📣 Yes, asymptomatic transmission happens ⚠️ The politicization of masks is dangerous. 🚨
Where a disease is permanently circulating, mitigation must be permanent.
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 North Carolina USA Petition - Halt the Passage of NC Bill 237 Banning Masks In Public
Started by Victoria Coble: “This bill not only undermines these scientific findings but also infringes on our rights as citizens to take necessary precautions for our well-being. It is especially concerning for individuals with pre-existing conditions who rely on masks as an essential protective barrier against potential health threats.”
USA FDA VRBPAC Public Comment period on vaccines. (DATE EXTENDED)
Submitted written comments for the meeting must be received by the FDA via the Federal Register no later than May 15, 2024 at 11:59 Eastern Daylight Time.
Asymptomatic and presymptomatic viral transmission is definitely a thing.
🗞️ In the news
CIDRAP - Analysis of cow, cat H5N1 avian flu samples raises concerns about spread to other animals Lisa Schnirring April 29, 2024 H5N1 in mammary gland cells The tissue samples in cows came from a three that were euthanized and three that died naturally. The researchers also performed postmortem exams on two adult cats from one of the farms, which had about 24 cats. The cats started showing symptoms a day after clinical disease was noted in the cows, and about half of the cats died. Microscopic examination revealed that the H5N1 virus infects epithelial cells of mammary alveoli where milk is produced, prompting acute inflammation in the udder, which could explain the drop in milk production and high virus levels that have been turning up in milk. The authors said the case series shows that H5N1 infection has more dramatic symptoms in cows than reflected in earlier reports of influenza A viruses in the animals. Cats showed symptoms soon after exposure Meanwhile, they wrote that the clinical disease in cats, especially neurologic symptoms, is consistent with earlier reports of H5N1 in cats and tracks with reports of cats eating infected wild birds and poultry products. Though wild-bird consumption can't be ruled out in the cats from the dairy farms, known consumption of unpasteurized milk and colostrum from infected cows, a fluid that contained a high viral load, makes it a likely exposure route, the team wrote.
ABC NEWS - Hundreds of patients died after catching COVID in Victorian hospitals, new data shows - By Hayley Gleeson Sun 5 May 2024 "No one seemed to give a hoot about protecting themselves or the patients," he said. "From what I know about COVID, I believe all the staff in an infectious diseases ward should be wearing respirators … the fact that it is not standard is just bamboozling." But perhaps he shouldn't have been so surprised. For months doctors and public health experts have been warning that too many patients are catching COVID in Australian hospitals with sometimes devastating consequences — though timely statistics are difficult to access because health departments do not publish them. Now, new data shows thousands of patients caught COVID in Victorian public hospitals in the past two years — and hundreds died — fuelling concerns that hospitals are not taking strong enough precautions against airborne viruses, and calls for stronger leadership from the Department of Health. Almost one in 10 patients who caught COVID in hospital died
House Members Struggle to Craft Road Map for Future of Telehealth — Lawmakers examine issues around reimbursement, licensure, and patient choice by Shannon Firth, Washington Correspondent, MedPage Today April 11, 2024 Pandemic-era telehealth flexibilities extended under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 are slated to end on December 31. With that deadline looming, Subcommittee Chair Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) said the committee is looking to advance long-term solutions for a new telehealth framework. To that end, members have introduced 15 different bills. Subcommittee Ranking Member Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) said that the changes that HHS made during the pandemic have set the standard and encouraged private insurance to follow suit. "This is not a partisan issue," she added. During the hearing, witnesses collectively agreed that the expansion of telehealth has been, on the whole, a success.
AP - Owners of a Colorado funeral home where 190 decaying bodies were found are charged with COVID fraud - BY JESSE BEDAYN, COLLEEN SLEVIN AND MATTHEW BROWN Updated 7:39 PM EDT, April 15, 2024 The 15 charges brought by the federal grand jury are in addition to more than 200 criminal counts already pending against the Hallfords in Colorado state court for corpse abuse, money laundering, theft and forgery.
