📧 Letter Campaigns to President Biden and Governor Newsom 📰 Medical misinformation & disinformation is in the news 🗞️
“Currently according to some estimates, more than 50% of what we think is news is actually instigated by the public relations industry.” -- Toxic Sludge is Good for You (documentary 2002)
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)
California USA Letter Campaign - Tell Gov. Newsom: Rescind dangerous new guidance for nurses and health care workers!
By National Nurses United: “California is running out of hospital beds, and nurses and other health care workers are already reporting extreme levels of moral distress and injury. This newest attack on the protections on which we all rely will only result in more infections, more hospitalizations, and more deaths.”
USA Letter Campaign - CDC shouldn't cut the already inadequate COVID-19 isolation guidelines.
By Mask Together America: “Stop the CDC’s dangerous proposal to cut the isolation guidelines for people infected with COVID-19. That would gravely damage Americans’ health, escalating the Long COVID crisis and bringing many more preventable deaths. Send a letter to President Biden and ask everyone to do the same.”
Canada Webinar - Indoor air and infectious disease transmission March 7, 2024 12:00 pm to March 7, 2024 1:00 pm - This event is Virtual.
The Institute for Pandemics (IfP) in collaboration with the Canadian Public Health Association presents a webinar for public health professionals to hear the latest research on indoor air transmission of infectious diseases and strategies to reduce exposure. This webinar is a preview to the symposium, “Something in the air: Towards a new understanding of aerosols and respiratory disease transmission”, that will be presented at Public Health 2024 in Halifax this April.
Industry fights against public health measures to guard profits, and the pandemic is surely no exception.
STAT - Juul’s internal playbook opens a rare window into influence in Washington - By Nicholas Florko Feb. 15, 2024 The trove of documents, which was released as part of a legal settlement with the state of North Carolina, shows that Juul tried everything from orchestrating untraceable political donations to paying think tanks for favorable research, in an effort to revamp its image and prevent both Congress and the FDA from taking action that could cost the company financially.
Le Clair MZ, Cockburn MG. Tanning bed use and melanoma: Establishing risk and improving prevention interventions. Prev Med Rep. 2016 Jan 14;3:139-44. doi: 10.1016/j.pmedr.2015.11.016. PMID: 27419006; PMCID: PMC4929140. A common misconception among indoor tanners is that artificial UVR produces a “safer” tan than outdoor sunlight (CDC, 2014). This belief is contradicted by scientific evidence, and must be addressed in order to effectively reduce the burden of indoor tanning on health outcomes worldwide.
🗞️ In the news
NBC News - Disinformation poses an unprecedented threat in 2024 — and the U.S. is less ready than ever The U.S. presidential election comes at a time of ideal circumstances for disinformation and the people who spread it. Jan. 18, 2024, 8:20 AM EST By Brandy Zadrozny Republican politicians and activists responded to the wave of disinformation in 2020 by targeting the researchers, universities, tech companies and journalists who pointed it out. Using social media campaigns, the courts and congressional committees, far-right critics have aired unfounded accusations that efforts to curtail disinformation around the election and the pandemic were part of a plot to censor conservatives. Some researchers said those partisan campaigns, which have included burdensome information requests and threats of reputational and legal harm to institutions, have had a chilling effect on new research going into 2024. Watchers are further challenged by the lack of transparency from social media companies. So-called black boxes surround the algorithms that serve up content, and the inability to see what is happening on the platforms in real time has only gotten worse. “We’re flying blind,” said Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public who studies election rumors.
MedPage Today - What Does AI Say About the Claims on Ivermectin for COVID? — We put the technology to the test by Daniel Teres, MD, Jane Oppenlander, PhD, and Martin A. Strosberg, MPH, PhD February 4, 2024 It is our assessment that the technology is not yet ready to help the general public sort out complicated or controversial healthcare questions. We found that different applications returned different results for the same questions, with many results being simplistic or inconclusive. In some instances, the data upon which the application is based was not up to date and some of the references were not verifiable. With regard to queries about the reliability and quality of specific studies cited by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, we found that, although AI in some cases provided an accurate summary of an article, the interpretation of the results was often ambiguous, leaving it to the user to struggle with difficult technical concepts such as risk-benefit and study design. In short, we believe AI cannot yet satisfactorily deliver the goods based on the capabilities asserted above. At this time, its use by the general public to referee even seemingly straightforward questions like the effectiveness of ivermectin for COVID is quite limited.
