🇨🇦 Petition to Canadian government ✏️ National Nurses United Petition to CDC & HICPAC 🏥 Mask advocacy groups or resources 😷
CIDRAP: "Wastewater surveillance may be best marker of community COVID-19 prevalence."
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)
CANADA Petition: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to put an unsustainable level of strain on Canada’s public health system
By Justin Singer from Toronto, Ontario: We, the undersigned, concerned citizens and residents of Canada, members of the scientific and public health communities, and advocates for evidence-based public policy, call upon the Government of Canada to: 1. Bring provincial health care systems into compliance with the criteria of public administration, comprehensiveness, universality, portability, and accessibility, as outlined in the Canada Health Act; …
People’s CDC webiinar - Wastewater Surveillance for Detecting COVID-19
USA Letter Campaign: Wastewater data is valuable infrastructure that must be funded.
By Chloe Humbert: Wastewater data is valuable infrastructure technology. Wastewater monitoring must continue and be expanded for our modern society's scientific public health management. Wastewater monitoring data is important scientific data for a number of applications, including public health monitoring for viruses like SARSCOV2. This needs to be funded and encouraged at all levels of government.
A postcard to Joe Biden from Chloe in Scranton, the People’s CDC External Review of the CDC recommendation #6
This is part of my 100 postcards to Scranton Joe, candidate for re-election, from Chloe in Scranton, Here are all 10 in the series.
🗞️ In the news
🇺🇸 Government Executive - White House calls on agencies to 'aggressively' reduce telework this fall. Chief of Staff Jeff Zients instructed agencies to focus on executing plans to increase in-person work in September and October. AUGUST 7, 2023, by Erich Wagner “As we look towards the fall, and with the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency, your agencies will be implementing increases in the amount of in-person work for your team,” he wrote. “This is a priority of the president—and I am looking to each of you to aggressively execute this shift in September and October.”
🇨🇦 CBC - Federal government struggling to get rid of millions of extra COVID-19 rapid tests. About 39 million extra tests are in storage. Laura Osman · The Canadian Press · Posted: Jul 29, 2023 "Acknowledging the volumes of tests in play and the challenge of divesting such quantity over a time-bound period, it is expected that disposal of expired tests would be required," staff wrote to Health Canada's deputy minister in a memo signed March 25. The memo was obtained through federal access-to-information laws.
🧻 CIDRAP - Wastewater surveillance may be best marker of community COVID-19 prevalence. By Mary Van Beusekom, MS. July 26, 2023 Rapid determination of community COVID-19 incidence can guide screening at hospitals, residential facilities, schools, and communal gatherings; mobilize treatment supplies; and preserve hospital capacity, the authors said. And since the CDC stopped publicly sharing COVID-19 case data in May 2023, water surveillance is likely the most accurate way to monitor infections The researchers suggested that counties performing wastewater surveillance and reporting data to the CDC NWSS could use an aggregated measure of the percentage of maximum wastewater SARS-CoV-2 concentration to estimate county COVID-19 prevalence. "Counties with a longer historical data record, tracking back to at least January 2022, will generally provide the most reliable estimates," they wrote.
🇺🇸 AP News - Nurses at New Jersey’s Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital go on strike, Updated 9:07 PM EDT, August 4, 2023 A main sticking point is staffing levels at the hospital, according to the union, United Steelworkers Local 4-200. The hospital counters that it’s among the highest-staffed medical centers in the state.
🇺🇸 The Maine Monitor - Maine physician who prescribed discredited COVID-19 treatments wanted to make a ‘spectacle’ of a state investigation. 18 months later, she said she’s succeeded. An anti-vaccination group chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is live streaming disciplinary hearings — and paying her legal fees. By Emily Bader, July 30, 2023 At one point, when Nass informed Joel Mahoney in a text message that the board subpoenaed his mother’s medical records, Nass wrote, “I know some crack attorneys. I certainly was hoping to make a public spectacle of an investigation.” On Friday, Nass’ adjudicatory hearing wrapped up its sixth full day. The first hearing date was over nine months ago. Closing arguments and board deliberations will be scheduled for a later date. The board’s grounds for disciplinary actions — which have been amended three times, with some allegations removed — include 13 violations related to patient care and competence, medical recordkeeping, “truth-telling and misrepresentation” and failure to comply with the board’s complaint notification and subpoenas in a timely manner.
💡 Scientific American: Conspiracy Theories Can Be Undermined with These Strategies, New Analysis Shows. A new review finds that only some methods to counteract conspiracy beliefs are effective. Here’s what works and what doesn’t. By Stephanie Pappas on April 5, 2023 The study is a review of research on attempts to counteract conspiratorial thinking, and it finds that common strategies that involve counterarguments and fact-checking largely fail to change people’s beliefs. The most promising ways to combat conspiratorial thinking seem to involve prevention, either warning people ahead of time about a particular conspiracy theory or explicitly teaching them how to spot shoddy evidence.
