🎲 Reinfections are risky 📰 A good response to bad advice 💢 The immunocompromised are rightfully a little bitter about left media
Content creators ought to have more integrity but in the end it is consumers who need to be ever vigilant.
USA Letter Campaign to the White House & Senate - Prioritize Telework for Federal Workers
Chloe Humbert - Telework should be prioritized for our future, to mitigate climate change and infectious disease. In a recent Senate bill, Government Executive reported that: “Manchin specifically targeted remote work as something that “hinders” productivity in the federal workplace in a statement endorsing the bill.”
Evidence shows the odds are better with vaccination and much worse with reinfections.
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🗞️ In the news
ABC.NET.AU - SA Liberal leader David Speirs slams government for hospital code yellow 'disaster', cancelled elective surgeries By Briana Fiore and Jodie Hamilton Posted Thu 30 May 2024 This morning, SA Health chief executive Dr Robyn Lawrence said hospitals were experiencing "intense pressure" caused by a combination of a COVID wave with other winter illnesses, such as the flu, RSV and other respiratory infections. Dr Lawrence said there were currently 200 more patients in hospitals in South Australia compared to the same time last year. "What we've seen over the last few weeks is increasing demand for patients requiring hospital admission, but not only that these patients are increasingly unwell," she said. "We have had every intensive care bed open and filled with patients."
Pro-Publica - She Campaigned for a Texas School Board Seat as a GOP Hard-Liner. Now She’s Rejecting Her Party’s Extremism. Courtney Gore, a Granbury ISD school board member, has disavowed the far-right platform she campaigned on after finding no evidence that students were being indoctrinated by the district’s curriculum. Her defiance has brought her backlash. by Jeremy Schwartz May 15, 5 a.m. CDT She was motivated to seek a school board seat after a steady stream of reports from the right-wing media she consumed and her social media feeds pointed to what she saw as inappropriate teachings in public schools. She, too, had been outraged by school mask mandates and vaccine requirements during the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Gore said she feels that she was unwittingly part of a statewide effort to weaken local support of public schools and lay the groundwork for a voucher system.
This is NOT fine
Learn nothing and accept poor treatment isn’t good advice.
Ryan Tennant, who has himself written letters to the editor in Kitchener Ontario and I quoted in a previous newsletter. He points out good advice from a reader, in response to what looks like a really problematic advice column in the newspaper.
@ryantennant_ · May 24, 2024 My grandma called me this morning because of a feedback piece in the newspaper's advice column today. "It's all the things you say too!" I hope the advice columnists heed this reader's recommendations in the last paragraph. It's true; we have a duty to take care of each other. Newspaper clipping printed text: Feedback Regarding the family disagreement over COVID-19 (April 10): Reader "While the 'global emergency of acute COVID-19 has mostly passed in Canada, thanks to vaccines, some minimally effective drugs and non-pharmaceutical interventions like masking that have since been malignantly politicized, the long-term effects are still a matter of grave concern. "COVID-19 is a vascular disease which causes, among other health problems, strokes, diabetes, ME/CFS and brain damage. Stats Can reported that up to 40 per cent 1 of us will develop long COVID by our third infection. "Please use your platform to encourage your readers to take care of one another: stay up to date on their vaccinations, stay home when sick, advocate for clean indoor air and wear a well-fitting mask in public spaces."
And he posted what it was a response to:
@ryantennant_ · May 24, 2024 Here was the original piece from April 10th that the reader was providing feedback on: “I am not dismissing anyone's stand on the vaccine; I'm just saying that, with the pandemic behind us (yes, I know COVID-19 still exists, but it is now a known virus, like the flu), families and friends should be able to get back to the loving place where they left off before they found themselves disagreeing on one (important) issue. I have a friend who doesn't believe in vaccines, whereas I do. We took a hiatus during the pandemic because we didn't agree on anything. But we're friends again because that's no longer an issue to discuss or argue over. Help your family move forward.”
This reminds me of the naive journalist in Milford Pennsylvania who’s decided that Trumpers and anti-vaxxers are fine after all now, he’s good with becoming anti-mask and anti-vax, and that the rest of us should just join them in their reckless behaviour, and people should now trust right-wing covid contrarian anti-vax anti-maskers. But what bothers me most about the “pandemic is over, just let all the bad behaviour be water under the bridge” and get back to welcoming family back, infectiousness recklessness and all… is not even that it involves the inaccurate definition of the pandemic being over. It’s not even this foolish idea that “moving forward” somehow wouldn’t involve learning to adapt to new realities. The scary part about this is that somehow for these people giving this advice, the pandemic was never real life, and somehow happened outside the reality of community and family functioning, instead of being one of those life experiences where people had an opportunity to really live up to their best being, or they instead showed you the truth of who they really are.
