🚩 Dem senators embrace anti-mask, side with far-right JD Vance 😯 CDC HICPAC expected to weaken infection control this week ⚕️
Workplaces, including government offices and the courts, are doing a poor job of handling covid outbreaks.
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 - PUBLIC MEETING - CDC HICPAC - Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee
When: November 2-3, 2023 Where: Teleconference Only
The Oral Public Comment Request Submission Period will open October 2, 2023, and close at 11:59 pm on October 23, 2023. The Written Public Comment Submission Period Will open November 1, 2023, and close at 11:59 pm on November 6, 2023.
“If you were not selected in the lottery for oral public comment, please submit your written public comment to HICPAC@CDC.GOV. The written public comment period will open November 1, 2023, and close at 11:59 pm on November 6, 2023. All written public comments received before or after the comment period opens or closes will not be added to the meeting minutes.”
DEMS JOIN RIGHT-WING ANTI-MASK ROLL CALL IN SENATE
Democratic Party Senators voted specifically for a JD Vance anti-mask provision.
Roll Call Vote 118th Congress - 1st Session XML Vote Summary
Question: On the Amendment (Vance Amdt. No. 1210 )
Vote Number: 266 Vote Date: October 25, 2023, 12:31 PM
Required For Majority: ½ Vote Result: Amendment Agreed to
Amendment Number: S.Amdt. 1210 to S.Amdt. 1092 to H.R. 4366 (No short title on file)
Statement of Purpose: To prohibit funds appropriated for the Department of Transportation for fiscal year 2024 from being used to enforce a mask mandate in response to the COVID-19 virus.
Vote Counts: YEAs 59 NAYs 38 Not Voting 3
If your senators voted against making mask requirements possible, and you don’t like this, you need to tell them that it matters to you. Because they’re voting yes to this bullshit because the anti-maskers send letter after letter to your senators to harangue them over the covid contrarian hysteria and your senators see this as an easy lift to placate those people. Because we have a problem with good people staying silent in the U.S. and not enough people are telling them to say NO to dismantling public health.
Here is a list of senators and how they voted (which can be found on the senate.gov page.)
NOTE: It’s always best to contact your own senator because they are sensitive to their own constituents and not very concerned with what people from other states think about them.
The Anti-mask voting Democratic Party Senators who voted with far right covid contrarian JD Vance who characterized saving lives as “public health panic” and wants a total ban on mask mandates no matter what, should be ashamed of themselves.
And I hope their constituents tell them so. (Links to their contact pages below.)
Arizona Kelly — Colorado Bennet — Minnesota Klobuchar — Montana Tester — Nevada Rosen — New Hampshire Shaheen — Ohio Brown — Virginia Kaine — West Virginia Manchin — Wisconsin Baldwin
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) slams a proposal by Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) against COVID-19 restrictions. Democratic Senator: This Is Why JD Vance's Anti-COVID-19 Restrictions Rule Is Wrong - Forbes Breaking News - Sep 7, 2023 “This bill would undermine the ability of states of cities and towns across this country to make decisions about what's best for their communities it would silence and hamstring Public Health experts who have guided our nation out of the darkest days of a pandemic that has killed one million one hundred and thirty nine thousand people in our country in three years - let me repeat that this disease has killed one million one hundred and thirty nine thousand people already and doctors experts are saying that covid is coming back it's on the rise once again this provision would violate a long-held belief in the Republican party that states and localities should not be told what to do by a federal government removed from the realities that they're seeing on the ground in their neighborhoods this bill is a little more than an attempt by Republicans to dismantle a public health infrastructure that had to be built in order to deal with this greatest of pandemic since 1918.”
My letter to Fetterman (who didn't vote):
You should have voted and voted NO On the Amendment (Vance Amdt. No. 1210 ) - anti-mask disability discrimination promotion. It is egregious and also ridiculous that these people are pushing against public health measures. We need our representatives to protect public health and push back on this kind of nonsense.
I also sent a thank you to Bob Casey thanking him for voting no.
🗞️ In the news
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette - Washington County inmates unknowingly treated with ivermectin get $2,000 each - by Ron Wood | October 6, 2023 The lawsuit contends detainees were given ivermectin as early as November 2020 and didn’t become aware of what the treatment was until July 2021. Ivermectin is an FDA-approved drug to address parasitic infestations such as intestinal worms and head lice and some skin conditions, such as rosacea. It isn’t — and wasn’t at the time — approved to treat covid-19.
