✊People want a better public health response😷Letter campaign to NYC council members for masks📝Join the movement for a covid safe campus📚
Adoption of right wing public health policy promotes dangerous Qanon psyops.
Contents:
- Events, Actions, & Campaigns (Attention students & New Yorkers!)
- Pandemic field notes (a movement against “Living with the virus” is growing)
- In the News (reports from Sweden, Canada, & the US are not great)
- This is NOT Fine section (the gaslighting is coming from inside the agency)
- He(a)rd Scuttlebutt (the pandemic grapevine)
COVID Safe Campus - The movement is growing and you’re invited to join.
Volunteer sign up: https://www.covidsafecampus.org/get-involved
Mandate Masks NY - If you’re in New York City, Contact your New York City Council Member and ask them to mandate masks.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/contact-your-new-york-city-council-member-and-ask-them-to-mandate-masks
In the absence of leadership, because many officials have abdicated their responsibilities with reckless abandon, people are being left to fend for ourselves in multiple disasters. Some people are wondering why somebody else isn’t doing something to stop the madness and others are scrambling to DIY a community wide disaster in a fierce attempt at individualism. But many people are building groups and coalitions based on common goals and to demand better actions and policies from those in positions of leadership.
I put out a call last week asking to be informed of groups and I got a couple of replies about groups I hadn’t known about before. More please!
Things are a little chaotic, and not everyone agrees on everything but groups are gaining more people interested in a better public health response. I’m reminded of a local union rep — he gave a pep talk at a public vigil a few years ago during a strike, recounting the story of the coal miners plight in 1902 and he said, “You don’t have to like each other, but you have to love each other.” And as a union member, I can’t get that out of my head.
🗞️ In the news
🇸🇪 Xinhua News: Sweden reimposes mask mandate in hospitals as COVID infection surges (“Starting from last week, 17 of Sweden's 21 administrative regions reintroduced face mask requirements in hospitals and nursing homes. Swedavia, the company that operates Stockholm's international airport Arlanda and nine other airports, has also reimposed measures to curb infections. As of last Wednesday, all airport staff have to wear face masks.”)
🇦🇺 ABC News: Australia's COVID response was one of the best in the world at first. Why do we rank so poorly now? (“Up until July 26, 11,285 Australians have lost their lives with COVID; 80% of those deaths occurred in 2022.”)
🇨🇦 CBC Toronto General Hospital under 'critical care bed alert,' says ICUs at full capacity (“A Toronto hospital says it is under a "critical care bed alert," with its three intensive care units all at full capacity due to staffing shortages.
Toronto General Hospital said in an email on Tuesday that its Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit, Cardiac Intensive Care Unit and Medical Surgical Intensive Care Unit are at their "total bed capacity" or have limited human resources to keep all of their physical critical care beds open safely and in operation.”)
🇺🇸 CBS News: New York Health Department says hundreds of people may be infected with polio virus (New York state health officials have found indications of additional cases of polio virus in wastewater samples from two different counties, leading them to warn that hundreds of people may be infected with the potentially serious virus.)
🇺🇸 WAND: CUPHD investigates a case of monkeypox at Rantoul daycare (“The Champaign-Urbana Public Health District and Illinois Department of Public Health, announce they are investigating a case of monkeypox associated with a daycare located in Rantoul, IL. The CUPHD, IDPH and Carle Health are working closely with an adult case at the daycare.”)
This is NOT fine
The permanent adoption of right wing “public health” policy in the U.S. has led to playing right into the hands of dishonest and disinformed Qanon adherents whose goal for years has centered around spreading fear with unfounded allegations of supposedly widespread child abuse.
And now I have been told a story of a parent in the Midwest who tried to get a kid tested and received innuendo by either the local health department, a doctor, or both, that if the kid tested positive for monkeypox it would be evidence of abuse.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt, the grapevine we never asked for
Someone I met online who is part of a Long Covid organization said that they notice that officials never mention children unless to minimize the threats of covid, and pointed out how nobody ever talks about how kids can get Long Covid.
I saw a post on twitter where somebody said they know someone who died at age 25 with such organ damage she couldn’t be a donor, reported to have had covid 5 times. Just rolling the dice so many times is a problem on its own, but I really hope somebody’s doing scientific studies to examine cumulative damage from relentless reinfections.
A member of the Covid Precautions Community on twitter said that their last covid cautious friend “gave in” and went to a restaurant and got covid. The person is reportedly a transplant recipient in need of a new transplant. It seems like even people who are undeniably high risk and vulnerable have trouble resisting the relentless advertising for a return to “normal” economic activities.
Someone told me that they were shopping around for dentists based on their airborne pandemic safety precautions and they actually had a dentist’s office outright tell them that they are “not a good fit for the practice” because they wanted infection control. Essential services need mask requirements — and HEPA filters. I take a HEPA purifier with me to my dentist who wore N95s before the pandemic because he doesn’t want to breathe decayed tooth dust.
I tuned in Leonardi twitter space and the first thing I hear is someone yet again asking him if they should put their faith in nasal spray while traveling. This is the third time he’s been asked, and he always tells the story about how his friend was using a nasal spray for that purpose and got covid while using it.
Someone posted in a forum that they do not much like the odd assertion from minimizers and the careless, “You gotta live your life.” My pat answer to that is — you can’t live your life if you’re dead. And that’s a possibility when you roll the dice with SARS2. But this person’s point was that they happen to be still living their life just as much as before, and have merely adapted to taking necessary precautions in a changed world. You can “live your life” while taking precautions. We don’t drink water out of the rain gutter, we don’t eat raw chicken, and we don’t stand in the garage with the door closed and the car running — and we don’t consider those precautions to be inhibiting living, in fact they facilitate living.
"I’ve come to believe that people less fear death than they do being kicked out of their social circle."
— Adam Kinzinger on PBS Frontline