🚩 Medical disinfo is insidiously dangerous ⚕️ Darkness in the kidney disease treatment industry ☑️ Census announced that they will NOT be making any changes to the ACS questions on disability (yet)
New York Times Op-ed details the signs of anti-vax propaganda like an astronomer showing evidence of a black hole that cannot be seen directly.
Alice Burns on Linkedin: Yesterday, Census announced that they will NOT be making any changes to the ACS questions on disability. In October 2023, Census proposed changes to align with international standards and received more than 12,000 comments, most expressing concern with the proposal. Census will be seaking more feedback and engagement before changing the questions: details forthcoming.
New York Times Op-ed details the signs of anti-vax propaganda like an astronomer showing evidence of a black hole that cannot be seen directly.
Except the anti-vax propaganda campaign is visible and prominent, so I'm not sure why someone would dance around and not just say - people are spreading lies and there’s no proper vaccine drive to counter it.
The entire op-ed completely avoids even mentioning the pervasive and widespread anti-vax disinformation and propaganda that is everywhere and well funded. They don’t mention that the government is not doing its part to promote the vaccine. They just make it seem like this anti-vax sentiment has materialized organically out of thin air, and then proceed to hand wring about not having an answer to “vaccine hesitancy” and the “heebie jeebies” that patients have from the intense propaganda campaign.
The response has been almost like clockwork, at nearly every medical visit in the last few weeks. “It’s time for the flu shot,” I’ll say to my patients, “plus the updated Covid vaccine.” And that’s when the groans start.
In the past, the flu shot elicited the most resistance. The patients at my New York City practice would take their other vaccinations without a second thought but balk at the flu shot — because their sister is allergic to eggs, or because they’re sure that the flu shot always gives them the flu or because they just “don’t do” flu shots. Now, though, the majority of my patients respond along the lines of, “Fine to do the flu shot” — sheepishly pause, then say — “but not the Covid.”
When I ask my patients if they have any concerns or questions about the Covid vaccine, hardly any do. Practically no one asks me about safety data or how effective it is at preventing viral transmission, hospitalization and death. Almost no one asks me about current case counts or masking or Paxlovid. There’s just a vague hedge, or an abashed, “I don’t know, I just don’t.” As I try to suss out what’s on my patients’ minds, I can feel their own slight sense of surprise that there is no specific issue causing their discomfort about getting the updated Covid vaccine. It’s as though they have a communal case of the heebie-jeebies.
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Moreover, these patients are not anti-vaxxers; they take their shingles vaccines and tetanus shots with hardly a shrug. Nearly all received the initial Covid vaccine series, and fully remember the urgency of getting those hard-to-find vaccination slots in the early days. Nor do they seem to be science deniers; they embrace standard medical treatments for most of their other health conditions.
Yes, this is exactly what propaganda does. It attaches a stink to things. That’s a major tactic of disinformation — to just apply negative emotions to something. People are not rational actors, so emotional manipulation works. And there’s a whole ecosystem and economic system around anti-vax, where people pushing this are motivated to make it part of the manufactured culture wars. But also, others are motivated because they wish to sell people alternative faux cures and unproven preventatives. These pseudoscience product purveyors moved in as soon as the pandemic set in, and they like people to refuse the vaccine because it ups the desire for “alternative” medicine.
The op-ed ends by telling reader patients to just put aside their heebie jeebies and get their vaccination. No call for a vaccine drive. No call for naming and shaming disinformation purveyors. Yet we know how change happens. And we know how “vaccine hesitancy” was overcome in the past. Nothing will change if we keep listening to op-eds from the New York Times tell us there’s no way out but individualism.
🗞️ In the news
Addressing the Concerns Over ‘Incredibly Low’ COVID and Flu Vaccination Rates By Ethan Sulliva 3 min read Published Jan 12, 2024 MedrivaThe World Health Organization (WHO) has recently expressed its concern over the ‘incredibly low’ COVID and flu vaccination rates, despite the surge in cases across the globe. This worrying trend is putting enormous pressure on healthcare systems, especially in the winter season when respiratory illnesses tend to rise. The low vaccination rates pose a significant public health risk and underscore the importance of vaccination campaigns and public awareness initiatives. The WHO’s statement emphasizes the urgency of addressing this issue to protect global health.
Second Measles Case Confirmed in Georgia, Both Unvaccinated and Linked to Previous Family Exposure WUGA | By Jeff Dantre Published January 29, 2024A second case of measles in Georgia has been identified by the Georgia Department of Public Health. The AJC reports those infected are both unvaccinated and belong to the same family. Last week, DPH announced the first confirmed case of measles in an unvaccinated person who was exposed while traveling out of the country. DPH worked to identify anyone who may have had contact with the person while he or she was infectious. There are no additional exposures related to this second case because the person was quarantining at home with the other family member with measles.
Possible measles exposure at Dayton Children's, CVG 91.7 WVXU (Ohio) | By Tana Weingartner Published February 5, 2024 at 12:24 PM EST The case was initially identified in a child who was evaluated at Dayton Children’s Hospital in the main campus Emergency Department on Jan. 29 and Jan. 31. “During the time of exposure where the individual was being evaluated, there were 232 other children, they’re being evaluated as well,” Medical Director Becky Thomas, Public Health – Dayton and Montgomery County said. There is a chance that many more people could have been exposed to the disease. But the department isn’t sure how widespread the exposure could be, given that CVG offers flights to 50 different destinations. “There is contact tracing also going on for individuals who were at the airport in the same terminal at that time,” Thomas said.
