🇦🇺Australian petition calls for National Cabinet health advice & minutes🇺🇸PCDC letter campaign to Biden & Congress🩺National Nurses United petition for worker protections😷
People speak out for masks on transit during public comments at the MTA board meeting in New York City
Contents:
- Events, Actions, & Campaigns
- Pandemic field notes & “Living with the virus”
- In the News (virus & adjacent media, science, news, and op-eds)
- This is NOT Fine section (gaslighting & other outrages)
- He(a)rd Scuttlebutt (the pandemic grapevine)
AUSTRALIA
Petition: Publish the National Cabinet COVID-19 health advice and minutes
The COVID-19 related decisions made by National Cabinet impact all Australians: we have the right to know how and why these decisions are made.
by Luna Tomyris
https://www.change.org/p/publish-the-national-cabinet-covid-19-health-advice-and-minutes
USA
Letter Campaign: Tell Biden and Congress: Mass infection must not be normalized.
By the People’s CDC
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/the-pandemic-is-not-over-biden-administration-covid-response-perpetuates-pandemic
USA
Petition: show your support for permanent Covid-19 protections
OSHA must take immediate action to issue a permanent standard to protect health care workers. And a broader, separate standard is also needed to prepare for future pandemics and protect all workers from workplace exposure to aerosol transmissible diseases!
BY NATIONAL NURSES UNITED
https://act.nnu.org/signup/Add-your-name-support-OSHA/
Twitter Space: covid-era parenting for covid-cautious parents by Stanley Lee Sat
Oct 8 at 1:00 PM US EDT
People speak out during public comments at the MTA board meeting in New York City
This month’s MTA board meeting had a number of people testifying to call out the awful MTA transit posters and call for caring for one another with a NYC transit mask mandate to protect accessibility for all transit riders.
A public comment by Lucky Tran was also well received.
IF YOU ARE IN NEW YORK join the campaign by Mandate Masks NY
Please call the office of the MTA Chair 212-878-7200 & let them know you want the mask mandate to be reinstated on public transit!
Sample script: "Hi, my name is ___. I'm calling to ask the MTA Chair to reinstate the mask mandate on public transit. Thank you!"
In addition, please message the MTA Board at https://contact.mta.info/s/forms/mta-board.
Suggested language: Dear MTA Board, I'm writing to ask you to reinstate the mask mandate on the MTA. COVID community transmission is high in NYC and the surrounding areas. We still need a mask mandate on public transit to protect people. Thank you
🗞️ in the news
🇺🇸 LehighValleyLive.com: COVID ‘long-hauler’ forced to sell longtime Phillipsburg diner By Pamela Sroka-Holzmann (Longtime restaurant, Sullivan's on the Main, has closed permanently in Phillipsburg. The decision came after its owner battled COVID-19 "long hauler" symptoms since late last year.)
🇺🇸✊ Cincinnati Enquirer: Princeton bus drivers intend to strike in October if bus company won't agree to paid time off by Madeline Mitchell ("We are living in the age of COVID, when people have been sick and contagious and had to miss work through no fault of their own," union field representative and lead negotiator Derryl Hall said in the news release. "And these drivers and monitors had no paid time off the job. Many of them had to come to work with COVID because they couldn't afford to take days off work and not be paid. It's just not right.")
🧠⚕️Washington University School of Medicine: COVID-19 infections increase risk of long-term brain problems by Kristina Sauerwein (If you’ve had COVID-19, it may still be messing with your brain. Those who have been infected with the virus are at increased risk of developing a range of neurological conditions in the first year after the infection, new research shows.)
🇺🇸📚 The Philadelphia Inquirer: These parents are making DIY air purifiers for Philly schools. They want one in every city classroom. (“Nobody thinks that there’s a DIY way to fix our facilities,” said Lizzie Rothwell, a district parent leading the project. “This is a necessary mitigation that we need as soon as possible, but it doesn’t get anyone off the hook for the bigger problem.” Rothwell plans to testify before the school board Thursday night.)
🇺🇸😷 Pandemic Enclave: We Are No One by Mike Hicks (We are no one…except the millions more who have not yet been infected, and are desperately trying to avoid it, because we know it’s not a cold, we know how it can devastate our bodies with even a single infection, and we know that “mild” means anything short of a trip to the hospital. We are no one…except for parents trapped in the agonizing dilemma of being forced to send their children to schools without mitigations, where their sons and daughters will unwittingly and unwillingly bring home a disease that can maim and kill. Yes, Mr. President, we are no one. We are the Mask Wearers.)
