📋 Petition: Support safe staffing for RNs! 🩺 Emergency response should never be a political football. 🏈 If it sounds too good to be true, stop and review. 🚩
The memory holed knowledge of presymptomatic and asymptomatic spread of infectious diseases, and bringing plague sticks back into fashion once again.
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)
USA Petition - #PassPaidLeave
By Glamour and Paid Leave for All: Sign this letter to demand policymakers finally commit to passing paid leave, and give all working people the right to care for themselves and their families without losing a paycheck.
USA Petition - Tell your members of Congress: Support safe staffing for RNs!
National Nurses United: “We are excited to announce the introduction of a federal bill in Congress, the Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act (S. 1113/H.R. 2530). The bill would set specific safety limits on the numbers of patients each registered nurse can care for in hospitals throughout the United States — and it's important that we generate as much support as we can from our lawmakers now.”
Yes, declaring a state of emergency in places on the path of the total eclipse was correct.
Social media can scramble truth and make anything sensible into a partisan football. Let’s remember that the Republicans have made it legally almost impossible to do any kind of emergency management in terms of disaster response to disease outbreaks. They have used the claim that it’s “authoritarian” or “an abuse of power” in order to stymie public health measures. So I’m a little disturbed that there were Democratic Party side voices out there on social media criticizing Republican politicians for declaring emergencies in places that were expecting to see influxes of large gatherings of people at one time in one day, in order to observe the eclipse. This is sensible because the more people gather in a place that’s not accustomed to large gatherings, the more there is a strain on emergency services via health incidents, traffic accidents, etc. Niagara Falls, Ontario, also used to high volumes of people, prudently declared a state of emergency to be prepared for the higher volume of visitors for the eclipse. Canada has it’s share of trucker convoy MAGA types, but Niagara Falls, Ontario, so far as I know, is not particularly MAGA aligned, so far as I know, and I was there a number of times during the Trump years. London, Ontario, I won’t comment on.
Just because Steve Scalise protected himself with a mask doesn't mean masks are wrong, after all.
Let’s not keep making disaster response and management a political football.
🗞️ In the news
SBS News - What was thought to be a 'significant' COVID-19 milestone wasn't at all It appeared as though Australia had a week without any COVID-19-associated deaths. But new data shows that wasn't the case. Published 12 April 2024 By Amy Hall Esterman said while Australia was in a "much, much better place" than a couple of years ago, over 22,000 confirmed cases had been recorded so far for March — with more data still to trickle in. "That's the tip of the iceberg, because the vast majority of people don't report it anymore, so Australia is still fairly much awash with COVID-19," he said. Griffin said another wave was "inevitable". "It's not seasonal nor predictable at this point in time … but it will happen," he said. "We just need to make sure that we maintain a level of awareness and preparedness so that we continue to minimise the impact. "We'd hate to see those numbers rise higher than they should be because we're not doing the right things."
AP - Dengue fever outbreak in Argentina leads to shortage of a must-have item: mosquito repellent BY ISABEL DEBRE April 9, 2024 As the South American country contends with its worst outbreak of dengue fever in recent memory, bug spray has become this season’s hot-ticket item. So hot that it’s sold out in virtually all Buenos Aires stores and going for exorbitant prices online, in some cases as much as 10 times the retail value. “We’ve been to at least 30 pharmacies all over the city and there is nothing left,” Ana Infante said as she swatted mosquitoes away from her two small daughters, their arms visibly pocked with red bumps.
COVID-19 Tied to Increased Risk for Rheumatic Disease — Maybe not a form of long COVID, but a concern just the same by John Gever, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today March 4, 2024 Yon and colleagues stopped short of calling AIRD a form of "long COVID," in which fatigue, malaise, and respiratory symptoms typically predominate. What they did conclude was that AIRD appears to qualify as a long-term COVID-19 complication: AIRD development rates remained strongly elevated in both countries up to a year after infection, and beyond that in the Japanese data (HR 1.57 vs general population, 95% CI 1.50-1.64) though not in Korea. The risk increase wasn't an artifact of COVID-19 patients having more contact with healthcare systems and thus heightened observation, the researchers emphasized. Their analyses also included comparisons between COVID-19 patients and people treated for influenza; AIRD rates were significantly greater in the COVID groups, by 30% in the Korean data and by 14% in Japan.
