📊 CDC should base guidance on best science to protect people 🗃️ Unwinding booby trapped bureaucracies, it can happen 💥
Liv Grace should not have been forced into exposure to RSV, pneumonia, and covid twice just by seeking necessary healthcare. CDC HICPAC needs to condemn forced exposure to preventable infections.
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 Letter Campaign: Wastewater data is valuable infrastructure that must be funded.
By Chloe Humbert: Wastewater data is valuable infrastructure technology. Wastewater monitoring must continue and be expanded for our modern society's scientific public health management. Wastewater monitoring data is important scientific data for a number of applications, including public health monitoring for viruses like SARSCOV2. This needs to be funded and encouraged at all levels of government.
CDC HICPAC PUBLIC COMMENTS
The CDC HICPAC meeting did not allow enough time for everyone who wanted to give public comment to do a public comment.
People’s CDC is asking people who record their own to post on social media please use the hashtag #cdccontrolinfection and if you want, email your written or recorded comments to the People’s CDC at thepeoplescdc@gmail.com
Letter Campaign By People’s CDC: CDC Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) needs public oversight.
Matthew Cortland has asked for people to copy him on submitted CDC HICPAC comments.
World Health Network has published additional oral public comments on Youtube.
It is too late to email CDC HICPAC but it’s not too late to continue speaking out, and writing your reps about this and all important issues.
A postcard to Joe Biden from Chloe in Scranton, the People’s CDC External Review of the CDC recommendation #8
I sent postcards but one can also send a message through the White House Contact Page.
🗞️ In the news
🗃️ BIG by Matt Stoller - Government Stupidity Is By Design. Unwinding forty years of booby trapped bureaucracies takes time, but it's happening. And the billionaires are noticing. By MATT STOLLER AUG 24, 2023 Legendary Congressman John Dingell once let slip the dirty secret about power. “If I let you write the substance and you let me write the procedure,” he said, “I'll screw you every time.” Today I’m going to write about a little-noticed procedural change by antitrust enforcers that caused the lawyers who represent every large corporation, every foreign government, and every large private equity fund to scream in unison. The goal of this change is to get the government to stop acting so stupidly when it comes to corporate power. Almost no one outside of the billionaire servant world noticed this shift when it was announced, but as it turns out, making public bureaucracies act competently is a threat to very powerful interests who rely on such institutional blindness. In other words, if you want to know why the government is so clumsy and stupid, this issue is for you. I’m even going to show you a way that you can help fix the problem, without much effort.
🇺🇸 Source NM - Patients asked a CDC advisory panel to be more transparent. Then their comments disappeared. CDC re-posts YouTube recording of public meeting after taking it down By: Austin Fisher - August 24, 2023 Denying the well-proven science of N95 respirators would be a significant step backwards, said Kaitlin Sundling, a pathologist, lab-based clinician, and member of the People’s CDC. “Matching our understanding of the science of aerosol transmission to our precautions in health care allows us to work to build public trust and destigmatize aerosol transmitted infectious diseases, especially whereas asymptomatic transmission is common, as with COVID,” Sundling said. The evidence review failed to mention any of the studies showing that continued use of N95s in health care settings does lower infections, said Shea O’Neil, a WHN volunteer, patient, disabled rights advocate, and sole caretaker of her son who is high-risk with a disability. O’Neil also criticized the evidence review because it highlighted the discomfort of wearing a mask, and ignored the damaging and widespread effects of Long COVID. The CDC slides do not thoroughly discuss isolation and do not mention early identification and isolation of infected people, Gold said.
🎥 The Guardian - Hollywood studio Lionsgate brings back mask mandate amid Covid spike. The studio behind John Wick and The Hunger Games has reinstated the use of masks after several employees tested positive for Covid-19. By Benjamin Lee, Tue 22 Aug 2023 10.13 EDT Employees are also now required to perform daily self-screenings and stay home if they have symptoms or have traveled internationally in the last 10 days. The company is also reintroducing contact tracing and providing at-home test kits when needed. The measures are being brought back after several employees tested positive. Lionsgate is best known for the John Wick, Saw and Hunger Games franchises. Los Angeles county officially ended a state of emergency for Covid back in March but recent outbreaks have occurred on the set of the Fox show The Masked Singer, at Taylor Swift’s concerts at So-Fi Stadium and at Warner’s Culver City offices.