🇨🇦📊 The Tyee: Should We Shrug at COVID? These Numbers Say No by Andrew Nikiforuk (A biological transformative event, which may have killed nearly 20 million people by revised estimates and has burdened millions more with chronic illness, continues to burn through the world’s population. Yet, although the authorities know that masking, ventilation, air filtration and isolating when sick can dampen this fire and protect the public health, they have inexplicably abandoned these tools. Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, for instance, even banished an inadequate five-day protocol for isolating while sick and infectious. How’s that for “laissez-faire epidemiology”?)
🇺🇸🛩️ Consumer Affairs: It’s a bumpy ride for the travel industry, a new study suggests (If you haven’t taken a trip lately, you might want to press pause for a little longer. According to the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Travel Study, consumer satisfaction with airlines is anything but a flight of fancy, hotels aren’t hosting happy guests, and car rentals are still stuck on the side of the road. “Many folks ventured out to travel for the first time since the pandemic hit only to be met with lackluster service and dashed hopes,” says Forrest Morgeson, assistant professor of marketing at Michigan State University and director of research emeritus at the ACSI. “We see this with hotels, where the quality of amenities and food services both dip below customer experience benchmarks of 70. Anyone who anticipated their travel experience would feel like the ‘normal’ pre-pandemic days are likely coming away sorely disappointed. While the desire to travel may be up, it might be time to adjust your expectations.”)
This is NOT fine
“Every other sector of society has changed” in its approach to the pandemic, said Dr. Erica S. Shenoy, associate chief of infection control at Massachusetts General Hospital. “But in health care, we’re kind of frozen in time.” Of course there’s good reason for that, given the vulnerability of patients, but at some point, health care providers will want to move back toward pre-COVID policies, she said.
Do we have to go back to the times we didn’t control for any diseases? Fecal oral and blood transfers galore? Should we be worried that hospitals are going to stop masking in the operating room? Seat belts? Child safety car seats? Rivers on fire? Toddlers smoking? Where does it end? Back to the Dark Ages and beyond?
What the hell is going on with doctors like this who make no sense?
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt, grapevine & word of mouth…
Harrisburg (Dauphin County) has wastewater reporting that is almost too well matched to their case counts. Many counties don’t diverge as much as my county, but most are not matched up as closely as Dauphin County.
Journalist Walker Bragman mentioned on a recent Status Coup episode that he’s working on a pandemic related podcast.
Mike Hicks dives in to speak out for the disabled & immunocompromised who were recently lampooned with a meme calling us chickens for trying to stay alive by a big shot pandemic twitter personality. In Yes, I’m A COVID Abstinence Rooster, And Proud Of It Hicks writes, “I’m specifically talking about the overarching group we know as COVID minimizers, and in this case a subset of people who have been sources of reliable and reasonable information to a certain point, and then who suddenly (or seemingly so) shoot off the rails into the minimizer camp.”
There are altogether too many posts in social media from prominent famous people at elite institutions that basically go something like: “Here are 32 tweets of pretzel math why it’s okay for me to go to an in-person conference and party with elderly friends. I’m gonna do what I want. Here’s why it’s totally fine and why you can go to hell if you disagree. A thread🧵”
It’s a mystery to me why other people keep reading epic twitter threads where wealthy people grandstand to fans & vie for absolution for all manner of missteps.
Word is hospitals are putting out alerts about the signs of stroke in children so healthcare workers don’t miss it before it’s too late. I’m sure it’s happened all along, but it was definitely not the norm!
It’s a failure of public health messaging in the entirety of the West that it can be the case that I’m an American who just read an article from Canada about an Australian “top immunologist” who literally believed the mild propaganda pushed by big money interests to get butts in seats downtown for the economy.
"This new dynamic battlefield is undermining traditional thinking and doctrinal approaches to information operations. Not only are nations at war in the information environment but so are their citizens, businesses and communities―and many Western democracies do not even realise it."
— Cassandra Brooker, Australian Army Occasional Paper No. 8 The Effectiveness of Influence Activities in Information Warfare