RFKJr's deranged level pandemic denial 💊 Paxlovid keeping older vaccinated and unvaccinated patients from severe covid.
Fossil fuel, commercial real estate, and mid level megalomaniacal managers are behind anti-telework RTO.
📍 Do Not Buy Day - FEBRUARY 28th 2025
Unhinged really is the only succinct way to describe RFKJr's deranged level pandemic denial.
RFKJr takes covid contrarianism and dials it up to 300 on a scale of 1 to 10. He's not just an anti-vaxxer, he's borderline flat-earth. I guess nobody should be surprised this guy is already going after psychiatric medicine first. But how long before he undermines and moves to do away with all infection control measures?
The Seattle Times - Patty Murray: RFK Jr. meeting was most troubling she’s had in 32 years Feb. 10, 2025 “I walked out from my meeting with him because he threw out so many nonsense, nonsensical questions and statements that it was head-spinning,” Murray said. Among the claims Kennedy made, according to Murray: He said 99% of COVID deaths were in people who were vitamin D deficient; he said we “haven’t done safety studies on vaccines”; and he said “there is an entire generation of damaged children.” “I’m looking at him and as I challenge him, he doesn’t flinch, he just leaned into all of these outrageous claims,” Murray said.
Mitch Mcconnell, polio survivor, was the only Republican in the Senate who voted against RFKJr’s confirmation.
I'm nostalgic for a time 20 years ago and conspiracy theories about Corning Glass running a British monarchy connected cabal of international superspies. At least nobody in a higher position of authority than an elderly veterinarian was trying to push that one.
Politico - Why the health care industry is letting RFK Jr. cruise to confirmation - From drugmakers to doctors, few health care groups are asking senators to block Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from becoming HHS secretary. By Daniel Payne 02/12/2025 03:39 PM EST From drugmakers to doctors’ organizations, groups thought to have the clout to steer policy and funding in Washington because they enjoyed bipartisan support and huge lobbying budgets have remained silent about Kennedy. They haven’t spoken up even though he has accused them of fraud and conspiracy, and promised to hold them accountable. That’s not because they aren’t worried, but because they didn’t think they could stop him — or think the cost of speaking out would be too steep, five people representing health groups, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said. By staying mum, they hope to limit the fallout if Kennedy follows through on his plans to strip the industry to the studs. “They think he’s the wrong person for the job,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, one of the few groups to openly decry Kennedy’s bid to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. “With good respect to all my buddies, they’re making the false assumption that if they stay silent, they will get something in return.”
📍 Note that with the rubber stamp on quackery from the federal government, scams and pseudoscience profiteering around medical misinformation and related sketchy stuff will likely get far worse. Buyer beware.
New York Post - RFK Jr.’s $100K Make America Healthy Again grift: Supplements, dog bowls and crypto plans By Isabel Vincent Published Jan. 30, 2025 It is common for appointees to divest business interests before taking a position in government to avoid accusations of a conflict of interest. The RFK Jr official merchandise store online currently sells “Make America Healthy Again” hats and T-shirts for $35, dog bowls for $40 and mugs for $17. MAHA Worldwide is controlled by Del Bigtree, a TV and film producer and anti-vaccine activist who was behind the MAHA Inaugural Ball at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington DC earlier this month, according to a report.
🗞️ In the news
TribLive - UPMC to require masks again as flu, viruses surge in region - Tom Davidson | Monday, Feb. 10, 2025 2:23 p.m. People visiting UPMC hospitals and health care offices should plan on wearing a mask, effective Wednesday. Affiliates of the Pittsburgh-based health care system signaled the move on social media Monday. “Masking will help to decrease the risk of spreading these potentially serious respiratory illnesses among our patients and staff. Visitors who aren’t feeling well should consider delaying their visit,” one of the social media posts said Monday. “This is required in all UPMC hospitals and outpatient areas, including UPMC Children’s Community Pediatrics and UPMC Children’s Express Care. Masks will be available if you need one.” It’s an attempt to curb the spread of respiratory viruses, which have been surging recently.
Respiratory viruses hit NEPA hard, prompting one school district to shut its doors for a day By Lydia McFarlane | WVIA News Published February 12, 2025 at 4:00 PM EST Widespread infections prompted the district in Wyoming County to close its physical doors for an entire day last month and go virtual to manage the spread as absentee numbers spiraled. “There weren't teachers in the classrooms,” Rakauskas said. “There weren't enough kids that they could do the larger lessons." The state's flu season, which started on Sept. 29, 2024, has been particularly bad this year. RSV transmission rates are high in NEPA compared to the rest of the state.