If someone was reckless with your safety regarding covid, they will likely be inconsiderate in other ways. If someone got hostile with you over right-wing extremism over pandemic issues, chances are their right-wing extremism will be provoked by any number of other issues. We already know that the trucker convoy Moms for Liberty anti-vax crowd were not satisfied by Democratic Party politicians agreeing to cede on public health. Once MAGA won that battle and got what they want, unmitigated spread and restricted vaccination, then they came after Black History books and reproductive health.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
The immunocompromised are rightfully a little bitter about left media voices abandoning pandemic issues.
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Elite panic style: Only the status quo matters in a changing world. They will sacrifice the restaurants to try to force the olden days.
Now NYC is getting rid of outdoor restaurant dining options just like Philly. And it’s not because people don’t want it — it’s authoritarian mayors who mysteriously identify as Democrats. It’s because certain dinosaurs with pull are demanding society go backwards, likely because of pure elite panic.
How Capitalism Murdered Journalism with Margot Susca - Adam Conover - Factually - May 29, 2024 “Sam Zell former private equity billionaire took over Tribune in 2007 and he had people coming to him saying we need to embrace the digital future that lies ahead he you know he had executives writing him memos that said you know anybody who says we should invest in digital get rid of them our business is in print”
Business Insider - Remote work is 'bullshit,' says real-estate billionaire Sam Zell, to cheers from fellow execs who profit from offices. By Alex Nicoll Apr 23, 2023 The value of big office properties is hanging in the balance as corporate tenants pull back on space, or don't renew leases altogether. The trend and dire outlook had real estate giant Brookfield defaulting on a loan tied to offices this month for the second time this year. WeWork, a once celebrated investment and cornerstone of the co-working space movement, was just warned that it could be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.
Sam Zell died in May 2023 — after a brief lung illness.
Stigma and social myths about physical realities is what hampers progress and improvements.
An interview with Robert Sapolsky talked about how people’s actions are the sum of everything, and talked about the quarantine model for all wrongdoing, and compares it to keeping kids home when they’re sick. I think we need to get that part right first, because many places are not even doing that in fact. I wish someone would inform Sapolsky that in some places they’ve been encouraging kids go to school while sick with covid, and there continue to be schools this school year forced to close and go remote because of too many staff off sick, and there have been op-eds published saying schools should have kids to stay in their seats even if there’s possibly a bomb in the school or presumably even if there’s an active shooter on the premises because the myth of potential “learning loss” worries them more than child deaths.
‘Live to 100’ explores why people in ‘blue zones’ live longer than average PBS NewsHour Dec 23, 2023 Dan Buettner: “I have no faith, and I do not know of any research where you can change a population’s health by trying to convince individuals to change their behaviour or somehow imbue them with responsibility. We’re genetically hardwired to create fat salt and sugar and take rest whenever we want. So unless we set up our environment where it’s easy for us to eat basically whole food plant-based easier for us to walk than it is to drive, we’re going to continue to see healthcare costs in the trillions as we see today in America.”
The “social determinants of health” are well understood. And yet with the pandemic some in leadership positions have insisted that it’s up to individual choices to end the pandemic. Obviously public health is needed for all these things, and the sooner we get behind that as a society, the better off we’ll be.
The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle of Content Production
There is a lot of money being spent to promote narratives, ideas, and products that benefit those with that money. There’s also some money to be made telling people what they want to hear. Anti-vax nods, cooing and soothing, telling people whatever you’re doing it’s ok you’re special so you’re gonna Win The Zombie Apocalypse (eugenics), maybe by getting Secret Knowledge (pseudoscience misinformation). Content creators ought to have more integrity but in the end it is consumers who need to be ever vigilant.
“Propaganda gains traction through repetition and saturation. The same message is disseminated through multiple channels and institutions, with small variations, to lead a maximum number of individuals “in the same direction, but differently,” as the sociologist Jacques Ellul wrote.” — RUTH BEN-GHIAT