😷 Petition: Keep Masking Mandatory in Healthcare Facilities 🏥 Letter Campaign: Release the data on hospital-acquired SARS-CoV-2 🦠 Suggestion for the experts: Please publish on Long Covid Treatment

Bonnie Henry removes masks in hospitals and exposes vulnerable patients in BC Canada.

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)

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USA Petition: Keep Masking Mandatory in Healthcare Facilities!

by COVID-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project, Inc: As states throughout the U.S. begin to discontinue mandatory masking in healthcare facilities, they place the most vulnerable populations at enormous risk in the very places and by the very people they go to for help. We are urging the State Department of Health, State Health Commissioner, and Governor to maintain or reimplement orders keeping masking mandatory in healthcare facilities.

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/keep-masking-mandatory-in-healthcare-facilities

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USA Letter Campaign: U.S. govt should release the data on hospital-acquired SARS-CoV-2 cases

By Chloe Humbert - Please require data on hospital acquired SARS-CoV-2 infections be made available to the public. Hospitals are required to collect data on SARS-CoV-2 cases acquired while patients are in the hospital (nosocomial infections) and report the data to the Department of Health and Human Services, but this information is not available to the public. Similar data on other non-SARs-CoV-2 infections has been publicly available for years; this information should be too.

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/report-data-on-hospital-onset-sars-cov-2-cases/

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GLOBAL Petition to: Moderna: Share the Science to Ensure Global Vaccine Access

By Justice is Global: The US government invested billions in Moderna’s vaccine technology, but Moderna has not shared the benefits with the public. The company raked in almost $18 billion in profits in 2022 alone, while multiple shareholders, including CEO Stéphane Bancel, have become billionaires. Meanwhile, it has stonewalled all efforts to share its publicly funded technology with the world or license out production to other manufacturers.

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/moderna-share-the-science-with-the-who-backed-hub-and-ensure-global-vaccine-access

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Pandemic Asks - What do you wish the experts would do? Reader Suggestion #1 - Please publish on Covid & Long Covid Treatment.

This is from reader submissions to the query form, What do you wish the experts would do in regards to the pandemic?

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Reader #1 mentions that there seems to be a lot of knowledge that’s referenced in news articles, on social media, and among, especially specialized healthcare professionals, in regards to knowledge about, and treatment of, Covid & Long Covid. For example, a cardiologist may know of a cardiac sequelae and how to treat it. But it’s pointed out that it seems there is not a lot actually published on these various things in regards to covid. At least to the extent that there are treatments, it’s unclear what they are or if there’s any consistency.

I came across this article and wondered the same thing:

Fortune: COVID isn’t just infecting you—it could be reactivating viruses that have been dormant in your body for years. by Erin Prater, December 26, 2022

Dr. Panagis Galiasatos, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins’ pulmonary and critical care division who treats long COVID patients, doesn’t routinely test his patients for latent viruses, given that most respond well to treatments that his clinic uses. “If a patient doesn’t respond to treatment, maybe we’ll test for other things,” he said.

What is this treatment happening in Baltimore Maryland? Is it happening in other places? Is this published? Which symptoms prompt this treatment? It’s likely a pulmonary treatment considering the doctor interviewed appears to be a pulmonologist and is claiming some of these treatments are effective. But what are they?

Reader #1 suggestion says:

Consider how you may go about publishing this information of this character to improve equity of care; otherwise, those without the ability to see specialists and/or those in regions where specialists may not have sufficient patient cohorts to witness these phenomena might not receive adequate medical advice.

I want this too. How do we encourage this?

Also, how do we make sure covid denier doctors in places with limited healthcare options are making treatments available?

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Related — A Long Covid Paxlovid placebo randomized control trial is starting and taking volunteers in Connecticut, New York or Florida.

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🗞️ In the news

• 🇦🇺 The Age: Hundreds die of COVID after catching virus while in hospital. By Aisha Dow and Henrietta Cook, March 31, 2023 (Hundreds of patients died of COVID after catching the virus while being treated at Victorian hospitals for unrelated ailments. More than 3200 people are suspected to have caught the virus while in hospital between January 1 and October 26 last year, according to leaked Victorian Health Department data. Of these patients, at least 344 – more than 10 per cent – died. Patients in hospitals are particularly vulnerable to COVID infections. “Infections should not be occurring in healthcare facilities,” said Associate Professor Philip Russo, an infection prevention expert from Monash University.)

• 🇺🇸 New York Public Radio, The Takeaway podcast: Undermining the ADA, April 6, 2023 (In terms of numbers, we roughly estimated at least 20 million newly disabled people as a result of long COVID. Part of the why I said we have to estimate this is because we're still continuing to watch long COVID evolve and shift and change how it manifests, how it affects people. I think we'll be seeing that for years to come, but I think one of the big challenges that we're seeing is health insurance companies do not want doctors diagnosing people with long COVID. Doctors themselves are still very unsure as to what long COVID looks like so we actually are watching them hesitate before providing people with a diagnosis, and that has huge impact. Without documentation, people often can't get the kinds of accommodations they need in the workplace or to school place. Whether it be continuing remote learning, the ability to telework, different lighting, different office setup, those sorts of things that are natural accommodations under the ADA, are that much harder to access for people with long COVID because they're finding themselves in a no man's land of being able to get documentation that they need to thrive and live.)

• 🇺🇸 Consumer Affairs: The high cost of insulin is finally coming down. by Mark Huffman 03-02-23 (After consumer advocates complained loudly that the cost of insulin, used to manage diabetes, had skyrocketed in recent years, a major drug company says it will slash the price it charges.)

