📢Public erupts with comments when San Fran health director calls masks authoritarian🙄😷Groups object to Medicare push to suppress reporting of preventable medical harms🏥📝
⚠️The problem with telling the at risk to do "one way masking" is that the at risk often have no choice but to live with people who are out there in the unmasked risk pool & bringing the virus home.😔
Contents:
- Events, Actions, & Campaigns
- Pandemic field notes & “Living with the virus”
- In the News (virus & adjacent news)
- This is NOT Fine section (gaslighting & other wrongs)
- Herd Scuttlebutt (did you hear about this?)
USA Today reports: Groups object to Medicare push to suppress reporting of harm done to patients at hospitals
Submit a public comment on this proposed rule change at this link: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/CMS-2022-0074-0006
Covid Safe Campus group is seeking volunteers to develop advocacy resources and policy guidance for higher education ahead of the fall semester, a range of skills is needed for this important disabled advocacy.
Public erupts with comments when health director calls mask mandates authoritarian at San Fran public meeting
Dr. Phillips, the San Francisco Health Officer, actually referred to mask mandates using the word “authoritarian” — what on earth are we doing here when a public health official is describing common sense infectious disease protections this way?
🙌 The people at Senior & Disability Action have been attending (some virtually) public meetings, and making their voices heard. 📣
We need to raise our voices everywhere.
The disabled & seniors who are raising up their voices to shout it out about the dangers we are facing in the pandemic, including Long Covid — they are the beacon of hope for us all. Thank you.
🗞️ In the news
🌆💰 Mission Local: Community hub funding eliminated in new city budget (San Francisco) (“In the midst of a new Covid-19 surge, [Mayor London Breed’s] budget cuts all funding for the covid response work provided by community hubs, which focus on providing testing and vaccines for neighborhoods and communities heavily impacted by the pandemic and in need of resources.” )
🧠👶 JAMA Network: Neurodevelopmental Outcomes at 1 Year in Infants of Mothers Who Tested Positive for SARS-CoV-2 During Pregnancy (“Findings: In this cohort study of 7772 infants delivered during the COVID-19 pandemic, those born to the 222 mothers with a positive SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction test during pregnancy were more likely to receive a neurodevelopmental diagnosis in the first 12 months after delivery, even after accounting for preterm delivery.”)
🩺🔬 Penn State University, Research: How many people get 'long COVID?' More than half, researchers find. (“The SARS-CoV-2 virus, the agent that causes COVID-19, can access, enter and live in the nervous system. As a result, nervous system symptoms such as taste or smell disorders, memory impairment and decreased attention and concentration commonly occur in survivors.”)
🏘️💰 NBC News: Real estate agents got $3.9 billion in Covid relief PPP loans. The housing market boomed, but few repaid the loans. (“PPP loans went to real estate agents in booming markets — $3.6 million to real estate entities in Beverly Hills, $4.3 million to entities in El Paso, Texas, and $14.9 million in 1,107 loans to real estate entities in Charlotte, North Carolina. All the loans were made with the understanding that they would be forgiven if the recipient met certain criteria…”)
🤒🩺 CMAJ: Association between long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and COVID-19 severity: a prospective cohort study (“Chronic exposure to air pollution may contribute to severe outcomes after SARS-CoV-2 infection, particularly exposure to O3.”)
🧠🩸 Neuroscience News: In Long COVID, Blood Markers Are Linked to Neuropsychiatric Symptoms (“In a new study of long COVID published March 13, 2022, in the Annals of Neurology, UC San Francisco researchers identified biomarkers present at elevated levels that may persist for many months in the blood of study participants who had long COVID with neuropsychiatric symptoms.”)
This is NOT fine
The problem with telling people “well, just take care of yourself” & suggesting “one way masking” ignores lots of disabled & seniors who can’t just choose to wear masks everywhere they’re put at risk.
Many people need to have medical care that necessitates mask removal such as dental care. And they may need to use public transit to get to the dentist.
Some people are at the mercy of family they have no choice but to live with - even caretakers — who are anti-maskers or covid deniers (or otherwise mild-pilled into a false sense of security and have “gone back to normal”) — people who simply do not understand or don’t believe there is danger for the at risk.
Some people have no choice but to live with someone who goes out to work in a high risk setting, such as a school. And some at risk people have to go out to work in high risk settings themselves.
In some cases one family member goes out somewhere unmasked, where masks are not required and the virus is in large quantities hanging in the air, and brings home covid to the at risk person who’s literally done all they can to avoid it, and the at risk person gets covid, and sometimes dies.
I’ve heard so many preventable stories like this — it’s heartbreaking and scary. 💔
Herd Scuttlebutt
James Heilman, MD recounts on twitter that people are being hospitalized with covid in BC Canada, and confused about why they are in the hospital because they were told it was mild now. It is unacceptable that people have been lulled into a false sense of security. 😠
I saw Lisa Iannattone posted on twitter that “the odds that monkeypox — a virus that causes ulcers on the face in >30% of cases […} — was circulating for years here unnoticed is 0%” … My first thought was, who the hell would try to assert that monkeypox has been with us for years unnoticed.? Seriously? A disease with weeks long pustules?? But somebody had… and I saw a headline that it was the World Health Organization that floated this weird idea. 🤦♀️ Things are getting more absurd all the time. Maybe elites busy on yachts will believe that the rest of us have been walking around with unnoticed pustules all over us for years, but I suspect most ordinary people will not buy that.🙄
Someone on twitter reported her mother with diabetes tested positive after “going back to normal” and visiting less careful family member, then she was refused Paxlovid by the healthcare provider on the grounds that it has a chance for rebound & her symptoms weren’t too bad. And patient was also told, which I don’t think it’s good advice, that she won’t need a booster vaccination since she’s had covid… for the second time. 😥
Open Letter: Cities Must Use COVID-19 Funding on COVID, Not Cops This is an open letter from the group Pan End It and the letter is still taking sign-ons from individuals and groups to demand that local governments use pandemic money on pandemic measures, especially in light of the fact that there is a lack of other pandemic funding going forward. Common sense and wisdom must win out.🦉
"Almost any large indoor gathering is a super-spreader event at this point."
—Dr. Matt Willis Marin County health officer quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle 3 June 2022