Anti-Science MAGA CDC: "It's like the flu"
Anti-Science MAGA CDC: "It's like the flu"
Infiltrated by anti-science, pro-industry, and burrowed-in MAGA Trumpers, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention promotes spread of contagious disease instead of preventing it.
The whole point of public health, and having a public agency like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is to PREVENT diseases COMMONLY HARMING US!
CDC drops 5-day isolation guidance for Covid-19, moving away from key strategy to quell infections - By Brenda Goodman, CNN Fri March 1, 2024 "The new guidance only applies to common respiratory infections, the CDC said. It shouldn’t take the place of specific guidance for pathogens that require special containment measures, such as the measles."1
The message is clear, once measles becomes common again, there will be no prevention of that either. Repeat for all “common diseases” like norovirus,2 notorious for disrupting workplaces and schools. The emerging diseases and the horrors of yesteryear alike - all these diseases may become “common” again. Just look at the news, so many of them get mentioned regularly: measles outbreaks in Florida,3 bird flu on every continent,4 ebola has a vaccine now,5 polio is making a comeback at the same time as rolling back vaccination for it,6 plague in a pet cat,7 dengue outbreaks,8 religious exemptions for meningitis shots,9 malaria from a growing mosquito problem,10 cholera vaccine shortages,11 - and when things get loosey goosey even at the labs, smallpox and who knows what else will be deemed “common” going forward.
Giving cover for recklessness - up to intentional murder.
The guidance announced today (March 1st 2024) by the CDC will give cover not only for people unconcerned about exposing others to a virus that’s still risky, especially for elderly and disabled people, but also for anyone, with the looming dice roll for long covid and post covid complications.12 In fact, it will also give cover for people who actually want to spread a dangerous deadly virus to someone else — on purpose.
Today is Disability Day of Mourning, the day to commemorate disabled people killed by caregivers.13 Yes, this is a thing that happens. It shouldn’t. But it does.
How long before they just start saying the quiet part out loud about nudging? They already voice that idea out loud in Sweden, saying on tv how some people are “helped over that edge between life and death.”14 And there’s ample evidence that Sweden deliberately allowed kids to be sickened in schools15 and “helped” the elderly in long term care homes over the threshold from life to death by withholding treatment.16
Eugenics has been normalized a lot.17 It may in fact be the norm.18 But that doesn’t make it right.
Eugenic thinking has never gone away, Ideas - CBC podcast January 20, 2023 Eugenics is seen as a 19th-century idea put into horrific 20th-century practice. But the attraction to breeding “better” humans has a long and persistent history, says Adam Rutherford.
It’s pseudoscience, and it never works as expected, but nevertheless people think it can “thin the herd” and somehow benefit people who believe themselves to be those who will survive and “win” this grotesque contest.
There’s room at the hospital, and in the morgue, so let it rip?
The calculation is being communicated pretty directly - that this is not about relieving or preventing suffering, or saving lives. It’s about money?
CDC Shortens COVID Isolation Recs — People testing positive for COVID no longer need to stay in isolation for 5 days, by Associated Press, March 1, 2024 - MedPage Today Why Are the Guidelines Changing? COVID-19 is not causing as many hospitalizations and deaths as it did in the first years of the pandemic.
It’s merely about - can the hospitals handle the load?19 And I guess still make money in the outbreaks.
I wonder who’s done the calculations on how much money they make by keeping a certain level of covid hospitalizations, before it becomes not profitable. This idea of a long-term “manageable” state of pandemic virus hospitalizations appeared to be of interest to industry oriented economists really early on.20
MAGA TRUMPIAN assertion: “Covid is like the flu”
We didn’t accept this when Trump was president. We voted him out. President Biden campaigned in 2020 on stopping the spread,21 and he has a mandate to steer public health back in that direction, not continuing toward the kind of total "let it rip" promotion of disease spread pushed by the Trump administration.22
Most of us want to move forward and do better, or at least prevent things getting worse - yes, even with flu, which is also NOT benign.23
CIDRAP - Even mild flu tied to double risk of heart attack, stroke in older patients, Mary Van Beusekom, MS February 12, 2024 The study results provide further evidence that while several pathogens are thought to increase cardiovascular risk through systemic infection and inflammation, the flu virus may have a more specific role in direct cardiac infection and endothelial dysfunction, leading to destabilization and rupture of existing atherosclerotic plaques, the authors said.
The known cardiac risks of covid are profoundly worse than flu, and have been well documented since 2020, and continue to mount into… a mountain of evidence.24
The evidence for pandemic virus related heart risks observed since 2020. Cardiovascular effects were noted right from the get go of the pandemic, and the evidence has only continued mounting since then. A mountain of evidence. CHLOE HUMBERT FEB 5, 2024 Here’s some of the published evidence of cardiac complications related to covid, in reverse chronological order dating all the way back to March 2020.
In this time of climate disasters and flaring diseases, the CDC ought to be strengthening the guidance around everything - including flu. It’s been done before.