Wellness influencers fueled pandemic misinformation. Now they’re targeting another crisis By Laura Paddison, CNN Updated 1:19 PM EST, Mon February 5, 2024 These posters are all wellness influencers — a loosely-defined umbrella term for a wide range of accounts including yoga, lifestyle, fitness, alternative health and new age spirituality. While conspiracy theories about the Hawaii wildfires spread across the internet last year, it may seem surprising they were also seized upon by part of the wellness community. But for years there has been a merging of wellness, disinformation and conspiracy, as a subset of influencers use the backdrop of aesthetically pleasing, pastel-colored posts to spread much darker messages, weaving together alarming conspiracy theories with calls for users to buy their supplements or services. This phenomenon exploded during the pandemic, when anti-vax sentiment took hold in large parts of the wellness community. As interest in the pandemic waned, experts say some wellness influencers have latched on to climate change to galvanize followers. Their concern: Those influencers — some with hundreds of thousands of followers — are exposing new, and younger, audiences to a slew of misinformation and undermining efforts to tackle the climate crisis. Cécile Simmons, a trained yoga teacher, was surprised when many of the wellness accounts she followed started posting about climate change. “It just started popping up in my feed and I thought OK, that’s interesting, now that COVID is ‘over’ they’re diversifying the narrative,” she told CNN.
Simone Gold Reprimanded by California's Medical Board — She must repay $26K in costs recovery and take courses in ethics and professionalism by Cheryl Clark, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today February 5, 2024 Federal documents say that Gold gave two speeches in which she maintained her opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates and government-imposed lockdowns and advocated use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. Gold was indicted on five charges: obstructing an official proceeding; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly or disruptive conduct; disorderly conduct in a Capitol building; and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.
The Washington Post - Tax records reveal the lucrative world of covid misinformation By Lauren Weber February 21, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EST The Post reviewed more than 330 filings by nonprofits that donated to the groups during the pandemic. Half of those gifts over $100,000 were made through a tax vehicle popular among the ultrawealthy known as “donor-advised funds,” which allow individuals to obscure their identities. The Post identified two funds dedicated to advancing biblical, libertarian or conservative values that each had given at least $1 million in total to at least three of the groups since 2020.
This is NOT fine
Once more, this time with feeling, propaganda about “learning loss” is a myth.
This disinformation campaign is story told on purpose to advance the dismantling of America’s public schools - a campaign that started long before the pandemic.
Curmudgucation The Panic Is No Accident PETER GREENE FEB 18, 2024
Learning Loss panic has been carefully crafted and aggressively marketed by two groups of people-- the folks who are intent on dismantling public education, and the people who have a vested interest in responding to the "crisis." As I pointed out back here, it was clear almost immediately. NWEA and CREDO hit the ground running with scary pronouncements about the severity of Learning Loss based entirely on numbers that were completely made up! McKinsey, the consulting behemoth whose entire business model is "Find a crisis and get paid to help fix it," quickly joined the fray. By the time we had actual test result numbers to look at, those same folks had already done business selling pearls to clutch, and the usual public education slammers had their doomsday baloney headline generators warned up (looking at you, New York Times).
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt grapevine 🍇🌱
MedPage Today publishes business PR consultant written op-ed arguing for lax infection control for covid (and other diseases)
They describe the author this way: “Adalja is a practicing infectious disease, critical care, and emergency physician. Disclosures Adalja is currently a consultant, speaker, and/or advisory board member for GSK, Shionogi, and BD.”
And leave out that he is the head of a PR consulting firm.
Here’s his linkedin profile:
Amesh Adalja on Linkedin - Tracking Zebra, LLC, Nov 2016 - Present, Pittsburgh, PA Infectious Disease related project management, consulting, media, and strategy firm founded by Dr. Amesh Adalja. Infectious diseases impact businesses in all industries from healthcare to food service. Tracking Zebra can develop a continuity planning applicable to specific businesses including mitigated losses and realizing new opportunities.
This is not medical advice, it’s just business.
The assertions in this op-ed should be scrutinized for error and pro-business propaganda to manufacture mild and normalize harm.
“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)
MedPage Today sent this out twice in one day as a headline in their emails on the same day it was published, and this is not typical for their newsletters, from my notice as a regular subscriber. Usually I have noticed MedPage Today newsletters promoting articles from a few days before. Sometimes articles are a week old before they make it into the emails.
The “plus” Hospital-at-Home headline was from February 17th, and had been in a newsletter already this week. Sending out this Tuesday February 20th headline in the Feb 20th newsletter, twice, obviously the newsletter editors seemed to be really excited to immediately promote this one for some reason.
A week earlier this doctor got roasted on his own Linkedin post, with people asking “I'm so curious what science and/or data this is based on?” and saying “They just want people to go back to work and pretend it's all normal” or “Covid is a BSL-3 virus and should not be relegated to flu status simply because they have over lapping symptoms.” But he was still motivated to double down on this messaging for some reason. Maybe it was just the one guy in the linkedin thread praising the work of Project Veritas that bolstered Dr. Adalja to press on.
“Currently according to some estimates, more than 50% of what we think is news is actually instigated by the public relations industry. PR professionals measure their success in terms of how well they can insert their clients’ messages into the continuous flow of news and information while their own activities remain out of view.”
-- Toxic Sludge is Good for You (documentary 2002)