Beware the Tissue-Thin Ruse Economy. 🚩 There is demand for Lina Khan to continue at the FTC. 📣 Vaccine uptake is low, so why are the anti-vaxxers still riled?
A large RCT compared telehealth to in-person care for palliative patients and found them equally effective, yet the Medicare telehealth provision is about to expire.
📍Video: Learn how to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.
If you’ve been ripped off or spotted a scam, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission takes complaints at FTC.gov/complaint or reportfraud.FTC.gov or reportfraud.ftc.gov/assistant for things like disaster fraud or price gouging.
✏️Write reps prompt - My letter to U.S. Senators:
I want to see Lina Khan stay as chair of the FTC. I approve and support the regulation of corporate monopolies, and I am relieved that inauthentic product testimonials will be penalized, and junk fees tamped down. Impending VP-elect JD Vance has expressed approval of Lina Khan in the press, and I think the Senate should urge and approve that so as not to interrupt FTC’s ongoing important work.
Please feel free to repurpose for your own letters to U.S. Senators. NOTE: Lina Khan and the continued fight against junk fees have been floated as a possibility in conservative press by weirdo VP-elect JD Vance. Make them prove it. The Senate has to approve any FTC replacement, and will possibly have some sway if there is demand for this from constituents.
JD Vance hints Elon Musk, FTC chair Lina Khan could be in Trump admin: ‘I agree with them both on some issues’ By Ethan Dodd Published Oct. 15, 2024, 6:05
“I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job,” Vance said in February at an antitrust conference.
More info on how monopolies exercise corporate authoritarian governance: Matt Stoller Explains Monopolies on Better Offline podcast with Ed Zitron.
Beware the Tissue-Thin Ruse Economy.
Cory Doctorow: Retiring the US debt would retire the US dollar – October 21, 2024 As important as the numbers revealed by the Secret IRS Files were, I found the explanations even more interesting. The 99.9999% of us who never make contact with the secretive elite wealth management and tax cheating industry know, in the abstract, that there’s something scammy going on in those esoteric cults of wealth accumulation, but we’re pretty vague on the details. When I pondered the “tax loopholes” that the rich were exploiting, I pictured, you know, long lists of equations salted with Greek symbols, completely beyond my ken. But when Propublica’s series laid these secret tactics out, I learned that they were incredibly stupid ruses, tricks so thin that the only way they could possibly fool the IRS is if the IRS just didn’t give a shit (and they truly didn’t – after decades of cuts and attacks, the IRS was far more likely to audit a family earning less than $30k/year than a billionaire). This has become a somewhat familiar experience. If you read the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, Luxleaks, Swissleaks, or any of the other spectacular leaks from the oligarch-industrial complex, you’ll have seen the same thing: the rich employ the most tissue-thin ruses, and the tax authorities gobble them up.
A “tissue thin ruse” is exactly what would describe the scheme being used to sell this dubious pandemic product. Someone brought my attention to a company that claims to have gotten around FDA and FTC rules by claiming that their drug is not a drug, by claiming it’s “drug free” just because they are using as the active ingredient, a substance typically used as an inactive ingredient. They’re claiming it’s essentially a cosmetic or personal care product that’s a disease preventative – except that’s the definition of a drug!
They proudly explain this trick they’re using too! In public! I explain it all here: And the nose hype continues… More pandemic profiteering that might violate regulations, and definitely isn’t ready for prime time. · Sep 30, 2024
You can’t do this, it’s quite obviously not a way it should be able to fool regulators. I reported all this to the FDA and FTC too. (I didn’t just post it on my blog). Maybe someday the FDA will issue a warning letter, like they have issued to other nasal spray vendors making improper claims. In the meantime of course, people are obviously making money off people desperate to avoid covid who don’t look too closely at their tissue-thin claims based on a prelim study conducted and funded by the company selling the product. (Always check the conflicts section!) And bonus PR, they have the seeming stamp of approval from Harvard. I imagine a lot of unproven dubious health products on the market are supposedly “getting around regulations” like this, and it’s probably going to get worse.
