🤒 Getting sick is inconvenient 🏦 Bank bans Masks 😷 A string of Republican accusations against federal teleworkers 💻
🤒 Getting sick is inconvenient 🏦 Bank bans Masks 😷 A string of Republican accusations against federal teleworkers 💻
A science podcast episode that covers the invention of surgical gloves and the struggle to get surgeons to actually wear them.
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)
Petition to CDC Director: Demand CDC use ALL the tools to beat SARS-CoV-2. We don’t accept constant infection.
By Mask Together America: “We want the CDC to embrace the multi-layered approach in its public health awareness campaign. Educate the public about the COMBINED benefit of vaccines, clean air, testing, respirator use, isolation when sick, and treatment.”
Getting sick is inconvenient
Truth: "There is NO group that has NO risk from covid" - Everyone is at risk, even previously healthy young people sometimes get Long Covid and serious complications or yes, even maybe get hospitalized or die.
Headline: "COVID levels are so high, they’re hovering near 2020’s initial peak, as the WHO urges those at high risk to take any booster they can get their hands on"
Translation: "It's ok that cases are as high in 2023 as in 2020 because it's just those people who should run for cover, and not inconvenience business profit centers, etc."
Truth: GETTING SICK WILL INCONVENIENCE YOU (at the very least)
FACT: Infectious disease is preventable.
Get boosted and wear a mask.
The boosters are recommended for everyone 6 months and up in the USA & Canada.
🗞️ In the news
NewScientist - Our priorities are all wrong when it comes to new technologies. We can't get life-saving drugs, but we can get dubious self-driving taxis, says Annalee Newitz - 30 August 2023 Friends of mine have had to go to the emergency room to get a prescription, while others have suffered through weeks of debilitating symptoms or months of long covid because nobody would prescribe it. None of this makes any sense. When the US made it available under an emergency authorisation in late 2021, Paxlovid was touted as the miracle drug we would all be taking for covid-19. But, as a recent survey found, doctors are leery of prescribing it. No one is quite sure why. There is no shortage of it and its main side-effects are pretty mild (a weird taste in your mouth, stomach upset). Yet I was denied a potentially life-saving treatment when I needed it – at least at first – for no good reason. So much for the idea that when an amazing new technology is available, we will all have access to it and our lives will be better. Instead, we get questionable technologies that nobody asked for.
CNN Opinion: The mistake hospitals made on Covid-19 - by Theodore Pak, Lara Jirmanus and Andrew Wang - Published 1:53 PM EDT, Tue September 19, 2023 With hospitals facing what the American Hospital Association calls “crushing financial challenges,” are medical institutions and the CDC really putting patient and worker safety first? Despite myriad compelling reasons to prevent Covid-19 transmission in hospitals, some hospital infection control leaders pressured public health departments to end Covid protections such as universal masking in health care settings, according to reporting from The Boston Globe. While there are important and legitimate reasons — such as reprioritizing the preventive and elective care that took a back seat during the height of the pandemic — for hospitals to want to move past their Covid priorities, it’s also notable that hospitals stand to lose money from rescheduling elective procedures when patients test positive for Covid-19. But whatever the motive for loosening masking and screening measures, patient and health care worker safety could ultimately suffer.
Government Executive - 'It is fraud, folks. It’s fraud': The latest in a string of Republican accusations against federal teleworkers - Erich Wagner SEPTEMBER 8, 2023 “Where are all of those workers? I know they’re still on the payroll, right? Is COVID over? Are we able to come to work safely? And yet, we still have a huge number of people from this city telecommuting or teleworking, and there’s no reason we should be doing that.” Ernst’s complaints appear to be missing important points of context, however. First, her pressure on the administration to reduce telework comes on the cusp of a major initiative by the Office of Management and Budget and White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients to “aggressively” reduce telework and increase “meaningful in-person work” at federal agencies, particularly at agency headquarters buildings.
BBC - Covid: Over-65s called for jabs as hospital cases rise - By Michelle Roberts - Sep 17 2023 Testing for Covid has been massively scaled back, making it difficult to know how many people in the UK might have it. The continued rise in hospital rates over recent weeks suggests the virus is likely to be circulating more widely among the population. Hospital admissions of patients testing positive for Covid are now at the highest rate since the end of April, at 4.6 per 100,000 people.
