🐄 Dairy farms avoid fixing problems 💻 Senate telework legislation intends to restrict federal remote work 🚩 Recycling of disease misinfo
Healthcare misinformation is a big problem, but we’re probably not going to solve this on social media alone.
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 to the White House & Senate - Prioritize Telework for Federal Workers
By Chloe Humbert - Telework should be prioritized for our future, to mitigate climate change and infectious disease. About the recent Senate bill,Government Executive reported that: “Manchin specifically targeted remote work as something that “hinders” productivity in the federal workplace in a statement endorsing the bill.”
Tips for writing reprentatives: chloehumbert.substack.com/p/writing-letters-to-elected-representatives
Note: Elected officials care what their constituents think, but politicians do not care about what people in another state think. So the best use of your efforts is to write to your own representatives.
Healthcare misinformation is a big problem, but we’re probably not going to solve this on social media alone.
A study on health misinformation reports that a too large number of people believe incorrect things about vaccines in the U.S.
The study included a chart on social media use.
🗞️ In the news
Government Executive - Senators’ latest telework legislation could imperil remote work A new bill from Sens. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., would cap all telework at 40% of an employee’s work hours, potentially endangering the federal government’s nascent remote work program. MAY 8, 2024 04:37 PM ET The legislation limits telework usage to 40% of the work days in any given pay period, with exceptions in cases where the employee is a military or federal law enforcement spouse or if a federal position requires “highly specialized expertise,” frequent travel or difficult to recruit for. Last week, Office of Management and Budget Director Jason Miller testified that the Biden administration’s goal is for “office workers” to commute to the office for half of their work hours in a given pay period.
FDA - Do Not Use Cue Health’s COVID-19 Tests Due to Risk of False Results: FDA Safety Communication - Date Issued: May 13, 2024 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning home test users, caregivers, and health care providers not to use Cue Health’s COVID-19 Tests for Home and Over-the-Counter (OTC) Use and its COVID-19 Test intended for patient care settings due to increased risk of false results.
Doc Who Said COVID Vax Can Magnetize People Has License Reinstated — Sherri Tenpenny, DO, had her license suspended indefinitely last summer by Kristina Fiore, Director of Enterprise & Investigative Reporting, MedPage Today May 7, 2024 The board had suspended Tenpenny's license indefinitely after she failed to cooperate with an investigation into public comments she made about COVID vaccines, MedPage Today previously reported. She was also fined $3,000. The board launched its investigation into Tenpenny after receiving some 350 complaints about comments she made to state lawmakers in 2021. Those comments included charges that COVID shots can cause people to become magnetized, or create "an interface with 5G towers," according to board documents.
This is NOT fine
Dairy farms avoid fixing problems even that can be their financial ruin.
STAT - Farmers resist push for workers to wear protective gear against bird flu virus By Sarah Owermohle May 10, 2024 Dairy groups say their members fear financial ruin if their cattle are found to be infected, and lawmakers, too, are increasingly concerned that H5N1 measures could chill the industry. There’s also the fact that protective gear is not ideal for hot working conditions such as milking parlors. “These workers have these fogged goggles all the time, which actually predisposes them to injuries,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist and director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. “N95 [masks] aren’t necessarily working well when they get wet.”
Maybe farms need to do better with their working conditions instead of using poor working conditions as an excuse to just sacrifice farm workers on the altar of profit.
The Farm Bill is coming up in the House of Representatives. There needs to be lobbying to fix this situation. We know that there will NOT be less threats involved in factory farming going forward, there will only be more. And businesses never seem motivated to do anything that makes sense in the long-term. Businesses are short-term oriented. They need to be regulated to force them to be forward looking and humane.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
Recycling bad pseudoscience immunity ideas for bird flu is going to lead to yet more harm.
There was a report that the LIE about “building immunity” now has people seeking to get H5N1 bird flu contaminated raw milk. This is gross and potentially dangerous. Also, raw milk enthusiasts are claiming “fearmongering” while there are now sensible and important warnings about raw milk and unpasteurized dairy products. Bird flu contaminated raw milk has been linked to mass cat fatalities. The immune system is not like a muscle, and “immunity debt” is not a thing, it’s a pseudoscience propaganda argument that’s been pushed to get people to blame mitigations for the effects of covid, like masks, which they believe “remind people of danger” and the danger of leads people to avoid engaging fully in the economy, so that’s why there’s been an anti-mask campaign by conservative business interests.
People are getting the axis of politics wrong as usual when it comes to public health & healthcare policy.
There are rumours being pushed on social media, by right-wing covid contrarians it seems, that the assassination attempt of Prime Minister of Slovakia is somehow linked to him refusing to sign the global pandemic accord coincidentally a few days earlier. The UK also refused to sign and Republicans in the U.S. are fear mongering about WHO. The idea that the WHO is issuing orders for the assassination of prime ministers is Corning Glass Superspies level conspiracy theory. Though sadly not surprising given some of the outlandish claims I came across when looking into some anti-vax long covid cure purveyors and related questionable promotions.
NPR strangely referred to Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia as a “leftwing nationalist” apparently only because Fico supports some social services. A lot of right-wing extremist governments support things that make a civilization run. The existence of publicly maintained roads, taxpayer funded police, and government services of one type or another does not make a regime lefty. Military is a socialized “good” after all. And author and professor Jeff Sharlet described the Slovakian Robert Fico as a “strongman” who is a “mobbed-up supporter of fascist Russia, linked to murder of journalists, who campaigned on rabid anti-LGBTQ+ platform”.
Sick burns on social media sometimes wind up looking like endorsements.
Some people post on open public social media as if nobody else besides the audience they have in mind is onlooking. So when they see some outrageous disinformation, for example, they might think it’s a sick burn to post something about some prominent foolish person posting on social media saying “Plandemic!” And perhaps most of their typical followers will share it and understand they’re making a sick burn mocking the item, never realizing that strangers who don’t know them, might see it as an endorsement of the idea. And then the post goes viral. Maybe because it’s being boosted by people who want to promote the idea. The opposition welcomes rivals who boost their visibility. And the idea is then reaching even more people who are more likely to not understand it’s a sick burn, but see it as an endorsement. This is why it’s so important even when debunking to never lead with the lie. What’s worse is that once the tweet has gone viral, the person posting this is often reluctant to delete the viral post even after being alerted that it’s spreading misinformation that could potentially cost lives. Having a post go viral can be intoxicating for some and this is because the social media dopamine hit really is powerful in the brain — and it could be anyone at any time manipulated by social media platforms that are designed to manipulate people this way. People with problematic viral tweets often never realize they may have been used, because the bad actors who want the concept boosted, may actually be the ones who made it go viral in the first place.
I think it’s important to recognize that often the goal of “misinformation mongers” is to create distrust in institutions, which makes room for more misinformation. We’re seeing increasing distrust of science, scientists and health-care institutions, and that’s the direct result of the spreading of misinformation.
Timothy Caulfield - HealthyDebate - Mar 13, 2024