📉 Business incentives run counter to public health 📋 HEPA should not need a LMN for FSA 🗞️ GBD BS in LTE in my local paper
📉 Business incentives run counter to public health 📋 HEPA should not need a LMN for FSA 🗞️ GBD BS in LTE in my local paper
Long-Hauler Birding in the Bay Area.
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 - #PassPaidLeave
By Glamour and Paid Leave for All: Sign this letter to demand policymakers finally commit to passing paid leave, and give all working people the right to care for themselves and their families without losing a paycheck.
USA Letter Campaign - HEPA air purifiers are a medical necessity for all and should be automatically eligible on Health Savings Accounts.
By Chloe Humbert: HEPA air purifiers should be automatically included as eligible for FSA and other health savings accounts. Health Savings accounts like FSA (Flexible Spending Accounts) currently require a Letter of Medical Necessity from a healthcare provider for verification when using FSA to purchase air purifiers and replacement HEPA filters. The IRS does NOT require a Letter of Medical Necessity (LMN) for PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) such as respirator and medical masks, and hand sanitizer, "for the primary purpose of preventing spread" of respiratory virus. In addition to removing pathogens from the air, air purifiers are used in many parts of the country now at times for air pollution such as wildfire smoke. This is a medical necessity for all humans and should not require a diagnosis or a Letter of Medical Necessity.
Business incentives run counter to public health.
Thinking an economic argument or business financial incentives will save us is hopium. I’m concerned that many people wrongly believe that there’s an “economic argument” that can “get through” to the business sector on disease prevention. This seems to make sense at first, because it should make sense. But it doesn’t work that way. These industries are led by people who regularly run things into the ground and then eject in their golden parachutes, decade after decade through booms and busts. The subprime housing crisis. Big tobacco. The airplane debacles. The tech hype. The automotive industry went after Ralph Nader with stalking and honey traps just because they didn’t want anyone to demand seat belts. Fossil fuel hires military mercenary outfits to remove opposition to poisoning people’s drinking water.
There’s not an economic argument that’s going to get industry to do the right thing on virus prevention or treatment, or convince them it’s in their interest to take care of human health. They don’t care — because industries and wealthy tycoons often make the most money during times of greatest human suffering.
The problem may look financial, but it is political. It’s a political choice. There is no way around this, no way to sweet talk businesses into doing it for their own good. Businesses from grocery stores to airlines will NOT make the right choices for human well-being, even if it would benefit them in the end, and even if the wrong decisions are seemingly hurting right now, because they have other incentives.
We need to pressure for governance solutions.
🗞️ In the news
CIDRAP - Long COVID incidence in US varies by state, highest in West Virginia - February 15, 2024 - Stephanie Soucheray, MA New state and territory surveillance data on long COVID in the United States shows the prevalence of long COVID exceeded 8.8% in seven states and was highest in West Virginia and lowest in the US Virgin Islands. The study is published today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
ABC NEWS - West Virginia lawmakers pass bill allowing religious exemptions for school vaccine requirements West Virginia was of five states without religious exemptions. By Mary Kekatos February 26, 2024, 2:21 PM "Our forefathers and their families experienced the ravages of measles, mumps, tetanus, polio, and meningitis," he wrote. "Modern medicine has worked diligently to protect our communities through the development and testing of vaccines that have been proven to be safe and effective." "Now, legislators want to turn the clock back nearly 100 years and remove some of the safeguards in our vaccination policies," Eshenaur continued. "If you are anti-vaccination, you are pro-disease. It's as simple as that."
The Conversation - A pandemic that won’t go away – as COVID enters its 5th year, NZ needs a realistic strategy Published: February 26, 2024 2:30pm EST As we enter the fifth pandemic year, we need a change in thinking about COVID-19. This infection has pathological features in common with the other severe coronaviruses (SARS and MERS). It is wishful thinking to imagine it will suddenly transform into a common cold coronavirus.
AP Peru has declared a health emergency in most of its provinces as dengue cases soar BY FRANKLIN BRICEÑO Updated 5:28 AM EST, February 27, 2024 In December, the World Health Organization said that Peru’s 2023 dengue epidemic was linked to rains and hot temperatures that helped mosquito populations to grow, especially in the north of the country.
STAT - Cholera vaccine shortage reaches worst point yet, with experts fearing deadly outbreaks Annalisa Merelli By Annalisa Merelli Feb. 27, 2024 At least 16 countries in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean are dealing with cholera outbreaks. According to the latest report from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, between Dec. 23 and Jan. 23, nearly 50,500 people contracted cholera and nearly 500 died. Those numbers will almost certainly rise amid the worst vaccine shortage since an oral vaccine was introduced in the 1990s.
