospital.”
> “Doctors always tell us to take the baby to the E.R. whenever we call about anything,” he replied, exasperated. (This was true.) “She is fine. She is eating and playing and happy. This is not an emergency.”
> He eventually caved and set out for the hospital a half-hour away. Knowing he was already annoyed by me, I did not want to pepper him with questions about how it was going.
> Instead, I turned to the location-monitoring devices that I had secretly stashed in our car a week earlier.
> “I’m worried,” I told my husband. “I want you to take her to the hospital.”
> “Doctors always tell us to take the baby to the E.R. whenever we call about anything,” he replied, exasperated. (This was true.) “She is fine. She is eating and playing and happy. This is not an emergency.”
> He eventually caved and set out for the hospital a half-hour away.
The next article writes itself doesn't it?
In 2018, the United States spent about $3.6 trillion on healthcare, which averages to about $11,000 per person. Relative to the size of the economy, healthcare costs have increased over the past few decades, from 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1960 to 18 percent in 2018. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) project that by 2028, such costs will climb to $6.2 trillion, or about $18,000 per person, and will represent about 20 percent of GDP.
baby-hospital visits are brutal. It's about 8 hours of waiting (usually in the middle of the night) with a screaming child while staff ignores you and then finally says there isn't a problem.
Recently during a bout of covid my son's tongue was blue and he couldn't figure out what was up. My wife wanted to the go to ER, the doctor said to go to the ER. I said, "no, there's another explanation for this and nobody is losing a night of sleep over this". The next day we noticed the blue tongue happened after taking some blue-colored vitamin gummies.
> baby-hospital visits are brutal. It's about 8 hours of waiting (usually in the middle of the night) with a screaming child while staff ignores you and then finally says there isn't a problem.
Add to that that depending on your health-care plan, it could cost you thousands of dollars!
Personally, I could care less about the cost (but it does bother me). IO should have mentioned above that in nearly all cases, urgent care is more appropriate (my provider has one open during daytime hours).
Also depends on your insurance provider (at least in the US). Previous insurance I had wouldn't cover urgent care clinics, but would cover ERs. Stupid beyond belief, but it was a small company so I guess there were compromises on the plan. Luckily I no longer have that plan and have a much more sensible and comprehensive plan.
I do try to be charitable, but it almost seemed like a sick game to me.
"Here, let me convince my husband that he needs to go take the baby to the hospital. Now, let's stalk him to see if he actually did it!"
Anyways, this turned me off. It could have been "forgiven" (if this word even applies) had it contributed something meaningful. Sadly, it didn't, so it just comes off as neurotic stalking.
This is actually one of the side issues I had with the piece. The way it's written, you would think that she asked explicit permission to track him to the hospital.
However, what seems to have happened in reality, is that they had previously played a harmless game of "find the Airtags". Then, some time later, possibly a large period, she uses those Airtags to track the husband. It's hard to say in either direction if the husband knew and expected to be tracked to the hospital. I think that was a deliberate choice - but it still comes off deceptive, if this is just happenstance.
If any of this had contributed meaningfully to the main points, I would tolerate it a lot more - that's my biggest contention. The fact that the author isnt a perfect person is just a side gripe that I have with plenty other articles.
I doubt very much that a journalist would publish something about stalking their also works in journalism spouse without everyone involved being on board with what went on. I think it's written to highlight how creepy it is, with the occasional “I got my spouse's consent for all this” interludes to make a point that it's often used for non-consensual spying.
Articles don't normally highlight the virtues of the journalist where that's not relevant to the subject of the article.
The way I understood that was - she was going to write a piece about this subject. Asked for permission. What's implicit is that this experiment would have to last until she was done writing the piece.
Not just "let's find airtags today" and then "boohoo I've been tracking you without permission". Wouldn't make sense. He was not surprised when his phone notified him that a tag was tracking him after a day in Manhattan.
My impression was that she was both a) already up with the baby all night, and b) was too tired to drive 30 minutes to the nearest hospital with their baby. The article didn't say if the husband was also up with the baby all night. While tired I'd be wary of drifting off while driving with my newborn in the car.
Taking a child to the hospital, in particular a toddler/infant, is extremely stressful. If one is already tired from caring for that child all night, I'd completely understand asking the other parent to take the child. In fact, I have done so personally, though having two children meant it also made more sense for one of us to stay home with the other child instead of towing a second (healthy) child through the hospital as well.
Also, this is an opinion/editorial piece, so whether the author watched their spouse the entire time or if the author pieced the evening together after the fact while writing this article is up for speculation.