Newsbreak - PA. State Rep. Cites Bible to Deny Climate Change. By Matthew C. Woodruff Oct 19 2023 Borowicz made several false claims about COVID-19 in another speech explaining her opposition, this time to a resolution directing a state commission to “conduct a study on the Commonwealth’s preparedness to respond to public health emergencies.” “We do not need a study by the same government that did this [Covid-19] to its people,” Borowicz said on X, “You guys were the ones who messed everything up. Now you want to study it. I will tell you what you did wrong. People died because basic medicines were withheld from them, like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and steroids.” Multiple international studies have shown that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine do not decrease the number of in-hospital days, respiratory deterioration, or deaths from Covid-19.
AP - Carnival ruled negligent over cruise where 662 passengers got COVID-19 early in pandemic - BY ROD MCGUIRK Updated 2:51 AM EDT, October 25, 2023 Federal Court Justice Angus Stewart ruled that Carnival had been negligent as defined by Australian consumer law by allowing the cruise to depart in the early months of the pandemic. He said Carnival had a duty to take reasonable care of her health and safety in regard to COVID-19. “I have found that before the embarkation of passengers on the Ruby Princess for the cruise in question, the respondents knew or ought to have known about the heightened risk of coronavirus infection on the vessel and its potentially lethal consequences and that their procedures for screening passengers and crew members for the virus were unlikely to screen out all infectious individuals,” Stewart said. Carnival had already experienced outbreaks on its cruises in the previous month aboard the Grand Princess off California and the Diamond Princess off Japan, the judge said.
This is NOT fine
Workplaces, including government offices and the courts, are doing a poor job of handling covid outbreaks.
Why are courtrooms not masked all the time during an ongoing pandemic, to protect everyone who has to be there?
Kise said he was sitting away from the AG’s table Tuesday to avoid catching COVID and complained about his opponents’ lack of notification, saying that “the leading candidate for president of the United States in this courtroom today,” and griping “I don't think we should really be here today.” Another Trump lawyer, said she did not want to use the same microphone as the AG’s office. Judge Engoron said that the trial would proceed as planned, clapping back at the request: “Masks are available. We are going to proceed.” A spokesperson for the AG’s office said later that it had followed the CDC’s guidelines, adding: “if there were any concerns, defendants could wear masks today or at any point, but they have opted not to.”
It is legal in many places for employees to go to work actively sick with covid, even while testing positive, or not testing at all, and often supervisors aren’t even allowed to suggest the sick person wear a mask while interacting with the public. This includes many state government offices.
If you think this is wrong, I strongly recommend you write your elected representatives and demand OSHA regulations that force employers to protect worker safety.
"Many people rationalize that if it were really dangerous the government wouldn't let it be advertised. They are wrong in that thinking. It is dangerous and the government does let it be advertised."
- Rick Pollay, Pack of Lies: The Advertising of Tobacco (1992)
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
Always click through before believing or passing along information on social media. There are 3 covid vaccines now available that are all in the same general ballpark when it comes to expected efficacy. Some people are misleadingly using Eric Topol’s decision to seek out Novavax as a booster as evidence to promote the social media hype claims that it’s superior somehow. But please always be sure to click through to see what people are actually saying, because the article they cite actually says “It’s hard to know how it compares” to mRNA vaccines, Topol admits” and goes on to explain there are no head-to-head studies.
Science - Should you pick Novavax’s COVID-19 shot over mRNA options? Limited data and lack of head-to-head studies make comparisons tricky - 6 Oct 2023 - ByJennifer Couzin-Frankel “It’s hard to know how it compares” to mRNA vaccines, Topol admits; there are no head-to-head studies to rely on. In clinical trials, Novavax appeared less likely than mRNA shots to cause side effects like headache and fatigue. But how does it stack up against mRNA vaccines when it comes to protection against SARS-CoV-2? The question has been vexingly difficult to answer. Some hints are emerging, including the first large study of Novavax in the real world, published this week by a team in Italy. The results are far from definitive, but they suggest “there aren’t massive differences” between the vaccines, says Alberto Mateo Urdiales, an epidemiology and infectious disease researcher at the Italian National Institute of Health, who led the study.
If you haven’t had any recent updated vaccine by now, I would get boosted with whatever one you can get in the safest location you can find. And wear a well fitting respirator mask when you go. I got the Moderna a few weeks ago because it was available at a location I felt was less busy and less likely to give me covid.
“OSHA has a statutory responsibility, statutory requirement to have an open and transparent process like we are having today to just determine what the standard should be. CDC is a black box. We have no idea how these recommendations are determined. Unfortunately, until there are, there are Freedom of Information Act requests or Congressional inquiries. So given all those things, it's really incumbent upon OSHA to develop standards, and to say these are the standards that every employer covered by the standard must follow.”
— Dr David Michaels, Epidemiologist, longest serving OSHA head, 2009 to 2017, testifying at an OSHA hearing on April 28, 2022