√Upcoming U.S. Absentee Ballot Deadlines🧑🏫School Advocacy letter📚Workplace Advocacy Resources🧑🏭Paid Leave was always necessary, but especially now🤒
It's time to check in periodically with covid cautious friends to compare notes on safety precautions.
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)
School Advocacy letter: SCIENTIFIC ADVICE ON THE SUITABILITY OF PORTABLE AIR FILTRATION DEVICES IN THE CLASSROOM - Dr Adam Squires - Senior Lecturer/ Aerosol Scientist Department of Chemistry University of Bath
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f5iepsmsn3a25wv/Letter%20Covid%20HEPA%20schools.pdf?dl=0
Workplace Advocacy Resources: People’s CDC: Fighting for Worker's Safety During COVID, INFOSHEET
Virtual Meeting Webinar: Marked By COVID Covid Community Meeting
October 13: Came Chavez, Executive Director the Dolores Huerta Foundation: Covid, Farmworkers, and the Latinx population
4:30pm US Pacific Time (Los Angeles) / 7:30pm US Eastern (New York)
Register --> www.markedbycovid.com/meetings
U.S. Absentee Ballot Deadlines
https://www.vote.org/absentee-ballot-deadlines/
Please especially remind anyone you might know who might be planning on attending or might know someone who plans on attending, the APHA event in November which is scheduled ON ELECTION DAY.
(Don't assume everyone remembers! Ask! Find out if you have friends & family traveling on election day!)
In some states applications for absentee voting must be received 15 days before Election Day.
🗞️ In the news
🇦🇺 ABC News: Mandatory COVID-19 isolation periods scrapped from October 14, emergency response 'finished' says national cabinet (States will determine how to implement the change, but national cabinet agreed to continue targeted financial support for casual workers in aged care, disability care, Aboriginal health care and hospital care. Support payments for people infected with COVID-19 who are not in those sectors will also end from October 14, with payments that continue to be funded equally by the Commonwealth and individual states or territories. Scrapping mandatory isolation marks the end of one of the last remaining pandemic restrictions.)
🇬🇧 The Guardian: Bereaved families fear Covid inquiry cover-up after ban on testimony by Mark Honigsbaum (Families of those who died from Covid-19 have been barred from submitting individual testimony to the official public inquiry about the standard of care received by their loved ones during the pandemic, the Observer can reveal. Instead, the inquiry chair, Lady Hallett, is proposing they submit “pen portraits” to a private research company as part of a parallel “Listening Project” that will not have the power to demand the disclosure of documents or investigate claims about their relatives’ care.)
🇺🇸 Financial Times Behind The Money Podcast (transcript): Who will pay for the next Covid vaccines? by Michela Tindera and Jamie Smyth (Jamie Smyth: “They took money from funds that were aimed towards building stockpiles of tests, building stockpiles of personal protective equipment. So that money’s been spent on the new boosters.” ... Ashish Jha: “It will leave America worse off for both Covid and for future pandemics. And it is remarkable to me that Congress has not yet understood that for national security, for health security, this is an essential investment not just for Covid but for future respiratory pathogens as well. And yes, we will fall behind and further behind on this.”)
📣 Morgan Stephens Sep 19, 2022: Protesters for #LongCovid and #ME via @MEActNet are gathering in front of the White House today. Follow along to see what their demands for @POTUS are. (“I’m putting my body on the line,” says ME/CFS & LC patient Gabriel San Emeterio @gabrielhse, on how protesting today might affect his health.)
🇺🇸 The Philadelphia Inquirer: Philadelphia libraries are struggling to stay open and short hundreds of workers by Anna Orso (archive link) (Some libraries have just a handful of employees on the payroll. If one person gets sick or takes vacation, help often has to come from another branch. Librarians have gotten used to bouncing between branches, just trying to keep the doors open. “The pandemic really broke us,” Feldman said. “People are very burned out. We do it to ourselves, because we must continue to serve. It’s just wearing on people.”)
