✏️ Petition: CDC & HICPAC should recognize aerosol transmission 😷 Outbreak in hospital after removal of masks, a betrayal of high risk patients 🏥 Tell your reps, We still need rapid tests 🧪
Pandemic Asks #4 - Where is the vaccine drive for booster uptake & why isn't anyone telling people?
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 Petition: Urge the CDC and HICPAC to fully recognize aerosol transmission and protect health care workers and patients!
By National Nurses United: 1) Fully recognize aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory pathogens. 2) Maintain and strengthen respiratory protection and other protections for health care workers caring for patients with suspected or confirmed respiratory infections. 3) The CDC must maintain an approach in any updated infection control guidance that is clear and explicit on the precautions that are needed in situations where infectious pathogens are present or may be present in health care settings; don’t adopt a crisis standards approach. 4) CDC and HICPAC should engage with stakeholders, including direct care health care workers, their unions, patients, and community members to provide them with the ability to review and provide essential input into guidance updates.
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.
Pandemic Asks - What do you wish the experts would do? Reader Suggestions #4 - Why isn’t anyone telling people about the boosters and explaining waning and efficacy??
This is from reader submissions to the query form, What do you wish the experts would do in regards to the pandemic?
This is actually multiple submissions where people have asked repeatedly, either asking why people aren’t being told (by authorities) about the effectiveness of the bivalent boosters or how they wane, or asking why there isn’t more of a public campaign to get people the boosters, with uptake being so low… and it’s because there hasn’t been a good enough public campaign to get people boosted. Also natural herd immunity disinformation.
News Study: Lack of awareness of new COVID boosters' availability, eligibility blamed for low uptake - By Ryan Chatelain Nationwide, PUBLISHED 1:00 PM ET Jan. 19, 2023 A new study published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked why so few people have received the updated shots. The three most common reasons given were lack of awareness about eligibility for vaccination (23.2%), lack of awareness about vaccine availability (19.3%) and perceived immunity against infection (18.9%).
The second bivalent spring boosters were restricted in an egregious manner, but even the people who are eligible for a second bivalent booster, are not getting the message.
It can’t be explained except as a case of following the politics. The right-winger anti-vax politicians have a stranglehold on the purse strings of governments and health insurance companies, and they don’t want to fund vaccination, so they have scientists going out and making shit up about why that’s ok to run cover for the politicians who are anti-vax and the chickenshit ones that won’t stand up to them.
We need to write our representatives in government and demand pandemic mitigations and “the tools” be funded.
🗞️ In the news
🇺🇸 Covid-19 cluster being monitored at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, officials say By Boston 25 News Staff, June 24, 2023 “BIDMC recently detected a cluster of COVID-19 cases among staff and patients. We promptly isolated the patients and thereafter initiated universal masking on the affected unit in accordance with infection control protocols,” the statement said. “We continue to closely monitor this situation and will adjust this plan going forward as needed, and have reported the cluster to the Department of Public Health and Boston Public Health Commission.” Major hospitals lifted their mask mandates in May after the end of the Covid-19 health emergency. That lifting came after the federal and state public health emergency for COVID-19 ended on May 11. In April, a group of local doctors called on Gov. Maura Healey to keep the mandatory mask requirements in place.
🇺🇸 Why the CDC’s New Mask Guideline Proposal May Actually Imperil Frontline Workers - “The decisions some of these public health people are making are not getting better. They’re getting worse.” - by Katie MacBride Updated Jul. 01, 2023, Published Jun. 30, 2023 For Brosseau, it’s simply mind-boggling to suggest that surgical masks provide comparable protection to a fit-tested respirator against hazardous aerosols. “We don’t use surgical masks in any other context,” she said. “In any other industry, I’d be run out on a rail if I suggested a surgical mask for exposure to a hazardous aerosol. So why [does HICPAC] think this is a good idea?” Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back. Peg Seminario was the director of occupational safety and health for the AFL-CIO from 1990 until her retirement in 2019. She called the guidelines outlined in the slide deck “Really astonishing. And frightening.” “People are still getting sick and dying from SARS-CoV-2; they’re still getting long COVID,” Seminario said, adding that health-care workers are still significantly more at risk of contracting the virus than the average person. Despite that, said Seminario, HICPAC’s proposed guidelines are “all based upon trying to minimize protections, rather than being responsive to the science and providing a strong level of protection. We’re talking about health-care workers exposed to suspected and confirmed patients.”
