#public health officials

[wat3rm370n]

Communities have been, and continue to be, manipulated.

This likely won’t get better any time soon.

Public health isn’t about a niche group with special or secret practices, and community care shouldn’t be gate kept away from people who for whatever reason haven’t been afforded information or opportunity. But there seems to have been a concerted effort to “other” people who avoid getting sick, and even to get people to other themselves - by pushing the immunocompromised and the careful to the so-called fringe. People, support groups, or organizations formed around public health, disability, patient advocacy, and generally avoiding covid, are lambasted as somehow bad and strange, even though these are essentially the interests of most people.

Jay Bhattacharya, of Great Barrington Declaration fame, is Trump’s pick to lead the NIH. People are rightly concerned that he’s going to move us into a Dark Age by squelching research. But this is a person with designs on social engineering. He has signaled that he wants to make up the media landscape and the political landscape in his vision. (And probably that of the Brownstone Institute, which backs him with big money.)

Tweet by Number 99 @MmeBlackBalloon Aug 18, 2023 "Still COVIDing" regional FB groups use social media to enable intentional communities that sequester "clean" people from the rest of the current world. They have 10's of 1000's of members whose identities are based on social isolation & fear of disease as markers of status. IMAGE SCREENSHOTS OF FACEBOOK Still COVIDing, Bay Area Edition Private 1.2K members 10 posts a day This is a group for COVID conscious individuals and families in the San Fran... Join Still Coviding, Young Adults Edition Private 620 members-2 posts a day This is a space for young adults who are still taking Covid precautions to co... Join Still coviding: adapting to the new reality Private 1.3K members. 5 posts a day This is a group for those who are trying to stay safe but are a bit more 'out ther... Join Still Coviding, Still Trusting & Believing In God, in unbelie... Private 315 members 2 posts a day This group is a safe place for believers of God who are still taking precautions a.... Join. REPLY by Jay Bhattacharya @DrJBhattacharya Aug 18, 2023 Meanwhile, at the command of the government, FB suppressed or eliminated vax injury groups, anti lockdown posts, and the GBD. REPLY by Number 99 @MmeBlackBalloon I wonder how much influence these kinds of people had on public policy and government perceptions of appropriate actions? Like very which came first, chicken or egg. Not that government don't always try to get away with censorship but having backing from masses helps. All bad. 1:13 AM 3 Aug 19, 2023 1,132 Views

The idea that Still Coviding Facebook groups had influence over public policy and government is laughable. I myself wrote 200 postcards to Biden in the last 4 years and almost nothing I wrote about was addressed, and none of my pandemic concerns were at all addressed. Joe Biden campaigned in 2020 on a robust pandemic response plan that was actually quite good. Once in office he and the Democrats who had defended the disabled and the high risk turned their backs on us and said: Return to Office butts in seats downtown for the economy. And the Biden administration pretty much embraced natural herd immunity, abandoned the pandemic measures he campaigned on, and additionally, under pressure from Republicans, the economic mitigation measures ended under Biden. I don’t know why they even needed Trump considering the Great Barrington Declaration has become the status quo of most nations frankly - except of course for the part where they “focus protection” on the vulnerable! That’s nowhere in sight as infants and the elderly have been totally hung out to dry along with the disabled high risk and immunocompromised.

MedPage Today - Nursing Homes Fell Behind on Vaccinating Patients for COVID — Billing complexities and patient skepticism partially to blame by Sarah Boden, KFF Health News December 5, 2024 Loveland has seen patients and coworkers at the nursing home where she works die from the viral disease. Now she has a new worry: bringing home the coronavirus and unwittingly infecting her infant daughter, Maya, born in May. Loveland's maternity leave ended in late June, when Maya wasn't yet 2 months old. Infants cannot be vaccinated against COVID until they are 6 months old. Children younger than that suffer the highest rates of hospitalization of any age group except people 75 or older. Between her patients' complex medical needs and their close proximity to one another, COVID continues to pose a grave threat to Loveland's nursing home -- and to the 15,000 other certified nursing homes in the U.S. where some 1.2 million people live. Despite this risk, a CDC report published in April found that just four in 10 nursing home residents in the U.S. received an updated COVID vaccine in the winter of 2023-24.