CIDRAP - Measles outbreak in Texas rises to 24 cases as New Mexico reports illness News brief February 12, 2025 Lisa Schnirring The number of cases in a measles outbreak centered in Gaines County, Texas, has jumped to 24, as health officials in New Mexico investigate a case—the state’s first of the year—in neighboring Lea County. The Texas State Department of Health Services (TSDHS) said yesterday that the 24 patients, up from 6 reported on February 5, had symptom onsets within the last 2 weeks. All of the patients are unvaccinated and are residents of Gaines County.
ABC News - Trump bars federal funding to schools with COVID vaccine mandates The executive order applies to students and not to teachers or staff. By Anne Flaherty and Kelsey Walsh February 14, 2025, 2:34 PM Trump's directive also calls on Health an Humans Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the incoming Education secretary to "provide a plan to end coercive COVID-19 vaccine mandates" and report back on the compliance of schools. One open question is whether the new administration could opt to go beyond COVID vaccines and put pressure on schools to drop requirements for other vaccines. Currently, all 50 states mandate that students receive certain vaccinations, including to prevent the measles. Many states, however, offer religious exemptions. Trump campaigned on ending all vaccine and mask mandates.
Experts warn of threat to global health as US freezes overseas aid Feb 8, 2025 Philippa Roxby, Smitha Mundasad & Dominic Hughes BBC News Health experts, on the other hand, have warned of the spread of disease, as well as delays to the development of vaccines and new treatments as a result of the cuts. As well as directly running many health programmes, USAID funds other organisations to carry out work on its behalf, and the freeze in funding has caused confusion among these groups too. Waivers for the funding freeze have been issued for some humanitarian programmes, but the announcement has already caused widespread disruption to services. Dr Tom Wingfield, an expert in tuberculosis (TB) and social medicine at the UK's Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, told the BBC it is hard to underplay the impact of the decision to dismantle USAID. "People don't appreciate the extent and reach of USAID. It goes towards under-nutrition, hygiene, toilets, access to clean water, which all have a massive impact on TB and diarrhoeal diseases. "Diseases don't respect borders - that's even more the case where we have climate change and mass movement of people. Infectious diseases will spread."
CIDRAP - TB cases linked to high schools in Michigan, California News brief February 3, 2025 Stephanie Soucheray, MA Active infections had been steadily declining since 2000 but increased starting in 2020, health officials said.
The New Republic - Malcolm Ferguson / February 12, 2025 Republicans Finally Reveal How They’ll Pay for Tax Cuts for the Rich. Mike Johnson has just released House Republicans’ budget plan—and it’s not good. They also threw in $2 trillion of compulsory cuts to Medicaid, which could make care healthcare even more expensive and inaccessible for large swathes of America.
Archives Host Missing CDC Data — Comparing archived data with censored government data will be critical, epidemiologists say by Rachael Robertson, Enterprise & Investigative Writer, MedPage Today February 12, 2025 On Tuesday, a federal judge ordered federal health agencies to restore pages and datasets that had been removed to comply with President Donald Trump's executive order to scrap language around diversity, equity, and inclusion. The judge's temporary restraining order was part of a lawsuit brought by Doctors for Americaopens in a new tab or window to get the pages restored. As of Wednesday, some pages had been restored, according to the Associated Press, but not all. Hoopsick noted that many of the CDC datasets already had been restored since the initial purge last month, though "the newly available versions have been censored, most notably to remove data related to transgender people." "These unprecedented restrictions on scientific information are a threat not only to the integrity of the data itself, but also to the ways in which we respond to that information, including how healthcare professionals provide patient care, and ultimately, the health of populations – especially those that are already made vulnerable in so many other ways," Hoopsick told MedPage Today.
NPR - After delay, CDC releases data signaling bird flu spread undetected in cows and people February 13, 2025 1:00 PM ET By Will Stone In the new study, researchers analyzed blood samples collected from 150 veterinarians who worked with cattle around the country and found that three of them had antibodies to the H5N1 virus, indicating recent infections. None recalled having any influenza-like symptoms or conjunctivitis. They also did not care for any cattle with known or suspected infections, although one did work with infected poultry. The findings underscore the difficulty of detecting and controlling human infections based on whether or not a person seeks out medical care, says Gregory Gray, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. "If the circulating H5 viruses become more transmissible between humans, we are not going to be able to control transmission as the viruses will spread rapidly and often subclinically," says Gray.