Rare and fatal brain disease in two deer hunters heightens concerns about CWD A team of researchers said the cases hint at a potential contamination from infected venison. CDC says link is unlikely. By Greg Stanley Star Tribune APRIL 25, 2024 Two friends who hunted deer together at the same lodge contracted an extremely rare brain disease and died, raising fears that they may have been infected by contaminated venison. A team of neurologists at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio presented the case at a conference last week, saying the deer herd surrounding the lodge is known to be infected with chronic wasting disease (CWD) – a fatal brain disease in deer caused by misfolded prion proteins. "The patient's history, including a similar case in his social group, suggests a possible novel animal-to-human transmission of CWD," the researchers wrote. But scientists at the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which have been monitoring these types of illnesses for decades, said that it is highly unlikely that venison or chronic wasting disease had anything to do with the deaths of the two men.
Doctors Strike at Detroit Hospital After Unionizing Last Year — Emergency physicians, contracted through TeamHealth, have pointed to staffing, quality concerns by Jennifer Henderson, Enterprise & Investigative Writer, MedPage Today April 19, 2024 "This is a nationwide problem," said emergency physician John Bahling, MD, speaking from the picket line. Amid long wait times for care and persistent short staffing, Bahling told MedPage Today that he and other union members are striking to fight for their colleagues, including nurses, as well as patients they serve as emergency medicine physicians. The American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) also lent their support for the physicians at St. John Hospital in a letter of concern to hospital leadership about the emergency department contract there. To date, unionization by emergency medicine physicians has been rare, Robert McNamara, MD, past president of AAEM, told MedPage Today. Now, seeing such efforts within this group is a "red flag" in the specialty of emergency medicine, he said. Asking why private equity is involved with the nation's emergency departments, which provide care to the most vulnerable patients, he said "private equity is there to make money at a high rate of return."
WHO Overturns Dogma on Airborne Disease Spread. The CDC Might Not Act on It. — The report "is a complete U-turn," according to one expert by Amy Maxmen, KFF Health News May 5, 2024 Scientists worry that as the H5N1 virus spends more time in mammals, it could evolve to more easily infect people and spread among them through the air. Traditional beliefs on droplet transmission help explain why the WHO and the CDC focused so acutely on hand-washing and surface-cleaning at the beginning of the pandemic. Such advice overwhelmed recommendations for N95 masks that filter out most virus-laden particles suspended in the air. Employers denied many healthcare workers access to N95s, insisting that only those routinely working within feet of COVID patients needed them. More than 3,600 healthcare workers died in the first year of the pandemic, many due to a lack of protection. However, a committee advising the CDC appears poised to brush aside the updated science when it comes to its pending guidance on healthcare facilities. Lisa Brosseau, ScD, an aerosol expert and a consultant at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minnesota, warns of a repeat of 2020 if that happens. "The rubber hits the road when you make decisions on how to protect people," Brosseau said. "Aerosol scientists may see this report as a big win because they think everything will now follow from the science. But that's not how this works and there are still major barriers." Money is one. If a respiratory disease spreads through inhalation, it means that people can lower their risk of infection indoors through sometimes costly methods to clean the air, such as mechanical ventilation and using air purifiers, and wearing an N95 mask. The CDC has so far been reluctant to press for such measures, as it updates foundational guidelines on curbing airborne infections in hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, and other facilities that provide healthcare. This year, a committee advising the CDC released a draft guidance that differs significantly from the WHO report.
This is NOT fine
Conservative pundit influencer Dave Rubin incites fear and possible aggression toward people who wear respirator masks.
On his show Dave Rubin states: "I firmly believe now that COVID was just a test run to normalize masks so we could have jihadists out in the streets." This seems like dangerous commentary considering the person who killed their own father for getting vaccinated based on conspiracy theories about threats. And of course this is just one conservative pundit, but even mainstream politicians are painting people in masks as “hiding their identity” and there have been videos — including shockingly of white male police officers ripping a respirator mask hardshell N95 off an Asian protester.
There need to be checks on power, resources devoted to protecting the vulnerable, and elected representatives and community leaders need to call for taking down the temperature on the rhetoric against groups that have already been targeted, or for doing things already politicized, like wearing respirator N95 masks and getting vaccinated. If the war drum continues to be beaten by weirdo pundits and fringe politicians, there will no doubt be some destabilized people who may target for harassment (or worse) the disabled, elderly, immunocompromised, transplant recipients, or cancer patients, because they have been hyped up into a state of fear and justification believing that people wearing N95s in public are terrorists. Attacks on healthcare workers are already a serious problem.
