✏️ HHS taking Public Comment on disability 🏥 The Republican plan to take away hospital mask requirements 😷 What is the plan for Long Covid? ☝️
Don't waste your money on gimmicks or potentially harmful devices.
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 - PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD - Discrimination on the Basis of Disability in Health and Human Service Programs or Activities A Proposed Rule by the Health and Human Services Department on 09/14/2023
Submit a public comment on disability accessibility in healthcare settings.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/09/14/2023-19149/discrimination-on-the-basis-of-disability-in-health-and-human-service-programs-or-activities
Comments Close: 11/13/2023
What is the plan for dealing with Long Covid?
This should be a question everyone is putting to elected representatives, because it’s seeming like there really isn’t a plan.
I would like to remind everyone that most people who got polio never even knew they had it. So we had an elimination campaign and an assertive vaccine strategy, based on the horrendous long-term effects of polio suffered by a minority of people infected. It was the correct thing to do for polio, and it’s the right thing to do now.
Why is the major media not framing it this way?
Possibly because there are big corporate interests pushing PR who are in opposition to public health because it might interfere with their profits.
🗞️ In the news
The Washington Post - Post Pandemic - Opinion - Long covid has derailed my life. Make no mistake: It could yours, too. By Madeline Miller August 9, 2023 I’ve watched in horror as our public institutions have turned their back on containment. The virus is still very much with us, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stopped reporting on cases. States have shut down testing. Corporations, rather than improving ventilation in their buildings, have pushed for shield laws indemnifying them against lawsuits. Despite the crystal-clear science on the damage covid-19 does to our bodies, medical settings have dropped mask requirements, so patients now gamble their health to receive care. Those of us who are high-risk or immunocompromised, or who just don’t want to roll the dice on death and misery, have not only been left behind — we’re being actively mocked and pathologized.
The San Diego Union-Tribune Opinion: Study shows ‘long COVID’ likely to cause mass misery if treatments can’t be developed. By The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board Aug. 24, 2023 2:37 PM PT That federal lawmakers up to President Joe Biden decided that COVID-19 research was an acceptable target for budget cuts shows awareness of this risk is receding. Such decisions could come back to haunt the nation — and to ruin the lives of many.
Salon - Long COVID is debilitating children. Doctors worry there aren’t enough centers to treat them. Doctors and parents say it can take months to get treatment — if their symptoms are even taken seriously. By Elizabeth Hlavinka. Published August 27, 2023 It would be a full month of running tests in which doctors continued to say Jack was "fine," until his pediatrician diagnosed him with post-COVID syndrome, also known as long COVID, and referred him to a specialized clinic, said his mother, Kelli Coviello, who is a principal's assistant at an elementary school in Massachusetts. "It's been a challenge of them not really, truly understanding," Coviello told Salon in a phone interview. "They think it's just school avoidance, and he doesn't want to come in or maybe it's just anxiety, and all this other stuff. … But he's an 11-year-old boy, who is looking at you saying, 'Am I dying? What's happening to me?'" Jack is one of thousands of children that has been diagnosed with long COVID. Last month, the National Institutes of Health updated its considerations for long COVID to say the burden of the condition in children "may be quite large."
VTDigger - Did Vermont officials quash local school mask mandates? Inquiring feds want to know. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating allegations that Vermont state officials improperly prevented school districts from requiring masks to slow Covid-19 transmission. by Peter D'Auria August 30, 2023 During the Covid-19 pandemic, state directives about masking at schools were often confusing and seemingly contradictory. Officially, Vermont’s policy has been to allow local districts to make their own decisions about masking, although the state was not always clear about whether districts had the authority to do so. But in at least one case, the Agency of Education pushed a school district to lift its mask mandate. In March 2022, the Washington Central Unified Union School District imposed a masking requirement in response to rising Covid-19 cases. After that decision, then-Secretary of Education Dan French emailed the then-superintendent and urged her to lift the mandate.
The Washington Post - Misinformation research is buckling under GOP legal attacks. An escalating campaign, led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans, has cast a pall over programs that study political disinformation and the quality of medical information online. By Naomi Nix, Cat Zakrzewski, and Joseph Menn - September 23, 2023 Academics, universities and government agencies are overhauling or ending research programs designed to counter the spread of online misinformation amid a legal campaign from conservative politicians and activists who accuse them of colluding with tech companies to censor right-wing views. The escalating campaign — led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans in Congress and state government — has cast a pall over programs that study not just political falsehoods but also the quality of medical information online. Facing litigation, Stanford University officials are discussing how they can continue tracking election-related misinformation through the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a prominent consortium that flagged social media conspiracies about voting in 2020 and 2022, several participants told The Washington Post. The coalition of disinformation researchers may shrink and also may stop communicating with X and Facebook about their findings. The National Institutes of Health froze a $150 million program intended to advance the communication of medical information, citing regulatory and legal threats. Physicians told The Post that they had planned to use the grants to fund projects on noncontroversial topics such as nutritional guidelines and not just politically charged issues such as vaccinations that have been the focus of the conservative allegations.
CIDRAP - Experts say CDC not getting right advice on hospital infection prevention - Stephanie Soucheray, MA - September 19, 2023 The proposed guidance is full of outright errors, she said, such as a slide that states surgical masks are as effective as respirators in preventing transmission of airborne diseases based on a review of 27 studies. "What did we learn from COVID? It seems like nothing, according to HICPAC," Brosseau said.
This is NOT fine
This is what the conservatives plan as the law of the land if a Republican wins the next U.S. Presidential election. It is an egregious planned attack on healthcare and public health.
CMS should:
Announce nonenforcement of the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate on Medicaid and Medicare hospitals.
Revoke corresponding guidance and regulations.
Refrain from imposing general COVID-19 mask mandates on health care facilities or personnel.
Pay damages to all medical professionals who were dismissed directly because of the CMS vaccine mandate.
I recommend reading this document because it’s their plan. They’re literally telling you what you need to be writing your representatives about opposing, and giving you an opportunity to get out ahead and start organizing around these things now — because they already are doing so.
They mention vaccines many times, including putting covid “vaccine” in scare quotes on page 156, which can only mean they don’t think vaccines are real, or that they don’t think covid is real, or maybe they just don’t want vaccines to be available.
They also made what looks like it’s probably an editing mistake on page 459 about the vaccines! So there.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
I find it most peculiar that people who are fully resistant to taking "covid is mild for most" at face value and who are actively cautioning against silent hidden or long term dangers from covid, would turn around and just be risk-happy when it comes to possible long-term risks of cornea damage and cancer risks from exposure to UV from devices that are not proven safe or approved.
I recommend reading Dr. Kaitlin Sundling’s post on making scientific decisions with a precautionary approach before wasting your money on gimmicks or potentially harmful devices.
It should really give you pause when vendors of dubiously sourced technology, I have heard join social groups online, and go into zooms with immunocompromised and disabled people present, and promote to them these unproven devices with the sales pitches like “Do you want to relax and unmask, here’s a product for you!” It’s quite sinister really — the targeting and the pitch.
In today’s corporate culture major PR firms promote crisis management as a necessary business expense. Whenever something bad happens to a corporation, often its first move is not to deal with the actual problem, but to manage the negative perception caused by that problem.
— Toxic Sludge is Good for You, documentary, 2002