I’ve written about this before25 too…
In 1928, James A. Tobey wrote in the American Journal of Public Health and urged people to write their representatives and senators to support a public health science bill that was being countered with reactionary mischaracterizations, and Tobey said, “It would be helpful if sanitarians would communicate with their United States Senators and Representatives regarding this important matter. Do it now.”26 This was taking place “after” the 1918 influenza pandemic. But there were more surges of the flu throughout the 1920s,27 as well as the spread of other preventable infectious diseases like tuberculosis.28 Interested people moved things forward, and pressured for the prioritization of health & safety, and so public health advanced to a point where flu epidemics and a lot of infections became a thing of the past by 1950, including smallpox. Warren G. Harding ran for president in 1920 with “return to normalcy” as his slogan,29 but there were as many as 110,000 reported cases of smallpox in the United States that year, then cases fell in the 1930s and disappeared by 1950.30 During that time, research, epidemiology, and disease control measures expanded greatly, because “From Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s through Johnson's Great Society of the 1960s, a federal role in services affecting the health and welfare of individual citizens became well established.”31 This was because the sanitarians and others communicated with their representatives.
Sinister Trumpian infiltration - a known thing, not a theory.
We have been warned that there have been embedded Trump allies left behind within all the federal public agencies - it’s called the “burrowing in” of political appointees by transferring into civil service positions.32
I was told that some watchdog organizations had done FOIA requests to the agencies to find out who filled out these particular OPM forms. Apparently this is standard practice oppo research.
Politico: The ‘deep state’ of loyalists Trump is leaving behind for Biden. It will be hard for the next administration to root out Trump political appointees that have moved into civil service jobs. By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN and MEGAN CASSELLA 01/19/2021 A higher-than-usual number of Trump administration political appointees — some with highly partisan backgrounds — are currently “burrowing” into career positions throughout the federal government, moving from appointed positions into powerful career civil service roles, which come with job protections that will make it difficult for Biden to fire them. While this happens to some degree in every presidential transition, and some political appointees make for perfectly capable public servants, Biden aides, lawmakers, labor groups and watchdog organizations are sounding the alarm — warning that in addition to standard burrowing, the Trump administration is leaning on a recent executive order to rush through dozens if not hundreds of these so-called “conversions.” The fear is that, once entrenched in these posts, the Trump bureaucrats could work from the inside to stymie Biden’s agenda, much of which depends on agency action.[emphasis added]
Some people have suggested that the timing of the California isolation guidance (which the CDC in part mimicked) seems suspicious, and that it could indicate deliberate machinations. That dropping of isolation as an outbreak peaks, or just after can obscure the detriment of the policy change.33 And that in fact people are working deliberately against public health. And that’s very much the plan plainly spelled out in the 900+ page Project 2025 document.34 This isn’t speculation, we know it’s true, because they’ve told us, out loud, and in public. They’ve been taking applications for Trump loyalists to install in thousands of federal agency positions come 2025.
The Washington Post - Duper or Duped?
The way CDC staffers deliberately planted PR info in that problematic WaPo article is the most troubling. It means that The Washington Post was given bad information, or deliberately imparted bad information. The WaPo reporter and editor dropped the ball by using fraudulent appeal to authority35 to make anti-vax claims of natural herd immunity.36 But beyond that, WaPo’s reporter also cited assertions from officials that turned out to be not true at all.
The article stated that the White House was not signing off on this guidance change and was “expected to release in April for public feedback,” according to officials who talked to the Washington Post.37
The Washington Post - CDC plans to drop five-day covid isolation guidelines, By Lena H. Sun, February 13, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EST The White House has yet to sign off on the guidance that the agency is expected to release in April for public feedback, officials said. One agency official said the timing could “move around a bit” until the guidance is finalized.
So releasing this guidance just a couple weeks later on March 1, 2024 (pulling the rug out from under public health experts and advocates who expected more time to respond) appears to be a deliberate bait and switch. And quite a hypocritical one too, considering that the Biden administration has boasted most particularly about how it’s “including more public input into agency rulemaking.”38
Government Executive - Biden administration boasts it’s including more public input into agency rulemaking. Agencies hope to solicit more perspectives and boost trust in government. DECEMBER 7, 2023 As part of the new agenda, the Labor Department cited all the groups they engaged with in plotting their new rules. “We intentionally seek input from members of the public who have not typically participated in the regulatory process, including workers with disabilities, union members, small businesses, low-paid workers and immigrant workers,” Labor said. The Homeland Security Department stressed its public engagement would ensure it did not implement rules with unintended harmful effects on “small businesses, startups and disadvantaged groups of multiple sorts.”
When they do receive public feedback, not unsurprisingly, it comes fast, hard, and overwhelmingly in favour of human life, and people over profits, as evidenced by hundreds of public comments to CDC HICPAC.39 I’ve certainly been ringing this bell and writing to the White House a lot about this.40
Biden admin boasts more public input on rulemaking while agencies ignore key constituencies I'm writing the White House to demand President Joe Biden make good on his 2020 campaign promise to mitigate infectious disease. CHLOE HUMBERT DEC 9, 2023 Yet when it comes to pandemic mitigation, patient safety, and worker safety, those most affected are being ignored, and our interests dismissed. There hasn't been strengthened OSHA standards since a hearing in spring 2022. And the CDC HICPAC committee is made up of members with hospital corporate executive positions, and NO PATIENT ADVOCATES. HICPAC needs oversight. They've received hundreds of public comments, many from disabled people, and a nurses union, a patient advocacy organization, and a citizens public health group, among others, have been sounding the alarm that the CDC is going forward anyway with rules to weaken protections for both patients and healthcare workers for ALL infectious diseases, in an apparent move to satisfy corporate healthcare bean counters because patient protection might cut into their profits.
