📝 Petition to WaPo: Stop spreading misinfo 🗞️ Save PCR testing for all in Massachusetts 🧪 Public comment period on Telemedicine regs
Disability Rights California opposes the California Department of Public Health’s (CDPH) updated guidance ending masking requirements in healthcare, long-term care, and other high-risk settings.
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 letter campaign: Demand Protections and Expanded Care for Our People!
By Long Covid Justice: Join us in demanding your governor ensure your state reevaluates its enrollees' eligibility in as fair and as equitable a way as possible and that your state takes every step possible to sustain and expand health coverage. Email your Governor Today!
https://secure.everyaction.com/nnfoXJ044E--VuwWqWT2lA2
Petition: Tell the Washington Post to stop spreading misinformation about COVID
By STRATEGIES FOR HIGH IMPACT & LONG COVID ACTION PROJECT (LCAP): “the article created a dangerous misrepresentation of the prevalence and severity of Long COVID, downplaying its existing risk to society – even while including compelling stories of the profound impact it has on individuals.”
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/tell-the-washington-post-to-stop-spreading-misinformation-about-covid/
Massachusetts USA Letter Campaign: Save Free PCR Testing for Uninsured and ALL Massachusetts Residents
by Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity: Governor Maura Healey announcement that they will close the state’s “Stop the Spread” COVID PCR testing program on March 31, 2023 will remove access to testing for undocumented, uninsured residents of the state. Stop the Spread Sites are an essential service for uninsured MA residents, and others needing free, fast accessible PCR tests. This rolling back of healthcare access is a dangerous precedent for Massachusetts, which has one of the best public health infrastructures in the country.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/save-free-pcr-ma
DEA Announces Proposed Rules for Permanent Telemedicine Flexibilities
Comments must be submitted online or postmarked via mail on or before March 31, 2023
Drug Topics: DEA Proposes New Telemedicine Regulations. By Peter Wehrwein. Mar 1, 2023 - These rules — developed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Verterans Affairs — are expanding patient access to critical therapies beyond the scheduled end of the COVID-19 public health emergency on May 11th.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is amending its regulations, in concert with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to expand the circumstances under which individual practitioners are authorized to prescribe schedule III-V narcotic drugs or combinations of such drugs that have been approved for use in continuous medical treatment (also referred to as maintenance) or withdrawal management treatment (also referred to as detoxification)—via a telemedicine encounter, including an audio-only telemedicine encounter.
Submit comment here:
https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/DEA-2023-0028-0001
🗞️ In the news
🇮🇪 Irish Times: Nursing union authorises ballots for industrial action over ‘unsafe staffing’ - Ballot of worst affected locations to go ahead as INMO calls on department and HSE to provide plan. by Emmet Malone, Fri Feb 17 2023 (“What we’ve said to employers is there’s an expectation that they keep their staff safe. They must have the current staffing numbers to deal with the number of and volume of patients that they’re providing care to, otherwise it’s unsafe.” She said that the absence of an urgent plan to address the fact that an average of 11 nurses are assaulted each day was both “incredible” and “unacceptable”.)
🇺🇸 Forbes: Neglected Tropical Diseases Are Increasingly Common In Impoverished Areas Of U.S.: Sen. Booker Reintroduces A Bill To Help Eliminate Such Diseases. by Joshua Cohen Feb 17, 2023 (Neglected diseases of poverty are a group of chronic and disabling illnesses, such as Chagas disease, hookworm, and Dengue fever, that primarily impact extremely impoverished people. The diseases are caused by parasites, bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and other pathogens, and disproportionally impact the most vulnerable, which contributes to and exacerbates existing social and health disparities. An estimated 12 million Americans are affected by these debilitating diseases. Many of these diseases are what scientists and policymakers have been calling neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) since Peter Hotez and colleagues coined the term 20 years ago. NTDs are a heterogeneous group of infections which are highly prevalent in developing regions of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. They include, among others, onchocerciasis (river blindness), African trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis, cholera, Chagas disease, and Dengue fever.)
This is NOT fine
Business Journal: California announces relaxed COVID-19 health order updates. March 7, 2023
Beginning April 3, masks will no longer be required in indoor high-risk and health care settings.
It’s still high risk, but California government just doesn’t care anymore I guess.
Disability Rights California opposes the California Department of Public Health’s (CDPH) updated guidance ending masking requirements in healthcare, long-term care, and other high-risk settings on April 3, 2023. Removing masking protections is a step backward for health equity in California.
People’s CDC: Removing masks in healthcare is dangerous and unethical.
Patients come to clinics and hospitals to improve their health. Healthcare providers have an ethical responsibility to DO NO HARM and ensure that they do not expose patients to COVID.
U.S. govt should release the data on hospital-acquired SARS-CoV-2 cases
This lack of transparency makes it impossible to make fully informed decisions about healthcare risks, prevents people from pursuing medical care, and damages hospitals’ reputations by appearing to want to hide this data.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
Senior & Disability Action have been busy advocating for public health in the Bay Area California. 🙌
I’ve heard that the mask mandate is fortunately staying at Oakland government buildings, but that the Oakland City Council is making it harder for remote access to council meetings.
Viruses are risk and an outcome of inequality
It seems comparing covid to HIV has a certain compelling aspect to it, and a recent academic article made this connection which felt like a vindication for some. But I don’t think this comparison is going to lead where people hope it will.
The vast majority of the western world does not see HIV as a problem at all. This is morally wrong, of course. But my point is that if you think this is going to finally wake people up, it’s a fool’s errand. Economically better off white people in the West are getting and taking paxlovid immediately when they test positive for covid, and they’re as vaccinated and boosted as possible. Some may still do poorly but it remains a very inequitable fallout from the virus. This is the comparison that actually makes sense between the viruses! And it’s not one anyone should celebrate.
This comparison between the actual viruses is also leading people to assume AIDS drugs can cure Long Covid (even though they don’t cure HIV, they just treat it). Some drugs have no apparent mechanism for effect on the sars-cov-2 virus because they are specific to HIV. There have been some conflicting studies about acute covid and people living with HIV that have confused the issue. Some of those studies could be seeing the effects of how uncontrolled or poorly controlled HIV is far more likely to lead to severe illness or death from any cause and better controlled HIV is less likely to lead to death. There’s no conclusive evidence these drugs would help people who are not HIV positive because the people in the studies are HIV positive subjects. One study on Azvudine with HIV negative patients with acute covid (not Long Covid) was a very small group of just 31 patients. Clearly we should have more studies such as this on a wide variety of potential treatments, for both acute covid and Long Covid, and we should demand it.
"Any amount of sacrifice by the individual for the collective is vilified."
— Walker Bragman on political opposition to public health, Debunk the Funk.