"We’ve created a national ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ Covid policy"⚖️"Disability Justice: the topic of next Marked By Covid Community Meeting🙌Alameda County reinstates indoor mask mandate😷

👃Hopes rise on nasal sprays but I'm still putting my best bets on N95s for now😷

Contents:

- Events, Actions, & Campaigns

- Pandemic field notes & “Living with the virus”

- In the News (virus & adjacent news)

- This is NOT Fine section (gaslighting & other wrongs)

- Herd Scuttlebutt (did you hear about this?)

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June 7, 11am US EDT, Online

Pandemic Action Network: In The Hinge Moment: Reforming Institutions To Address Modern Threats “During this discussion with David McNair, we aim to draw on previous hinge moments to understand where we are today.”

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June 9, 730pm US EDT, Online

Marked By Covid Community Meeting topic: Disability Justice & Covid-19

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📃✊ Open Letter: Cities Must Use COVID-19 Funding on COVID, Not Cops

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😷❤️😷

The reinstatement of indoor mask mandate in Alameda County includes transit and all public places. This will benefit everyone, but especially disabled and seniors. Senior and Disability Action (SDA) has been consistently advocating for masks on transit by lobbying the local transit authorities, such as AC Transit who has finally also reinstated masks. Transit is an essential service, and we all deserve access to safe essential services.

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🗞️ In the news

• 🔥🤢 The Guardian: ‘We’re playing with fire’: US Covid cases may be 30 times higher than reported (“It’s almost as though we’ve created a national ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ Covid policy – and that is a perfect way to promise that Covid will spread rapidly,” she said – especially concerning given as much as 60% of Covid transmission happens from people who never have any symptoms.)

• 😥🕯️Bloomberg: Covid Is Way More Lethal to Kids Than The Flu (“Of known respiratory viruses, only Covid-19 has ever killed more than 100 US children in a month in the modern era,” Faust said in the analysis. “It did so three times during the delta and omicron alone.”)

• 📅🦠 CIDRAP: Global data reveal half may have long COVID 4 months on (“Findings from the study show that the prevalence of long COVID is substantial, the health effects of infection seem to be prolonged, and the condition could stress the healthcare system, the researchers said… "With an estimated 200 million individuals affected, post COVID-19 condition's impact on population health and the labor force is enormous," they concluded.”)

• 🥖🥬 Consumer Affairs: How safe are your groceries? A new study says it depends on where you shop (link to report) (“Lax notification standards could cost lives Stores are not required to notify customers directly of recalls. The FDA currently only requires a company to post on its recall website and publish an official news release that initiates the recall.”)

• 🤰💉 KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor: Pregnancy Misinformation – May 2022 (“about three in ten women who are pregnant or planning to get pregnant (29%) believe at least one of three false statements about pregnancy and the vaccines”)

• 😥🕯️ Politico: Can long Covid lead to death? A new analysis suggests it could (“The review at the CDC, the details of which POLITICO obtained, is the first of its kind and indicates that long Covid and the health complications associated with it could lead to death.”)

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This is NOT fine

Monkeypox is now being given the mild treatment by government health authorities in the U.S. and Sweden. I’ve even heard that official government web sites in the U.S. and in Sweden have been altered to reflect more mild statements about monkeypox. In the U.S. negative pressure rooms for airborne containment are no longer recommended, and in Sweden they changed language from stating the mortality rate in children to say just that it’s usually mild.

Painting monkeypox as a gay STD sure sounds familiar. Someone posted on twitter that the hospital said a man with visible lesions had to have sex with another man to get tested.

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Herd Scuttlebutt

• 👃💧❓ I’ve spotted a hope in a new nasal spray that’s NOT yet been approved in the U.S. nor by WHO. One should consult their own doctor & pharmacist and investigate if anything has contraindications or interactions before using new products, even OTC supplements. Anecdotally, Anthony Leonardi said on a Twitter Spaces session that someone he knows used this new nasal spray before going to a dinner party - and got covid anyway. There have also been reports of studies of steroid nasal spray and antihistamine nasal spray being correlated with better outcomes. None of this has been shown as surefire though & I’d put best bets on not abandoning N95s. And BUYER BEWARE ordering medicines & supplements from online purveyors, this market is awash in bad actors capitalizing on America’s unaffordable drug prices and people’s desperation for treatments & cures. AARP’s fraud resource center warns they may be selling “drugs that are mislabeled; expired; ineffective because they have the wrong dosages or active ingredients; or even toxic, laced with dangerous substances ranging from printer ink and floor polish to arsenic and amphetamines.”

• 📚🧑‍🏫🧐 Still hearing about school officials who have been pressuring employees to return to school quickly after testing positive. Shouldn’t people who are sick be listening to their doctors about convalescing with a serious virus? You wouldn’t ask HR or the school principal whether you need a colonoscopy or to treat a kid’s cancer, so don’t take advice from some rando down at the school.

  

• 🥳🧂🍻I have been told more stories of people getting covid from attending outdoor gatherings. It seems that if you say outdoors is safER than indoors, people hear that it’s just plain SAFE. And of course not all outdoors is the same. There’s a big difference between hiking in the forest with your own family, or sitting closely in a backyard with friends, masks off talking & singing together. Also sharing the indoor bathroom with no mask could be a pitfall.

  

  dark humour by @Annalisa840917

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"Don't let anybody tell you they can tell you exactly what's going to happen with this virus."

— Mike Osterholm, on SARS-CoV-2