💉 Reminder to American seniors: get a boost. 🦠 Unmasked and exposed at work ❗️ I don’t feel left behind, I feel disrespected.
We need public health voices with microphones stressing the need for prevention. It’s a failure of public health that people don’t know that there is no group who is not at risk with covid.
Contents:
- Events, Actions, & Campaigns
- Pandemic field notes
- In the News (pandemic & adjacent media, science, news, and op-eds)
- This is NOT Fine section (gaslighting & outrages)
- He(a)rd Scuttlebutt (gossip & gripes)
PBS News Hour is asking the people to tell them about how the change in isolation guidelines will impact people with disabilities.
I suggest also sending complaints to the White House: whitehouse.gov/contact
I don’t feel left behind, I feel disrespected.
News-Medical.Net - Older adults' social patterns shift post-pandemic, study finds
"The pandemic is not over for a lot of folks," said Jessica Finlay, an assistant professor of geography whose findings are revealed in a series of new papers. "Some people feel left behind." The study comes amid what the U.S. Surgeon General recently called an 'epidemic of loneliness' in which older adults-; especially those who are immune compromised or have disabilities-; are particularly vulnerable.
My problem isn’t loneliness, it’s having my rights abridged.
I’m busy with my life — I have a spouse, 2 cats, several mystery snails, I’m an artist and photographer, and I like the outdoors. I have plenty going on.
The problem I have is that I can’t reliably access healthcare without risking getting infectious diseases from unmasked healthcare workers because there’s a lack of ethical patient safety standards enforced in healthcare settings.
Let alone safely engage in essential and non-essential community, business, education, and work opportunities. I miss going to the symphony, but I don’t miss going to restaurants at all. Some things have been made inconvenient or unattractive, though some things have become more convenient, like shopping. And sadly, in the U.S. there are other reasons to avoid crowded locations beyond just the unmitigated infectious disease threat, and even worse — there are those lobbying with PR to have nobody react to mass violence either.
At least this article is based in actual data collection from real people, and not just the vibes of some journalist in Milford, PA who’s decided to trust the unmasked anti-vaxxers.
And for pity’s sake, once more, this time with feeling, stop saying post-pandemic! The truth is, we’re not post-pandemic, and the evidence is everywhere. They wouldn’t keep doing studies and writing articles hand-wringing about it if it was over.
🗞️ In the news
NBC News - Covid vaccines not linked to fatal heart problems in young people, CDC finds The new report debunks widespread misinformation that the mRNA shots were connected to sudden cardiac death in young athletes. April 11, 2024, 1:45 PM EDT By Berkeley Lovelace Jr. When you’re balancing risks and benefits, you have to look at that and go, ‘You got to bet on the vaccine,’” he said. Dr. Leslie Cooper, chair of the cardiology department at the Mayo Clinic, who was not involved in the study, said the researchers were actually “quite generous” in their analysis, adding that the 100-day time frame following vaccination was a large one. “They went above and beyond to try and capture any possible cardiac death from vaccinations,” he said.
Government Executive - Biden rescinds COVID-era executive orders, folding safer federal workforce task force The Office of Personnel Management issued new guidance last week rescinding some forms of COVID-19-related administrative leave, but preserving four hours of paid leave for federal employees to get vaccine booster shots. APRIL 15, 2024 03:52 PM ET Erich Wagner The Executive Order on COVID-19 and Public Health Preparedness and Response, signed Friday, ends edicts aimed at preventing the hoarding of medical supplies, promoting pandemic-era travel safety policies and the order that required mask-wearing in federal facilities and creating the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force. The order also does away with the position of the COVID-19 response coordinator, shifting that position’s responsibilities to the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response, a White House office founded through an appropriations bill passed by Congress in December 2022.
This is NOT fine
It’s a failure of public health that people don’t know that there is no group who is not at risk with covid.
This absolutely is a covid-19 issue when covid is still killing hundreds of Americans a week — to say it’s not is perplexing. It’s reasonable for anyone, not just the immune deficient, to wear a mask to avoid all “common” respiratory illnesses. Do so-called healthy people really want to be sick all the time or risk post covid conditions?
It feels as if even people with lives on the line have been cowed into covid denial, pleading for clemency. We already know that the trucker convoy Moms for Liberty anti-vax crowd were not satisfied by Democratic Party politicians agreeing to cede on public health. Once MAGA won that battle and got what they want, unmitigated spread and restricted vaccination, then they came after Black History books and reproductive health.
And if you think they’re not going to come after people who need to mask — you don’t know history.
The Nazis’ First Victims Were the Disabled - The New York Times By Kenny Fries Sept. 13, 2017
I hear from people all the time about workplaces that are chronically short staffed due to continual sick leaves, and people leaving for health reasons… with conditions that sound suspiciously like PASC or well-known post-covid cardiac conditions, or who just say outright that they have long covid. Often these are people who were fine before the pandemic and multiple infections.
If you think eugenics won’t ever come for you, you don’t know how it works.
Every Letter to the Editor I send to The Times-Tribune, that articulates that many do and should take the virus threat seriously, seems to get rejected.
We need public health voices with microphones stressing the need for prevention.
We need prevention.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
Unmasked and exposed at work anecdotes in a tweet thread by former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams.
USA Petition - #PassPaidLeave
I don’t know if most people realize this, but anti-vax is part of right-wing agendas because of eugenics ideology beliefs — overt or covert.
Reminder to American seniors to get a boost.
Reminder: In the U.S. everyone 65+ is recommended to get a spring boost if it’s been more than 4 months since the last covid-19 vaccine dose. Please nudge your senior family and friends to get topped up.
Quote:
“The workgroup considered nonuniversal policy options, with considerable discussion around the magnitude of benefits in the young, healthy population. As part of these deliberations, the workgroup requested additional data on severe illness due to COVID-19 in those with and without underlying conditions. There was no group that clearly had no risk of severe illness. Additionally, the vast majority of the US population had an underlying condition that would qualify under a risk-based recommendation.”
CDC ACIP Covid-19 Work Group at the CDC ACIP meeting September 12, 2023