📣 NYC MTA Board Meeting Today MONDAY Jan 30 @ 1230pm 🎙️ “lockdown” is always bad faith 💉 FDA denies reality
Don't let social contagions and repeating rumours modify our collective awareness of reality so we make erroneous decisions or fail to make necessary decisions.
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)
NEW YORK CITY, USA
The next MTA Board Meeting is this MONDAY, January 30, at 12:30pm
There is time for public comments. Sign up to speak virtually or in-person and urge them to reinstate the mask mandate on public transit. Registration to speak at the meeting will open at 11:55am and close at 12:25pm. Learn more and sign up here: https://new.mta.info/transparency/board-and-committee-meetings/how-to-comment.
More information and where to sign up for registration is online here (you need to register from 11:55am-12:25pm) If you can't make it to the meeting, but want to send comments, you can email the MTA Board at https://contact.mta.info/s/forms/mta-board.
Join Mandate Masks NY: MandateMasksNY.org
The bad faith trick of Everything is “lockdown”
The libertarian right-wing push to promote anti-mask sentiments and mischaracterize even rather popular mask mandates as “lockdown” is both preposterous and egregious disinformation propaganda.
🗞️ In the news
The American Prospect: The Myth of Jeffrey Zients. There is no reason to trust a longtime corporate stooge to serve as President Biden’s chief of staff. BY MAX MORAN JANUARY 27, 2023 (Revolving Door Project Substack link) (In 2021, Zients joined the Biden administration in arguably the most consequential job of all: COVID-19 czar, the point man for coordinating all of the federal health agencies to rescue America from the pandemic. If ever there was a time for him to prove his managerial bona fides, this was it. Zients failed miserably. He didn’t boost production of tests or personal protective equipment, but he did personally dissuade Republican Gov. Phil Scott of Vermont from issuing a statewide mask mandate. He did nothing to assert government ownership of the vaccine technologies the government helped develop, allowing Pfizer and Moderna to charge hundreds of dollars worldwide for treatments every human being needs to receive. Experts warned the White House months in advance to expect a surge in December 2021, but Zients did almost nothing to prepare. When the omicron variant hit, lines to get tests stretched across city blocks nationwide, two years into the pandemic.)
The Salt Lake Tribune: Utah plastic surgeon gave kids saline shots instead of COVID vaccine in fraud scheme, prosecutors say. The surgeon, two of his employees and a neighbor were indicted in connection with the scheme. By Jordan Miller, Jan. 19, 2023, 2:53 p.m. | Updated: Jan. 20, 2023, 3:34 p.m. (A Midvale plastic surgeon and three other Utahns were indicted on conspiracy charges last week after prosecutors say they dumped nearly 2,000 doses of COVID vaccine down a drain, distributed fake vaccination cards — and, at the request of some parents, injected children with saline to convince the young patients that they had been vaccinated.)
Important Context by Walker Bragman: Changes At COVID Conspiracy Nonprofit Follow Important Context Report. The Brownstone Institute appears to have parted ways with one of its fellows after a report by Important Context highlighted public calls for violence. Jan 27 2023 (In our story, we noted that Brownstone had tacitly encouraged radicalism among its supporters. We highlighted a Dec. 2021 Brownstone article by the group’s founder, Jeffrey Tucker, which featured an image of a guillotine and called for “consequences” for public health officials and policymakers who had sought to limit the spread of COVID.)
Philadelphia Inquirer Thousands of Philadelphians must resume applying annually for Medicaid starting in April. A pandemic-era rule that prohibited states from cutting off Medicaid for most people who no longer qualified or didn't reapply annually as normally required is ending. Thousands could lose coverage. by Harold Brubaker, Jan 14, 2023 (archive link) (The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, which regulates Medicaid, says no one will lose Medicaid without a chance to reapply — though advocates worry about the state having three-year-old addresses for some people. Plus, the agency is going to take a year to work through all the people who have not filled out renewal forms during the pandemic. Some states are taking less time, making it more likely that people will fall through the cracks.)
This is NOT fine
The FDA appears to be trying to pretend that the pandemic is something that it’s not. They only seem to care about the hospitals, not actually human lives nor quality of life. I have great concerns about the hospitals, but frankly I worry about the hospitals year round because they are being stressed year round, they just crank it up off the charts in the winter.
The reasoning for recommending vaccines NOT based on science but based on marketing concepts based on the lowest vaccine uptake market, is not going to “simplify” anything. It seems like a recipe to further undermine trust in government, as an entity that can function based on practical evidence and concerns. Is undermining the government the point? I wonder how many right wing believers or even Trump appointees are burrowed into all these agencies and are continuing to sabotage government in the name of clearing the way for libertarian fever dreams?
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
I really worry about the scare tactics being implanted into the discourse to usher normal people away from civic engagement. This week I noticed multiple instances of people repeating an ominous warning that there will be “civil war” if you require masks. There are two problems with this argument. First, it’s not about the masks and we know that because when “members of the neo-Nazi group showed up at a New Hanover County school board meeting. They covered their faces, which was ironic considering the meeting was to discuss mask mandates.” Second, if people threatened to riot to demand murder be made legal, what are we going to do as a society? Are we going to make murder legal? The takeaway here is: Don’t take the bait on dubious arguments & don’t repeat these hot button social contagions.
A perennial gaslighting message people keep pushing on social media is the idea that it makes sense to boost and promote people who maybe say something good once in awhile, even if they push anti-vax or other dangerous misinformation. ONE sentence discouraging people from getting vaccinated or getting treatment could lead hundreds of people not getting vaccinated or not taking needed treatment. If people die or have poorer outcomes those are real world consequences. It’s not that big a lift to refrain from participating in spreading lies.
“Cognitive warfare” is one of the ways used by specialists to modify, orient and alter human reasoning for the purpose of conquest, superiority or inferiority of individuals, a group of individuals, groups, or populations. It is based on the knowledge of the cognitive processes mobilized by these individuals in the use and the control of their environment, notably technological, by means of digital technologies. Generally speaking, the aim is to modify the awareness that individuals have of reality in order to make them take erroneous decisions or prevent them from taking necessary decisions.”
— Cognitive Warfare First NATO Science Meeting Bordeaux ‒ June 21, 2021