#keep masks in healthcare

[feminist-space]

"Seminario cited the recent report, “Employer-Reported Workplace Injuries and Illnesses,” that shows that the number of respiratory illnesses in the private health care and social assistance sector increased from 145,300 in 2021 to 199,700 cases in 2022, an increase of 37.5 percent.

...

As an industrial hygienist, Seminario was extremely critical that there were no experts in respiratory protection on the committee nor did it include engineers who developed ventilation guidelines. She believes that the HICPAC committee members are likely so opposed to respirators “because once you are into recommending respiratory protection, with that comes a full respiratory protection program from OSHA,” with penalties for violations.

An epidemiologist and consultant, Michael Olesen, echoed this, believing the changes reflect “pressure to remove liability from hospitals.” He added, “I take a very clear position that we should be having respiratory protection mandates in all healthcare settings right now.”

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Many patients who spoke at the HICPAC meetings said they had gotten Covid-19 when they went to the hospital and that the new policies were keeping them from getting care.

Given that, Dr. Art Caplan, professor of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, previously told me that dropping masking requirements in hospitals is “utterly, completely, irresponsible.” Similarly, staff refusing to mask, even when a patient requests it, is a moral failure. “The first principle is, you must do what is in the best interest of your patient,” he said.

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Several people were asked why they believe HICPAC is determined to water down protections. Consistently, respondents say, “to reduce liability.” Earlier in the pandemic, hospitals regularly tested patients and staff for Covid-19, and you could often tell where and how you became infected. Since staff are no longer masking and continue working when ill, and patients are not being tested on admission, you can no longer prove who infected you. Hospitals are the only ones who win in this scenario, absolving themselves of responsibility and liability."

[otherbombdotcom]

From the lack of care for community health, to the constant thread of eugenics, and disproportionate effect on people of color and queer people the similarities between the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the ongoing covid pandemic are eerie.

[eliana-system]

The thing about me wearing a mask is that some students will come to me to complain about how they "don't understand how I can bear to wear it, it's so hard" and that they "cheated " when it was illegal not to wear them and then look flabbergasted when I actually point out that they are participating in disabled people's death. When I point out that they can't know who has a weakened immune system so they can avoid them. That Covid is a multi system infection that will impact your immune system the more you catch it.

[eptck]

i am so fucking tired of being the only person around me still wearing a mask . i’m the only one in my family who masks . i’m the only one i’ve seen in my school who masks . most of my friends don’t mask . my doctor and my physical therapists don’t mask

i’m not saying this to feel good about myself . i just feel so fucking alone . if you’re in america and you don’t wear a mask in public , i will never be able to fully trust you with my health

ESPECIALLY if you’re a leftist , and i know most of you who follow me are , i can’t believe that your activism is anything but a way to feel good about yourself if you won’t afford people the common decency of trying not to spread something that could kill them

the pandemic is not over . it was never over . it will not be over any time in the foreseeable future . you are putting people’s lives at risk

if you don’t wear a mask in public , you need to ask yourself why . why are you okay with that

[nando161mando]

Who are you protecting?

https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/

#CovidIsNotOver #COVIDisAirborne #KeepMasksInHealthCare #maskup #WearAMask #covid #covid19

[0hwonderboy]

being one of like… 6 ppl wearing a mask and the other 40 ppl not wearing one where there are literal cancer patients is fucking insane to me. healthcare has become beyond fucked up with med workers not masking.

[liminalweirdo]

Here is a pre-written letter you can add your name to

If you are in the US, here are some pre-written letters you can sign and send (like a petition)

if you are in California:

If you are in Oregon

and finally

When I caught Covid in December, I tested positive for two weeks.

Americans, when the guidelines get released in April, your feedback will be crucial.

Institutions do not care about your health. They don't even care about logic regarding productivity. You're not just replaceable to them--they would rather you earn them less money than you living in a way that gets you even a tiny bit closer to feeling like a different world is possible.

[feminist-space]

Please join us in sending a letter to congress via Resistbot, to maintain masking in healthcare settings.

Please text PRIKQU to 50409 and the Resistbot will take care of getting the letter sent on your behalf.

Demand Masks in Healthcare

As my representatives in Congress, I am asking you to intervene with the CDC and with all levels of the Administration in regards to Covid-19.

We MUST have N95 masks or equivalent worn by all staff with patient contact in healthcare facilities-hospitals, outpatient centers, and nursing homes.

The HICPAC advisory committee to the CDC is proposing to weaken infection control measures. They are incorrectly saying that surgical masks are as protective as N95s, cherry-picked their data, and ignored abundant evidence to the contrary.

Further, some hospitals (like MGH) are not honoring requests from patients that staff wear a mask. This would appear a violation of ADA standards for accommodation and is unconscionable, resulting in patients delaying necessary care because they risk a deadly hospital-acquired Covid infection.

