😷 Petition: #BringBackMasks in Ontario Canada 😷 Campaigns for free N95 distribution in NYC and Canada, and hopefully more places soon 😷
Labor unions need covid safer strikes and political rallies.
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)
🇨🇦 ONTARIO CANADA
Petition: Bring back mask mandates in Ontario
I have heard from many Ontarians, both vulnerable and healthy, concerned on how they can protect themselves this winter from infection and illness when so many around them are maskless in high risk indoor public settings like grocery stores, stores, transit, pharmacies, doctor's offices, schools, universities, concerts, and mass events. Please consider signing this petition now. Together we can make a difference.
By Bill Comeau
https://www.change.org/p/bring-back-mask-mandates-in-ontario
🇨🇦 CANADA
Petition: The Canadian Government Needs to Distribute Free N95 Masks to the Provinces
We need to urgently distribute N95 masks to the provinces. Why? Omicron's increased transmissibility through the air makes cloth and surgical blue masks less effective now. Studies over the past year have highlighted the superior proven performance of technologically-advanced N95 masks over both cloth and blue surgical masks.
By Bill Comeau
https://you.leadnow.ca/petitions/the-canadian-government-needs-to-distribute-free-n95-masks-to-the-provinces
🇺🇸 NEW YORK CITY, USA
Sign-on Letter: Calling on NYC to put in place a free N95 mask distribution program across the city!
Looking for organizations to sign-on to a sign-on letter calling for a free N95 mask distribution program in New York City. If you're part of an organization that is interested in signing on in support, please contact Mandate Masks NY. (Twitter & Web site)
By Mandate Masks NY
https://www.mandatemasksny.org/
WE WANT A COVID SAFER STRIKE
From Adam J. Moore, MPH posted on his Instagram: “48,000 graduate student workers and post-docs across the entire University of California (UC) system are set to go on strike starting tomorrow (Nov 14) in response to the UC’s unfair and illegal contract bargaining practices. If you plan to join the in-person picket line, follow these guidelines to keep yourself and your comrades covid safer 😷✊🏼♿️”
🗞️ In the news
🇺🇸 Payday Report: 22,000 CA Nurses to Strike – Markets Tank on Lula’s Speech – Colombian TikTok Workers Fight Back by Mike Elk (Yesterday, in Northern California, more than 22,000 nurses, members of the National Nurses United employed by Kaiser, gave a 10-day notice to strike on November 21 and 22 in one of the largest private sector actions ever. The nurses are striking to demand that Kaiser increase staffing.)
🫀Nature Medicine: Long-term cardiac pathology in individuals with mild initial COVID-19 illness (Thus, the imaging findings suggest that inflammatory cardiac involvement after COVID may be a pathophysiological commonality shared among all individuals, regardless of the expression of cardiac symptoms. The underlying pathological mechanism for the detected increase in myocardial water content remains unclear at this stage and may relate to changes in vascular, cellular or interstitial permeability, but it is unlikely explained by direct myocyte injury/necrosis, as thought to be the core mechanism in classical viral myocarditis)
⬅️ Midnight Sun: Why Has the Left Deprioritized COVID? by Raia Small (In Canada and the US, major labour unions have been reluctant to criticize the NDP or the Democratic Party despite these parties’ abandonment of workers to COVID. In the US, Democrats who are critical of the party’s centrist mainstream, such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have been nearly silent on COVID-19 since Biden took office, allowing the administration and Congress to oversee mass death without serious pressure from the party’s left flank.)
This is NOT fine
Senator-elect John Fetterman, as Lt. Gov. on the campaign trail was seen at a labor rally, indoors, with Senators Bob Casey & Sherrod Brown, and not a mask in sight.
John Fetterman, I’m hoping, is probably vaccinated and boosted to the max, maybe using Evusheld, and likely with quick immediate access to Paxlovid and adequate healthcare services. But there are a lot of people in this picture.
What are we doing?
I'm a retired union member. I voted for Fetterman. I phone banked for Fetterman with Indivisible. I donated to Fetterman's campaign, I have Wegner’s stickers to prove it. I sent postcards to voters campaigning for Fetterman with National Nurses United.
Politicians and unions need to do better than this. Many are excluded from so many events because we can't take such risks. Nevermind how we're excluded from many jobs because of lack of mitigation or accommodation. This needs to change.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of covid in San Diego. But I saw a headline from San Diego Union Tribune saying, “Uptick in flu cases prompts hospitals to put up overflow tents in parking lots to ease ER burden” as if covid doesn’t exist. When before the pandemic have there been overflow tents at hospitals because of flu season in mid November?
Someone pointed me to a twitch streamer scientist who answers science questions, and that he said, rightly that many experts you hear from in the pandemic are all theory and no praxis. And this is absolutely what I’ve been complaining about for some time. In some cases they refuse to even acknowledge the many people who are doing actual work to change things, not just lamenting about it. And in some cases, the experts actively undermine political action by disparaging it as “not the right activism” or engaging in fatalism suggesting that petitioning one’s government is hopeless when it’s not.
Someone somewhere in the UK is reporting on twitter, not mentioning which employer, but reporting that some employer’s plan is “sending immunosuppressed staff for Cognitive Behavioural therapy to remove their fear of Covid makes buildings with maskless staff, no ventilation, no testing etc” instead of moving to “make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010 by allowing immunosuppressed staff to work from home” — because, the person states, they don’t want to fulfill their legal obligations they’re trying to convince immunosuppressed staff that the need mental health treatment to "conquer their fear” and the person rightly points out no amount of therapy is going to make the building safe. It sounds a bit like the totally false and racist idea of Drapetomania as a fake mental illness claiming slaves who fled captivity were doing so because they were mad. It’s like the people in charge expect humans to walk calmly, and willingly into abattoir blades with no complaints, calmly centered in mindfulness while meeting a terrible and terrifying fate. That’s not how reality works, and avoiding a potentially serious illness is perfectly natural for everyone, and for the high risk, not worrying should surely raise more eyebrows.
"The current status quo around this issue in the richest country in the world - it’s pathetic. It’s just ridiculous that we give as consumers as occupants as Americans no consideration to the air we breathe when you sure as heck wouldn’t take a drink of water handed to you by a stranger on the street."
- Scott Frank, at the White House Summit on Indoor Air Quality, 11 Oct 2022