BUYER BEWARE. Don’t let nonsense separate you from your money for nothing.
Unfortunately I’ve heard of people using these nose sprays so much they get sore throats and nose bleeds. I’m no doctor but damaging the delicate tissue inside the nasal passage probably isn’t the best way to avoid getting sick.
The best approach to covid prevention? This doctor says it’s not up your nose:
And after all, the pathogen in the case of covid can go right into lungs.
(crossposted from my tumblr)
🗞️ In the news
CIDRAP - MIS-C much more common in kids not vaccinated against COVID-19, data reveal Stephanie Soucheray, MA November 8, 2024 A new large study of children in California shows that unvaccinated kids are at a much higher risk of developing multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) if they were unvaccinated with two doses of Pfizer's mRNA COVID vaccine before contracting COVID-19. The protection was significant in all children ages 5 to 17 years, but most notable in children ages 12 to 17, where even one dose of vaccine offered strong protection against developing the severe condition.
US Weekly - ’90s Supermodel Georgina Cooper Dies Suddenly at 46, Just Months After Wedding By Wendy Geller November 9, 2024 Cooper’s friends, Jade Parfitt and Erin O’Connor, confirmed her death on social media Thursday, Nov. 8. According to the Daily Mail, Cooper died of complications apparently stemming from long COVID.
Yale School of Medicine - Telehealth Is Just as Effective as In-person Care, Study Finds October 23, 2024 by Isabella Backman One of the largest randomized clinical trials to directly compare telehealth and in-person care has found that they are equally effective in improving quality of life in patients seeking palliative care—specialized care focused on managing the symptoms of serious illness. The use of telehealth surged at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic through waivers that expanded Medicare coverage for a wide range of medical services. These flexibilities are set to expire by the end of 2024 unless Congress takes action to extend them—and many private insurers follow Medicare’s lead.
Egypt declared malaria-free after 100-year effort 20 Oct 2024 Jaroslav Lukiv BBC News Egypt has been certified malaria-free by the World Health Organization (WHO) - an achievement hailed by the UN public health agency as "truly historic". “Malaria is as old as Egyptian civilization itself, but the disease that plagued pharaohs now belongs to its history," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Egyptian authorities launched their first efforts to stamp out the deadly mosquito-borne infectious disease nearly 100 years. Certification is granted when a country proves that the transmission chain is interrupted for at least the previous three consecutive years.
CDC NEWSROOM - Lassa Fever Suspected in Death of U.S. Traveler Returning from West Africa - 10/28/2024 CDC is supporting state and local public health officials from Iowa who are working to learn more about how the patient may have contracted Lassa fever. Early information suggests the patient may have had contact with rodents while in West Africa. CDC and other federal agencies have offered federal assistance to Iowa. People with Lassa fever can only transmit the illness when they have active symptoms and CDC is working with state public health officials to identify people who had contact with the patient after the patient's symptoms began. Those identified as close contacts of the patient will be monitored for 21 days.
Important Context - Pro-COVID UK Charity With Anti-Vax Ties Behind Controversial Stanford Health Policy Conference Collateral Global’s fight against pandemic mitigation measures has gone international. Walker Bragman Oct 18, 2024 But shortly after the conference took place, Stanford’s health policy department, which hosted the affair, updated the event page with a disclaimer that the proceedings had been “supported in part by contributions” from Dr. George F. Tidmarsh, an adjunct professor of pediatrics and neonatology at Stanford School of Medicine, and a UK charity called Collateral Global. Collateral Global was incorporated on November 4, 2020 as a private limited company by attorney James Bassam Farha of Farha Secretaries Limited and serial entrepreneur Alex Caccia, who was reportedly the partner of Great Barrington Declaration co-author and Stanford symposium panelist Sunetra Gupta as of December 2020. Until last year, Caccia, himself involved in the drafting of the declaration, headed up the now defunct Animal Dynamics Limited, a company that designed and manufactured “autonomous solutions” like drones and received funding from the UK Ministry of Defence. All three Great Barrington Declaration co-authors—Gupta, Bhattacharya, and biostatistician Dr. Martin Kulldorff, formerly of Harvard Medical School—were involved with Collateral Global as early as December 2020 as part of its supervisory board. Kulldorff no longer appears on the organization’s website.
