📣 Letter campaigns for free tests! 🧪 People's CDC external review of the CDC identifies major red flags 🚩 CDC discourages testing in East Palestine 🚩
📣 Letter campaigns for free tests! 🧪 People's CDC external review of the CDC identifies major red flags 🚩 CDC discourages testing in East Palestine 🚩
Like clockwork now, every spring, they report on the news that allergy symptoms could be "new" symptoms of covid. Get tested, wear a mask.
Contents:
- Events, Actions, & Campaigns
- Pandemic field notes & “Living with the virus”
- In the News (virus & adjacent media, science, news, and op-eds)
- This is NOT Fine section (gaslighting & other outrages)
- He(a)rd Scuttlebutt (the pandemic grapevine)
USA Letter Campaign: Free PCR tests and CDC Data Collection
By People’s CDC: Join us in writing Congress, the CDC and the ICATT and ask them to make Free PCR tests available for all through ICATT. They can do this by maintaining and expanding the pharmacy and stand-alone testing sites through Color Health, eTruthNorth, Quest and others at libraries, retail locations and independent pharmacies, and to expand this program to require community health centers to test residents for free.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/free-pcr-for-all
USA Letter Campaign: We need free rapid home covid tests for all
By People’s CDC: At a minimum, 8 tests per month per person should continue to be covered by all health insurance including private plans, Medicare and Medicaid – and available via the US Postal Service. Without free tests, many people simply won’t test, and will go to work or school sick – and won’t seek treatment that could keep them from getting sicker. Covid isn’t over, so we need at-home TESTS.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/we-need-free-rapid-home-covid-tests-for-all
New York State USA Letter Campaign: Reinstate the Mask Mandate for Healthcare Settings in NY!
By Mandate Masks NY: Contact the Governor, Commissioner, and State Assemblymember and Senator to say that we need New York State to reinstate the mask mandate for healthcare settings!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/reinstate-the-mask-mandate-for-healthcare-settings-in-ny
People’s CDC issues report: CDC external review (spoiler alert: red flags 🚩🚩🚩)
Too Many Deaths, Too Many Left Behind: A People’s External Review of the CDC, by the People’s CDC
We identified three major “red flags:”
The CDC leadership downplays the serious threat COVID-19 continues to pose, likening COVID to the flu and creating maps that deemphasize the risk of COVID transmission instead of aiming to control and prevent disease.
The CDC leadership has shifted recommendations following pressure from influential business interests and has aligned public health guidance with political agendas over scientific evidence to create an atmosphere where workers and consumers are willing to put their lives and health at risk to work and shop in unsafe conditions.
CDC guidance pushes individual choice over a population health approach to protect everyone. This approach devalues the lives of high-risk individuals (4 in 10 US adults) by burdening them to protect themselves, instead of encouraging everyone to protect each other.
And things are not looking like they continue to proceed in the wrong direction as federal workers are urged to have in-person work, the CDC itself is having an outbreak.
🇺🇸 The Washington Post: CDC meeting, intended to mark covid progress, sees virus cases of its own. The conference for disease detectives hadn’t been held in person for several years because of the pandemic. By Dan Diamond, April 28, 2023 The staff dedicated to investigating disease outbreaks for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received a reminder this week of the pandemic’s persistence: confirmed covid cases at their own conference.
🗞️ In the news
🇯🇵 The Japan Times - Mask use in Japan at 86% despite eased guidelines, AI analysis finds. By Karin Kaneko, Apr 11, 2023 About 86% of people are still wearing masks in public a month after Japan’s guidelines were eased, according to an artificial intelligence system developed by broadcaster NTV surveying people at Tokyo Station.
💉 Ars Technica: Unvaccinated more likely to have heart attack, stroke after COVID, study finds. Being fully vaccinated reduced the risk by about 41 percent. By Beth Mole - 2/21/2023 For those who had a major cardiac event, the median time of the event was 17 days after the start of a COVID-19 infection and 212 days (roughly seven months) since the last vaccine dose. Overall, the people most at risk of having a cardiac event after an infection, regardless of vaccination status, were older males with other underlying health conditions. Previous cardiac events increased the risk the most, but diabetes, liver disease, obesity, and high cholesterol were also significant risk factors.
🚩 Tampa Bay Times - Florida health officials removed key data from COVID vaccine report. By Christopher O'Donnell APRIL 7, 2023 The Times’ records request asked for all previous versions of the state analysis made public on Oct. 7. The documents show that, before the final version was released, at least five drafts had been produced. One version included a data table showing the number of cardiac-related deaths from infection. The conclusion in four of the drafts provided a counterpoint to Ladapo’s assertion about the vaccine. Four epidemiologists who reviewed the drafts said the omission is inexplicable and flawed from a scientific standpoint. They said that, based on the missing data, Ladapo’s recommendation should be rescinded.
