Petition for OSHA national infectious disease standard ✒️ Masks are safety gear that pre-date the pandemic - let's not get distracted 😷
Recorded phone call with RFK Jr. reveals Trump reciting anti-vax talking points.
USA petition - Protect Health Care Workers and Patients from Infectious Diseases
National Nurses United - We need a national OSHA infectious diseases standard!
Recommending masks for health protection is nothing new and should never be curtailed.
It’s not abnormal to want to avoid infection, even if you’re just interested in not getting sick. And the CDC has been recommending using masks to avoid flu infection since 2007.
CIDRAP - CDC offers advice on citizen use of masks, respirators Robert Roos and Lisa Schnirring May 3, 2007 "If people are not able to avoid crowded places, [or] large gatherings or are caring for people who are ill, using a facemask or a respirator correctly and consistently could help protect people and reduce the spread of pandemic influenza," CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said in a news release. For example, says an 11-page guidance document the CDC released, people might choose to wear a face mask when going to a grocery store or a religious service, and they might want to use a respirator when visiting a sick neighbor to deliver food or medicine. Surgical face masks are simple masks designed to fit across the nose and mouth and catch large respiratory droplets produced by the wearer, but they also offer some protection from others' secretions. They are inexpensive and typically fit fairly loosely. "Think of it as a way to catch and contain respiratory secretions," Gerberding said at a news briefing today. "These masks are very good catchers of those droplets, they keep your secretions contained within you." N-95 respirators are thicker masks that are designed to fit tightly to the face and block at least 95% of small airborne particles.
CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding was appointed by Republican Tommy Thompson who was at the time the Secretary of Health and Human Services in the George W. Bush administration, was the Republican governor of the state of Wisconsin for over a decade and throughout the 1990s.
In addition to mask protection from allergens and air pollution,there are other infection risks that are quite serious. For many years in Pennsylvania, I’ve used a respirator mask and gloves to deal with mouse droppings & remains. In the southwest U.S. it’s essential.
Coconino County Arizona - Posted on: July 12, 2024 - Increase in Hantavirus Activity, Two Deaths Reported in Coconino County HPS is a severe and sometimes fatal respiratory illness caused by the infection with hantaviruses. Hantavirus is spread from rodents, primarily the deer mouse in Arizona, to people through airborne transmission from viral droplets spread through handling or stirring up materials contaminated with rodent urine, saliva, or feces. Hantavirus is not spread person-to-person. HPS is not limited to one geographic location. It can be present in many areas in the southwestern region of the United States where there is rodent activity, even if mice are never seen. Symptoms of the illness can be fever, headache, and muscle aches progressing rapidly to severe difficulty in breathing and, in some cases, death.
🗞️ In the news
The Conversation - Boost your immune system with this centuries-old health hack: Vaccines - Published: June 20, 2024 There are a dizzying number of tips, hacks and recommendations on how to stay healthy, from dietary supplements to what color of clothes promotes optimal wellness. Some of these tips are helpful and based on good evidence, while others are not. However, one of the easiest, most effective and safest ways to stay healthy is rarely mentioned: vaccination.
NATURE - EDITORIAL 05 June 2024 What we do — and don’t — know about how misinformation spreads online There are gaps in our understanding of how and why digital misinformation propagates. To help design effective interventions to minimize the spread of falsehoods, researchers need data and transparency from online platforms. In Ahmad’s words, online advertising is “happening kind of in the dark”: as with social media, the bulk of the data needed to understand how misinformation spreads are held by online platforms. If platforms are conducting interventions of their own to try to curb the spread of misinformation, that is happening away from public scrutiny. The first step to tackling misinformation must be for companies to engage more with researchers. The studies that have already been performed show that it is possible to collaborate ethically on data while ensuring people’s privacy. Moreover, taking steps against the spread of provable falsehoods does not amount to a curb on freedom of speech if it is done transparently. If companies are not willing to share data, regulators should compel them to do so. The rise of generative artificial-intelligence (AI) applications, which reduce the barrier to producing dubious content, is another reason to tackle the issue urgently.
ABC NEWS - Nearly 200 cases of dengue virus reported in New York and New Jersey: CDC New York has reported 143 cases and New Jersey has reported 41. By Youri Benadjaoud July 10, 2024, 8:44 PM New York has reported 143 cases and New Jersey has reported 41. Dengue transmission is typically common in tropical and subtropical areas of the world, according to the CDC. Over 2,500 people have been infected in the U.S. so far this year, about five times higher than the same time last year. Puerto Rico currently makes up the bulk of those cases -- with over 1,700 reported.