Woke-washing is propaganda, not public health.
There are some that claim there’s some benefit to catching viruses. Except that's not true.41 They use all kinds of woke-washing, to discredit people who want to not get sick or who call for mitigation measures. It’s a popular tactic among covid contrarians and climate deniers.42
An argument I’ve seen against an isolation guideline is that some people don’t test if they know they’ll have to isolate.43 This is silly because if they don’t test and then don’t isolate, or test and then still don’t isolate, we’re still left with someone who is, either way, NOT ISOLATING.
Another cognitive mindflip idea I see floated is that public health needs to “weigh other things” - other than the public’s health. Even Nixon’s EPA was instructed to develop regulations weighing “only one concern: public health. The costs to industry were explicitly deemed irrelevant.” according to Jane Mayer in her book Dark Money.44
So I have no idea where Ashish Jha, a doctor, is coming from when he recommends not warning people about the dangers of, for example, alcohol consumption,45 because most people will still drink, or perhaps Ashish Jha thinks they ought to. Even the best, most highly effective and proven cancer treatment courses don’t always work out right for everybody, but we don’t withhold them from all cancer patients. Why even have doctors at all if they’re not going to give accurate medical advice? Withholding important information seems like malpractice, frankly.
Medical and public health guidance from doctors and officials should reflect reality no matter what citizens or lawmakers choose to do with it. You shouldn't tell people something is safe when it isn't.
The job of public health is NOT to SOOTHE AND COO at people with LIES. That's called dangerous propaganda. Tobacco industry style46 - I call it - manufacturing mild.47
Preventing disease is obviously beneficial from the perspective of humanity.
Whatever the short-term goals of industry, arguing for profits over people, it’s undeniable that infectious diseases that make people suffer for days, weeks or worse, disrupt society, short-staff businesses, put people under financial strain, disable people, and kill some, are obviously worth preventing.
The reduction of harm to the community always involves various strategies and layers of protection.48 Public health is not an à la carte menu.49
Multiple layers for safety: public health is not an à la carte menu. Successful safety interventions are about a comprehensive commitment to the common good. CHLOE HUMBERT OCT 15, 2023 Anyone thinking in these simplistic smorgasbord terms, claiming you can just do some kind of pick and choose one or two is just wish casting and should not be trusted for evidence based advice on personal protection or public safety.
The best public health campaign is a strong one, that leaves no question but that there’s a clear benefit to prevention.
We need to stand up for what’s right.
Demand better: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Letter Campaign - CDC shouldn't cut the already inadequate COVID-19 isolation guidelines. By Mask Together America (Updated 3/1)
Letter Campaign - Take Action for COVID Isolation Guidelines By People’s CDC
Petition: Tell the White House, people need to be able to stay home and isolate when sick. by Chloe Humbert (Updated 3/1)
And make no mistake. The Biden administration will love it if you put all your heat to the CDC. Spend all your time and energy spinning your wheels at a government agency that’s doing what they want, with the blessing of the Biden administration. The right-wing loves it if this makes you hate the government, and go along with libertarian anti-government business interests. The opposition loves it if all your anger is focused on civil servants, and not pressuring your elected representatives who have the real power. Agency employees do not make these decisions, and they typically don’t even have to listen to the public outside of a public comment period. And beware, if you badger civil servants, they may use this to call YOU a MAGA-like Fauci threatening terrorist, and attempt to discredit your advocacy as illegitimate. So focus your attention on elected officials at all levels – and again, and again. They’re supposed to represent us, after all.
Don’t fall for any set ups, protect yourself from spiraling fatalism,50 and watch out for the red flags of disruption.51
References:
CDC drops 5-day isolation guidance for Covid-19, moving away from key strategy to quell infections By Brenda Goodman, CNN Fri March 1, 2024 "The new guidance only applies to common respiratory infections, the CDC said. It shouldn’t take the place of specific guidance for pathogens that require special containment measures, such as the measles."
Norovirus cases continue to climb in the US, especially in the Northeast, CDC data shows By Amanda Sealy, CNN 2 minute read Published 6:04 PM EST, Sat February 24, 2024 The most common symptoms are diarrhea, vomiting, nausea and stomach pain. There’s no specific treatment for norovirus, but experts recommend drinking plenty of liquids to avoid dehydration. In order to prevent illness, the CDC recommends washing your hands, rinsing fruits and vegetables and cooking shellfish thoroughly.
AP - Florida refuses to bar unvaccinated students from school suffering a measles outbreak BY TERRY SPENCER Updated 5:48 PM EST, February 23, 2024 Dr. Rana Alissa, the academy’s Florida vice president, said Friday that the state should follow the CDC guidelines “for the safety of our kids.” Allowing unvaccinated children to attend during the outbreak not only endangers them, but others who might have compromised immune systems and could later catch it from them, she said. “When you have an outbreak, to contain it you have to follow the public health and safety recommendations, not give people a choice,” she said. “Frankly, giving people a choice is what got us here.” Jodie Guest, an epidemiologist at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, said the CDC’s guidelines “are based on decades of iterative science” but false information about the measles vaccine’s dangers is spreading.
The Guardian - Scientists confirm first cases of bird flu on mainland Antarctica Fears for penguin colonies after the discovery of the highly contagious H5N1 virus in two dead skuas - Phoebe Weston Mon 26 Feb 2024 09.27 EST These are the first confirmed cases on the continent itself, which shows the virus is spreading in the region, most likely via migratory birds. This H5N1 outbreak is thought to have killed millions of wild birds globally since 2021, and has spread to every continent except Oceania.
