ℹ️ EPA solicits recommendations for Indoor Air Quality in bldgs 🎲 Normalcy doesn't benefit everyone ☝️
It was never really about the masks - IAQ under attack.
Contents:
- Events, Actions, & Campaigns
- Pandemic field notes & “Living with the virus”
- In the News (virus & adjacent media, science, news, essays, and op-eds)
- This is NOT Fine section (gaslighting & other outrages)
- He(a)rd Scuttlebutt (the pandemic grapevine)
USA - A Notice by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Request for Information: Better Indoor Air Quality Management To Help Reduce COVID-19 and Other Disease Transmission in Buildings: Technical Assistance Needs and Priorities To Improve Public Health
Comment period ends 5 December 2022
The agency is announcing a 60-day public comment period to solicit information and recommendations from a broad array of individuals and organizations with knowledge and expertise relating to the built environment and health, indoor air quality, epidemiology, disease transmission, social sciences and other disciplines.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/10/05/2022-21590/request-for-information-better-indoor-air-quality-management-to-help-reduce-covid-19-and-other
Twitter Spaces: relationships during the permanent covid era
Thursday 20 October 2022 @ 2pm US Eastern Time / 11am US Pacific
by Stanley Lee @stanigator
https://twitter.com/stanigator/status/1580489887257890816
Virtual Webinar: Marked By COVID Covid Community Meeting
October 20: Monica H. Green, PhD: The history of infectious disease and why our work to remember is so critical
4:30pm US Pacific Time (Los Angeles) / 7:30pm US Eastern (New York)
Register --> www.markedbycovid.com/meetings
It was never really about the masks.
It was never about the masks. It wasn’t about vaccine mandates. It wasn’t about restrictions. It’s not about freedom. It was never about CRT. It’s not about trans people using bathrooms. It’s not about personal choice, clearly. It’s not “you do you” that’s for sure. “You can still just wear a mask” they said. And then the stories, and videos, of people, especially Asians, getting harassed in places like public transit — for wearing a mask.
Air filtration is gaining some traction as an infection control measure, because basic filtration is a proven safe technology to reduce airborne pathogens, allergens, and pollution. It’s an engineering control that doesn’t rub up against rugged individualism (or faces)… Enter the pandemic deniers & minimizers wrongly suggesting clean air is not good actually! Or just ridiculing anyone who uses air filtration… which should be anyone who uses… indoors.
This proves it was never about the masks. Is there some contingent who finds it intolerable that other people have air purifiers in their homes? Or is this simply about deliberately stoking derision and animosity, and using any and all pandemic related issues to do it? I think we have to recognize in some cases this isn’t just about individualism attacking public health. It’s a socially dangerous attack on civil society.
🗞️ In the news
🇨🇦 CBC: Calgary doctor files human rights complaint over removal of airplane mask mandates by Paula Duhatschek (Keegan said that while airplanes do have filtration systems, they don't completely eliminate the risk of COVID-19 transmission, especially if people are unmasked. He noted people travel for many reasons (he flew to Toronto earlier this year for surgery) and the government has a duty to accommodate those who have disabilities. Lifting the mask mandate creates "an environment that is unwelcoming and unaccommodating to people with compromised immune systems, cardiopulmonary conditions, and so on," he said.)
🇩🇪 ABC News: German health minister urges stepped-up COVID-19 measures ByThe Associated Press (Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said he favors requiring mask-wearing indoors, a measure that has largely faded in Germany except on public transport, in medical facilities and care homes. “The direction we’re going in isn’t a good one," Lauterbach told reporters in Berlin. He added that it would be better for states to impose limited restrictions now than stricter ones later. “The sooner we step on the brake the better it will be,” he said.)
🇺🇸 King5: Silverdale hospital short on staff calls 911 for help after being overwhelmed with patients (“The charged nurse from inside the emergency room called 911,” said Central Kitsap Fire and Rescue Chief Jay Christian. “The charging nurse said twice, 'we’re drowning,' conveying that they only had five nurses on duty and 45 patients in their waiting room, and she was asking for help from local firefighters to come work inside of the ER to help relieve some of that pressure.”)
🇺🇸 The Wall Street Journal: Covid Aid Left Out of Stopgap Funding Bill by By Stephanie Armour (archive link) (Almost 50 public interest groups, including the Infectious Disease Society of America, pressed appropriation committee heads on the need for more funding. National Nurses United, the largest organization of registered nurses in the U.S., also wrote to Congress saying almost 400 people are still dying daily from Covid-19.)
