🌍💉⚖️ Upcoming Action at Moderna HQ ⚕️🏥 OSHA hearing on rule to protect healthcare workers 😷 #Mask4Equity town hall tonight 🎙️😷
Read my Letter to the Editor about the risks of prom super spreader events
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
🎤🌍💉⚖️ April 28 @ 5pm Action at Modera Headquarters Cambridge Massachusetts
Action Campaign around the annual shareholder meeting to pressure Moderna to share their vaccine. A diverse coalition of groups of public health, trade policy, and access to medicine organizations have been campaigning for global cooperation to end the pandemic.
Sign up to get involved, help, or attend this historic event: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdYMF5LQiYBkEzvRFuQcfFbWgHFcjxtWxauIk7dSjtV-ySHCQ/viewform
🧑⚖️📺 Wed April 27, Thurs April 28, Fri April 29, & Mon May 2
US Department of Labor online public hearing on proposed final rule to protect healthcare workers from COVID-19 exposure, livestream scheduled. https://www.osha.gov/coronavirus/healthcare/rulemaking
Theo Allen (@UniversalMaski2) demanded OSHA hold this hearing on the final rule and his pre-hearing comments are posted here: https://downloads.regulations.gov/OSHA-2020-0004-1886/attachment_1.pdf
Schedule of appearances: https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/OSHA-COVID-19-Healthcare-Rulemaking-Hearing-Schedule-041422-508.pdf
Drop-in group watch at World Health Network, sign up: https://www.worldhealthnetwork.global/contact
Tweet Hashtag: #OSHAhearing
🖥️🎙️ April 25 @ 5pm US PDT (8pm EDT)
#Masks4Equity: A Town Hall & Teach-in, to learn more about the need for masks on transit by Senior & Disability Action
See on Twitter and Facebook
Register to attend: http://bit.ly/Masks4Equity
🦠🥳🦠🥳🦠
I came across a news article about a super spreader prom event and the takeaway from the article was that the worst that happens from getting covid at prom is having to quarantine. 🧐🤔🤦♀️
Nearly 100 students get COVID after California high school's prom
"You have to just weigh 'are we willing to sacrifice what will happen if you do get COVID and you have to quarantine' versus 'is it worth it just to go out and have a good time for something you can do only twice in your life really,'" said Del Balso.
My Letter to the Editor, April 25th 2022
I was disturbed when I read in the news “Nearly 100 students get COVID after California high school's prom” and it's suggested the only consideration in deciding to go to gatherings is “the sacrifice of having to quarantine if you get covid” - as if quarantine is the worst that could happen to people or their loved ones. No expert was quoted, only a series of people connected to the event who seemed unaware of important medical facts. There are serious potential outcomes of infection. Of course we all hope the worst doesn’t happen to anybody, but during this pandemic the worst too often happens - COVID being the third leading cause of death in the U.S. with millions suffering from complications that cause long term problems, including for some with no prior conditions. I would like to see a 6 month, 1 year, and 5 year follow-up on the students who got covid at prom before jumping to the conclusion that this super spreader event was mostly harmless. How many will be disabled by Long Covid? How many will have lost family? And as far as we know there has been no case count or contact tracing among the staff who worked that event. We do not know all the long term risks from an illness that’s only been around since 2019, and some risks we do know about are alarming. And if prom is worth a quarantine, it would've made more sense to quarantine before the event.
Chloe in Scranton
🗞️ In the news
🔬 12 cases of unexplained hepatitis found in children in Israel (and they report that adenovirus is being considered as a cause 🧐🤔🦠)
COVID-19-vitamin D paper retracted by Springer Nature journal (“A journal has retracted a 2021 paper claiming that vitamin D “significantly reduced the inflammatory markers associated with COVID-19 without any side effects” following criticism…”)
📄 Op-Ed: ‘Learning to live with it’? From Covid to climate breakdown, it’s the new way of failing by George Monbiot (“There is no learning involved in “learning to live with”. It tends to mean an inability to adapt to new realities, and in some cases looks like a total retreat into abstraction.”)
This is NOT fine.
I’ve been hearing about too many large conventions. Something that comes up a lot is the concept that having hybrid remote options means that the people remote are somehow not full participants. This is a disability accessibility issue, and too often it’s treated as a trivial social matter. There are ways to make this stuff work, if people are committed to making it work, not just looking to sideline anyone not attending large indoor gatherings as a pandemic rages on.
Herd Scuttlebutt
Francois Balloux has gone on blocking spree on twitter, including blocking Dr. Lisa Iannattone for commenting about the mystery hepatitis in children post-covid but being attributed to adenovirus, Iannattone said “even if it is adenoviral hepatitis, we’re essentially seeing a complication that’s usually restricted to immunocompromised kids in supposedly healthy children post covid”
A meme circulating about the post-covid adenoviral hepatitis in children showing adenovirus rushing toward a door being held open by a coronavirus, with a liver seen on the other side of the doorway.
“A catalyst for change in society is usually persona non-grata with those who have been the beneficiaries of the system.”
Shirley Chisholm