⚕️CDC and HICPAC need to protect healthcare workers & patients 🚩 The eugenics of survivorship bias & natural immunity claims
Funding for vaccines has been reduced because infectious disease has wrongly been deemed "mild" and No Big Deal so people are not sufficiently pressuring representatives for what we need.
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)
USA Petition: Urge the CDC and HICPAC to fully recognize aerosol transmission and protect health care workers and patients!
By National Nurses United:
A postcard to Joe Biden from Chloe in Scranton, the People’s CDC External Review of the CDC recommendation #2
This is part of my 100 postcards to Joe Biden, I sent postcards but one can also send these messages through the White House Contact Page.
🗞️ In the news
🇬🇧 British Medical Association - First major survey of doctors with Long Covid reveals debilitating impact on health, life and work. by BMA media team. Press release from the BMA. Location: UK Published: Tuesday 4 July 2023 Almost one in five respondents (18%) reported that they were now unable to work due to their post-acute Covid ill-health; Less than one in three (31%) doctors said they were working full-time, compared to more than half (57%) before the onset of their illness; Nearly half (48%) said they have experienced some form of loss of earnings as a result of post-acute Covid; 54% of respondents acquired Covid-19 during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, and 77% of these believed that they contracted Covid -19 in the workplace; A small minority of doctors had access to respiratory protective equipment (RPE) around the time that they contracted Covid-19, with only 11% having access to an FFP2 respirator and 16% an FFP3 respirator; More than 65% of doctors responding said their post-acute Covid symptoms had not been investigated thoroughly and effectively by an NHS long Covid clinic or centre. And almost half of doctors reported not even being referred to an NHS long Covid clinic at all. At a time when health services face huge staff shortages, the loss of doctors from the workforce because they were not adequately protected has serious implications for the ability of the NHS to meet patient demand and ensure safe patient care.
🇺🇸 Tacoma woman with tuberculosis finally arrested to receive treatment in jail by KOMO News Staff - Thu, June 1st 2023 A Tacoma woman who has been avoiding treatment and isolation for tuberculosis (TB) for more than a year has been arrested so she can receive medical treatment in jail. Pierce County sheriff deputies located and detained the woman at her home in Tacoma Thursday, according to the Pierce County Sheriff's Department (PCSD). The arrest comes after a judge issued a 17th order in May for the woman to be involuntarily detained for treatment. “We initially tried to look for her, but we were unable to find her, we believe she was trying to avoid being captured," said Sgt. Darren Moss, with PCSD. The woman was booked into a negative pressure room in the Pierce County jail Thursday where she will get treatment for TB.
💢 Medpage Today: COVID and Aspergillus Are Dangerous Bedfellows — Attention must be paid to this new, sometimes deadly duo. by Claire Panosian Dunavan, MD - April 16, 2023 While some people equate "superbugs" solely with bacteria, specialists who care for immunocompromised patients have long dealt with life-threatening and drug-resistant fungi. Today, experts also worry that environmental factors, including climate change, will nurture scary new species. For today let's consider Aspergillus -- a ubiquitous, sporulating fungus that has long inflicted myriad harms, from allergic airway disease in asthmatics to fatal, necrotizing pneumonia in people lacking white cells to tangled hyphal spheres (aka "fungus balls") in old, burnt-out pulmonary cavities. Now we have yet another woe to add to the list: Aspergillus is invadingopens in a new tab or window lungs already damaged by SARS-CoV-2.
This is NOT fine
Natural Immunity, survivorship bias and the normalization of the pseudoscience eugenics ideology
People’s CDC COVID-19 Weather Report: June 26, 2023. Missteps in CDC's vaccine recommendation meeting, commentary on data problems and survivorship in COVID death data, an op-ed on multilayered infection control in healthcare, and more. JUN 26, 2023 All current COVID data, including deaths, are clouded by “survivorship bias.” Survivorship bias can cause us to overlook the fact that there have been changes in characteristics of the population over time due to deaths of groups of people earlier on. Unfortunately, far too many people died earlier in the pandemic, including those who were high risk and immunocompromised, and are no longer part of the susceptible population. Misleading claims that COVID is now “mild” and deaths are “rare” point to analyses that ignore the fact that many people died in earlier waves, and many of the rest of us have drastically changed our lives to add layers of protection and avoid exposure. In this context, even “low” levels of continued preventable deaths due to COVID signify ineffective public health responses rather than inherent properties of viral variants.
APHA has engaged in covid minimizing disinformation and covid contrarianism, basically asserting that the covid pandemic is no big deal, apparently for the purpose that they can continue their convention and travel and conference related business activity unfettered by concerns for human health. And now the APHA director is expressing concern about defunding infectious disease public health programs.
The debt deal rescinded about $27 billion in unspent federal money that had been allocated to fight COVID. It also led the CDC to remove $400 million in fundingopens in a new tab or window to states for workers who fight the spread of sexually transmitted infections, according to an email obtained by CQ Roll Call.
That executive director sure has a nerve hand wringing about this defunding now, when APHA has been instrumental in the political drive against public health.
I’m seeing a lot of other big shots on social media who’ve pooh-poohed people avoiding covid, or lambasting people calling for public health measures as “alarmist” - and now are shocked, shocked that the government has defunded vaccines. What did they think would happen if they didn’t call for action?
"Virtually every American ages 16 and older — 96.7% — had antibodies either from getting vaccinated, surviving the virus or some combination of the two by December"
These are the people who did not die. Selection bias.
Of all age groups, seniors have the smallest share of Americans with at least one prior infection, at 56.5% of people ages 65 and over.
Many seniors and the disabled are trying desperately to stay alive and protect what health we have. It has been made harder.
Young adults and teens had the largest proportion of people with a prior infection, at 87.1% of people ages 16 to 29.
Young people and healthy adults can get long covid too. Just ask Physics Girl.
Eugenics is a pseudoscience based on a poor understanding of evolution. It will not work out the way people think. Everyone seems to think they will be the strong who survives.
A lot of people having antibodies from infection is the reason that many other people are dead. For some reason thinking this good, and seeing it as the “encouraging” bright side, has become normalized. How the hell did that happen?
National Nurses United and People’s CDC have been calling for people to write representatives and demand better to protect everyone. I’m writing my representatives regularly. Join me.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
I would not take infectious disease advice from fancy celebrity doctor who:
Does specious math in public to convince at risk people to go to restaurants, deliberately ignoring Gambler’s Ruin - that eventually your luck will run out if you keep exposing yourself in high risk settings.
Pokes fun at their own wife, who is over 60, for wanting to avoid getting a virus that has been killing and disabling people, especially people over 50.
Continues to take risks after their wife develops Long Covid.
Gets covid, and while sick sustains a head injury and breaks neck in the bathroom, and instead of deciding getting covid is bad, minimizes the injuries and declares that showers are bad.
RFK Jr., dynastic presidential primary candidate and extra level anti-vaxxer, has stated that as president he would like to take away funding from studying infectious disease, he doesn’t think infectious disease is worth looking at because, he wrongly claims that people already suffering with chronic disease were really the only people affected by covid. This is not true. Just ask Physics Girl. But even if it was, it would still be worth it to care about disabled people if you’re not a eugenicist. I also think a lot of healthy working people would prefer not to have to be off work for weeks at a time with infectious diseases.
I heard about these statements, and others, on Conspirituality Podcast episode July 8 2023, Brief: RFK's Health Propaganda Roundtable.
“You don’t want to back yourself into controlling the pandemic because all the vulnerable Americans have died. That’s not how you win in public health.”
Deborah Birx, in Fortune, April 2023