🧠 The Tyee: The Coming COVID Brain Wreck? by Andrew Nikiforuk (The virus can also penetrate the blood-brain barrier and ignite central nervous system inflammation. The blood-brain barrier is a sort of immunological roadblock that prevents infections in the blood from entering the brain. A Danish study also found that risk of ischemic stroke, which blocks blood flow to the brain, was more frequent in COVID-positive patients than in those with respiratory infections. “There have been several studies by other researchers that have shown, in mice and humans, that SARS-CoV-2 can attack the lining of the blood vessels and then trigger a stroke or seizure,” Al-Aly said in the news release. “It helps explain how someone with no risk factors could suddenly have a stroke.”)
🇺🇸⚖️ Washington Post: People in jail sued over covid safety. The oversight didn’t last. By Katie Mettler and Emily Davies (archive link) (The legal battles over coronavirus protections in the neighboring jurisdictions, experts say, helped expose grim realities about the jails here and nationwide. Jails are not equipped to provide specialty or ongoing care, leaving the people in them vulnerable to the spread of infectious diseases. As a result, generations of detainees in the facilities have suffered from outbreaks of valley fever, MRSA, HIV — and now the coronavirus, with a looming new threat of monkeypox.)
🐦 Atlas Obscura: Why Birds Changed Their Tune During the Pandemic by Shoshi Parks (It wasn’t just that the pandemic-induced pause in activity made it easier to hear urban wildlife. Some animals adapted almost instantaneously to exploit soundscapes vacated by traffic and construction. In the unnatural quiet of the Bay Area, amid noise levels that hadn’t been heard since 1954, white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys) changed their tune.)
This is NOT fine
Emphasis mine:
For all the punishment COVID-19 has inflicted in New Mexico, the virus also is responsible for the state enacting one of the broadest paid sick leave laws in the country.
“It’s almost completely related to the pandemic,” said Democratic state Sen. Mimi Stewart, who co-sponsored the bill in her chamber.
The New Mexico law, which went into effect July 1, requires private employers of all sizes to give their workers one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, up to 64 hours of paid leave in a year.
That’s it folks “up to 8 days” per year sick leave is “one of the broadest sick leave laws” in the United States of America.
Most parts of the U.S.A. has NO SICK LEAVE REQUIRED AT ALL.
How are people supposed to recover when sick or isolate when contagious?
Read my recent post: We Need A Paid Sick Leave Guarantee
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt, grapevine & word of mouth…
Every mention on social media of immunocompromised being put in jeopardy in healthcare settings without mask rules has some troll going "dude get FULLY vaccinated" as if they don't know the people talking about this have had more vax boosters than anyone else. What do they think at risk means??
I’m always saddened to hear yet another story of someone getting covid for the first time from someone they thought was still taking precautions, but had recently stopped but didn’t bother to inform the person on the receiving end. It might wise to check in with people periodically to make sure you’re still on the same page.
However, I also keep hearing stories about people lying to high risk people and exposing them. Unfortunately if someone themselves has been convinced that it's not that serious anymore, they will assume others are being unreasonable and they will feel comfortable lying “to protect your feelings” because they believe there is no harm in them exposing you, and because they believe you’re simply emotional about it. Sadly, from the stories I hear about denial of long covid and denial of dead spouses and relatives and friends, they will continue to believe this even after their high risk friend or family member is dead — by twisting themselves into a pretzel to not face the horrible truth, that we’re in a bad pandemic, because the bamboozle of normalcy bias has captured them, and as Carl Sagan said, “If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle."
So when you check in, do more than just ask generally if someone is taking precautions. Asking specific questions about how they feel about the pandemic and specific questions about safety measures they take will often reveal at least hints of denialism or unconcern — believe them when you hear them.
To be honest, I trust nobody that isn't concerned about their OWN safety. If they’re not even concerned about their own safety, how can I possibly rely upon them to consider my own?
Those who are not faithful to principles become open to evil, to have evil done to them or to do evil themselves
— Pramoedya Ananta Toer