PAYDAY REPORT - Bolsonaro Forced to Turn over Passport as Top Aides Arrested over Coup Plot BY: MIKE ELK FEBRUARY 8, 2024 Last year, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was caught using a fake vaccine card, a federal crime in Brazil. The aide, who helped him forge the vaccine card, has flipped to avoid prosecution and provided evidence of how Bolsonaro tried to plan a coup. According to a 134-page dossier released by the Brazilian federal police, Bolsonaro assembled the Defense Minister, his Justice Minister, the head of ABIN (Brazil’s equivalent of the CIA), and others to plan the coup. In meetings, some strangely recorded, the group plotted how they would arrest the President of the Brazilian Senate and members of the Brazilian Supreme Court Justice to prevent election results from being certified. The Brazilian intelligence chief agreed to work with Israeli intelligence, Mossad, to spy on potential opponents of their coup plan. Bolsonaro was forced to turn over his passport and warned by federal officials that he was not allowed to contact others being investigated by federal authorities. Already, Valdemar Caso Neto, the chairman of Bolsonaro’s political party, the PL, was arrested this morning when his house was searched, and it was discovered that he illegally owned a gun. A former US State Department employee, Felipe Martins, was also arrested. Over several years, he had been a close advisor to Steve Bannon, who worked for Bolsonaro and was the chief liaison between Trump and Bolsonaro.
Government Executive - O’Malley reduces telework for Social Security HQ, regional office staff The new commissioner outlined a plan to create “core collaboration days” for members of management, while most frontline workers are seemingly spared from the cuts. FEBRUARY 1, 2024 “Our return to a greater onsite presence not only gives us more opportunity for collaboration, engagement and innovation, but it also brings us into alignment with other federal agencies across government, who have been increasing their own onsite presence,” O’Malley wrote. “[As] we improve the quality of our data to measure our effectiveness across the complex components of the agency, we will continue to adjust in order to reach the best possible balance within individual units.” Not changing, at least for the time being, are the telework schedules of frontline workers in the agency’s many field offices, teleservice and payment centers, hearing offices and or in the Office of Appellate Operations. Currently, field office employees may telework two days per week. In the hearing offices, decision writers can remain on telework five days per week while most support staff spend three or four days a week teleworking. Within the Office of Appellate Operations, most staff may work up to five days a week while on telework.
If I were specifically a Long Covid advocate, I would pay attention to the plight of kidney disease patients in the U.S. We need to get profit motives out of healthcare yesterday.
When Caregivers Turn into Jailers. To understand the totalizing power that DaVita and Fresenius have over end-stage renal disease patients, it helps to start with a Congressional hearing that took place a little over twenty years ago. In that hearing, titled Kidney Dialysis Patients: A Population at Undue Risk?, Senator Chuck Grassley expressed frustration that not many patients would testify about their experience, for fear of retaliation by their own health care providers. “They must dialyze to live,” Senator Grassley said. “That fact alone has discouraged many patients interviewed by this committee from coming forward today to publicly testify.” It was a rather astonishing comment, that people were afraid of their own caregivers. But it wasn’t an outlandish one.
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The top-down control dehumanizes everyone involved. Doctors can come to feel powerless and burnt out, patients are afraid, and technicians can do very little except submit to an authoritarian culture. One common theme in Mueller’s book is that clinics will concoct false allegations to kick out patients who ask questions or notice problems. One patient, at a dialysis facility in Queens, was “terminated after being accused of striking other patients and jerking the dialysis needles out of her arm, while her husband, Juan, was said to have threatened staff members with a knife and a gun.” The clinic employee put these allegations in the patient’s medical record after the patient “reported staff misconduct to New York State health officials.” Later, the employee slipped the patient the following note, in which she admitted she was ordered to falsify the report…
It reminds me of something that someone told me they overheard a doctor saying they were concerned that if patients were allowed to require providers to mask as an ADA accommodation, it will set a precedent that the patient can dictate other parts of their care too - apparently with no sense of awareness about patients having any right to autonomy. The system teaches everyone engaged in it, that once you need medical care for whatever reason, you are nothing but a ward of the healthcare system. And it’s a money-making focused healthcare system in the U.S., which makes it even worse.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt 🍇🌱
On social media, in a forum for pro-precaution discussion (ostensibly at least), someone actually posted an op-ed written by Pierre Kory about “unexplained deaths” of working age people as if it was legitimate. The op-ed wrongly blames unexplained excess deaths on vaccines and preposterously also wrongly blames “lockdowns” including remote options — (“lockdown” now refers to any and all disease spread mitigation.) It should be obvious to anyone halfway informed and not in the qanon milieu that Kory’s op-ed belongs in the garbage. Pierre Kory is the guy who pushed ivermectin, is a covid contrarian, is anti-vax, and is connected to Steve Kirsch and Peter Mccullough who are not only anti-vax, but claim the covid vaccines turn people trans. Spreading that kind of propaganda isn’t going to help at all, and can cost lives.
Frontline PBS reposted to youtube their documentary on the dangers of the poorly regulated supplement industry. I would highly recommend watching this documentary or reading up on the dangers related to the poorly regulated supplement industry before taking things advertised for covid, long covid, prevention of covid, or “immune boosting” generally. Some of the stuff that’s caused people to need liver transplants are still on the market with the company apparently still in business. Buyer beware. (And write your reps if you think the government should be doing better than this.)
✨Wellness tip of the day✨ Caring about evidence is cool. Caring about regulation is cool. We all deserve better than snake oil. 10:28 AM · Jan 24, 2024 · 3,631 Views -mallory (she/her)💬 @this_is_mallory