NPR - Ebola vaccine cuts death rates in half — even if it's given after infection February 15, 2024 Ari Daniel Among the unvaccinated, mortality was 56%. But for those who'd received the vaccine, that rate was cut in half. And this was true no matter when someone got vaccinated before the onset of symptoms, whether just a couple days (27.3% fatality risk) or more than three weeks (17.5% fatality risk). In addition, those who had been vaccinated had less virus circulating in their bodies than those who hadn't. Coulborn says this may help explain the "lower risk of dying, and it could also have an impact on transmission, reducing the spread of Ebola during an epidemic." "So while getting vaccinated as early as possible is the most beneficial," explains Coulborn, "we now know that vaccination is better late than never."
Mississippi Free Press: Mississippi Must Grant Religious Exemptions For Childhood Vaccines, Federal Judge Rules. By Ashton Pittman by Ashton Pittman, April 20, 2023 Mississippi’s compulsory childhood immunization requirements include a vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis; for polio; for hepatitis B; for measles, mumps and rubella; and for chickenpox. The State does not mandate COVID-19 vaccines. Mississippi has the highest childhood vaccination rate in the nation, a fact that MSDH has attributed to strict vaccine laws. While other states with more permissive vaccine laws have reported measles outbreaks in recent years, Mississippi has not reported a case originating in the state in decades.
NBC News - Oregon's first case of human plague in 8 years likely came from a pet cat The owner’s infection likely started out in a lymph node and progressed to the bloodstream, a county health officer said. Feb. 9, 2024, 4:46 PM EST By Aria Bendix The person was likely infected by their pet cat, who had developed symptoms, according to Deschutes County Health Services. Humans are most commonly exposed to plague from the bites of fleas carrying Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the disease. Household pets can get also infected if they hunt rodents infected with plague or are similarly bitten by an infected flea. Pets can then transfer the infection to humans via tissue or bodily fluids, such as respiratory droplets from cough or sneezes. Alternatively, they might carry home fleas that in turn bite humans. Cats are particularly susceptible to plague because their bodies have a hard time clearing the infection and they're more likely than some other pets to chase and capture rodents.
AP Peru has declared a health emergency in most of its provinces as dengue cases soar BY FRANKLIN BRICEÑO Updated 5:28 AM EST, February 27, 2024 In December, the World Health Organization said that Peru’s 2023 dengue epidemic was linked to rains and hot temperatures that helped mosquito populations to grow, especially in the north of the country.
ABC NEWS - West Virginia lawmakers pass bill allowing religious exemptions for school vaccine requirements West Virginia was of five states without religious exemptions. By Mary Kekatos February 26, 2024, 2:21 PM "Our forefathers and their families experienced the ravages of measles, mumps, tetanus, polio, and meningitis," he wrote. "Modern medicine has worked diligently to protect our communities through the development and testing of vaccines that have been proven to be safe and effective." "Now, legislators want to turn the clock back nearly 100 years and remove some of the safeguards in our vaccination policies," Eshenaur continued. "If you are anti-vaccination, you are pro-disease. It's as simple as that."
The New York Times - Mosquitoes Are a Growing Public Health Threat, Reversing Years of Progress. Climate change and the rapid evolution of the insect have helped drive up malaria deaths and brought dengue and other mosquito-borne viruses to places that never had to worry about them. By Stephanie Nolen Photographs by Malin Fezehai Sept. 29, 2023 Because the genetic makeup of mosquitoes evolves quickly in response to changing environmental conditions, they have also developed resistance to the class of insecticides in wide use — while the malaria parasite itself is increasingly resistant to the once highly-effective drugs used to treat it. And a new mosquito that thrives in urban areas has come from Asia to Africa, where the spread of malaria had always been confined largely to the countryside. That change has made more than 100 million additional people vulnerable to mosquito-borne infections, researchers at the University of Oxford recently estimated. The multiplying risks, experts say, mean there’s an urgent need for a method to protect people from all mosquitoes — one that will help defend against malaria, but also dengue, yellow fever and whatever pathogen lurks around the corner. (Only female mosquitoes bite; they need the protein in blood to produce eggs.)
STAT - Cholera vaccine shortage reaches worst point yet, with experts fearing deadly outbreaks Annalisa Merelli By Annalisa Merelli Feb. 27, 2024 At least 16 countries in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean are dealing with cholera outbreaks. According to the latest report from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, between Dec. 23 and Jan. 23, nearly 50,500 people contracted cholera and nearly 500 died. Those numbers will almost certainly rise amid the worst vaccine shortage since an oral vaccine was introduced in the 1990s.
CIDRAP - Healthcare use, costs rose after COVID infection, even for healthy adults - February 5, 2024 Lisa Schnirring Among the previously healthy adults, healthcare burden in the year following COVID infection increased in all subgroups, even in those who hadn't been hospitalized. Similar to the companion chronic disease study, the greatest increases involved new blood-related diagnoses, which increased more than 150% compared to the baseline period.
Disability Day of Mourning Wikipedia - The Disability Day of Mourning is observed annually on 1 March[1] to commemorate disabled people who were murdered by their caregivers, especially their parents. First observed in 2012 and propagated by disability rights organizations such as Not Dead Yet and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, the day aims to bring attention to the issue of filicide of disabled children and adults and the degree to which such murders are treated as different from or more socially acceptable than similar murders of abled people.