🇬🇧 Covid-19: Bring back mandatory mask wearing in health settings, say Scottish workers BMJ 2023; 382 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.p1648 (Published 17 July 2023) Decisions taken to end the universal wearing of face masks in hospitals and doctors’ surgeries are placing patients and staff at greater risk of covid infection and need to be reversed, a group of healthcare workers in Scotland who are affected by long covid has said. The Scottish Healthcare Workers Coalition, which is participating in the Scottish covid inquiry, described policies to withdraw mandatory mask wearing as flawed and dangerous and akin to playing “Russian roulette” with people’s lives. The coalition has written to the Scottish government criticising guidance published in May that ended the requirement to wear masks.1 It says that covid has not gone away and 300 people die from the effects of the virus every week in the UK. “Any decision that removes protection from the spread of SARS-CoV-2 puts those who are most vulnerable at greatest risk,” says the letter. It adds that healthcare workers are three to four times more likely to contract covid than the general population and that the NHS is failing in its duty under the Health and Safety at Work Act to provide a safe working environment.
🇺🇸 Harvard Law School - Bill of Health - A Patient’s Right to Masked Health Care Providers, July 20, 2023, by Katherine Macfarlane Enforcing a health care provider’s duty to mask should not be left to patients. Masking is an inherently charged subject with the potential to create tension in the patient-physician relationship. That conflict may compromise quality of care or create or exacerbate a patient’s medical trauma. High-risk patients with disabilities have suffered enough.
🇨🇦 CNBC - Novavax stock spikes 29% after company snags $350 million from Canada for unused Covid shots MON, JUL 10 2023 by Annika Kim Constantino The announcement is another sign of hope for investors after the cash-strapped company raised doubts about its ability to stay in business earlier this year. In May, Novavax adopted a more positive outlook and announced a sweeping cost-cutting plan alongside its first-quarter earnings report. The company said it expects 2023 revenue of between $1.4 billion and $1.6 billion. Novavax’s stock price jumped around 30% on that news. The company’s stock price is down 4% since the start of the year after after shedding more than 90% of its value in 2022. Novavax still faces a number of challenges ahead, including competing with Pfizer and Moderna in the commercial Covid vaccine market and a pending $700 million arbitration over a canceled vaccine purchase agreement.
🇺🇸 Omaha World-Herald - Nebraska removes wastewater surveillance webpage used to track COVID-19. By Julie Anderson , Martha Stoddard Aug 15, 2023 Updated Aug 16, 2023 With reductions over the past year or more in reporting of COVID-19 metrics, both locally and nationally, wastewater surveillance had been considered one of few remaining tools for public health officials to monitor disease levels. A spokesman for the State Health Department said the state’s wastewater data was taken down due to President Joe Biden’s ending of the national emergency and public health emergency declarations for COVID-19 in May. “Data continues to be tracked for that program and is available upon request,” the spokesman wrote in an email Monday.
🇺🇸 Slate - Where Are the Treatments for Long COVID? We don’t know why the virus can lead to persistent symptoms. We urgently need more research on therapies anyway. By Liz Highleyman, May 08, 2023 In February 2021, the National Institutes of Health launched RECOVER, a $1.15 billion effort to better understand long COVID and test treatments. But two years later, with the funding mostly used up, the initiative has yet to enroll a single patient in treatment trials, according to a recent STAT and MuckRock investigation. The delay, patient advocates charge, has wasted time, resources, and patient goodwill. Although advocates demanded—and have gotten—seats at the table, many feel RECOVER decision-makers aren’t really listening. Some are especially incensed about a plan to rehash studies of exercise, which patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as ME/CFS—a related condition also thought to arise from viral infection—say can make their condition worse. “For people who have been profoundly ill for years, it’s devastating to learn that RECOVER hasn’t launched any treatment trials yet. We have no time to lose by wasting money on debunked and even dangerous interventions,” said JD Davids, a longtime AIDS activist and co-founder of Long COVID Justice.