🇺🇸 Government Executive: Telework Isn't to Blame for Government Backlogs and Inefficiencies, OPM Director Says. by ERICH WAGNER, MARCH 13, 2023 “Face time is not a proxy for performance,” she said. “We need to utilize these flexibilities in order to take advantage of what we have learned throughout the pandemic—that we’ve actually seen greater engagement, increased productivity and performance. And I’ll tell you, we’ve actually just announced new data variables that we’ll collect to provide more granular data on telework and remote work for agencies to use to discern productivity, performance, recruitment and retention.”
🇺🇸 Government Executive: OPM Will End Agencies’ Maximum Telework Status Next Month. The move follows White House guidance last week instructing federal agencies to reduce the use of workplace flexibilities following the end of the COVID-19 national emergency. By Erich Wagner, APRIL 19, 2023 In the days since OMB published its telework guidance, which called on agencies to develop a new system to continuously monitor telework’s positive and negative impacts on service delivery, federal employee groups continued to suggest that while it appears well-meaning and rooted in evidence-based policymaking, the White House should have solicited input from agency HR officials and labor groups earlier in the process.
The Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity's action call was prompted by Gov. Maura Healey's decision to end the state’s public health emergency on May 11 — signaling the end of full-time masking in healthcare settings. The group is also asking that all Massachusetts health care institutions provide free N95 masks. The coalition has collected more than 700 signatures in an open letter...
🌳 Propublica: How We Found That Sites of Previous Ebola Outbreaks Are at Higher Risk Than Before Research links deforestation to outbreaks. by Irena Hwang and Al Shaw - Feb. 27, 2023 Garnett long lamented the deforestation from farming, mining and logging in the region and wondered if tree loss had anything to do with the outbreak that had swept into Sierra Leone from a forested area of Guinea. With activities in his country at a standstill due to the outbreak, Garnett asked the ERM Foundation, the nonprofit arm of a sustainability consulting firm in London, to help him analyze patterns of deforestation. Their findings suggested Garnett’s hypothesis was valid: A particular pattern of deforestation seemed to explain a number of Ebola outbreaks they studied, including the one that began in Meliandou, Guinea.
This is NOT fine
The CDC discourages testing, because of course, they always have
Jordan Chariton interviews Eric Cozza, an East Palestine resident who, along with others, has had elevated levels of cancer-causing Vinyl Chloride detected in his urine. Cozza recorded audio of trying to get his healthcare provider to test his urine for Vinyl Chloride—a cancer-causing toxicant that was blown up in the Norfolk Southern "controlled burn" on February 6th. Eric has been suffering with nosebleeds, burning eyes, headaches, chest pain, and short term memory loss. In the audio, his nurses and doctors tell him the CDC has urged medical providers NOT TO test East Palestine residents for Vinyl Chloride.
You can’t find what you’re not looking for, and if you never test, it’s “rare” and if it’s rare, nothing needs to be done… This was the case with someone I knew in the early 2000s who died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. I was told that the CDC told the widow CJD was rare, but that they wouldn’t count this case because they don’t count cases without confirming with autopsy, and, they said, they almost never do autopsies to confirm the cases. You do the math. How rare is anything if nobody is counting it?
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
They know. Clearly the threat of covid in some form is present in the forefront of the President’s mind, whatever the policy or propaganda — Truth comes out.
THE PRESIDENT: What’s your question?
CHILD: What’s the top step to success?
THE PRESIDENT: What’s the top what?
CHILD: Step — steps — step to success.
THE PRESIDENT: What’s the top step to succ- — to success?
CHILD: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, well, making sure that we don’t all have COVID.
It’s allergy season. So the news is reporting that the newest variant of covid gives people itchy red eyes like allergies. I’ve heard many podcasters and youtubers complaining about allergies. I’ve had allergies. Half the people I know have had allergies lately. This happens every spring. Pollen counts are legitimately high in my area. But it’s like clockwork now, every spring, they report on the news and tell us that allergy symptoms could be symptoms of the “new” variant. And every year a lot of people say they just have allergies and some don’t test until and unless they take a turn for the worse. But some people never get it bad, never test, and never know they have covid and so go around spreading the virus assuming it’s allergies. Actual public health messaging and better access to testing is the answer here, not just blustery headlines about “new” symptoms every year that are same as they ever were, after all. Get tested, wear a mask.
"Many people rationalize that if it were really dangerous the government wouldn't let it be advertised. They are wrong in that thinking. It is dangerous and the government does let it be advertised."
— Rick Pollay, Pack of Lies: The Advertising of Tobacco (1992)