Teams Human - Wastewater says surge - Beware long covid stem grifters - Americans, get free tests - Sweden officials just won't stop doubling down on the eugenics friendly rhetoric. CHLOE HUMBERT DEC 30, 2023 Sweden, adding insult to injury. "Någonting ska man avlida av .... hjälps över den där kanten mellan liv och död" och mycket annat. Translated from Swedish: "Something to die of .... is helped over that edge between life and death"
Counter Disinformation Project - The Swedish Deception - Report Internal emails from FOI's question the integrity of the Swedish strategy COUNTER DISINFORMATION PROJECT SEP 4, 2022 Freedom of information requests by Swedish journalists show Tegnell discussing herd immunity in mid-March in an exchange with Finland’s pandemic advisor Mika Salminen and the head of the Swedish national health agency suggesting one way of tackling the epidemic would be to allow healthy people to become infected voluntarily in controlled settings. “One point would be to keep schools open to reach herd immunity faster,” Tegnell recommended.
Brusselaers, N., Steadson, D., Bjorklund, K. et al. Evaluation of science advice during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 9, 91 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01097-5 Many elderly people were administered morphine instead of oxygen despite available supplies, effectively ending their lives.
Eugenics as an ideology. Legal and political agendas have motivations to make semantic arguments that obscure eugenics and maybe that’s why we don’t have a separate word for eugenics as an ideological belief. CHLOE HUMBERT NOV 30, 2023 The possibly more prevalent, and somewhat more insidious version of eugenics ideology, that has flown under the radar in our modern world, is the variety that spawned grotesque and wholly unscientific ideas like “natural herd immunity” in the pandemic, as pushed by Scott Atlas and The Great Barrington Declaration adherents. To withhold prevention of suffering from those vulnerable.The proponents of this type of eugenics claim that they are leaving it up to “nature” or, alternately, specifically a divine power, depending on their religious or secular orientation. The point is to stop any intervention that would save people they think are “weak” or “undeserving” in some way as inappropriately countering the superior “nature” to do its thing. This includes resistance to all public health measures like masks, vaccines, food assistance, healthcare equity, or even disaster relief and universal education in public schools. Never mind that interventions are natural too, because humans do them, the same way birds build nests, but clearly people draw the line on “natural” wherever it’s convenient to their purpose.
Eugenic thinking has never gone away Ideas - CBC podcast January 20, 2023 Eugenics is seen as a 19th-century idea put into horrific 20th-century practice. But the attraction to breeding “better” humans has a long and persistent history, says Adam Rutherford.
CDC Shortens COVID Isolation Recs — People testing positive for COVID no longer need to stay in isolation for 5 days by Associated Press March 1, 2024 - MedPage Today Why Are the Guidelines Changing? COVID-19 is not causing as many hospitalizations and deaths as it did in the first years of the pandemic.#
Robin Hanson’s 2020 Viral Valentine Tweet. And by viral, I mean the pandemic, because the tweet itself was not very popular at all. By Chloe Humbert Feb 29, 2024 In February 2020, on February 14th, 2020 in fact, Robin Hanson actually proposed infecting people with sars-cov-2 on purpose to spread out the load on the hospitals. It may have been Matt Stoller that had initially drew my attention to it — unfavourably by making remarks about Robin Hanson’s writing about surviving robot uprisings.
THE BIDEN PLAN TO COMBAT CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) AND PREPARE FOR FUTURE GLOBAL HEALTH THREATS The American people deserve an urgent, robust, and professional response to the growing public health and economic crisis caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
Medpage Today: Report Shows Trump Administration Embraced Herd Immunity via Mass Infection — The strategy likely contributed to many preventable deaths, report notes - by Jennifer Henderson, June 22, 2022 "The concept of allowing herd immunity to develop via natural infection had a major consequence to it," William Schaffner, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, told MedPage Today. "Natural infection had the capacity to make very many people -- older people, people with underlying illnesses, people who are immunocompromised -- very, very sick." The price that's paid for permitting a virus that is new to a population and capable of making people sick to spread through that population is a lot of illness, hospitalization, and death, he noted. "That price is too high," he added. "We don't do that in public health. What we try to do is protect the weak, not expose them to illness and the risk of dying."
CIDRAP - Even mild flu tied to double risk of heart attack, stroke in older patients Mary Van Beusekom, MS February 12, 2024 The study results provide further evidence that while several pathogens are thought to increase cardiovascular risk through systemic infection and inflammation, the flu virus may have a more specific role in direct cardiac infection and endothelial dysfunction, leading to destabilization and rupture of existing atherosclerotic plaques, the authors said.
The evidence for pandemic virus related heart risks observed since 2020. Cardiovascular effects were noted right from the get go of the pandemic, and the evidence has only continued mounting since then. A mountain of evidence. CHLOE HUMBERT FEB 5, 2024 Here’s some of the published evidence of cardiac complications related to covid, in reverse chronological order dating all the way back to March 2020.