💰 Important Context - Major ”Grassroots” Parents’ Rights Group Rakes in Big Right-Wing Money. Parents Defending Education scored hundreds of thousands of dollars from major conservative foundations and funds. WALKER BRAGMAN - JUN 15, 2023 The work PDE does runs parallel to that of Koch groups. The organization has cultivated parental anger at public schools and teachers unions over COVID safety and school curricula. It has played a key role in efforts to ban books from schools that deal with topics like race or LGBTQIA+ issues. In May 2021, PDE sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona with other parents’ rights groups, including MFL, expressing concern over federal efforts to focus on anti-racism and the legacy of slavery. PDE provides activists with resources they need to get involved in the movement, including a whole page on its website dedicated to attacking the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union.
🇺🇸 Insider - One of America's biggest health insurers just issued a warning that healthcare costs are about to soar. Lydia Ramsey Pflanzer, Jun 14, 2023 The "strong" level of care older Americans are seeking out suggests that people are getting more comfortable getting procedures they put off during the pandemic, the UnitedHealth Group executive said. The insurer is incorporating this higher level of demand into the prices it sets for plans it offers next year in the private market for health insurance for older Americans, known as Medicare Advantage. The stocks of health insurance companies tumbled on Wednesday following the warning.
🚨 Medpage Today: Myasthenia Gravis Tied to Elevated Risk for Severe COVID — Patients with autoimmune disorder should be prioritized for vaccines, antivirals, researchers say. by Ingrid Hein, Staff Writer, MedPage Today April 25, 2023 In addition, they detailed in JAMA Network, people with the autoimmune disorder had a roughly twofold greater risk of emergency department (ED) visits (HR 1.84, 95% CI 1.29-2.62), hospitalizations (HR 2.48, 95% CI 1.61-3.79) and death (HR 2.11, 95% CI 1.17-3.78) versus the general population. "Our results support the prioritization of people with MG [myasthenia gravis] for vaccination as well as for consideration of early therapeutics for COVID-19, such as antivirals," the group said.
🇺🇸 Wisconsin Public Radio - Vulnerable to COVID-19, patient calls retreat of hospital mask mandates a 'betrayal' - Chamomile Harrison and immunocompromised people worry about scaling back mask mandates. One UW Health doctor is urging stricter requirements, too. By Jonah Beleckis, Published: Wednesday, June 14, 2023, 6:05am Jamie Fairfield also called into "The Morning Show" to urge the return of mask mandates. The Algoma resident left behind a 34-year career as a dental lab technician because her employer dropped its masking requirements in 2021. Although disheartened to leave, Fairfield said her health had to come first. She has myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disease. Soon after she quit, a former coworker spread COVID-19 to several others in the office, she said.
This is NOT fine
The eugenics is right out in the open, hiding in plain sight.
Jonathan Howard, the doctor author of “We Want Them Infected” posted a tweet about how unnecessary and sad it is that more unvaccinated children have died in Mississippi. And many of the responses outright pointed out that these children might’ve had “comorbidities” and that healthy children rarely die. If the children did indeed have comorbidities, that makes it all the more tragic that their parents failed to get them vaccinated. So how on earth is this an argument against vaccination? Because anti-vax is a eugenics ideology. And that’s why they don’t necessarily rail against, or might even be ok about, vaccinating the elderly. It’s why they say “focused protection” for seniors or suggest the vaccine be restricted to those over 75 and not given to “healthy young people” and make the restrictions to “those with compromised immune systems” so narrow so even the eligible have trouble with access. Senior citizens typically don’t have babies anymore. Anti-vax priorities are very clear in the talking points and arguments if you’re paying attention.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
Repeatedly wrong person puts out a book referencing “post-pandemic” while encouraging masks at the book event, after having pooh-poohed masking.
Stop saying post-pandemic already.
Basement level standards of a crisis standards approach that leaves determinations of protocols for respiratory transmission of pathogens up to employers is unacceptable and can undermine both the health and safety of patients and health care workers and by extension the community.
Rita Valenti RN, Public comment at the CDC HICPAC Meeting on June 8th 2023