📝 Workshop to write Public Comments to the U.S. Office of Civil Rights on Section 504🇨🇦Canadian mask petitions😷The Bizarro World of American Public Health🤦♀️Stop making youths deny reality😵💫
📝 Workshop to write Public Comments to the U.S. Office of Civil Rights on Section 504🇨🇦Canadian mask petitions😷The Bizarro World of American Public Health🤦♀️Stop making youths deny reality😵💫
😷 How to stay safe from COVID (and other risks) at a protest
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)
- He(a)rd Scuttlebutt (did you hear about this?)
📝 🙌 Write a Public Comment to the Office of Civil Rights on Possible Amendments to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
The U.S. Dept of Education is accepting public comments on disabled student safety in schools in the midst of this pandemic. If you care about stopping the spread among students in schools, many who have disabilities or may have in future, you can submit a public comment.
The disability pandemic justice group Pan End It! has made it easy for you to submit a comment, and are providing a sample template. ❤️✊
Tuesday, June 28 @ 8pm US EDT — Join the friendly zoom workshop to meet others, learn more, & get tips for writing a comment.
🇨🇦 British Columbia CANADA
😷 Petition: Free N95 masks for healthcare and frontline workers in BC now
🇨🇦 Ontario CANADA
😷 Petition: Stop The Ableism: Keep Mask Requirements In Medical Facilities And On Transit
😷 How to stay safe from COVID (and other risks) at a protest 💉
Bring your mask along — It's not only the amount of people you'll encounter at a protest — it's what they might be doing. Even outside, screaming, chanting, coughing and singing all expel more of the particles that can spread COVID than regular activity does…
Stop making youngsters deny reality
LA School district has pandemic advice that completely ignores any need for disease prevention, and focuses solely on the notion that children must be forced to muster “resilience” (or fake it?) — in the face of living through a pandemic. The emphasis is completely on avoiding “anxiety” and not actually implementing any safety precautions to protect these children.
Officials are more concerned about stopping people from reacting to the disaster than about actually addressing the disaster itself. Disaster researchers call this “elite panic.”
These officials in LA are recommending you push yoga and positive thinking on the youngsters as they reel from infection after infection.
Do these health experts really think the human species survived all this time because our ancestors, in the midst of being pursued by a lion, stopped short on the savannah plain to center themselves emotionally?
🗞️ In the news
😿 The Seattle Times: New study is first to document likely cat-to-human virus transmission (archive link) (“Cats are far more likely to catch the virus from people than to transmit it to them, scientists say. But the case is a reminder that people who are infected with the virus should take precautions around their pets…”, said Dr. Scott Weese, an infectious diseases veterinarian at the University of Guelph in Ontario.”)
🇺🇸 Everett Herald: Once a rarity, remote government meetings appear here to stay (“The silver lining of COVID was people who struggled to get to meetings were able to participate in government,” said Rep. Emily Wicks, D-Everett. “There is so much more engagement.” She authored legislation, which awaits Gov. Jay Inslee’s signature, to ensure that surge in public participation doesn’t disappear after the pandemic.)
✈️ Consumer Affairs: Southwest pilots protest workloads and scheduling mismanagement (“Upwards of 1,300 Southwest Airlines pilots who say they are fed up with being overworked and understaffed have taken to the picket line at Love Field in Dallas.”)
🙊 Traces of monkeypox virus found in San Francisco wastewater (“Wastewater samples taken from a San Francisco treatment plant this week have detected traces of monkeypox virus.”)
The Bizarro World of The American Public Health Association
Instead of promoting a salubrious environment for a meeting of minds during an historic & deadly pandemic, something that should be in their wheelhouse — the APHA is choosing to go ahead with a large in-person convention this year in Boston. No reports about mask requirements, air filtration, nor occupancy limits. In fact, remote presentations have been specifically disallowed, and I’ve not heard of any allowance for accommodating disabled people.
But what can we expect from an organization that chose the increasingly absurd slogan: “150 years of creating the healthiest nation.” I’ve heard the expression “Two Americas” and I think there’s one that people in charge of the APHA live in which bears no resemblance to the one where the rest of us are living.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt — stories of “living with it”
After encouraging readers of The New York Times that indoor restaurant dining was low risk based on questionable math ignoring the "gambler's ruin", Wachter now reports he does: NO INDOOR RESTAURANT DINING.
Virginia is ending quarantine for state employees, saying as long as the worker is vaccinated or had covid in the last 6 months, if exposed, just work as normal! People are getting sick within weeks apart. Why is the Virginia government unaware?
Someone posted in Covid Precaution Community about having to sign a legal waiver at a doctors office, where patients are informed that covid is dangerous and they accept that they might be infected there. Half the patients were wearing N95s but ALL of the staff were maskless.
I’ve heard too many reports of healthcare providers telling patients “everyone is going to get covid multiple times” — Curious doctors could forget that many people die with the very first infection.
An issue of the Pennsylvania C19 newsletter includes guidance for testing that can be interpreted to mean that vaccinated symptomatic people only need to test if they have had a “known exposure” to a confirmed case. If everybody follows that, nobody gets tested!
World Health Network declared monkeypox a pandemic, while the WHO is reluctant to say it’s an emergency, even while it’s now found in wastewater, and we don’t know how many women might have monkeypox because the official test strategy is “only gay male testing” — no matter exposure, even with pustules.
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
– Frederick Douglass, 1886