🔍 Wired - The Long Covid Mystery Has a New Suspect, Immune cells called monocytes are triggered to help clear infection—but in some cases they never switch off, leaving patients breathless for months. By MAGGIE CHEN, MAY 5, 2023 10:07 AM Pearmain and the team had good reason to suspect these cells. Other researchers had already found that SARS-CoV-2 affects monocytes. According to Judy Lieberman, a biologist at Harvard Medical School, in cases of severe Covid, monocytes infected with the virus often die in a way that releases lots of alarm molecules into the body, triggering large amounts of additional inflammation. “It’s like a feed-forward loop,” she says. “Once this gets going, it’s incredibly hard to control.” These results pointed to the potential role of dysfunctional monocytes in long Covid, as inflammation is known to contribute to some lasting symptoms.
🇺🇸 Propublica - He Became Convinced the School Board Was Pushing “Transgender Bullshit.” He Ended Up Arrested — and Emboldened. by Nicole Carr May 20, 2023 An image of a shooting target — with two bullet holes to the head and five scattered around the chest — serves as a warning to visitors who climb the brick steps and pass the American flag to reach Eric Jensen’s front door. “If you can read this you’re in range,” the sign says. Another warning, posted near the doorbell, states: “No Solicitation. … This property charges $50 per minute to listen to any vaccine/medical advice.” He ordered that one in 2021, after mobile units offering COVID-19 vaccines began riding through his community outside Winston-Salem, North Carolina. For years, Jensen had been looking for a way to voice his many grievances, related not just to masks and vaccines but to “transgender bullshit” and library books “trying to convert kids to gay” and other perceived dangers he says his five younger children face in the public school system. (The 65-year-old retiree has four other children who are adults.) Then he found a place where he could finally be heard.
🇺🇸 Mosquitoes that carry West Nile are becoming resistant to insecticides, CDC says - NBC News got rare access to the federal health agency's insect lab in Colorado where scientists study the spread of mosquitoes and the illnesses they carry. July 29, 2023, 3:35 PM EDT / Updated July 30, 2023, 7:12 PM EDT - By Erika Edwards VanDenBerg had a severe form of West Nile virus, caused by a single mosquito bite. He developed inflammation in his brain. He lost his ability to read and write. His arms and legs stiffened with paralysis. "I didn't know whether my mobility would ever come back," he said. "It was a pretty scary time." While this summer saw the first locally acquired cases of another illness linked to mosquitoes, malaria, in two decades, it's West Nile virus — and the mosquitoes that spread it — that most worries federal health officials.
This is NOT fine
The new healthcare infection control recommendations being proposed by CDC HICPAC are weaker than existing protocols. The committee is packed with representatives from some of the nation’s largest hospitals. Meetings are subject to little to no public scrutiny. At the last meeting the committee voted on guidelines before permitting public comment. Advocates have been requesting the draft guidelines for weeks with no reply. The proposed guidelines ignore the CDC’s existing “Hierarchy of Controls” and the extensive evidence on the effectiveness of respirators and the importance of ventilation for controlling exposure to infectious aerosols. If these changes are implemented, it leads to weakening protections for health care workers and patients.
Send complaints to the US Congress and Senate.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
If you are in the USA or CANADA and looking for mask advocacy groups or resources to find N95s, Mandate Masks US has a directory and a mailing list: https://linktr.ee/MandateMasksUS
People promoting and selling dubious or unproven remedies and prophylactics continue to target market to people with Long Covid, and people who wish to avoid covid. There are insufficient treatment options for Long Covid, and too few community efforts at mitigation of spread, which is leading a lot of people to spend a bunch of money to buy something may be not just useless, but may even be harmful.
The Conversation - Ivermectin, blood washing, ozone: how long COVID survivors are being sold the next round of miracle cures. Published: August 7, 2022 by Deborah Lupton Individuals, doctors and pharmaceutical company representatives are among those who have promoted experimental therapies that have not been thoroughly tested with clinical trials. Some individuals or groups are exploiting people’s desperation, using long COVID support networks to attempt to profit from offering treatment plans or alternative therapies such as vitamin supplements and ozone treatment.
Encourage others to ask around, read up, and ask their own doctor, before putting out money for devices, pastes, potions, supplements, and nose sprays.
Instead of a crisis care guidance and baseline required for healthcare employers to implement we need to maintain and strengthen respiratory protection other protections for healthcare workers including the use of elastomeric powered air purifying respirators in recommendations.
Shimi Sharief MD MPH Public comment at the CDC HICPAC Meeting on June 8th 2023