🇺🇸 KFF - Lost Medicaid Health Coverage? Here’s What You Need to Know. By Samantha Liss, AUGUST 10, 2023 Consumers should be wary of anyone charging to assist them in finding coverage — or pushing a particular plan. Misleading marketing has led some people to plans that aren’t actually insurance, such as health care sharing ministries, which don’t necessarily cover members’ medical bills.
This is NOT fine
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but I think it’s worth revisiting something I wrote about over a year ago. While some people may believe they are “making a choice” to risk covid, many people are being FORCED against their will into the risk.
There are people who are under guardianship or other legal, financial, or physical beholden arrangements where the power is a complete binary, and they cannot resist. They are not allowed to get vaccinated. Not allowed to mask or bullied into not masking. There are sadly many disabled and elderly who are at the mercy of radicalized anti-vax anti-maks extremists, sometimes in their family, and sometimes even in healthcare settings.
Liv Grace Public Comment at the CDC HICPAC Meeting - Aug. 22, 2023
My name is Liv Grace. I'm 36 I’m physically disabled as well as chronically ill. I have a number of autoimmune diseases including lupus and I already live with many of the conditions associated with long covid such as POTS lung disease and kidney disease. Additionally I'm immunodeficient on top of the immunosuppression for my lupus medication. I'm also a cancer survivor. People often comment that I live with so much illness and they say how hard that must be, but what is many times more difficult is being unable to safely access medical care. Last December I caught RSV from my infusion center because my nurse who knew she had been exposed to RSV refused to wear an n95. That turned into pneumonia. Two weeks after recovering and returning to my infusions I caught covid there, just a few days before my birthday in February, after two months of recovery time from pneumonia. I then caught covid a second time while getting necessary post covid blood work in April barely after recovering from February's infection. One way n95 masking is not enough for me. I have not gotten Medical Care since April because of the reality that I will get sick again as long as medical providers refuse to practice respiratory hygiene. I attempted many times to implement ADA accommodations that would allow me to wait in my car rather than the waiting rooms and would require medical staff to wear an N95 while treating me. Over and over again medical establishments refused. My appeals were rejected. I was told that it was impossible to accommodate my needs as a high risk severely immunocompromised person. I am still recovering from back to back covid. I now suffer from increased kidney issues and new heart issues. I had to start taking a blood thinner and a Statin to reduce my risk for a catastrophic cardiovascular event. Without medical care my health will deteriorate to the point of needing hospitalization where I will have even more exposure to unmasked staff. This is a catch-22 either access care and catch covid and other dangerous-to-me infections to the point of further endangering my life or do not get care at all and endanger my life. The evidence review on n95 respirator and surgical mask effectiveness was flawed and must be redone with input from scientific researchers and experts in respiratory protection aerosol science and occupational health. This is eugenics. I'm Jewish and I see the writing on the wall - the history of not only the Holocaust but many genocides - including the ongoing genocide of indigenous people - target disabled people first. I am literally begging for something to be done. Thank you.
This is happening in America, to Americans, because of rampant lies and so-called culture wars that gin up hysterical animosity toward public health and health hygiene.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
Disease is not fair. It’s enticing to believe that people will get what’s coming for them, or that good behaviour will be rewarded, but things just don’t work out like that when it comes to health and healthcare. There’s also not going to be some ah-ha moment where insufferably arrogant people finally “wake up” to the danger of covid, or any pandemic, or even war or climate catastrophe. There’s not some tipping point where things will get bad enough that it will override other incentives so people in a mass will just decide to do the right things, or where people in charge will forget about their competing incentives, or money, and just do the right thing. So don’t wait for everybody to hop on board before doing the right things or speaking up. The good news is, we don’t actually need everybody, and what we need from you might be just as simple as writing to your representatives in government.
“Millions of Americans continue to feel the lingering impacts for weeks for months, and with long covid, even for years due to their experiences with long covid. As many of you know long covid symptoms are as diverse as they are complicated, and can be debilitating so we've just got to continue to focus on this issue because with both kids and adults experiencing long covid it may have huge impacts on our educational and health care systems as well as our workforce.”
Senator Ed Markey speaking at Marked By Covid Covid Memorial Day 2023