American Journal of Public Health - LAW AND LEGISLATION - JAMES A. TOBEY, LL. B., DR. P. H. Pass the Parker Bill - 1928 (NIH.gov) Pass the Parker Bill-A vigorous resolution urging Congress to pass the Parker Bill for federal health coordination over the veto of the President was adopted by the Association at its 57th Annual Meeting in Chicago in October, 1928. The second session of the Seventieth Congress convenes December 3, 1928, and will adjourn March 3, 1929. The time for action is short, but there is time enough for this desirable procedure. The principles of the Parker Bill have been indorsed by the American Public Health Association every year since 1925, and Congress finally adopted the measure, somewhat amended, in May, 1928. Apparently due to the influence of General H. M. Lord, Director of the Budget, President Coolidge vetoed the bill on May 18, giving as reasons the fact that one section was considered unconstitutional and that the bill tended to " militarize " the U. S. Public Health Service. The palpable fallacies of these arguments have already been discussed in this department. Though the Parker Bill by the amendments lost a certain effectiveness, it is still a very important measure, especially in its provisions for allowing the detail of U. S. Public Health Service personnel to other government bureaus; in granting a commissioned status to sanitary engineers and other scientific personnel of the service; in providing for a Nurse Corps; and in setting up a national advisory health council. Sanitarians are still interested in this excellent measure and keenly desirous that it be passed now. If it is not, the bill must be reintroduced and passed all over again in the next Congress. It would be helpful if sanitarians would communicate with their United States Senators and Representatives regarding this important matter. Do it now.
American Journal of Public Health and THE NATION'S HEALTH - The Influenza Epidemic of 1928-1929 with Comparative Data for 1918-1919 * - Selwyn D. Collins - February 1930 It will be seen that since January 1, 1920, there have occurred six more or less definite epidemics. The epidemic of 1928-1929 was the most important since that of 1920. The peaks of these six epidemics occur all the way from the early part of January to the early part of May, and the peak of the pandemic of 1918-1919 occurred much earlier in the fall than was the case in 1928-1929.
Salon - Biden’s “new normal” on COVID is neither normal nor new By MARTHA LINCOLN - LORENZO SERVITJE - June 26, 2022 As only readers in their eighties or nineties will remember, Americans used to die easily and frequently from bacterial and viral infections such as pneumonia, influenza, and tuberculosis. In the late 1930s and early 1940s — just shy of the "Antibiotic Era" — these high rates of mortality from infectious disease diminished drastically, mostly due to decades' worth of public health interventions, including improvements in sanitation and hygiene. These achievements were bolstered by the ability to treat bacterial infections with an expanding arsenal of antimicrobial drugs. In just seven years — from 1943 to 1949 — Americans saw the age-adjusted death rate from influenza and pneumonia get cut in half, dropping from 101.7 deaths per 100,000 to 45.1 per 100,000.
Return to normalcy - From Wikipedia "Return to normalcy" was a campaign slogan used by Warren G. Harding during the 1920 United States presidential election. Harding would go on to win the election with 60.4% of the popular vote. 1920 election. In a speech delivered on May 14, 1920, Harding proclaimed that America needed "not nostrums, but normalcy".[1] Two months later, during a homecoming speech, Harding reaffirmed his endorsement of "normal times and a return to normalcy."[2] World War I and the Spanish flu had upended life, and Harding said that it altered the perspective of humanity. He argued that the solution was to seek normalcy by restoring life to how it was before the war.[3] Harding's conception of normalcy for the 1920s included deregulation, civic engagement, and isolationism.[3] He rejected the idealism of Woodrow Wilson and the activism of Roosevelt, favoring the earlier isolationist policy of the United States.[4]
Statista: Number of smallpox cases recorded in the United States from 1900 to 1952 The number of smallpox cases in the United States fluctuated between 1900 and 1930, with as many as 110,000 reported cases in 1920, however the number of cases fell sharply in the 1930s, and there were no cases at all in the United States from 1950 onwards.
Institute of Medicine (US) Committee for the Study of the Future of Public Health. The Future of Public Health. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1988. 3, A History of the Public Health System. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218224/ From the 1930s through the 1970s, local, state, and federal responsibilities in health continued to increase. The federal role in health also became more prominent. A strong federal government and a strong government role in ensuring social welfare were publicly supported social values of this era. From Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s through Johnson's Great Society of the 1960s, a federal role in services affecting the health and welfare of individual citizens became well established. The federal government and state and local health agencies took on greater roles in providing and planning health services, in health promotion and health education, and in financing health services. The agencies also continued and increased activities in environmental sanitation, epidemiology, and health statistics. Federal programs in disease control, research, and epidemiology expanded throughout the mid-twentieth century. In 1930, the National Hygienic Laboratory relocated to the Washington, D.C., area and was renamed the National Institute of Health (NIH). In 1937, the Institute greatly expanded its research functions to include the study and investigation of all diseases and related conditions and the National Cancer Institute was established as the first of the research institutes focused on particular diseases or health problems. By the 1970s NIH grew to include an Institute for Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke, an Institute for Child Health and Human Development, an Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, and an Institute of Mental Health, among others. In 1938, Congress passed a second venereal disease control act, which provided federal funds to states for investigation and control of venereal diseases. In 1939, the Federal Security Agency, housing the Public Health Service and national programs in education and welfare, was established. The Public Health Service also continued to expand. During World War II, the Center for Disease Control was established, and shortly thereafter, the National Center for Health Statistics. (Hanlon and Pickett, 1984) Federal programs supporting individual health services and state programs also continued to grow, both in number of health problems and types of citizens addressed. The Social Security Act was passed in 1935. One title of the act established a federal grant-in-aid program to the states for establishing and maintaining public health services and for training public health personnel.
