šļø Public Hearing: Oversight - COVID-19 in NYC š„ Petition: Require masking in all healthcare settings š· Tomorrow: ELECTION DAY IN THE U.S.A. ā
The virus isnāt racist, but society is, and itās hurting everybody.
Contents:
- Events, Actions, & Campaigns
- Pandemic field notes & āLiving with the virusā
- In the News (virus & adjacent media, science, news, essays, and op-eds)
- This is NOT Fine section (gaslighting & other outrages)
- He(a)rd Scuttlebutt (the pandemic grapevine)
Americans, Have you voted yet?
TOMORROW IS ELECTION DAY IN THE U.S.A.
I voted 2 weeks ago by mail dropbox. Donāt assume everyone you know voted. Ask. Remind them. Just in case.
NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL
Public Hearing "Oversight - COVID-19 in NYC: Evaluating the Present Challenges."
Monday, Nov 7th at 1pm US Eastern Time (rescheduled from last week)
Anyone in the public is able to testify virtually or in person at the hearing and/or you can submit written testimony up to 72 hours after hearing has been adjourned. To sign up to testify virtually or in person, or to submit written testimony, and to learn more please go to https://council.nyc.gov/testify/. Please be advised that any personal information you provide in your comment or testimony will be publicly available and will remain part of the public record. More information on the website above.
Join Mandate Masks NY for updates: www.mandatemasksny.org
USA Petition: Require masking in all healthcare settings
Just in time for flu season, withĀ 300-400Ā US residents dying from COVID-19 daily, the CDC revised its infection control guidelines regarding mask-wearing in healthcare settings, from hospitals and clinics to home care providers and nursing homes. The new guideline recommended masks only need to be worn in healthcare settings when COVID Community Transmission rates are high, based on the CDC map. This change is dangerous, unethical and based on flawed data. Sign our petition to: President Joe Biden, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, and White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Ashish JhaĀ
By the Peopleās CDC
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/require-masking-in-all-healthcare-settings/
The virus isnāt racist, but society is, and itās hurting everybody.
How it started.
2022 Mar 29
U.S. media has extensively covered racial disparities in COVID-19 infections and deaths, which may ironically reduce public concern about COVID-19. In two preregistered studies (conducted in the fall of 2020), we examined whether perceptions of COVID-19 racial disparities predict White U.S. residentsā attitudes toward COVID-19. Utilizing a correlational design (NĀ =Ā 498), we found that those who perceived COVID-19 racial disparities to be greater reported reduced fear of COVID-19, which predicted reduced support for COVID-19 safety precautions. In Study 2, we manipulated exposure to information about COVID-19 racial disparities (NĀ =Ā 1,505). Reading about the persistent inequalities that produced COVID-19 racial disparities reduced fear of COVID-19, empathy for those vulnerable to COVID-19, and support for safety precautions. These findings suggest that publicizing racial health disparities has the potential to create a vicious cycle wherein raising awareness reduces support for the very policies that could protect public health and reduce disparities.
How itās going.
Whites now more likely to die from covid than Blacks: Why the pandemic shifted (archive link)
October 19, 2022
āIt was a lot easier to stay away from others,ā his widow, Hollie Wilson, said of the largely White and predominantly conservative county of about 42,000 residents. āLess people. Less chance of exposure.ā
Covid seemed like other peopleās problem ā until it wasnāt.
The imbalance in death rates among the nationās racial and ethnic groups has been a defining part of the pandemic since the start. To see the pattern, The Washington Post analyzed every death during more than two years of the pandemic. Early in the crisis, the differing covid threat was evident in places such as Memphis and Fayette County. Deaths were concentrated in dense urban areas, where Black people died at several times the rate of White people.
āI donāt want to say that we werenāt worried about it, but we werenāt,ā said Hollie, who described her 59-year-old husband as someone who ānever took a pill.ā After a while, āyou kind of slack off on some things,ā she said.
(Bold emphasis, mine.)
šļø In the news
š° CMD: Koch-Funded Legal Group Fights to Protect Online Covid Misinformation ByĀ Walker Bragman (The pair are two of the three co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, an influential open letter released in October 2020 calling on governments to reject large-scale public health interventions in the face of the Covid pandemic in favor of āfocused protectionā for the vulnerable only. The document, which was signed at a conference hosted and filmed by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a libertarian think tank that has received Charles Koch Foundation funding, generated fierce backlash within the scientific community but was embraced by certain political leadersāparticularly those on the right like Trump and Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida.
Funding information for the Brownstone Institute is not yet available, as it just received tax-exempt status in early December 2021, and its website states, āWe do not and will not share donor names.ā NCLAās involvement in the lawsuit signals the latest effort in an ongoing war on public health measures waged by right-wing, business-aligned groupsāparticularly those affiliated with billionaire Charles Koch.)