STAT - H5N1 bird flu in U.S. cattle: A wake-up call to action - By Luciana Borio and Phil Krause April 12, 2024 While FDA-approved antiviral drugs like Tamiflu and Xofluza could be an important line of defense against H5N1, logistical barriers impede their timely administration, as they work best when given as early as possible within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms. Most Americans would find it challenging to get a prescription filled for these medicines within the optimal time frame. Streamlining access to stockpiled antiviral drugs through improved test-to-treat measures like behind-the-counter distribution or dedicated telemedicine consultations could vastly improve their effectiveness as a frontline defense. Making plans to do that need to start now.
This is NOT fine
The memory holed knowledge of presymptomatic and asymptomatic spread of infectious diseases.
My mother warned me back in the 70s that people can spread viruses they have before they get symptoms. Why is this suddenly forgotten knowledge among some doctors and scientists? I saw a sign at a healthcare provider saying "if you have symptoms please wear a mask to prevent spread of viruses." They surely were told about this as children, in school, and the evidence in the pandemic has made it quite clear that this happens. And when I say evidence I mean scientific evidence and anecdotal evidence for 4 years straight, if not a lifetime. Did everyone get amnesia or something to memory hole this basic common knowledge?
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
If it sounds too good to be true, stop and review.
If it sounds too good to be true... If you're wondering why isn't this fantastic tech everywhere.... Probably a reason for it. (It doesn't work, has safety issues, the cost is ridiculous, or there's some better solution.) In other words, it's just the next hyped scam or hopium mirage.
We actually have things that work for stemming infectious diseases. Masks, HEPA filters, testing & isolating, hand washing, vaccination, and antiviral medication. We need to ask why we're not using the things we have!
The campaign against child vaccination and in favour of widespread infection with contagious diseases is the same project.
Covid Inquiry: Concerns with former Children's Commissioner Anne Longfield's witness statement - Inconsistencies and a failure to mention Long Covid - COUNTER DISINFORMATION PROJECT MAR 28, 2024 UsForThem opposed all efforts to reduce transmission in schools, called for children to be allowed the “benefits” of infection, and coordinated an antivax campaign against child vaccination. The founder Molly Kingsley has shared calls for Nuremberg 2.0 against anyone involved in child vaccination and defended disgraced MP Bridgen’s claims that covid vaccines could be worse than the holocaust. Despite UsForThem's disinformation and promotion of far-right conspiracy theories Longfield has continued to support them even submitting joint applications with them for other modules of the covid inquiry.
The anti-vax camp claims, against all evidence, that vaccine adverse effects are less rare than is known to be when that is absolutely not true and there’s no evidence of it. They have to make this claim of more widespread risk, because otherwise, they would have to admit to advocating everyone stop taking cholesterol pills, cancer treatments, and everything else that people know very well saves our own health and the lives of our loved ones through modern medical science, based on very rare cases of allergic reactions and the like. It is absolutely clear this is part of an overall covid contrarian Great Barrington Declaration natural herd immunity right-wing ideology that claims widespread infection is good, and protecting the general welfare through public health measures is not. This movement, and its claims, are authoritarian, anti-community, and against the public good.
Paul Marik and Pierre Kory brought some kind of legal action, it seems to me, to harangue and silence a doctor who criticized them, and then did a confusingly misleading hit piece on that doctor to boot. But I assume that these characters will now be chastised severely by all the right-wing media pundits for being all cancel culture and for censorship, right? (Not holding my breath.)
“This is the Heritage Foundation. They are one of the most influential right-wing think tanks in the country. And they’re out there making anti-vax covid misinformation like that’s part their thing now, it’s just part of right-wing orthodoxy.” — Walker Bragman on Anti Vaxxers Lobby Supreme Court to Kill Us All Status Coup News March 22, 2024