To be honest, I do avoid crowded locations for a number of reasons. Though I personally haven’t experienced harassment for wearing a mask, not even when I wear a N95 at boat launches in state forests, state parks, and game lands, sometimes deep in the “red” countrysides where some houses have huge permanent wooden trump signs and that sort of thing. I’ve not heard from anyone locally having much problem with this, even while masking at work habitually. In fact, I happen to know several conservatives who put on a mask at work during the winter now, without any requirement.
I actually more often hear of people being harassed for wearing a mask on the streets of liberal enclave cities. My suspicion is that this may have something to do with the fact that people can be ramped up to behave with hostility by the idea that they are in fact fighting back against a threat, whereas at the gamelands out in the rural area, they would rightly realize they are in fact the bully, not the underdog. There is historic evidence that people are prompted to act violently when they believe they are in fact defending themselves, no matter how absurd it might seem objectively.
McDoom, Omar Shahabudin. “The Psychology of Threat in Intergroup Conflict: Emotions, Rationality, and Opportunity in the Rwandan Genocide.” International Security 37, no. 2 (2012): 119–55. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23280416.
The threat is framed or rationalized increasingly within society as part of a conflict between two readily identifiable social groups, such as those defined along ethnic, sectarian, or racial lines. In Rwanda, the civil war would be narrated as an “ethnic” conflict, one between the Hutu majority ingroup and Tutsi minority outgroup. It was not framed as simply a conflict between the government and rebels. The second mechanism is “outgroup negativity”: the greater the threat, the greater the references that denigrate the outgroup. Often the threat is framed to resonate against negative historical and cultural beliefs—myths or narratives—that exist within the in-group about the outgroup. In Rwanda, historical references to Hutu oppression at the hands of the Tutsi increased as the threat itself increased. The third mechanism is “outgroup homogenization”: the greater the threat, the greater the de-individualization of outgroup members. The threat is perceived as one posed not only by those bearing arms, but by all members of the outgroup. As the threat peaked in Rwanda, more and more Hutu would see all Tutsi civilians as the enemy. It was not just rebel combatants who represented the threat.
I’ve been ridiculed — told to not “catastrophize” about the dangers of going masked to a university campus which has banned all masks. I’ve been called alarmist before. And I hope I’m wrong and the upcoming months leading to the election somehow gets less and less hyped up and less tense, but I’m not counting on that. And I’m not counting on all police to recognize my ADA rights even if given special dispensation for wearing a mask as accommodation in a mask ban zone. I didn’t like the idea of pandemic comfort level buttons, and I don’t like the idea of having to get special dispensation sash that says “disabled” across it just to protect myself in order to go out and about in society.
Masks need to be freely available, and freely worn.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
Where a disease is permanently circulating, mitigation must be permanent.
Government Executive - OMB leader defends administration’s approach to telework House Republicans continued to demand better data from the Biden administration regarding the prevalence and effectiveness of telework at federal agencies. APRIL 30, 2024 “At the onset of the COVID pandemic, massive federal employee telework was a justifiable necessity, but that necessity ended a long time ago,” Comer said. “Yet massive telework continues under the Biden administration, which is intent on making it a permanent fixture of federal work life. How do we know this is in the best interest of the public? The only data we’ve seen on that is a survey of federal employees themselves, and they think it’s working great.” Miller said his office is working with federal agencies to collect the data required by Congress in its most recent spending agreement, but noted that, when including the around 50% of federal employees with no access to telework, 80% of the federal workforce is working in-person on any given day.
C.difficile is endemic in many nursing homes and hospitals, so should we stop hand washing because c.diff and flu are here to stay? Nonsense. Endemic disease pretty much means PERMANENT infection controls. Where malaria is endemic, they don’t stop using mosquito nets —the use of mosquito nets is standard — and sometimes mandated in hotels in malaria endemic regions.
Scruples?
I remember playing the party game Scruples as a kid. Is it perhaps ironic that the creator of the game is now running a misinformation conspiracy theory influencer website.
NewsGuard's Reality Check - Misinformation from the creator of “Scruples” card game - MAR 18, 2024 Henry Makow, a Canadian author who in 1984 invented the card game “Scruples,” which throws players into moral quandaries, also runs a conspiracy blog recently rated by NewsGuard. Makow’s website, HenryMakow.com, is filled with conspiracy theories on topics such as the Israel-Hamas war, vaccines, and 9/11.
“We all may be just one COVID infection away from myriad health troubles, lifelong disability or death. COVID is not mild.”
Heather Hanwell - HealthyDebate.ca - Mar 13, 2024