Dr. Cohen like the rest of the Administration is pretending that Covid is over and is focusing on the "urgency of normal." They are pushing people to go back to unmasked offices with inadequate ventilation, when teleworking has worked very well.

On July 20, 900 experts sent a letter to Dr. Cohen asking her and HICPAC to make their processes transparent, to seek the input of a variety of stakeholders, and to listen to experts in ventilation and aerosols. See https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10482911231195898. This has fallen on deaf ears.

On 8/25, in "The Check-in with Dr. Cohen," a Q&A session, Dr. Cohen tells people to wash their hands and stresses "it's important to use all the tools we have in our toolbox to protect ourselves." Not once did she mention masks or ventilation, both critically important since we know that Covid is primarily transmitted by aerosols.

The CDC states its mission is Saving Lives, Protecting People.TM They have abdicated in meeting their responsibility.

[otherbombdotcom]

Accepting that we are all going to repeatedly contract a virus that causes cumulative vascular damage, is accepting that the most vulnerable among us will die. Layered covid mitigations, starting with wearing a high quality respirator, says no to preventable infections and "acceptable" death.

Image Description: Dark grey and red text over a grey scale background. The background is an image of an N95 respirator. The dark grey text reads, "Say NO to preventable infections". Red text offset behind the grey text reads, "Acceptable death".

[liminalweirdo]

source

tinyurl.com/hicpacprotections

click through to add your name to the open letter

[medsocionwheels]

Mask Week of Action 2023 - Recap

ICYMI we called on healthcare workers to mask up and protect patients last week. Here are some highlights from my own "Mask Week of Action" posts promoting the push to keep masks in healthcare (and bring them back in places that dropped them long ago).

[luckyagain]

people being selfish enough to go to a show sick, get other fans sick, and then taking a photo with louis on the red carpet KNOWING you have covid is unbelievably fucked up

[feminist-space]

^video above from March 2022.

From December 15th, 2023:

"Hospitals and emergency rooms could be forced to ration care by the end of this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Thursday, saying recent trends in COVID-19 and influenza are now on track to again strain America's health care system. The new COVID variant JN.1 is making up an increasing share of cases, the CDC's tracking shows."

[otherbombdotcom]

I don't give a shit if a cis bisexual woman brings her boyfriend to pride. I do however, care whether or not all of y'all's brought your respirators to wear. The COVID pandemic is ongoing, airborne, and disproportionately affects the queer community ESPECIALLY negatively racialized members of the queer community.

[liminalweirdo]

id below the cut

source

screenshots from Instagram user gauntletnews containing several article snippets:

Institutional COVID denial has killed public health as we knew it. Prepare to lose several centuries of progress.

This propagandist narrative aimed to achieve, not just a practical outcome, but a philosophical, political victory. It aimed to individualize a collective good that has been entrenched as a basic human right in rich societies for at least a century. It aimed to reframe disease control as something that should be a choice for each person, rather than a publicly funded collective effort.

...

demanding clean air and clean water is not “living in fear” but simply expecting the bare minimum of a democratic society to which we pay taxes and refusing to be a bootlicker for billionaire talking points.)

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The history of public health in this country and around the world is the history of disease eradication, mitigation, suppression, and prevention. The name of the public health body currently pushing “you do you” as a strategy is the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, for God’s sake. It’s not the Center for Diseases Are Fine and Go About Your Day.

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Let’s talk about the short and long-term social outcomes of COVID normalization. Yes, masks and all other precautions are demonized to the point of being framed as indicative of mental illness, including on the left. But we also see this attitude bleeding into disease control generally. Another reason the public appears more willing- perhaps even eager- to spread disease- has to do with officially sanctioned misinformation being hurled at parents: that your kids are getting sick more often because of the “lockdowns” that occurred in 2020.

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Unless we change course urgently- unless we fight back against the normalization of constant illness and the individualization of a critical public good- we are going to see a long, slow, across-the-board decline in health and life expectancy amid increasingly uncontrollable disease outbreaks and overwhelmed hospital systems.

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The reality is that our kids will be continually reinfected with COVID while navigating the return of measles and other vaccine-controlled diseases, while being told there is zero technology that can protect them and zero reason to protect them, while contracting flu and RSV more frequently and with worse severity.

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This is not 1824. It is 2024. We have the technology and knowledge to mitigate disease spread. Let’s fight for a future that is safer, better, and healthier than the world we grew up in, rather than sicker, crueler, and technologically regressed. If we don’t face reality and understand what we’re sacrificing right now, the next generation certainly will.

end id]

[playingplayer2]

I did not sleep I am very tired now but we have an electrician coming today and I absolutely cannot sleep because s t r e s s ⋋⁠✿⁠ ⁠⁰⁠ ⁠o⁠ ⁠⁰⁠ ⁠✿⁠⋌ which is unpleasant :(