Are You Ready to Diagnose Valley Fever? — The dust-borne fungal blight has many forms, and its footprint is growing by Claire Panosian Dunavan, MD, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today June 24, 2024 According to climate modeling experts, Coccidioides immitis, the soil-borne fungus that causes VF, may soon expand its domestic habitat well beyond California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Utah, and southwestern Washington state to as far north as northern Montana and as far east as western Minnesota.
This is NOT fine
Anti-vax Trump phone call with RFK Jr.
Luke Beasley posted clips from the since deleted video of a phone call between Donald Trump and RFK Jr. where Trump espouses distinctly anti-vax talking points. Anecdotally, I’ve heard of 2 people in Pennsylvania who were prior Trump voters and have recently told someone they’ve now decided to vote for RFK Jr. Neither are apparently big anti-vaxxers that I know of. But I think Donald Trump is going to try to get RFK Jr. to drop out, or is clearly trying to lure anti-vaxxers back to the Republican Party. One thing that is clear is that a second Trump administration will not involve any big vaccine development programs, no matter what happens.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
Registered Republican Trump rally shooter used an umbrella when it was raining.
Actually I don’t know if the killer ever used an umbrella, and since he’s dead nobody can ask him anything now.
But the media interviewed a former high school classmate of the perpetrator, who described the shooter as awkward and included the information that he wore masks to school after a lot of other students had stopped. To describe him, as the media did, as “covid conscious” — as if that’s an identity — from just that, is a stretch. I don’t think that’s taking this report in perspective. That classmate hadn’t been in school with the shooter in two years, since the shooter graduated in spring 2022, shortly after the most hugest big omicron winter wave.
I have mentioned repeatedly that I know of Republicans who wear masks. There are people who just keep trying to make it political — but it just isn’t. Masks are healthcare.
There are some dubious politicians pushing mask bans. This is egregiously pointless and harmful. But we know this is largely driven by corporate interests not wanting anyone reminded of any danger existing - be it air pollution, covid, or asbestos for that matter. They believe it puts a damper on economic engagement. And they’re right about people often not wanting to do risky things if they know it’s dangerous. And covid contrarians and right-wing think tanks have really worked hard at trying to make respiratory protection political, but that’s not based in any reality. Just because right-wingers and some others want now to claim people wearing n95s are dangerous doesn’t make it true. There is also some weird suggestions being pushed that immunocompromised and disabled children or children who get sick with covid or long covid will become violent because of not being at in-person school — but there’s no evidence that illness, childhood cancer treatments, childhood accidents, disabilities, remote schooling, or homeschooling, have ever made any children violent. And it’s a bigoted assertion that disabled people are dangerous somehow just because of being disabled.
Some young man who, for whatever incoherent reasons, became a perpetrator of extreme gun violence and murder, and happened also to wear a mask to school in a pandemic, like so many others, during a deadly winter — is in reality, like mentioning that he wore winter coats in February or that he was quiet on the bus.
Gavin DeBecker is now some anti-vax weirdo who works for a billionaire, but he’s long been a security professional who once upon a time made a good point about the media giving an outsized impression that killers are unassuming and give no outer sign of problems largely because the media often interviews neighbors or classmates who don’t have anything revealing to say. Often news reporters interview people who say “he was quiet” or remark about how this or that murderer made great potato pancakes at the church bazaar every year. Basically what these neighbors or old schoolmates are saying is "I don't actually know anything relevant.” And that’s the case here I suspect — the former classmates didn’t know him over the past 2 years, didn’t seem to know him very well when they were at school together, and have nothing particularly important to say about the guy now.
Masks are safety gear — like boots, goggles, a bandaid, or a parka.
Quote:
I was really struck with the low proportion of healthcare providers that recommended and given what we know about influenza and other vaccines and the critical role that healthcare providers play in recommending vaccines um I wondered what we did know about healthcare provider attitudes and what some of the barriers may be and as an aside it worries me that if it were not a universal recommendation that the role of the health care provider in identifying and appropriately counseling those with risk um would that would be become even more problematic.
Dr. Denise Jamieson MD MPH at the CDC ACIP public meeting, June 27 2024