Right-wing talk show used Steve Hassan’s BITE model for anti-mask propaganda.
Someone told me on Sept 28th at around lunchtime, sometime at the midday, in northeastern Pennsylvania, there was a right-wing talk show on broadcast radio where the talk show hosts were using Steve Hassan’s cult “BITE model” to assert anti-mask propaganda, by saying that it proves the government is an awful cult, and mask mandates were authoritarian cultism or something. Continuing the right-wing anti-mask campaign in 2024 is absurd, and probably only had the purpose of ginning up Qanon past glories to get out the vote for Trump. Steve Hassan was not on the show himself as a guest, from what I was told. At times Steve Hassan said some stuff people find troubling or problematic, but I haven’t heard of him being an an actual anti-masker or using his cult criteria to argue against mask requirements himself.
I’ve tried to find out over the intervening weeks but have been unable to find out what radio show this was on. If anyone knows, please tell me what it was, or do let me know if you have heard any reason to think Steve Hassan approves of this kind of argument.
Vaccine uptake is really low, so why are the anti-vaxxers still so riled up?
To really be effective public health, and to have any chance at quelling transmission, most people should be vaccinated, and really there should be a better campaign to get uptake much higher than to have as of October 25th, 2024, just 13.5% of U.S. adults up-to-date as of the 2024─25 COVID-19 vaccine, which came out in August 2024.
But there are very few covid vaccine mandates nowadays in the U.S., and yet there are these stories of people with grudges willing to join raids, make shit lists, and making outrageous fictional claims about the vaccines - from claiming they’re gonna be in lettuce or the food supply generally, that they’ll implant eggs, or actually claiming that they’re products of the antichrist. This hysteria about vaccines is really out of proportion, to say the least.
There are some jobs, for example in healthcare, that might require vaccinations, and actually always have. People in the military are required to get all kinds of vaccines and most are grateful because at any time they might be deployed somewhere that there's stuff in circulation that isn’t at home. If this were anyone else complaining about work mandates, conservatives would say “you signed up for it” or “just find another job” and be told to quit whining. So it’s very difficult to understand this enthusiasm for gripes.
The minimizers and anti-vaxxers are enthusiastically aggressive which is peculiar since their Great Barrington Declaration, minus the protection of the vulnerable of course which we always knew was a lie, has been enacted pretty much everywhere anyway! It’s like the trucker convoy people protesting public health mitigations that had no longer existed for quite awhile.
So why do they have to persist in a culture war against health & safety? I wonder if it’s because it was never about the particulars, it’s just about being against public health in general and finding targets to blame to distract from real problems with real solutions that some people with a lot of money and power don’t like.
Because it’s like Anne Nelson said on the Bucks County Beacon podcast The Signal: “follow the money. Because the greatest beneficiaries of their operations are the plutocrats that don’t want to pay any taxes and they don’t want any public services to the rest of us that cost them taxes, such as public schools, public roads, public libraries, public health. So they want to hold on to as much money as they can.”
📌 North of 48 podcast interview.
North of 48 – S5 EP3 It Don’t Mean a Thing if it doesn’t have that Pennsylvania Swing – 8 November 2024 (youtube) (also available on apple podcast)
I went on this Canadian podcast to talk about the recent elections, and how disinformation and important issues, including pandemic issues, figure into perceptions of the economy and voting behaviour, along with the problem of progressive politicians who run to the right, and the need for constituents to maintain public pressure on anyone who gets into these positions as representatives.
Quote:
“Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned. Protect the vulnerable and encourage the afraid. If you are brave, stand up for others. If you cannot be brave – and it is often hard to be brave – be kind.” — Sarah Kendzior