Politico: The ‘deep state’ of loyalists Trump is leaving behind for Biden. It will be hard for the next administration to root out Trump political appointees that have moved into civil service jobs. By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN and MEGAN CASSELLA 01/19/2021 A higher-than-usual number of Trump administration political appointees — some with highly partisan backgrounds — are currently “burrowing” into career positions throughout the federal government, moving from appointed positions into powerful career civil service roles, which come with job protections that will make it difficult for Biden to fire them. While this happens to some degree in every presidential transition, and some political appointees make for perfectly capable public servants, Biden aides, lawmakers, labor groups and watchdog organizations are sounding the alarm — warning that in addition to standard burrowing, the Trump administration is leaning on a recent executive order to rush through dozens if not hundreds of these so-called “conversions.” The fear is that, once entrenched in these posts, the Trump bureaucrats could work from the inside to stymie Biden’s agenda, much of which depends on agency action.
Noha Aboelata, MD @NohaAboelataMD 11:52 PM · Feb 29, 2024 I'm actually convinced this was done by California on purpose. By rolling back protections around the peak, the predictable decline would hide any immediate impact of the policy. Sinister. Quote: Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing 8) According to sources, the data analysis is mainly based on change in COVID levels after a certain state announced & enacted a similar controversial isolation relaxation policy — on Jan 9th 2024!!! It’s a brand new policy after the Nov-Dec 2023 wave had already peaked! The peak
Project 2025: Righties ready to roll. (Heads up, yes it's real & you might not like it.) A list of some coverage from left of Project 2025. CHLOE HUMBERT FEB 2, 2024 I’m publishing this list of links because I still encounter people thinking I’m talking about some conspiracy theory about a secret plan and they don’t realize it’s something actually proudly published on a website.
Fraudulent Appeal to Authority. The tactic of citing sources that don’t actually back up a claim. This ploy utilizes the halo effect, anchoring bias, the mere exposure effect, autopilot thinking, and informational learned helplessness. And it’s fraud. CHLOE HUMBERT FEB 9, 2024 Pseudoscience wellness grifters selling unproven remedies often use this tactic. They post a claim, and then they link to a scientific study to give the impression that it backs up their claim but that, once examined, by no means supports the claim, in fact it often refutes their claim, or is just not even a study of what they’re claiming. But since often nobody examines the linked material at all, never mind closely, and many don’t know how to examine and consider scientific studies, the liars get away with it.
WaPo reporter’s citation uses fraudulent appeal to authority to make anti-vax “natural herd immunity” claim. The Washington Post no “candle in the dark” here. CHLOE HUMBERT FEB 26, 2024 The WaPo article giving the impression that the CDC is claiming (wrongly) that natural infection alone is an equivalent to getting vaccinated, is inaccurate. It’s also a typical claim of targeted anti-vax propaganda, relying on “appeal to nature” beliefs. And it’s dangerous because if people believe the CDC is making these anti-vax claims, it may in fact contribute to depressing vaccine uptake further. So The Washington Post basically just trafficked in anti-vax PR peddling.
The Washington Post - CDC plans to drop five-day covid isolation guidelines By Lena H. Sun February 13, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EST The White House has yet to sign off on the guidance that the agency is expected to release in April for public feedback, officials said. One agency official said the timing could “move around a bit” until the guidance is finalized.
Government Executive - Biden administration boasts it’s including more public input into agency rulemaking. Agencies hope to solicit more perspectives and boost trust in government. DECEMBER 7, 2023 As part of the new agenda, the Labor Department cited all the groups they engaged with in plotting their new rules. “We intentionally seek input from members of the public who have not typically participated in the regulatory process, including workers with disabilities, union members, small businesses, low-paid workers and immigrant workers,” Labor said. The Homeland Security Department stressed its public engagement would ensure it did not implement rules with unintended harmful effects on “small businesses, startups and disadvantaged groups of multiple sorts.”
CDC HICPAC November 2023 Public comments - We don't need to see our doctors' smiles, we need doctors who are protected from airborne pathogens and who can protect us from them too. Joseph Pincus of Massachusetts
Biden admin boasts more public input on rulemaking while agencies ignore key constituencies I'm writing the White House to demand President Joe Biden make good on his 2020 campaign promise to mitigate infectious disease. CHLOE HUMBERT DEC 9, 2023 Yet when it comes to pandemic mitigation, patient safety, and worker safety, those most affected are being ignored, and our interests dismissed. There hasn't been strengthened OSHA standards since a hearing in spring 2022. And the CDC HICPAC committee is made up of members with hospital corporate executive positions, and NO PATIENT ADVOCATES. HICPAC needs oversight. They've received hundreds of public comments, many from disabled people, and a nurses union, a patient advocacy organization, and a citizens public health group, among others, have been sounding the alarm that the CDC is going forward anyway with rules to weaken protections for both patients and healthcare workers for ALL infectious diseases, in an apparent move to satisfy corporate healthcare bean counters because patient protection might cut into their profits.