Alberta premier orders review of shared kitchens in Calgary as hundreds of kids sick with E. coli - Jade Markus · CBC News · Posted: Sep 15, 2023 In an environmental inspection report of the kitchen at KidsU Centennial - Fueling Minds Inc. — the shared kitchen used by the daycares believed to be connected to the outbreak — AHS detailed major health issues, including cockroach infestations and unsafe food handling on Sept. 5, the date of the inspection, which happened the day after the outbreak was declared. AHS said the inspection also found instances of food not being handled in a manner that makes it safe to eat, and a lack of appropriate equipment for keeping food cold during transportation.
Study: 1 in 6 kids have persistent COVID symptoms for 3 months after infection. CIDRAP - By Stephanie Soucheray, July 21, 2023 "It was thought at first that the pediatric population was relatively spared from the long-term effects of COVID-19 after infection," the authors said. "But this changed rapidly with increasing reports and studies of pediatric patients not fully recovering from acute COVID-19." Sore throat, fever, sleep disturbance most common. Among the studies included in the present analysis, 16.2% (95% confidence interval [CI], 8.5% to 28.6%) of the pediatric participants experienced 1 or more persistent symptoms at least 3 months post COVID-19. Symptoms included fatigue, depression, sleep disturbance, cough, throat pain, and gastrointestinal symptoms.
Forbes - The Other School Staff Shortage. By Peter Greene, Aug 13, 2023 That survey found that every region of the country was having trouble finding enough drivers. 51% of respondents described their situation as desperate. In 2022 a follow-up survey found the situation had not significantly improved. And now 2023 is seeing more of the same. Causes? Covid left many bus drivers looking for another job, and many didn’t come back. Many didn’t want to come back. The job has gotten tougher; the same uptick in behavioral issues reported in schools is also evident on school buses. The hours are odd, the pay unspectacular. Solutions? Convince school staff to get a bus driver’s license. Raise pay. Provide support for dealing with difficult riders. None of these are new ideas, and none seem to be helping enough. Concerns about finding enough staff to drive the buses are everywhere—except in our national discourse about education. Why is this critical issue not commanding widespread attention beyond the local communities directly affected?
MedPage Today - Pulse Oximetry Inaccuracies Delayed COVID-19 Treatment — Black patients more likely to have an unrecognized need for therapy versus white patients. by Elizabeth Short, Staff Writer, MedPage Today August 24, 2023 Of note, in this study, patients who had an initially unrecognized need for COVID therapy based on pulse oximetry error received treatment at a median of 7.3 hours compared with 6.5 hours for those whose need for therapy was recognized right away. "While this inaccuracy was more likely to happen for Black patients, both Black and white patients who had this inaccuracy saw similar delays in receiving COVID-19 medication," Wu told MedPage Today in an email. "This suggests that racial bias in pulse oximeter accuracy is a key factor for the treatment differences between Black and white patients in our data." "Clinically, our results again emphasize that physicians should scrutinize 'borderline' values reported by the pulse oximeter and not hinge important medical decisions on such numbers," he added.
The Maine Monitor - Only three Maine doctors faced discipline for COVID-related offenses. By Emily Bader, August 13, 2023 There is a line between doctors trying their best to treat patients in an “unknown situation” during the early days of the pandemic and those who continued to use treatments even after proved ineffective, said Dr. Louisa Barnhart, a Waterville-area psychiatrist who retired from the medical board in 2021 after 10 years, the last two as chair. “The line is that the board doesn’t want to squelch people trying to treat people early on, but on the other hand doesn’t want people then fleecing individuals by giving them medications” that lack scientific evidence of their efficacy in treating the disease, she said. Dr. Jeffrey Barkin, a Portland psychiatrist and immediate past president of the Maine Medical Association, said doctors have a “moral obligation through the Hippocratic Oath and the Oath of Maimonides to be competent and share the best information — not misinformation, not disinformation — and … to not just run with an idea that they have but to vet that idea with other physicians and other thought leaders so as to minimize misinformation and disinformation.”
Doc Who Said COVID Vax Magnetized People Has License Suspended — Sherri Tenpenny, DO, "refused" to cooperate with investigation by Ohio's medical board. by Michael DePeau-Wilson, Enterprise & Investigative Writer, MedPage Today August 11, 2023 Tenpenny told state lawmakers that the COVID vaccines could cause people to become magnetized or create "an interface with 5G towers," the disciplinary document noted. The board launched an investigation after it received "approximately 350 complaints" about Tenpenny's comments, but the investigator claimed that Tenpenny never cooperated, even after multiple attempts to contact her.
