🏞️Outdoor recreation still requires caution📱A call for the Governor of New York to reinstate the indoor mask mandate😷Letter Campaign: Essential Services Need Mask Requirements😷
Right wing influencer spin on long covid is some next level covid denial.
Contents:
- Events, Actions, & Campaigns
- Pandemic field notes & “Living with the virus”
- In the News (virus & adjacent news)
- This is NOT Fine section (gaslighting & other wrongs)
- He(a)rd Scuttlebutt (did you miss this?)
😷📝 Letter Campaign: Essential Services Need Mask Requirements
Use action network form to write U.S. & Canadian representatives, or use the letter as a template to send to your representatives and other decision makers yourself, or just write your own letter to advocate for essential service mask requirements.
🔗➡️ tinyurl.com/essentialmasks
😷📱 A call for the Governor of New York to reinstate the indoor mask mandate
“Call on NY Governor Kathy Hochul and Health Commissioner Dr Mary Bassett to reinstate the mask mandate in all public indoor spaces and schools”
🔗➡️ MandateMasksNY.org
Online Group watch of the 2016 documentary “HyperNormalisation” with discussion about how this concept relates to the pandemic.
The watch will be split into 4 online meetups of 1 hour at least, first 40 minutes of watching the documentary., July 9, 16, 30, & Aug 6. The film is available on Youtube with closed captioning, the group watch will have a text chat but does not have transcription. This will be hosted in the World Health Network platform accessible via the web, and a corresponding discussion will take place in the WHN slack. It’s not necessary to join WHN to attend the group watch but you are very welcome to join WHN using this form.
Watch 1, Saturday July 9 @ 2pm US EDT, add to google calendar
Outdoor recreation still requires cautious choices!
Outdoors is generally viewed as safer than poorly ventilated indoor spaces — but transmission does happen outdoors! Theresa Chapple discussed the realities of outdoor transmission on a recent episode of Death Panel podcast.
I always wear an N95 mask in bathrooms - even standalone latrines in the woods - because you have no idea if someone infectious was in there before you. I also use a pstyle and have my own camp toilet.
Check your local parks department or tourism bureau web site — they probably have a list of lesser used parks & trails to avoid crowds.
VisitPA.com: 10 Lesser-Known State Parks Worth an Outdoor Adventure
“Hoping to avoid the crowds while still getting out and exploring the great outdoors? It may be easier than you think!”
For example, here in the Poconos, Gouldsboro State Park is less crowded than the adjacent Tobyhanna State Park.
🗞️ In the news
🏥📄 Politico: Biden officials to keep private the names of hospitals where patients contracted Covid (“Not knowing what the likelihood of getting transmission in the hospital really impacts an individual’s ability to quote unquote ‘make a personal decision’ on their risk levels,” said Mia Ives-Rublee, a disability rights advocate who has a lung condition that makes her more susceptible to Covid.)
👃🫁 Consumer Affairs: Inhaled vaccines may be a better alternative than nasal sprays, study finds (“The researchers explained that the nasal spray vaccine travels to the nose and throat but doesn’t go much further than that in the body. The study showed that the inhaled tuberculosis vaccine was more effective because it was able to reach deeper into the respiratory system.”)
🇬🇧🩺 Nursing Notes: Tribunal rules long-Covid is a disability (“In a landmark ruling, a caretaker working for a charity has successfully proven that Coronavirus left him with “substantial and long-term” side effects affecting his ability to work.”)
🔁 🥅 Salon: Biden’s “new normal” on COVID is neither normal nor new (“As a medical anthropologist and a scholar of the history of medicine and public health, we see nothing normal about the present moment. Part of our concern stems from COVID-19's enormous epidemiological footprint. In 2020, the novel coronavirus became the third leading cause of death in the United States. Provisional 2021 data show it remains there, led only by heart disease and cancer. From a historical perspective, this is a shocking development: the last time the United States saw an infectious disease as a top-three cause of death was 1937, before the availability of penicillin.”)
📚✋ Education Week: Thousands of Students Will Face Long COVID. Schools Need to Plan Now (“Long COVID “could define a whole sub-cohort of kids within a generation,” said Dr. Mady Hornig, a physician-scientist who is studying long COVID at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. When asked how it might affect K-12 schools in the next one to five years, she said: “You know that meme that’s floating around that shows someone saying ‘Everything’s fine!’ when fire is raging all around them? I feel that’s where we are right now.”)
This is NOT fine
Assertion:
“You were always at risk with flu and stuff anyway.”
Response:
There’s a difference between me walking on the street in my fairly quiet residential neighborhood OR — walking in the middle of a freeway during rush hour. Both the risk and the potential consequences are higher.
(And stop with the flu stuff already. I was never happy with flu deaths, were you?)
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt, the stories of “living with it”
I heard on the Conspirituality Podcast (episode 108) that Dr. Cristian Northrop a q-associated conspiracy wellness influencer has been describing what sure sound like potential post-covid complications & long covid symptoms — but she describes them as part of some kind of spiritual ascension process so she says you don't need meds or treatment for these conditions. This is really some next level Long Covid denial.
I have heard that some people mistakenly think they can’t have Paxlovid, and so don’t ask for it. Even having HIV is NOT exclusionary for use of Paxlovid and people living with HIV should be asking a doctor.
I saw a tweet thread where a makeup artist describes a client who tested positive after being exposed at New Years and later they admitted to having persistent memory problems when they showed up at the wrong time for an appt. — but then denied having had covid on the basis they were asymptomatic and assumed their positive covid tests were false positives. It’s 2022 and there are people unaware of asymptomatic covid, and of false positives being uncommon.
I have heard that pediatrician offices in northeastern Pennsylvania are no longer requiring masks for patients and staff. And the pharmacists and staff at the CVS are going maskless while maskless covid positive customers come in for their Paxlovid. Essential services need mask requirements. What are we doing people?
Let’s get real, so-called personal freedom is an illusion. You pay taxes, obey traffic laws, wear clothing, use a helmet on a bike or motorcycle, use a seat belt; these are just a few examples of curbs on your freedoms. Why are you not screaming about these attacks? Irony much? I’m really tired of all this whining of personal freedoms. We need to put this virus to sleep, and if that means a bit of inconvenience for all of us to get healthy, suck it up.
Owen Rubin in San Leandro, Letter to the Editor, San Francisco Chronicle June 17, 2022