➡️ CDC HICPAC - it's not over ✏️ UK Petition for accessible public transit 🚃
HEADLINE: "Boris Johnson Believed Old People Should 'Accept Their Fate' And Catch Covid" - shocking, but not surprising.
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)
United Kingdom PETITION To: Stephen Barclay, Mark Harper, Wes Streeting, Louise Haigh - Make public transport accessible to the clinically vulnerable
By Nico Reznick - “Transport companies should provide staff and passengers with quality masks of FFP2 standard or higher, as a major step in improving public health and disability access.” - to Steve Barclay, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Mark James Harper, Secretary of State for Transport, Wesley Paul William Streeting, Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Louise Margaret Haigh, Shadow Secretary of State for Transport since 2021.
USA - PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD - Discrimination on the Basis of Disability in Health and Human Service Programs or Activities A Proposed Rule by the Health and Human Services Department on 09/14/2023
Submit a public comment on disability accessibility in healthcare settings.
Comments Close: 11/13/2023
Guide to making a public comment by Pan End It.
CDC HICPAC - It’s not done - Submit comments
The CDC HICPAC meeting took place this past week. There is still time to submit a comment by November 6th.
The recordings are available for both days and include public comments:
I was chosen this time to give comment at the meeting and that is about 6-1/2 hours into the first meeting day.
There were hundreds of public comments to the August 2023 meeting urging for more protections for infection control in healthcare settings. The committee still decided to ignore all those comments and to go forward with these new weakened infection control guidelines.
The next step is seeing the new guidelines on the public federal registrar at which time there will be another period of receiving public comments.
In the meantime, I’m going to keep keep writing representatives to tell them what I think about all this.
Here are a few related prepared letter campaigns:
People’s CDC Keep Masks in Healthcare, Letter Campaign to Governors
CDC HICPAC Meeting presentations / draft guidelines:
https://www.cdc.gov/hicpac/meeting-presentations.html
People’s CDC recommendations for CDC HICPAC guidelines:
https://peoplescdc.org/2023/11/01/recommendations-for-hicpac/
🗞️ In the news
KION 46 - Under cloud of scrutiny, CDC advisers meet to revise infection protections for health care workers - By Ricardo Tovar - Published November 2, 2023 Dr. David Michaels, an epidemiologist and professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health, said the new guidelines should have benefited from all the knowledge about the transmission of respiratory infections gleaned during the pandemic. Instead, he said, “this is going backwards.”
CIDRAP - Research shows small reduction in long COVID with antiviral use - October 24, 2023 Stephanie Soucheray, MA Today in JAMA Internal Medicine researchers from the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health describe a small reduction in post-COVID condition (PCC or long COVID) among US adults ages 65 and older who were treated with either the antiviral drug nirmatrelvir (Paxlovid) or molnupiravir (Lagevrio). The studies were based on Medicare enrollees diagnosed as having COVID-19 from January to September 2022.
Cash-Goldwasser S, Reingold AL, Luby SP, Jackson LA, Frieden TR. Masks During Pandemics Caused by Respiratory Pathogens—Evidence and Implications for Action. JAMA Netw Open. 2023;6(10):e2339443. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.39443 October 31, 2023 High-quality studies have shown that use of face masks in the community is associated with reduced transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and is likely to be an important component of an effective response to a future respiratory threat.
This is NOT fine
Boris Johnson wanted old people to “accept their fate” and catch Covid so that the young could get on with their lives, it has been revealed. The former prime minister also suggested that he agreed with Tory MPs who believed the virus was “nature’s way of dealing with old people”.
Shocking — but not surprising that this is what they said behind closed doors a few years ago since every government’s policy now reflects this to an amazing extent.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
In the past, that 60 minutes tv show brought us John Stossel, Lara Logan, and poor shaming the disabled as all moochers. They also delegitimized the show by using it to legitimize fringe figures. So I don’t have any hopes pinned on that outlet. And for this clean air episode, they had JG Allen on the show. He’s a minimizer who apparently said kids should be back to fully in-person school way back when, even without any of his recommendations for ventilation upgrades or safety measures. One wonders why even bother making the recommendations? Also, nobody was actually using any respiratory hygiene like n95 masks in any of the promos I saw for that show. Curious.
Though it’s an interesting topic that I think should be widely understood, I don’t think the problem of infectious disease spread will be solved by teaching people or businesses how air purifiers work. We need regulations to make them standard in risky settings. Nearly everyone now knows covid spreads from people’s mouths and noses into the air. My coworkers discussed this in early March 2020. Some people are not fully cognizant about how far virus can travel in the air, but they’re not ignorant of how it works. Yes, some people in the government and business try to deny it spreads easily through aerosols, mostly probably for legal reasons. But it’s like when former President Donald Trump lies – almost nobody is really fooled! Sure, some people pretend to believe what he says — if it suits them. The CDC has tried to pretend like they don’t know how aerosol transmission works, but they knew back in 2020, and there’s proof they knew.
The problem isn't a lack of understanding about how to stop the spread. People just don’t think it’s necessary because they have learned to ignore or downplay the risks and normalize the harms as part of the Manufacturing Mild process, just as Big Tobacco and Fossil Fuel has done, so too commercial real estate, restaurant businesses, and the travel industry additionally push against any recognition that certain activities are risky, because people might pull back even further on those things.
Awareness only gets you so far. The idea that if only enough people know, something will magically happen without me doing anything beyond clicking on social media is sure a really enticing fantasy to justify doom scrolling and doing nothing else. This is apocalyptic hopium or accelerationist fantasy. We need a new PR scheme, but all the most lucrative mechanisms in the media landscape are being flooded with money to normalize negative outcomes. People are incentivized in the wrong direction, to promote those accelerationist ideas in some cases because it keeps concerned people inactive, placated, waiting for the miracle, instead of pushing for common sense regulations to clean indoor air and have respirator masks be standard (and free to the public) in risky settings like healthcare facilities, elderly care, and public transportation.
“Covid is Airborne and can be transmitted by patients and healthcare workers who are asymptomatic. Healthcare facilities must require universal masking of well-fitting masks for everyone in the facility with N95 as the baseline.”
— Rita Valenti RN Public comment at the CDC HICPAC Meeting on June 8th 2023