🧮 Mitigating harm is an economic good 🚩 Apocalyptic hopium is a trick
Perhaps a respirator mask should be recommended in all stages of food production?
Contents:
- Events, Actions, & Campaigns
- Pandemic field notes & “Living with the virus”
- In the News (virus & adjacent media, science, news, and op-eds)
- This is NOT Fine section (gaslighting & other outrages)
- He(a)rd Scuttlebutt (the pandemic grapevine)
USA Letter Campaign - HEPA air purifiers are a medical necessity for all and should be automatically eligible on Health Savings Accounts.
Mitigating harm is an economic good
Responding to and mitigating harms, can be good for the financials of regular people — with the right policies.
Forbes - Wealth Gains Across Income Groups Show A Strong And Equitable Economic Recovery - Christian Weller - Apr 2, 2024 The recovery from the pandemic induced recession was fast and equitable. This does not mean that many households are not struggling. They are. But, many households saw meaningful improvements to their short-term financial security and longer-term economic mobility. Those improvements were widespread by income, unlike the experience of the last recession, when economic security and opportunities became more concentrated at the top. These equitable gains would not have been possible without large and continued investments in the economy by the federal government.
This is why there’s such a chorus of voices to demand that the pandemic is “over” now. People with money don’t want wealth gains to be equitable, or even happen at all, for the working class. This is WHY they had to stop all mitigation, and assert that there was no longer any need to support people. Because having a government that makes provisions for people to deal with illness and disease spread is a threat to keeping the working class poor and over a barrel.
It's just greed at this point because either way most catastrophes benefit those with a lot, because people with power and money typically prioritize their own interests over actually responding to disasters. There are always people who are already wealthy, and make out like bandits in any financial downturn. Some bet on the side of catastrophe and others eject in their golden parachutes before the reckoning comes due. Some industries of course are just worried it’s bad for some businesses. But the whole idea that you can’t mitigate disease spread and help people stay healthy, because it would be bad for the economy - is bullshit.
🗞️ In the news
Science - U.S. government in hot seat for response to growing cow flu outbreak Veterinarians and researchers on the front lines say it has taken too long to share data on viral changes, spread, and milk safety 22 APR 2024 - BY JON COHEN Only one human case linked to cattle has been confirmed to date, and symptoms were limited to conjunctivitis, also known as pink eye. But Russo and many other vets have heard anecdotes about workers who have pink eye and other symptoms—including fever, cough, and lethargy—and do not want to be tested or seen by doctors. James Lowe, a researcher who specializes in pig influenza viruses, says policies for monitoring exposed people vary greatly between states. “I believe there are probably lots of human cases,” he says, noting that most likely are asymptomatic.
HealthyDebate.ca - Mar 13, 2024 by Maddi Dellplain Setting the record straight: Medical experts debunk the biggest myths in their field “I think it’s important to recognize that often the goal of “misinformation mongers” is to create distrust in institutions, which makes room for more misinformation. We’re seeing increasing distrust of science, scientists and health-care institutions, and that’s the direct result of the spreading of misinformation.”
Rishi Sunak sets out plans to tackle 'sick note culture' April 19, 2024 By James Gregory & Jennifer McKiernan, BBC News If the Tories win the general election, Mr Sunak wants to make it harder for some patients to obtain a sick note.
This is NOT fine
Perhaps a respirator mask should be recommended in all stages of food production?
From 2010:
The Florida Times-Union - Survey: Food servers feel pressured to work while sick - A labor group says the practice is posing a national health hazard. Diane Stafford - Oct 6, 2010 The survey sponsors say those numbers heighten public health risks if the nation's 10 million restaurant industry employees, working in more than 568,000 food and drink establishments, spread disease.
From 2015:
NPR - Survey: Half Of Food Workers Go To Work Sick Because They Have To - October 19, 2015 - By Lynne Shallcross Fifty-one percent of food workers — who do everything from grow and process food to cook and serve it — said they "always" or "frequently" go to work when they're sick, according to the results of a survey released Monday. An additional 38 percent said they go to work sick "sometimes." That's a practice that can have serious public health consequences. For instance, as The Salt reported last year, the vast majority of reported cases of norovirus — the leading cause of foodborne disease outbreaks and illnesses across the country — have been linked to infected food industry workers.
Early in the pandemic:
ProPublica - The Plot to Keep Meatpacking Plants Open During COVID-19 Newly released documents reveal that the meatpacking industry’s callousness toward the health of its workers and its influence over the Trump administration were far greater than previously known. by Michael Grabell May 13, 2022, 3:40 p.m. EDT As workers began calling in sick at a Tyson pork plant in Waterloo, Iowa, the company’s workplace health managers instructed plant nurses not to record the absences as “COVID-19,” but instead as “flu-like symptoms,” families of deceased workers said in their lawsuit. ProPublica reported extensively on how COVID cases at the plant spread through the community. Similarly, when local health officials in California investigated an outbreak at a Foster Farms chicken plant, they discovered five additional deaths that had been marked not as fatalities, but instead as “resolved cases” or “resolutions.” Health officials told the subcommittee that during a conference call with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, someone from either Foster Farms or the USDA jokingly called them “toe tag resolutions,” referring to the toe tags that are often put on corpses at morgues.
2023:
Health - Sick Restaurant Workers Linked to 40% of Foodborne Illness Outbreaks, CDC Says By Korin Miller Published on June 7, 2023 According to study authors, retail food establishments should adopt more comprehensive food safety policies in order to help prevent foodborne illness outbreaks. “Ill workers continue to play a substantial role in retail food establishment outbreaks,” the authors of the report wrote, “and comprehensive ill worker policies will likely be necessary to mitigate this public health problem.”
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
Accelerationist apocalyptic hopium is a trick
— it’s eugenics hidden inside a cinnamon fireball candy coating. Solutions don’t happen because things get “bad enough” to “wake people up” to start spontaneously acting wisely. Change comes when some people decide to organize for a goal to make a system work, and push forward. Don’t wait for everybody.
Quote:
“I just wanted to point out that in Dr. Wallace's slide 22, half of the children who died had no underlying conditions. There is no group that clearly has no risk from COVID. And even children and adults with no underlying conditions can still experience severe illness due to COVID. And we're at a point now when vaccine and infection [inaudible] immunity is beginning to wane. We have these new variants that are emerging. We're all becoming more susceptible.”
- Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, MD at the CDC ACIP meeting September 12, 2023