🙌Virtual Workshop Zoom: Section 504 public comment writing🤝People’s CDC zoom event invites you to get involved🚃Petition to Amtrak for masking designated cars😷

This is normal? Conventions in the pandemic are the hypernormal theatre of the absurd.

Contents:

- Events, Actions, Campaigns

- Pandemic field notes

- In the News (virus & adjacent news)

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

- Herd Scuttlebutt (heard it through the social media)

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🚃😷 Petition:

Amtrak: Protect people by designating some "mask-required" cars on each train

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🙊🐦 Twitter Spaces: World Health Network discussion about Monkeypox

Wednesday June 22 at 8:00 PM US EDT

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📣 🙋Virtual Event on Zoom: How to Get Involved with the People’s CDC

A collective of public health practitioners, scientists, healthcare workers, educators, advocates and people from all walks of life working to reduce the harmful impacts of COVID-19. Join to learn more this week.

Thursday, June 23 at 05:00 PM US EDT

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📝📚Virtual Workshop on Zoom: Section 504 public comment writing with Pan End It!

US Dept of Ed is taking public input on amendments to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Join for more info, tips, and community with others writing comments to encourage protecting the rights of students with disabilities. (More info in this doc.)

Friday June 24 at 5:30pm US EDT

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Responding to bad assertions.

Some assertions are illogical and also morally invalid. Nevertheless, I have heard that healthcare workers, progressive political organizers and social justice activists have been saying things like: “Just get vaccinated” or “You can wear an N95 if you’re worried” or “Disabled people can just stay home.” But even by their logic, this isn’t reasonable.

1. Many high risk people are essential workers and must work in person jobs to survive & keep their health insurance

2. People can’t just stay home from medical visits, or other essential places.

3. Some disabled and seniors can’t choose to get vaccinated or wear a mask because their legal guardians are anti-vax anti-mask pandemic deniers

4. Lots of disabled and seniors have no choice but to live in close quarters with family members who are getting exposed and bringing it home

meme lovingly made by @Annalisa840917

Of course there are no guarantees, not even for the vaccinated, something missing in too many risk calculations.

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🗞️ In the news

• 🎥🦠🧠 Knowable Magazine on Youtube: Covid and the brain: A neurological health crisis (“In this video, Stanford neurologist Michelle Monje describes her work showing how even mild respiratory infections with the SARS-CoV-2 virus may lead to lingering problems with the brain.”)

• 😔🧠💔 The Mainichi: Japanese doctor warns of potentially fatal COVID-related brain damage in children ("Since acute encephalopathy is caused by viral infections, I had predicted that if coronavirus case numbers rose, there would also be patients with the acute brain disease, and unfortunately we are now seeing such cases." In some cases, patients who develop acute encephalopathy experience a drastic deterioration in their health as well as severe convulsions. Muramatsu explained, "The girl who passed away was the type whose condition worsens drastically, and I think it would have been difficult to save her life even if she had been hospitalized from the onset.")

• ⚕️🩺🤦‍♀️ StatNews: The irony — and ignominy — of medical conferences as superspreader events (Emergency physicians like us have seen the worst of Covid-19, from children gasping for breath to death on an unimaginable scale. So you might expect us to be cautious about attending large public gatherings and set a standard by establishing careful guidelines for organizing them. You’d be wrong.)

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Theatre of the Absurd

Just that big conventions are happening in the midst of a pandemic surge would be bizarre enough. It seems inexplicable that they are being held by, scientists, doctors and even air quality professionals. When you understand the risks and the danger, it’s hard to watch the social media posts of people in crowded rooms, doing dances, some masked, some not. No HEPA filters visible at the indoor air quality convention. Conferences with doctors shunning masks. It’s absurdity.

Many of these meetings have had buttons and badges to choose from that basically say “hug me” OR “prefer social distance”… presumably so people can label themselves as Conforming to Normal or — Still Worried. I’m sure these organizers meant well, but the junior high school peer pressure vibes seem palpable. And you can imagine the selection bias involved — because who’s attending potential super spreader events if they’re really worried? Probably just some at risk people who have been professionally pressured to attend. And the organizers went with the idea of having disabled people wear labels?

It looks particularly ridiculous because it’s obvious these people are trying very hard, too hard, to force normal. I suspect that most know they’re just pretending, and underneath the veneer of exaggerated normal, in the backs of people’s minds, is at a minimum, that they don’t really want to get sick for weeks or months like I’m sure they know happens.

I was recently recommended an interview on Youtube about “Hypernormalisation.” And it seems like a good word for this creepy feeling of pod people pretending all is well when it definitely is not.

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Herd Scuttlebutt

• A pharmacist here in Pennsylvania recently told me in passing that he knew somebody who had a party with about 40 people and just over half attending got sick, and he said, “That’s the very definition of a super spreader event.”

• The Iowa Covid-19 Tracker web site now has a US Monkeypox Data Tracker.

• Anthony Leonardi on his Twitter Spaces said that he thinks in a decade nobody’s going to be allowing rampant spread in schools because by then everyone will know how bad that is. The issue is that 2 years ago I thought that would be the case in 2 years, and even knowing what we know now, nobody should want to shove children into virus laden classrooms but it’s happening anyway.

• There are a lot of reports on social media of vaccinated & boosted people on their 3rd and 4th covid infection now. People are wondering why that’s happening, but I think it’s obvious that some people just can’t avoid repeated and constant ongoing risk of exposure — such as families with children who have to go to school where there are less & less protections in place.

• I heard a report that Boston Public Schools stopped their mask protections with just 11 days of school left. Almost like officials wanted to get one last surge of covid in their community to tide cases over the summer.

• Someone told me that a school district in Pennsylvania, in response to request, has agreed to crack windows on school buses for ventilation, starting with the summer school term. Change is possible.

• David Leonhardt made some really basic error in order to push a theory about race and covid, and many have pointed out why this is wrong, including Abby Cartus on a Death Panel Podcast episode. The New York Times is refusing to retract the error. And word is that our representatives in government are fans of that economist’s error laden takes on a medical issue.

• The Sudden Valley Community Association in Washington announced an office closure on their web site because they are “experiencing an extreme escalation in the spread of COVID-19 among staff.” At least they’re letting people know what’s going on. I see a lot of complaints on Nextdoor here in Pennsylvania where people just aren’t connecting the dots.

• Bob Wachter, who sort of made it sound like his wife was silly for wanting to avoid covid, and who argued some really dubious gambler’s ruin bad math to push indoor restaurant dining, now reports his wife has long-covid.

• ME Action has a Disinformation Handbook that is very good at explaining why engaging helps bad actors do repetition… which helps the reiteration effect, where people come to believe something is true because they’ve heard it so many times. This is also the mere exposure effect used by advertisers… the more familiar something is, the more likely you are to like it. Highlighting fatalism is dangerous, and repeating bad information, even to criticize, is a dicey play.

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"It is absolutely essential that we all understand that the information environment is a combat domain of immediate importance and we are both offensive and defensive in it all the time"

— Rear Adm. Steve Parode