The truth is that the Pentagon under the Trump administration perpetrated an anti-vax propaganda campaign, and under Biden, that campaign continued for at least a while. But not only that, there was someone who I was shown evidence that they were listed as an NIH contractor in 2021 and who operated on social media as a pro-vax influencer who posted prolific amounts of dubious “vax, unmask, and relax” content - clearly going well beyond promoting vaccination, and actually to exist to calm nerves about going “back to normal” seemingly for the sake of The Economy, or perhaps to at least to calm the public to settle things down. They literally told people in April 2021 that it was absolutely impossible for vaccinated people to transmit the virus to each other, when no such evidence existed at that time nor since. When I say this influencer is prolific, people who analyzed the posts of this person’s social media account, told me that it appeared they were doing it as a full time job with overtime, or that the account was being staffed by multiple people in shifts. Today this influencer account can be found hyping (as if it’s just another exciting breakthrough), among other studies on covid remedies, a junk covid product that is being hyped by a number of other outlets in a PR blitz.

The point is that we’re living in The Internet of Fakes, and government entities and big industries are documented as having been known to hire operatives and provocateurs and even to infiltrate social groups.

But Jay Bhattacharya thought it was vulnerable people, often immunocompromised, who were “silencing” him, and this elite has silenced his way to the Trump administration. He’s entering the halls of power with his assertions that regular people just trying to survive are enemies trying to silence and take away power from Jay Bhattacharya. Even if it’s totally made up, or perhaps because it’s made up, this orientation around covid is so disturbing.

Jay Bhattacharya @DrJBhattacharya Aug 18, 2023 “Meanwhile, at the command of the government, FB suppressed or eliminated vax injury groups, anti lockdown posts, and the GBD.” 9 replies, 41 retweets, 366 hearts, 12K views.

Considering that every accusation is a confession with these people, I think there’s good cause for concern.

Mother Jones - November 26, 2024 - He Rose to Fame as a Covid Contrarian, and Trump Wants Him to Be NIH Head - Jay Bhattacharya is outspoken about public health restrictions and sees censorship on social media. - Kiera Butler At a conference hosted by the anti-lockdown group the Brownstone Institute in November 2021, nearly a year after the rollout of the Covid vaccines, Bhattacharya lamented that public health had become a tool “for authoritarian power” and “to enforce the biosecurity state.”

We know that shadowbanning is indeed real. But ironically the people who complain the loudest are the biggest of hypocrites when it comes to the “free speech” issue. So what do you think Jay Bhattacharya intends to do with money he will have at the NIH to splash around to contractors who can hire influencers online?

Many pandemic related groups today are sadly largely places where the members are used as a captive audience of eyeballs given to vendors by admins who’ve consolidated power. They’re too often filled with MLM stuff and target marketing of pseudoscience covid products. People join groups for support and are offered opportunities to buy expensive products with no good evidence of safety or efficacy. People join advocacy groups thinking they’re getting involved in activism, only to find that they’re expected to hype someone’s project on social media, and help them gain attention to get funding from some cryptocurrency source or other. And that’s along with an endless parade of infiltration by trolls, operatives, reporters, scammers, spammers. And many already suspect the presence of state actors in these spaces. But these social groups form because people, especially people at high risk who must avoid infections, have sought out people in similar situations when their families and friends were convinced to abandon safety or any care or concern for the high risk, in order to prop up the economy - by both political parties and both the Trump and the Biden administrations - because both parties prioritize profits over people and businesses over constituents. The most vulnerable people are already extremely marginalized, and sometimes harassed. People avoiding covid have to avoid almost everything, especially in the winter. Online clubs are far from perfect, but the last thing we need is the further fringe-ifying of communities. Especially when social media seems as toxic as ever, and the same problems exist in all social media to some extent. Social media is a way to meet people, sure, in the same way you can meet new people in a tavern, but it’s an absolutely terrible place to try and maintain real connections or accomplish anything within that space. “Likes” are not substantial, let’s be honest. And now, lockdown revisionists and anti-vax posse vigilantes will target this population who has no defenders in positions of power, possibly with state sanctioned violence, or at best, be given a harder time than is already the case.