ProPublica - Syphilis Is Killing Babies. The U.S. Government Is Failing to Stop the Disease From Spreading. The only drug that treats syphilis during pregnancy is in short supply. Untreated, the disease can pass to newborns, killing them or leaving them with disabilities. As cases rise sharply, the government isn’t doing much to prevent shortages. by Anna Maria Barry-Jester March 4 2024 This emergency was predictable: There have been shortages of this drug in eight of the last 20 years. Yet federal health authorities have not prevented the drug shortages in the past and aren’t doing much to prevent them in the future. Syphilis, which is typically spread during sex, can be devastating if it goes untreated in pregnancy: About 40% of babies born to women with untreated syphilis can be stillborn or die as newborns, according to the CDC. Infants that survive can suffer from deformed bones, excruciating pain or brain damage, and some struggle to hear, see or breathe. Since this is entirely preventable, a baby born with syphilis is a shameful sign of a failing public health system.
Scripps News - New Mexico man dies after contracting rare case of bubonic plague The state's first case of the bacterial disease in four years has left it looking for a cause and if there's an ongoing community risk. By Alex Arger Posted: 7:09 p.m. EDT Mar 11, 2024 It's generally spread to humans through the bite of an infected flea, but people can also become infected through direct contact with infected tissues or sick humans or animals, including rodents, wildlife and pets. The CDC says humans can also get the plague through inhaling respiratory droplets containing the bacteria.
NBC News - Oregon's first case of human plague in 8 years likely came from a pet cat The owner’s infection likely started out in a lymph node and progressed to the bloodstream, a county health officer said. Feb. 9, 2024, 4:46 PM EST By Aria Bendix The person was likely infected by their pet cat, who had developed symptoms, according to Deschutes County Health Services. Humans are most commonly exposed to plague from the bites of fleas carrying Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the disease. Household pets can get also infected if they hunt rodents infected with plague or are similarly bitten by an infected flea. Pets can then transfer the infection to humans via tissue or bodily fluids, such as respiratory droplets from cough or sneezes. Alternatively, they might carry home fleas that in turn bite humans. Cats are particularly susceptible to plague because their bodies have a hard time clearing the infection and they're more likely than some other pets to chase and capture rodents.
CIDRAP - Healthcare use, costs rose after COVID infection, even for healthy adults - February 5, 2024 Lisa Schnirring Among the previously healthy adults, healthcare burden in the year following COVID infection increased in all subgroups, even in those who hadn't been hospitalized. Similar to the companion chronic disease study, the greatest increases involved new blood-related diagnoses, which increased more than 150% compared to the baseline period.
MedPage Today - Hold Your Horses, Health Workers With COVID Still Must Isolate — This aspect of CDC's guidance is not to be glossed over by Jean Ross, RN - March 16, 2024 NNU has been pushing back and speaking out on these proposals that would weaken protections for nurses and patients alike. Thankfully, in January, the CDC sent HICPAC's draft back for further revision, which will hopefully address some of NNU's core concerns. But there is still work to be done; the CDC has not yet added frontline nurses and their union to HICPAC's workgroup. Without our input, the CDC won't be able to develop guidance that takes our science-based perspective and insights into account.
This is NOT fine
Pointless Great Barrington Declaration b.s. in a letter to the editor in my local newspaper.
But if Bhattacharya has been silenced, he’s certainly one of the loudest “silenced” individuals in recent memory. He and his colleagues, and their GBD, have influenced policy at both the national and state level. The US, with its staggering death toll and millions suffering long COVID, owes much of its pandemic failure to the Stanford professor and his colleagues.
Right-wingers are not being stifled. There is simply TONS of money pouring into right-wing media. “The left” are not the people threatening bloodbaths and we don’t have millions of subscribers like the anti-vax Substack publications.
This guy has made such a name for himself that RFK Jr. had him as a speaker. At least the fact that Jay Bhattacharya is the author of a piece published in April 2020 called “The Economic Case Against Medicare For All” should make clear once and for all that RFK Jr. is not a lefty.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
Long-Hauler Birding in the Bay Area.
The Ed's Up - Birding for Long-Haulers - March 18, 2024
I started wondering if I could share the hobby that has become so restorative to me with the community that has become so important to me. Birding could expand the world that long COVID has contracted. It could offer long-haulers the therapeutic benefits of being outdoors and immersing in nature. It could salve some of the solitude that chronic illness brings, offering social time in an outdoor setting with low risk of respiratory infection.
Spoiler alert: it’s not a bioweapon.
“The scientists are deployed to influence regulatory agencies that might be trying to protect the public, or to defend against lawsuits by people who believe they were injured by the product in question. The corporations and their hired guns market their studies and reports as sound science, but actually they just sound like science.”
— Dr. David Michaels, The Triumph of Doubt, 2020