• 💰 Important Context - Peter Thiel's Secretive Spending. Tax records reveal that the Thiel Foundation gave millions to a shadowy right-wing fund in 2021. by Walker Bragman, March 27, 2023 (The Thiel Foundation, the nonprofit charity of billionaire and right-wing megadonor Peter Thiel, gave millions of dollars in 2021 to a secretive donor-advised fund that has funneled money into groups that spread COVID denial as well as hate groups, federal tax records reveal. The founder of Silicon Valley tech giant Palantir Technologies, Thiel has made a significant amount of money as a result of the lucrative government contracts his company has secured over the years—and particularly during the pandemic.)

• 📄 NewsGuard: Misinformation Monitor: April 2023 By Macrina Wang, Valerie Pavilonis, Zack Fishman, and Jack Brewster, Additional reporting by John Gregory, Sam Howard, Chine Labbé, and Louise Vallée (NewsGuard found that the 25 accounts cumulatively posted 141 tweets (original and quote tweets) containing false, misleading, and unsubstantiated claims. While the majority published in English, some also tweeted in French. These tweets were viewed nearly 27 million times and received more than 760,000 likes and retweets during this period, the NewsGuard analysis determined. The 25 accounts also cumulatively retweeted 35 posts containing misinformation, bringing the total number of tweets and retweets identified by NewsGuard for advancing false, misleading, or unsubstantiated information to 176. Out of those 25 accounts, 10 were reinstated under Musk after being suspended under Twitter’s previous ownership. The most common focus of the falsehoods was COVID-19. In 66 tweets and retweets, 15 accounts baselessly claimed that the vaccines were dangerous or have caused mass death, AIDS, strokes, stillbirths, or other injuries.)

• 📺 The Column - CNN, Sunday Morning Shows Completely Ignore Up To 15 Million Americans Being Thrown Off Medicaid. In a pattern that’s been repeated many times since 2021, millions being driven further into poverty simply doesn’t register in our “national debate.” by Adam Johnson, Apr 3 2023 (Editor’s note: Some Medicaid experts, while agreeing the story is vastly under-covered and the situation is grim, don’t want the reader to get the impression the cuts were a fait accompli on an individual basis. The risk is this could promote doomerism and I don’t want to do this! So I wanted to update this post to note that the 15 million is an estimate and, on an individual basis, one is not necessarily condemned to losing Medicaid. If you have any questions or worries that you or your loved ones may be at risk of losing benefits, please go to Localhelp.healthcare.gov. Nevertheless, as a broad political issue, the situation is not looking good.)

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This is NOT fine

Bonnie Henry removes masks in hospitals and exposes vulnerable patients in BC Canada

Bonnie Henry the provincial health officer and ghoul of BC Canada, has claimed that masks aren’t needed in healthcare settings because everyone in healthcare settings is vaccinated now and that protects everyone. But there are no guarantees — we need LAYERED protections. High risk patients are still at risk, even vaccinated. Some high risk patients don’t benefit as much from the vaccines. Some patients can’t be vaccinated. And the most concentrated place to find high risk patients is at healthcare settings!!! And this claim that EVERYONE is vaccinated in healthcare settings - ALL the patients are vaccinated? And have ALL the healthcare workers and all the patients been boosted recently? Because evidence shows the booster efficacy for transmission wanes to basically zero by 8 months and in this same article they say that the spring booster program is only for the highest risk and those over 80 - nothing about healthcare workers and general patients getting the spring boost in BC.

They're exposing the most vulnerable at their most vulnerable, when there's no choice, and the patient is helpless to resist.

I suggest that investigations should be done in all hospitals where they are unmasking. Heaven only knows what other disease protocols are being abandoned. Are they still masking in the operating room? Are they disinfecting bedpans? Are they pumping in drinking water from the parking lot drainage ditch? Who could be sure at this point?

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He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱

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Updated the post on booster restrictions. They’re still too restricted: “limited to those age 65 and older” and “those with weakened immune systems” only. Please join me in demanding broader sooner access to the boosts! You can use my form, or write the White House directly. Feel free to use my letter, or write your own!

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I imagine almost everyone reading this is aware of the changes at Twitter and how blue checks no longer are verifying any authenticity of the accounts on the platform. Many blue check accounts spread disinfo before, but it’s even more common now with cheap blue checks. There are many casual sometimes-users of social media who might not know this, so do your friends and family a favour and mention in passing what’s happened with blue checks on Twitter to spread the word — just in case!

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Debunk the Funk with Dr. Wilson - Reacting to “The Consequences of School Closures” (w/ Walker Bragman & Dr. Tyler Black)

Dr. Wilson, Dr. Tyler Black, and Walker Bragman (Important Context) review and comment on the disinformation in the congressional subcommittee meeting about school closures. Dr. Tyler Black explains how he had turned down being on the Mehdi Hasan Show with Monica Gandhi because he didn't consider her a reliable source because of all her predictions that wound up being wrong. And that led to the interview where Mehdi Hasan asks Monica Gandhi all about her continual wrong statements.

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The image is that of a flue, a terracotta chimney part that is a square tube shape, on it the word FLUE. The caption reads Smallpox never became the flu. Thousands of years and smallpox never became like the flu.

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"Washing your hands is good. Like Jesus man, how are you a surgeon, and you're advocating against washing hands? It's funny because Kulldorff just said we shouldn't focus on one disease we should focus on all diseases. Well washing hands is just generally good for infectious diseases, it just generally helps prevent it."

Dr. Wilson, Debunk the Funk about the weird anti-public health people who testified in the U.S. Congress in February 2023

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