Public Health Debt There’s no such thing as immunity debt, it’s a theory based on nonsense, and I’m so tired of it. CHLOE HUMBERT JAN 5, 2024 Getting viral infections is bad. The only medically advisable way of acquiring any immunity against a virus like covid, is to get vaccinated. Immunity debt is still NOT A THING. It’s not based in science. And nobody should seek out infections. The term “immunity debt” only popped up in 2021 as part of a “back to normal” PR push. It’s propaganda based vaguely on the hygiene hypothesis, which is hazy but not even applicable to viruses
Anti-mask Woke-washing The moral distortion of social justice. CHLOE HUMBERT AUG 31, 2023 Woke-washing is a divisive tactic and a cognitive attack of gaslighting1 where the perpetrator often employs disinformation and a tactic known as DARVO (deny, attack, and reverse victim / offender), in order to silence the targeted victim, or to attempt to delegitimize the target in the eyes of allies, peers, or others.
Bloomberg - Strict Covid Isolation Rules May Discourage Testing By Robert Langreth February 21, 2024 at 6:00 AM EST A few weeks ago, my college-aged daughter hesitated to get a Covid test after developing flu-like symptoms, fearing she would end up in mandatory isolation under her school’s rules.
Jane Mayer, Dark Money. The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, January 2016 “In developing regulations the EPA was directed to weigh only one concern: public health. The costs to industry were explicitly deemed irrelevant.”
Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH @ashishkjha 3:24 PM · Mar 1, 2024 The question is not whether guidance will have benefits If we only focused on benefit Public health would recommend You never drive over 30 MPH Ever drink alcohol (no amount is safe!) Ever eat bacon (class 1 carcinogen!!) And so on But those would be bad recommendations
Pollay RW, Dewhirst T - The dark side of marketing seemingly “Light” cigarettes: successful images and failed factTobacco Control 2002;11:i18-i31. The international headquarters of B&W's parent firm, British American Tobacco, counselled that new marketing approaches should “create brands and products which reassure consumers, by answering to their needs. Overall marketing policy will be such that we maintain faith and confidence in the smoking habit . . . All work in this area [communications] should be directed towards providing consumer reassurance about cigarettes and the smoking habit . . . by claimed low deliveries, by the perception of low deliveries and by the perception of `mildness'. Furthermore, advertising for low delivery or traditional brands should be constructed in ways so as not to provoke anxiety about health, but to alleviate it, and enable the smoker to feel assured about the habit and confident in maintaining it over time”
Manufacturing MILD -- MILD: A longtime PR word to downplay threats, normalize harms, and manufacture consent by manufacturing doubt. CHLOE HUMBERT AUG 5, 2023 Normalizing negative effects and harmful outcomes is a cognitive warfare8 psychological strategy to delegitimize health & safety precautions, by manufacturing doubt.9 There are powerful interests who do not want safety precautions and are politically aligned against public health of any kind.
The New York Times – The Swiss Cheese Model of Pandemic Defense. It’s not edible, but it can save lives. The virologist Ian Mackay explains how. By Siobhan Roberts – Published Dec. 5, 2020 – Updated Dec. 7, 2020 No one layer is perfect; each has holes, and when the holes align, the risk of infection increases. But several layers combined — social distancing, plus masks, plus hand-washing, plus testing and tracing, plus ventilation, plus government messaging — significantly reduce the overall risk. Vaccination will add one more protective layer. “Pretty soon you’ve created an impenetrable barrier, and you really can quench the transmission of the virus,” said Dr. Julie Gerberding, executive vice president and chief patient officer at Merck, who recently referenced the Swiss cheese model when speaking at a virtual gala fund-raiser for MoMath, the National Museum of Mathematics in Manhattan.
Multiple layers for safety: public health is not an à la carte menu. Successful safety interventions are about a comprehensive commitment to the common good. CHLOE HUMBERT OCT 15, 2023 Anyone thinking in these simplistic smorgasbord terms, claiming you can just do some kind of pick and choose one or two is just wish casting and should not be trusted for evidence based advice on personal protection or public safety.
Seek protection from noise and spiraling gloom CHLOE HUMBERT FEB 16, 2023 Adversaries will try to confuse you into inaction… into doing nothing. As Carl von Clausewitz pointed out, the aggressor “would prefer to take over a country unopposed” — if possible. If you are bombarded with disinformation and chaos, it works as a cognitive attack and can put you into a state of inaction — or even erroneous disruptive action, such as dooming and spreading fatalism for example — and you unwittingly harm your own cause and your own movement.
Red Flags for Disruption - Sorry to say but people who try to get stuff done typically have obstacles, and derailments. CHLOE HUMBERT JAN 19, 2024 Red Flags for Disruption Perpetual brainstorming Sessions that do not lead to any specific goal or next step. Strategy meetings that merely function as historic type critiques in the contemporary. Lots of “first date” type meetings with people, not a lot of follow-ups. Investing time & energy in actions at the wrong level or directed at inappropriate targets Sending comments to an agency or civil servant, outside a comment period or recognized process. Suggestions to contact elected representatives in a state you don’t live in. Boosting and promoting items and activities that are incongruent with the group’s current goals. Engaging in “food fight” controversy that goes nowhere and may serve to boost opposition framing. Disruptors or chaos agents Ingratiate themselves with leaders, key people, or governing committee members. Disrespectful exchanges with others, including overt verbal abuse or more subtle belittling Engages in gaslighting or tone policing. Disparages the already agreed upon projects of the group or criticizes activism generally. Remains mysterious in relevant ways that raise questions. References grandiose plans or extremely unrealistic goals. Talks of violence