Spotlight PA - Bird flu cases on the rise in Pa. as the state expands testing, containment efforts by Marley Parish of Spotlight PA State College | Feb. 12, 2025 Pennsylvania’s Department of Health monitors for the disease, but the agency’s current role primarily focuses on education. If a person were to contract bird flu, the department would monitor their status and conduct contact tracing. The state Department of Agriculture leads the response within the industry. The Game Commission also plays a role by tracking and testing wild birds, and got involved when roughly hundreds of snow geese in Lehigh and Northampton Counties were found dead earlier this winter. To respond to cases in Pennsylvania, state officials rely on guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s so-called Red Book on highly pathogenic avian influenza infections, which was last updated in May 2017. Bird flu is almost always fatal to domestic poultry, so infected birds are euthanized and disposed of through a process monitored by a state and federal interagency task force. The U.S. Department of Agriculture compensates farmers for some of their losses, and the state recovery fund aims to handle expenses not covered by the federal government.
Newsweek - Steve Bannon Issues Medicaid Warning to Elon Musk -Published Feb 14, 2025 "I think it's generally confusion and mayhem on Capitol Hill. But hey, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's some logic here. Maybe they're making some progress on this. But until we see the math—and I mean hundreds of billions of dollars of cuts—and stop whining about entitlements, get into that discretionary spending, get into the Pentagon, get into Medicaid. Medicaid, you've got to be careful with because a lot of MAGA is on Medicaid. If you don't think so, you are dead wrong. Medicaid is going to be a complicated one. You just can't take a meat ax to it, although I would love to."
Paxlovid keeping older vaccinated and unvaccinated patients from severe covid.
But white patients get it more often than others.
CIDRAP - Paxlovid protects against hospital care, death, especially in older patients, data show News brief January 21, 2025 Stephanie Soucheray, MA Both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients benefitted from Paxlovid when administered within 5 days of COVID-19 infection confirmation, the authors said. But researchers observed lower rates of use among Black and Hispanic patients than among White patients.
Lack of adequate sick leave in the context of infectious diseases is a problem.
r/COVID19positive Educational-Basil540 Friday, December 6, 2024 at 7:40:24 PM EST Jobs make doing the right thing so hard Tested Positive - Me I tested positive Tuesday 12/3 and have been out of work since then. That's 4 out of my 10 sick days used in one week. On top of that, my mom has cancer and I take care of her, so I used a few sick days on that as well. I work in education, still have 6.5 months of work till summer, and only about 6 paid days off left I got my teaching cert a year ago and continued as an aide to be home for my mom but stuff like this is why I'm trying to find a job that offers remote work. My bf also tested positive and has been working from home all week and only missed one day. Education is where you'll get sick the most often but get the least amount of leniency when you need to take off because of it. I also have to get a new docs note stating I reasonable took today off. Hint: I had a 101 fever at 3 am, which they literally say in our handbook means you shouldn't work. Ohhhh boy. Rant over sorry, just stressed.
My letter to reps:
Adequate paid sick leave should be guaranteed by law. If people are expected to get covid, flu, norovirus, and all the rest of it, several times per year, then a minimum of 4 weeks paid sick leave should be legally mandated for everybody in America. We also need financially punishing regulations to prevent employers requiring contagious employees to work sick and drive everyone into disabling chronic illnesses and penury.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose the contents of my letter for your own letters to reps.
Fossil fuel, commercial real estate, and mid level megalomaniacal managers are behind anti-telework RTO.
The REAL Reasons CEOs Hate Remote Work - SOME MORE NEWS Feb 12, 2025 "Hi. We've been told that 2025 is the year that remote working will die, despite it often being good for workers and their employers. CEOs hate it though, and they're working to get rid of it."
Beware offers of closed communities that offer “safety” - it may be just some tech monarch’s dream for corporate totalitarianism.
DARK GOTHIC MAGA: How Tech Billionaires Plan to Destroy America - Blonde Politics | The Silly Serious - Nov 13, 2024 A look into how the tech leaders may be using the new administration to achieve their own agenda. Looking specifically at Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Marc Andressen, Ben Horotwitz, Brian Armstrong, and David Sacks as well as their relationship with figures like JD Vance, Balaji Srinivasan, and Curtis Yarvin. There is a focused discussion on how a shaping of the government might take place based on convergences between the ideas of Yarvin, who influences the tech libertarian right, and Project 2025, who have authored a playbook exclusively for President Trump to help with his transition to power.
Quote:
“Resolve today to view our media and politics through this lens. This means giving up on finding just one trustworthy place to find your news and, instead, starting to read between the lines of all news you come across. This take rhetorical skill and critical thinking, which has largely been exorcised from American education. Ask yourself when reading every article or viewing every video, who is this for? What is the purpose? The idea that our media is unbiased is ludicrous. You make decisions with every story, with every sentence, every word.”