Public comment period on CFPB proposed rule on medical bills 📜 Public health is about all of us
Alex Jones has spent years working for covid.
USA Public Comments Period CFPB - Proposed rule: Prohibition on Creditors and Consumer Reporting Agencies Concerning Medical Information (Regulation V)
Docket number - CFPB-2024-0023 Date comments close - AUG 12, 2024
NPR: “If enacted, the rules would dramatically expand protections for tens of millions of Americans burdened by medical bills they can’t afford. The regulations would also fulfill a pledge by the Biden administration to address the scourge of health care debt, a uniquely American problem that touches an estimated 100 million people, forcing many to make sacrifices such as limiting food, clothing, and other essentials. “No one should be denied access to economic opportunity simply because they experienced a medical emergency,” Vice President Kamala Harris said Tuesday.”
Public health is about all of us, and we all have a stake in the course of the pandemic.
I’m a little concerned that some influencers out there have maybe unintentionally been giving the impression that you must be part of a specific identity group to speak about covid, or politics around public health generally. I really hope this is not a message sent or received by anyone advocating for public health.
The cancer patient in North Carolina who was “confronted by a man who shouted expletives and called her a liberal for wearing the mask” does not need to have long covid, or identify as disabled, or liberal or progressive, to have an opinion on pandemic mitigations, politics around public health, or opinions on risks of covid, or opposition to mask bans. Obviously people with high risk conditions have a bigger stake in the issue of public health and masking, and in the U.S. one political party is far worse on public health than the other. Nevertheless, I know of conservatives who wear N95 masks. I know of people who are young and healthy with no disabilities who’ve never had covid, and don’t want to get it, and previously young and healthy people who now are disabled with long covid.
It seems to me that if one wants to arrange oneself into an affinity group regarding public health issues, it’s better to organize around what you want, not what you are.
🗞️ In the news
BBC - Do hospital masks mean Covid is making a comeback? 4 July 2024 By Dr David Gregory Kumar, BBC Midlands Today Science Correspondent Some hospitals have reintroduced mask wearing after a spike in patients being admitted with Covid-19, so should we be worried the virus is making a comeback? Since Monday, patients, visitors and staff are required to wear masks in clinical areas at the Royal Stoke University Hospital and County Hospital in Stafford. In Worcestershire, the Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said the measure was necessary "to protect patients, their loved ones and hospital staff from risk of infection" . They are currently treating 65 patients with Covid-19, the highest number since December 2023. Patients are also in hospital for longer so that would indicate they are sicker too.
BBC - Covid hospital admissions in Scotland exceed last winter - 5 July 2024 There are no Covid-19 rules or restrictions in Scotland, but people are advised to try to stay at home if they have symptoms and wear a well-fitting face covering if they do have to go out. The vaccine programme has been scaled back since the initial rollouts early in the pandemic. Now, only certain people are entitled to jabs under seasonal booster programmes. They are: - Aged 75 or over - People with a weakened immune system - Adults who live in care homes
10 WJAR - Hospital admissions rise as COVID-19 continues evolving, says Rhode Island expert - by BARBARA MORSE, NBC 10 NEWS Mon, July 8th 2024 If there's a silver lining, deaths from COVID are down. However, COVID remains a public health threat, and if you've never had it, it could hit you hard. "Their immune system has no experience with this virus," said Dr. Leonard Mermel, an infectious diseases expert and director of the Department of Epidemiology and Infection Control at Rhode Island Hospital. If you've had COVID recently for the first time, it may have hit you hard for this reason. "The virus continues to evolve," Mermel said. "That's what this group of viruses do." What if you're vaccinated? "The vaccines we got in the past for past infections don't protect as much against the current strains," said Mermel, who keeps close track of what's trending in Rhode Island.
Miami Herald - More ER patients in Florida test positive for COVID. The surge is different this time. By Michelle Marchante Updated July 10, 2024 UCSD Health appears to be the first among the region’s large medical providers to mandate masking this year. Scripps Health continues to “highly recommend” masking when its workers are within 6 feet of another person in a clinical area or in crowded locations such as elevators. Employees are also directed to wear masks if patients ask them to cover up. But Scripps, Sharp HealthCare and Kaiser Permanente San Diego all said that their assessment of recent coronavirus trends has not yet reached the threshold where they would require masking.
Block Club Chicago - Loretto Hospital Executive At Center Of COVID Scandal Charged With $15 Million In Fraud Anosh Ahmed and his friend Sameer Suhail were accused of defrauding the West Side safety net hospital out of millions of dollars. Another former executive faces more embezzlement and wire fraud charges. by Kelly Bauer - July 12, 2024 The federal charges came after a Block Club Chicago investigation that began with allegations Ahmed funneled hard-to-get vaccines early in the pandemic to his neighbors at Trump Tower and to workers at high-end businesses he frequented. The vaccines were meant for the city’s poorest people but ended up in areas where Chicago’s wealthiest lived and played.
