😷2 groups lobby for a mask mandate in Bay Area💻Petition: Make WFM a continued option for AT&T workers📝Letter campaign: CDC is supposed to CONTROL & PREVENT disease⚕️
Teacher shortages, doctors without sensibility, and a lack of mitigation in public parks isn't speaking well of our civilization in this moment.
Contents:
- Events, Actions, & Campaigns
- Pandemic field notes & “Living with the virus”
- In the News (virus & adjacent media)
- This is NOT Fine section (gaslighting & other outrages)
- He(a)rd Scuttlebutt (the pandemic grapevine)
Letter Campaign: CDC is supposed to CONTROL & PREVENT disease
Letter to President Joe Biden in response to the ever more disastrous “guidance” & lack thereof coming out of the CDC.
Use the form letter or write your own and send it at the White House Contact page.
Attention BAY AREA: Tuesday August 16th at 4pm US Pacific Daylight Time
Join SDA at the zoom meeting: bit.ly/816SFHC
Senior & Disability Action and Marked by Covid sent a joint letter to San Francisco Department of Public Health requesting they reinstate indoor mask requirements & provide free high-quality masks in public places. You can contact the SFDPH by phone, email, or mail.
Petition: Make "Work From Home" a Permanent Option for AT&T Employees
Public parks still need pandemic mitigation too
In Pennsylvania, it’s not too difficult to find trails and lakes where it’s fairly easy to avoid people. Unfortunately if you want to attend group programs, popular tourist attractions, or especially any indoor activities at parks, it’s not doable for those avoiding infection — because no masks are required at PA state parks. I’ve avoided Hawk Mountain Sanctuary since the pandemic hit because it’s often busy — popular probably because it has a better than average accessible packed gravel trail with benches every 100ft. You can argue that there’s no point in masks on lonely forest trails by oneself. But you can’t apply that argument for busy areas, group programs, and indoor spaces. The least we could do is have a masking in those venues.
🗞️ In the news
🧪 ABC News: FDA: Take 3 home tests if exposed to COVID to boost accuracy (“If you were exposed to COVID-19, take three home tests instead of two to make sure you’re not infected, according to new U.S. recommendations released Thursday. Previously, the Food and Drug Administration had advised taking two rapid antigen tests over two or three days to rule out infection. But the agency says new studies suggest that protocol can miss too many infections, and could result in people spreading the coronavirus to others, especially if they don't develop symptoms.”)
💵 Policy Genius: 44% of Americans aren't financially prepared for long COVID (“Plus, 6 in 10 Americans underestimate their odds of contracting long COVID, while only 14% have disability insurance to help cover the costs.”)
💔 Common Dreams: We Are Not 'In This Together': The Biden Adminstration's Covid-19 Policy Is Still Killing Vulnerable People (But Biden and the CDC have also worked very hard to conceal the risks that Covid-19 poses to well and abled people. Not only has the public been convinced that it's reasonable to return to "normal" at the peril of the vulnerable, they've also been convinced that it's reasonable to return to normal at their own peril.)
🇺🇸 NBC10 Philadelphia: Temple U.'s Faculty Union Calls Fall Semester Masking Policy ‘Irresponsible' (The Temple Association of University Professionals (TAUP) issued a statement on Wednesday demanding that the school reverse its decision, with union President Jeffrey Doshna calling the move to lift the masking mandate for classrooms "irresponsible.")
🇬🇧 The Guardian: Economically inactive Britons with long Covid have ‘doubled’ in a year (“Individuals who are not employed and are not looking for paid work are classified as being economically inactive. The data suggests the long-term impacts of the virus could be driving people into this category, or into retirement.”)
This is NOT fine
The pandemic is too often erased on the topic of teacher shortages in the U.S.
The Philadelphia Inquirer: As the start of the school year looms, teacher vacancies remain. (archive link) (“The problem is, we can’t even put them in a study hall,” McGarry said in a recent interview. “We won’t have a substitute teacher or staff” to run it.)
Washington Post: ‘Never seen it this bad’: America faces catastrophic teacher shortage (archive link) (“Rural school districts in Texas are switching to four-day weeks this fall due to lack of staff. Florida is asking veterans with no teaching background to enter classrooms. Arizona is allowing college students to step in and instruct children.”)
The Philadelphia Inquirer story doesn’t even mention covid, the pandemic, disability, nor the numerous deaths of teachers. In the Washington Post story, there’s one quote referencing covid, from Randi Weingarten saying there are “aftereffects” from covid.
But covid is not past tense.
San Francisco Chronicle at least quoted a Superintendent acknowledging that teachers being off sick is still an ongoing issue.
Just one of many stories I’ve heard of early retirements or people leaving teaching is that of @Liat_RO, who stated, “Some sad personal news: I’m taking a leave from @NYCSchools this year.@NYCMayor & above have shown they don’t care about teachers -or students- wellbeing...”
When schools exclude the disabled and older teachers, by making the workplace inaccessible — they should expect to have a smaller pool of applicants.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt, what you may have missed…
Someone else posted that their GP doctor just kept insisting to them that it was inevitable they would get infected. This is abusive, and someone else pointed out in that thread that it comes across as a death threat. It’s confusing why people’s own doctors are wishing them unwell or telling them to give up on living.
Laura Miers mentioned on twitter that“one of the biggest sources of pandemic disinformation” is often people’s own doctors. Clearly healthcare workers are not only subject to the same misinformation & propaganda the general public consumes on their phones, but they’re also being gaslit from operating under rules that make no logical sense.
I once came across a healthcare worker on twitter who did what seemed like backwards engineering logic from nonsensical hospital protocol. They said something like “you don’t start PPE where it’s not needed outside the covid ward” — they were defending the hospital protocols that said you don’t use PPE until a patient’s covid test comes back positive. I have no idea how they reconciled this.
A woman mentioned on Leonardi Twitter Space that her young adult daughter’s cardiologist never even asked her if she’d had covid in the past after suddenly developing mystery tachycardia. Daughter hadn’t had covid that she’d known of, but considering the incidence it does seem like they should be asking.
“While we have no treatment or biomarker, the CDC relaxation of Covid guidelines is totally unhelpful— staying Covid cautious is the right move, and we desperately need better tools to block infections and transmission.”
Eric Topol