People talk about media and journalists “obeying in advance” nowadays, but if you care about having doctors mask and not spread their covid or flu to cancer patients, or even if you just care about vaccination - like me you’ve likely been seeing journalists obey in advance to authoritarianism for ages now. And probably also see tons of evidence people don’t even know that updated covid vaccines even exist.

lisa725 2d ago Tuesday, December 3, 2024 at 10:36:14 PM EST Honestly I had no idea there was one. Is it like the Flu shot now? My doctor didn't say anything about it at my annual. She asked about the flu shot. That's it. I have gotten the shot 4 times and I would get it again. Reply grulepper 2d ago. It's a yearly like the flu shot, odd your doc didn't bring it up. Reply Key-Wallaby-9276 22h ago My doc nor my kids doc did either Reply the-names-are-gone 16h ago Yeah it is odd that the medical professional with a decade of schooling and however many years of real world experience didn't see the need to ask

I’m concerned that this situation won’t be confined to making vaccines less available, or even outlawing them, as there has been talk of having county sheriffs deputize anti-vaxxers to do raids on public health officials and others. When people are given power of the state and a stamp of approval on going after enemies, it can coerce people to act improperly or invite opportunists. What’s going on is nothing to take lightly.

(crossposted from my substack)

[giorgio52fan]

Uncertain Horizon: Will the COVID School Years Return Amid New Variants?

The relentless specter of COVID-19 continues to cast a shadow over the education landscape. As the world grapples with the ever-evolving variants of the virus, the question on everyone’s mind is whether the COVID school years will return. Despite the optimism of public health officials and the reassurances regarding the efficacy of tests and vaccines against new variants, a critical examination…

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

Sorry man, the world and especially children are gonna get more secular and corrupted. The time of christianity was yesterday

Ah, but you mistake the goal. The goal is not to preserve the Christian culture. The Christian culture died in the 1960s (if not the 1860s). The goal is to conquer secular culture again.

[astromechs]

the coworker i share an office with has covid again, internal screaming

[autism-corner]

big day for jace 6=w=9

[dsm-v]

Did you know that even “fully-vaccinated and boosted” individuals can contract and spread Covid? And that the best protection you personally can count on is to wear a well-fitted respirator-style mask?

[urgentkettle]

Do not attempt to scrub your computer’s circuit boards in the autoclave.

the dishwasher could probably clean so many other things but we're all just too hung up on the name to even imagine

[luulapants]

I'm so frustrated by the lack of response to the mass psychogenic illness of law enforcement officials claiming to suffer contact fentanyl poisoning. There were a few studies done that quietly concluded that it's not real, none of the cases were credible, and the symptoms most closely resemble a panic attack or somatic episode.

No one is connecting this to systemic issues in police training and culture and no one is treating this as the canary in the coal mine it is.

Modern police training is functionally cult indoctrination, and intentionally cultivates paranoia. Police learn that everyone is out to get them, danger lurks around every corner, and their only job is to make it home alive after their shift.

They then enter the body of police culture, where questioning the bad behavior of fellow officers is at best strictly socially punished and at worst can get them killed, where they are constantly vigilant to say the right things and portray the right beliefs.

Suddenly, after generations of mainstream culture being generally supportive of police, in the midst of an anxiety-riddled pandemic, there is a highly-publicized backlash against law enforcement. Regular people are saying ACAB, calling cops fascists and murderers and wife-beaters. They're posting officers' service records on social media. Police, unwilling to believe they are evil, experience a cognitive dissonance backlash effect and cling to beliefs that contradict reality.

No one should be shocked - and no one should be hesitant to say - that there is a mental health crisis in law enforcement. They are paranoid, hyper-vigilant, and mired in cognitive dissonance. They have guns and virtually unchecked power to enact violence in their communities. Making up delusional stories about fentanyl is a pretty mild outcome compared to what we should be expecting from these circumstances.

Police aren't just bastards. They're a danger to themselves and others.

[sophsweet]

Government Diet Advice Leads to Yo-Yo Dieting

I searched for anything on government diet advice and yo-yo dieting from misinformation and there was nothing so here goes

Weight management requires both daily activity and eating real food to get essential nutrients. Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay During lockdown, many people went from commuting daily to work, walking to the bus stop, going out during breaks, commuting home or going out. While at work we cannot snack. An entire industry of delivering food to workplaces has grown out of the shorter…

[dykeredhood]

Accidentally tripped and fell because I didn’t see a step in a dark auditorium and now my forearm and knee are gonna come out in a bruise

I’m fine, nothing is actually broken; I’m just chagrined that I looked like a clumsy fool in front of others and I’ve already dutifully disinfected the little scrapes I got

[aanews69]

All our links in one place:https://sleekbio.com/aanews69Visit our Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/DNPLServicesWe deliver stories. We also give you guides, tip...