This is NOT fine
Alex Jones is traumatizing his audience with a disturbing wildlife video he compares to hospitals and vaccines.
[CONTENT WARNING .]
Knowledge Fight podcast reviewed Alex Jones show where he played to his audience a disturbing wildlife video with prolonged suffering. He introduced the video as supposedly being a clip of Hillary Clinton eating lunch. And after playing the video, he apologized to his audience, but he said his audience needs to know it’s not as bad as what happens in hospitals, falsely claiming that millions of people have been deliberately killed with vaccines, and he graphically described prolonged deaths in hospitals supposedly perpetrated upon people. This seems likely to incite violent emotions against vaccine proponents and healthcare workers. Perhaps this is why some are wishing certain doctors “prolonged death”, and others are talking about retribution plans by people resentful about being vaccinated in the military.
Investigating Indoctrination to Incitement: What is the Relationship between Hate Media and Genocide? Author: Acker, Alixandra, Global Studies – Global Security and Justice, University of Virginia Advisor: Furia, Peter, AS-Politics (POLI), University of Virginia Issued Date: 2023/01/31 https://doi.org/10.18130/p706-qb92 First, the target group is negatively stereotyped as different, alien, inferior, and inhuman which awakens sentiments from dislike and animosity to passions like hatred. 12 Next, the target is characterized as an extreme threat to the survival and wellbeing of one’s nation or ethnic group. Lastly, hate media advocates for an eliminationist solution to the threat, which ranges from limitations and discrimination to expulsion and in extreme cases, annihilation. 13 Hate media is believed to contain threats, incitement to violence, and prejudicial actions against the target. 14 The cases I explored in this thesis all feature a form of hateful discourse in which perpetrators were exposed to extreme negative stereotyping, fear and threat dialogues, and linguistics related to extermination.
Alex Jones reportedly also went on to do a double Accusation in a Mirror claim in the clip provided by Knowledge Fight, where Jones is saying that Democrats pointing to conservatives who are openly talking about disturbing plans, is in fact a case of Democrats doing Accusation in a Mirror, because it’s what Democrats are actually planning. And if that’s confusing, I think it’s supposed to be.
Psychology Today - Giving Up: Informational Learned Helplessness. It's exhausting when it’s hard to figure out what is true and what is false. December 23, 2021 | Susan A. Nolan, Ph.D., and Michael Kimball, Reviewed by Jessica Schrader The plodding repetition of conspiratorial lies can lead to “cognitive exhaustion.” But it goes deeper than that. Peter Pomerantsev, author of the book This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, popularized the concept of “censorship by noise” in which governments “create confusion through information—and disinformation—overload.”
I don’t know of any left, progressive, liberal, or centrist podcasts which are telling their audience that doctors and hospitals are killing people on purpose. I know of no Democratic Party announcements or plans comparable to the Republican Project 2025, Agenda 47, or Article 3.
Alex Jones claimed he saved lives by telling people about what he calls “the poison shot”. The host on the Knowledge Fight podcast said Alex Jones has spent years “working for a disease” and that seems an accurate description.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
Jessica Burn Notice
I’m really tired of having to debunk the “feels truthy” influencer sit & spin room pseudoscience and anti-activism that is the wildly monetized blog of Jessica Wildfire. She was a successful monetized influencer before the pandemic, she’s not just some “covid cautious person with a blog”, she’s an established and successful savvy content creator. She’s not only promoted bronze nose wands and pseudoscience products - but actually prioritized them over masks and legitimate mitigations. She attempted to erase that the Civil Rights movement dealt with being told to “go slow” claiming it was only something that started being told to people in the 1990s, and she asserted that it was a good idea to fight ableism with more ableism, playing to people’s worst impulses for revenge. Lately she’s promoting unhealthy levels of pointless social media engagement and the right-wing conspiracy theory pushing doctor from the Trump administration.
Here are just some my reasons for not promoting this influencer and trying to ignore her content:
Jessica Burn Notice · Jan 22, 2023
Jessica Where There’s Smoke, and Mirrors · Jun 28, 2023
Jessica Whatever Validates Your DoomScroll · Oct 29, 2023
Jessica Misfire. A Reiteration Red Herring · Jul 10, 2024
When people are not thinking things through, we tend like & share stuff without engaging in critical thinking, because it feels right or it satisfies some confirmation bias, etc. That’s a key sales technique that influencers use.
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