🇺🇬 Prevention: Ebola Outbreak in Uganda: CDC Says America Needs to Be Ready By Korin Miller (The Ebola death rate depends on the strain, Dr. Adalja says. But the average fatality rate for Ebola is around 50%, according to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). Meaning, half of people with Ebola die, on average. However, PAHO says that fatality rates have ranged from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks.)
🪟 San Francisco Chronicle: How long does coronavirus stay in the air after someone with COVID leaves the room? (archive link) (“How fast air leaves a room depends on how quickly outdoor air can enter and mix with the indoor air. According to the FAQ, a 95% replacement can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 10 hours in a residence, 12 minutes to two hours in a public building, and as little as five minutes in a highly ventilated area of a hospital, like an isolation ward.”)
🇺🇸 Route Fifty: State AGs Want Power to Hit Airlines for Consumer Complaints by Elaine Povich (But in a press release in late August, the DOT appeared to acknowledge that complaints are through the roof. “There was a 34.9% increase in air travel service complaints from May to June, and complaints are nearly 270 percent above pre-pandemic levels,” the DOT said in the release.)
This is NOT fine
Normalcy doesn't work for everyone
Joe Lunn of Thunder Bay, Ont., told CBC in March that he was concerned about the government's plans to drop mask mandates. The heart transplant recipient died last month at 51 after contracting the COVID-19 virus.
"I feel like immunocompromised people, as we continue to move through this, continue to get closer and closer to fear of death," Burleigh said.
Burleigh believes people should still be required to wear masks in places such as grocery stores and pharmacies that were deemed essential during earlier stages of the pandemic and are difficult for vulnerable people to avoid.
And why was this person expendable?
"We do have to get back to this sense of normalcy." - Dr. Leighanne Parkes
I suppose we can “normalize” high levels of preventable deaths of vulnerable loved ones, but I’m not sure how good this normalcy is going to feel for everybody who survives it.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt, the pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱 …
After the death of the 17 year old daughter of an Illinois lawmaker - the press statement in the news was: “She was fully vaccinated, and quarantined after occasional positive, asymptomatic COVID tests during the omicron wave.”
Someone in a twitter community reported that an entire family was infected with sarscov2 at a super spreader funeral event of 60+ people, half who attended a dinner afterward. Reportedly nobody in the family who attended was spared. I’m old enough to remember when Americans, including infectious disease experts, would say things that were frankly racist about people in Africa who just refused to stop their funeral rites and so were spreading ebola.
Word is public schools in California are giving kids free hamburgers for perfect attendance in order to encourage them to come to school sick & contagious with covid because public school funding is based on attendance rates. Horrendous perverse incentives.
Phoenix Arizona experiencing "a significant delay" in trash collection citing "staffing challenges" as the reason.
Immunocompromised students at NYU are “concerned about their health” following the campus mask mandate being lifted.
In London Ontario Canada, OPSEU Local 110 files group grievance over lack of masking at Fanshawe College.
In Massachusetts 3 or more colleges are extending mask requirements because of union advocacy.
Rutgers in New Jersey is reported to be keeping masks this semester because of workers organizing to promote mask mandates for campus safety.
Kari Raymer Bishop (@KRaymerBishop on twitter) wrote: “I still can't get over the Toronto Zoo requiring masks in the Africa pavilion to protect the gorillas from Covid-19 but we are cool with sending kids to school with no Covid protections.”
I constantly see reports on social media where people say they encounter people who simply don’t know the facts like that you can get covid more than once, and that it can cause organ damage.
I’m hearing more people relate that friends and family say that yes, they’re hearing very scary things about long covid and SARSCOV2 complications, but they also come right out and say they don’t want to think about it. So there’s definitely some willful denial going on.
Again and again I hear stories about various groups of friends, online forums, and social media groups, where someone says they have covid and that’s the reason they’re not going somewhere, and other people in whatever group are responding to them saying don’t worry just go ahead and go to that concert or party or to visit whoever. Peer pressure has sure gotten super dark in the pandemic.
Unfortunately I’m hearing more often now about people being both cavalier and open about working public facing jobs while actively contagious and even sick with covid.
Another description of the pandemic handling in Sweden: Counter Disinformation Project: The Swedish Deception. It’s worth scrutinizing what’s come out about Sweden because it’s likely some of the same things have happened sub rosa in a lot of other countries in the West.
For some reason people can’t remember that prior to the pandemic, “colds” never bound people up in bed for weeks straight, and the flu only caused entire workplaces or schools to close during pandemics.
It’s perplexing to me how “health conscious” people ignore the considerably high risks of damaging health by contracting SARS-COV-2.
Death and suffering have been normalized to such a horrific extent that the vulnerable are now expected remain "civil" when asking not to be disposed of so that others can keep social plans intact. The moral vacuum of the current moment is shocking. — Maggie Mills