[thoughtportal]

Opinion Here’s how to get free Paxlovid as many times as you need it

When the public health emergency around covid-19 ended, vaccines and treatments became commercial products, meaning companies could charge for them as they do other pharmaceuticals. Paxlovid, the highly effective antiviral pill that can prevent covid from becoming severe, now has a list price of nearly $1,400 for a five-day treatment course.

Thanks to an innovative agreement between the Biden administration and the drug’s manufacturer, Pfizer, Americans can still access the medication free or at very low cost through a program called Paxcess. The problem is that too few people — including pharmacists — are aware of it.

I learned of Paxcess only after readers wrote that pharmacies were charging them hundreds of dollars — or even the full list price — to fill their Paxlovid prescription. This shouldn’t be happening. A representative from Pfizer, which runs the program, explained to me that patients on Medicare and Medicaid or who are uninsured should get free Paxlovid. They need to sign up by going to paxlovid.iassist.com or by calling 877-219-7225. “We wanted to make enrollment as easy and as quick as possible,” the representative said.

Indeed, the process is straightforward. I clicked through the web form myself, and there are only three sets of information required. Patients first enter their name, date of birth and address. They then input their prescriber’s name and address and select their insurance type.

All this should take less than five minutes and can be done at home or at the pharmacy. A physician or pharmacist can fill it out on behalf of the patient, too. Importantly, this form does not ask for medical history, proof of a positive coronavirus test, income verification, citizenship status or other potentially sensitive and time-consuming information.

But there is one key requirement people need to be aware of: Patients must have a prescription for Paxlovid to start the enrollment process. It is not possible to pre-enroll. (Though, in a sense, people on Medicare or Medicaid are already pre-enrolled.)

Once the questionnaire is complete, the website generates a voucher within seconds. People can print it or email it themselves, and then they can exchange it for a free course of Paxlovid at most pharmacies.

Pfizer’s representative tells me that more than 57,000 pharmacies are contracted to participate in this program, including major chain drugstores such as CVS and Walgreens and large retail chains such as Walmart, Kroger and Costco. For those unable to go in person, a mail-order option is available, too.

The program works a little differently for patients with commercial insurance. Some insurance plans already cover Paxlovid without a co-pay. Anyone who is told there will be a charge should sign up for Paxcess, which would further bring down their co-pay and might even cover the entire cost.

Several readers have attested that Paxcess’s process was fast and seamless. I was also glad to learn that there is basically no limit to the number of times someone could use it. A person who contracts the coronavirus three times in a year could access Paxlovid free or at low cost each time.

Unfortunately, readers informed me of one major glitch: Though the Paxcess voucher is honored when presented, some pharmacies are not offering the program proactively. As a result, many patients are still being charged high co-pays even if they could have gotten the medication at no cost.

This is incredibly frustrating. However, after interviewing multiple people involved in the process, including representatives of major pharmacy chains and Biden administration officials, I believe everyone is sincere in trying to make things right. As we saw in the early days of the coronavirus vaccine rollout, it’s hard to get a new program off the ground. Policies that look good on paper run into multiple barriers during implementation.

Those involved are actively identifying and addressing these problems. For instance, a Walgreens representative explained to me that in addition to educating pharmacists and pharmacy techs about the program, the company learned it also had to make system changes to account for a different workflow. Normally, when pharmacists process a prescription, they inform patients of the co-pay and dispense the medication. But with Paxlovid, the system needs to stop them if there is a co-pay, so they can prompt patients to sign up for Paxcess.

Here is where patients and consumers must take a proactive role. That might not feel fair; after all, if someone is ill, people expect that the system will work to help them. But that’s not our reality. While pharmacies work to fix their system glitches, patients need to be their own best advocates. That means signing up for Paxcess as soon as they receive a Paxlovid prescription and helping spread the word so that others can get the antiviral at little or no cost, too.

{source}

[hope-for-the-planet]

The Climate Change Superfund Act makes major fossil fuel companies financially liable for damage due to extreme weather events and other dangers related to climate change. The amount these companies are responsible for paying depends on their contributions to emissions since 1995.