The Mercury News - ‘Really alarming’: Santa Cruz County nursing homes hit hard by recent COVID spike. Four of seven facilities experiencing outbreaks. By PK HATTIS | Santa Cruz Sentinel PUBLISHED: August 17, 2023 at 4:40 a.m. | UPDATED: August 17, 2023 Ghilarducci declined to share the names of the nursing homes experiencing outbreaks because “it’s not necessarily that they’re doing anything wrong.” He said leadership in several facilities have expressed frustration at the lagging vaccination numbers, but feel powerless to do much about it for fear that they might drive away staff that are already working for mediocre pay in the most unaffordable rental market in the nation. “They’re trying to balance between how much to push versus keeping the place running,” said Ghilarducci. He expects at least a couple of the facilities will come out of “outbreak” status in the coming days. Meanwhile, local wastewater data continues to keep the door open for a late-summer surge, as trends across the county have continued to ascend.
This is NOT fine
This person took a moment to send a complaint to this bank about their “no masks” sign on the door. And others have pointed out how it’s an ADA violation in multiple ways.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
This is an op-ed without even one mention of masks:
As the CDC peddles right-wing anti-mask science denial. We need to get change from the elected reps in power, such as the President. Write your reps.
I’ve been hearing people are complaining about getting the new boosters approved and paid for by insurance up front when making appointments at CVS Pharmacies. This should highlight the need for the CDC ACIP meeting schedule to be adjusted, since we’re already in a surge, we’re already back into the school year, and the demand is there. Write your reps and the White House and ask them to come up with a more reasonable ACIP meeting schedule to reflect covid being a pandemic and epidemic disease, and to stop wish-casting for covid to be seasonal like flu. As Deborah Birx said again recently, it’s not like flu!
Grim history prior to the invention of surgical gloves.
A podcast episode that covers the invention of surgical gloves and the struggle to get surgeons to actually wear them, and, of history, they ask, how could an influential surgeon of the time regard surgical gloves as pseudoscience gaudy fashion? It took more than a decade of debate before surgical gloves achieved universal usage. And apparently there was an early surgical glove version of the “5 second rule” for rooting around inside the body cavity too. They say that at that time the science was not obvious. But today with gloves and masks it absolutely is clear - we understand physics now.
The Invention of Surgical Gloves Stuff To Blow Your Mind But if you go back in time before germ theory, before these various technologies, things obviously get a bit darker. Smith et al point out in medieval times there was a high level of illness and death in hospitals, and “when a sick person entered a hospital, his or her property was disposed of, and in some regions a requiem mass was held as if he or she had already died.” -- That’s a bad healthcare plan. -- It’s not a singing endorsement of the hospital you’re about to enter. Because of course the tools were primitive. They weren’t cleaned between uses. Cauterization via hot iron or boiling oil was commonly used. You’re looking at between 60 and 80 percent mortality rates. This is pretty common during the time period. And even into the early modern period, many things had improved but you still had surgeons placing ungloved hands directly into wounds, and directly into incisions, and so forth. And this was certainly the norm again much of human history. We didn’t have the materials and or we didn’t know about the invisible world of microbes.
This is what the CDC HICPAC is planning to take us back to apparently, and as a result might force all of society to adopt backwards science denial.
NBC - Expected CDC guidance on N95 masks outrages health care workers. Health workers warn that loosening mask advice in hospitals would harm patients and providers. Sept. 16, 2023, 7:00 AM EDT By Amy Maxmen | KFF Health News Her assertion is backed by the California occupational safety agency, Cal/OSHA, whose rules on protecting at-risk workers from infections might be at odds with the CDC’s if the proposals are adopted. “The CDC must not undermine respiratory protection regulation by making the false and misleading claim that there is no difference in protection” between N95 masks and surgical masks, commented Deborah Gold, an industrial hygienist at Cal/OSHA, at the August meeting.
“Should patients have to ask their surgeon to wear sterile gloves? Putting the burden of protection on patients is not an appropriate infection control approach.”
- Kaitlin Sundling, MD, PhD, public comment at a CDC HICPAC meeting