📢 2 groups call for emergency stay of the TSA mask mandate Court Order 😷 CovidSafeCampus.org releases report cards on higher ed covid policies 📚
😷 poll says most want masks on public transport 📊
Contents:
- Get Involved (Events, Actions, & Campaigns)
- Life in the pandemic field notes (“living with the virus”)
- In the News (virus & adjacent media)
- This is NOT Fine section (gaslighting and other wrongs)
- Herd Scuttlebutt (did you hear about this?)
GET INVOLVED & STAY INFORMED
📢📝 Join Marked By COVID to tell President Biden & CDC Director Walensky: Court Mask Mandate Decision Requires Emergency Stay & Appeal
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/join-marked-by-covid-in-calling-on-president-biden-to-appeal-circuit-court-mask-mandate-decision/
📝📚 Covid Safe Campus REPORT CARD
https://www.covidsafecampus.org/reportcard
“COVID Safe Campus has released the Higher Education COVID Policy Report Card to provide students with the essential COVID policy transparency they need to make informed decisions as National College Decision Day approaches.”
📱📧 People’s CDC Transportation Mask Mandate Action Toolkit
https://bit.ly/PubTransitMasksNow
Demand an emergency stay of the Federal Court Order and bring back the public transportation mask mandate.
Call the White House Switchboard: 202-456-1414 or send a message: https://whitehouse.gov/contact/ (Sample email & phone scripts available)
😾 I had to take my elder cat to the veterinarian and it’s clear the vet’s office is attempting to prevent disease spread, which is better than the “back to normal” garbage I’ve been hearing other people are encountering at vets. But the measures don’t recognize airborne transmission. I’m considering printing & sending them the WHN’s Ventilation Guide and several pages of CleanAirCrew.org. The HVAC was only running for about 45 seconds the whole hour or so I was in the exam room. 😿
They have patients & their humans wait in the car. Only one human is allowed in and must be masked. The vet & techs were masked but none were wearing N95s. Payment is received at a drive up window. But you have to walk through the room with unmasked staff at the far end, sitting together. And I saw an unmasked staff member in the lab room where they take the animals for bloodwork.
So many well-meaning mitigations are often stuck in early pandemic close contact droplet dogma.
And it’s not like you can shop around for vets. I’m lucky to have an established relationship with a competent vet’s office that’s at least trying. There is a vet shortage and many are not accepting new patients. People have been complaining about this on my local Nextdoor.
“Living with the virus” is highly inconvenient.
🗞️ In the news
📄 Fact Sheet: Medicare Covers Over-the-Counter COVID-19 Tests (I didn’t actually hear about this until weeks after the fact in my congressperson’s newsletter & I’m baffled that Medicaid is not covering these tests too, since many with Medicaid insurance are highly exposed restaurant & retail workers. I wrote Rep Cartwright about this to ask why not Medicaid?📝)
📄 Op-ed "La pandémie de Covid-19 n'est pas finie et nous avons les moyens de la combattre" (“A group warns against the "belief" that the pandemic is over and criticizes the current fatalism believing that we can no longer control contamination.”)
📊 YouGov poll: Do you support or oppose the U.S. government requiring that passengers on public transportation wear face masks? (63% of US adults surveyed support face masks being required on public transport) 🚆🚍✈️
📄 Press release: People’s CDC Condemns Court’s Interference in Public Health Protections (“The People’s CDC applauds local transit authorities who are maintaining their masking mandate, and encourages others to follow.”)
♨️ New York City parent victimized by Child Services denounces government after daughters contract COVID-19 at school ("All of this talk they’ve done in the news about ‘living with the virus’ is B.S. Having to worry like this all the time, with the brunt of the situation falling on regular working people and their children—this is no way to live.")
📄 Op-ed TEMPEST: Where is the Left on Pandemic Politics? (“There are several ways to address the issue of “what should we do.” One is to discuss our policy demands on governments. Another is to discuss what kinds of mass education we might engage in together with community health outreach workers, Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (COSH) groups, and workplace activists about how people can protect themselves and each other in their daily lives.” )
📄 Op-ed Now’s not the time to dispense with covid-19 precautions (“We fear that Americans don’t have a good sense of the true state of the pandemic.”) (archive link)
This is NOT fine.
There is an epidemic of people who believe that the worst that happens if they get covid is they will have to quarantine.
Mid-flight mask mandate lifting by airlines is both disability discrimination, and flies in the face of the asserted tenets of the business market. People can’t shop around airlines with their “risk appetite” halfway through a flight, and it’s accepted business practice that it’s not appropriate to change things in the middle of a service agreement.
Jerome Adams reported passive aggressive remarks toward mask wearers on his Delta airline flight.
Airlines lifting the mask rule seems unwise after the fiasco of cancelled flights in the UK due to pilots stricken ill after masking was lifted.
A New York Times staff union member is complaining that staff are being pressured to return to the office.
Herd Scuttlebutt
😷 covidmeetups.com the covid cautious social app has reached 2,000 members in about 2 months, and without any major media coverage, just word of mouth. Spread the word!
🌶️ Leana Wen went on a twitter spree blocking Oni Blackstock, Ryan Marino, and other doctors, journalists, and even the entire organization of the bereaved & Long Covid patient advocacy Marked By Covid.
🧮 Guy who claims to be good at math said the TSA mask mandate lifting was unlikely to have an effect on disease spread because Americans on average only fly 5 hours per year. He is seemingly unaware of the existence of buses & trains. But also ignores what’s been known about travel and disease spread since at least as far back as the Old Testament. And unappreciated is that a significant portion of Americans rarely fly at all anyway. (“32% of those surveyed said they don’t remember ever buying luggage”) Air travel is expensive in a population where over half the people can’t afford a $1000 emergency expense. Yet we know that it only takes one person traveling to bring an outbreak to a new location.
🌍💉⚖️ Achal Prabhala, Ayanna Pressley and Ady Barkan, among others, spoke about global vaccine justice at a webinar on April 21st in the lead up to the April 28th Moderna Action in Cambridge Massachusetts. 📢📢📢
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again."
Thomas Paine