Money collected from fossil fuel companies will be used to mitigate the health impacts of climate change and improve public infrastructure.

[reasonsforhope]

"For years, California was slated to undertake the world’s largest dam removal project in order to free the Klamath River to flow as it had done for thousands of years.

Now, as the project nears completion, imagery is percolating out of Klamath showing the waterway’s dramatic transformation, and they are breathtaking to behold.

Pictured: Klamath River flows freely, after Copco-2 dam was removed in California.

Incredibly, the project has been nearly completed on schedule and under budget, and recently concluded with the removal of two dams, Iron Gate and Copco 1. Small “cofferdams” which helped divert water for the main dams’ construction, still need to be removed.

The river, along which salmon and trout had migrated and bred for centuries, can flow freely between Lake Ewauna in Klamath Falls, Oregon, to the Pacific Ocean for the first time since the dams were constructed between 1903 and 1962.

“This is a monumental achievement—not just for the Klamath River but for our entire state, nation, and planet,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “By taking down these outdated dams, we are giving salmon and other species a chance to thrive once again, while also restoring an essential lifeline for tribal communities who have long depended on the health of the river.”

“We had a really incredible moment to share with tribes as we watched the final cofferdams be broken,” Ren Brownell, Klamath River Renewal Corp. public information officer, told SFGATE. “So we’ve officially returned the river to its historic channel at all the dam sites. But the work continues.”

Pictured: Iron Gate Dam, before and after.

“The dams that have divided the basin are now gone and the river is free,” Frankie Myers, vice chairman of the Yurok Tribe, said in a tribal news release from late August. “Our sacred duty to our children, our ancestors, and for ourselves, is to take care of the river, and today’s events represent a fulfillment of that obligation.”

The Yurok Tribe has lived along the Klamath River forever, and it was they who led the decades-long campaign to dismantle the dams.

At first the water was turbid, brown, murky, and filled with dead algae—discharges from riverside sediment deposits and reservoir drainage. However, Brownell said the water quality will improve over a short time span as the river normalizes.

“I think in September, we may have some Chinook salmon and steelhead moseying upstream and checking things out for the first time in over 60 years,” said Bob Pagliuco, a marine habitat resource specialist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in July.

Pictured: JC Boyle Dam, before and after.

“Based on what I’ve seen and what I know these fish can do, I think they will start occupying these habitats immediately. There won’t be any great numbers at first, but within several generations—10 to 15 years—new populations will be established.”

Ironically, a news release from the NOAA states that the simplification of the Klamath River by way of the dams actually made it harder for salmon and steelhead to survive and adapt to climate change.

“When you simplify the habitat as we did with the dams, salmon can’t express the full range of their life-history diversity,” said NOAA Research Fisheries Biologist Tommy Williams.

“The Klamath watershed is very prone to disturbance. The environment throughout the historical range of Pacific salmon and steelhead is very dynamic. We have fires, floods, earthquakes, you name it. These fish not only deal with it well, it’s required for their survival by allowing the expression of the full range of their diversity. It challenges them. Through this, they develop this capacity to deal with environmental changes.”

-via Good News Network, October 9, 2024

[destiel-news-channel]

[Image ID: The Destiel confession meme edited so that Dean answers 'Tim Walz is Kamala Harris' running mate.' to Cas' 'I love you'. /End ID]

This is according to a source that told CNN, he has not been formally called by Harris yet. CNN link

EDIT: It is now official!

Tim Walz is the one who started the tactic of calling Republicans 'weird', by the way.

Tim Walz is in his second term as the Minnesota governor. He is 60 years old and a former high school teacher.

Memorable information (click the text for its source)

Walz is "a champion of Democratic causes, including union organizing, workers’ rights and a $15-an-hour minimum wage."

eliminated nearly all of Minnesota's abortion restrictions

protected gender-affirming care for transgender youth

legalized the recreational use of marijuana

"free school meals to children, free tuition at public colleges for students whose families earn less than $80,000 a year, a paid family and medical leave program, health insurance regardless of immigration status, gun violence prevention, abortion rights protections, voting rights expansion and more"

Feel free to add more.

[sab-teraa]

Oh! How I wish Vikram Rathore and team existed in real life 🥲