šŗšø Fortune: The U.S. is officially in a flu epidemic, federal health officials say. Theyāre preparing to deploy troops and ventilators if necessary BY Erin Prater (Federal health officials on Friday painted a picture of some respiratory illnesses like flu surging in some areas of the country, with other areas seeing peaks of RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus infection. Cases of COVID and flu-like illnesses are occurring all areas, they said. RSV is a common virus that hospitalizes thousands of infants and young children each year, though it can also pose a risk to the elderly. Symptoms can range from mild cold-like ailments like sneezing, sore throat, fever, and stuffy nose to pneumonia, which can prove fatal. Patients can quickly take a turn for the worst.)
šŗšø Huffpost Politics: House Report Exposes Trump's Efforts To Politicize The CDC, COVID-19 Guidance ByĀ Marita Vlachou (In May 2020, Alexander also edited language in a draft CDC statement regarding the pandemicās death toll in the U.S. to make it āmore positive,ā according to an email reviewed by the subcommittee. Redfield also said the administration ācompromisedā the agencyās COVID-19 guidance in several instances to paint a rosier picture of the pandemic.)
šŗšø The Washington Post: CDC officials describe intense pressure, job threats from Trump White House By Dan Diamond (archive link)(Former CDC director Robert Redfield, former top deputy Anne Schuchat and others described how the Trump White House and its allies repeatedly ābulliedā staff, tried to rewrite their publications and threatened their jobs in an attempt to align the CDC with the more optimistic view of the pandemic espoused by Donald Trump, the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis concluded in a report released Monday. Several public health officials detailed a months-long campaign against Schuchat sparked by Trump appointeesā belief that her grim assessments of the pandemic reflected poorly on the president, leading Schuchat, a 32-year CDC veteran, to openly wonder if she would be fired in the summer of 2020, her colleagues told the panel.)
šØš³ Reuters: China rolls out first inhalable COVID vaccine By Casey Hall ("Our bodyās first line of defence is the mucus membrane of our respiratory system, we want that to be directly stimulated to improve immunity and using the inhaled vaccine does that," Dr Zhao Hui, chief medical officer at Shanghai United Family Hospital Pudong, told Reuters. His hospital is among those administering the new vaccine, which will be used as well as regular injected shots.)
This is NOT fine
A lot of people are confused or frustrated when they test positive for longer than 5 days, and many are upset when they are sick for longer. It seems like people are truly being blindsided because they were not informed that covid would make them sick and or contagious for over a week. But the vast majority of people I know whoāve gotten covid recently have tested positive to at least day 10. And most of the sources I found cited a week as average. The CDC really did public health messaging a disservice, even in this area.
And something often missing in the test to exist isolation is actual recuperation. Are you actually recovered? Even after testing negative, people should probably be tending to symptoms and problems, and not ignoring them.
š TIME: Why You Should Restāa LotāIf You Have COVID-19 By Jamie Ducharme
(The only guaranteed way to avoid Long COVID is not to get infected by SARS-CoV-2. But if someone does get sick, āRest is incredibly important to give your body and your immune system a chance to fight off the acute infection,ā says Dr. Janna Friedly, a post-COVID rehabilitation specialist at the University of Washington who recovered from Long COVID herself. āPeople are sort of fighting through it and thinking itāll go away in a few days and theyāll get better, and that doesnāt really work with COVID.ā)
He(a)rd Scuttlebuttā¦ pandemic grapevine šš±
SARS-COV-2 is known to cause post infection complications including cardiac problems. Bad actors are flooding the zone with anti-vax propaganda about every noteworthy sudden death in order to trick people into thinking itās all "not covid" when it absolutely could be SARS-COV-2.
49 year old food author named Julie Powell reported she got covid in September, then reported getting flu in October, and her last tweet reported that she had a condition her doctors were not worried about it, and then she died.Ā
I came across a whole twitter thread about friends who decided that the pandemic and health concerns are verboten. I donāt know what these people are going to do when theyāre old ā if they make it there. Theyāll deny and ignore the volcano erupting it right up to being pyroclasted into a grim posterity.
Nobody would take someone seriously who said āchild car safety seat fatigueā or said that ālittle doses of HIV is good for youā or that schools should never lockdown when thereās a shooter inside rampagingā¦ or that theyāre tired of drinking water with the poo filtered out of it. Why do we take people seriously when they say nonsense about taking precautions for a serious virus on the loose?
People complaining about ventilation and air filtration measures, and yet refusing to mask, and refusing to stay home when sick. Sometimes in defiance of their own clergy. What are people thinking??
āReality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.ā
ā Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon