Politicians ignoring and covering up Covid, Parasitic resilience, The final stage of public health, and more
Bonus barely mentioning how Covid affects your heart, brain and other organs
Welcome to the latest issue of the Covid-Is-Not-Over newsletter! We’re currently sitting at 642 subscriptions, which I think is pretty amazing. Thank you all! I’m sort of aiming for 1000 by mid-2024. And aggressive goal, maybe, but hopefully possible.
The mini-theme for this week is politics. In particular, how politicians and political parties have failed us. It’s a topic I’ve covered before, directly and indirectly. And it’s one I think I’ll be returning to again and again.
While most of the items I highlight below focus on the situation in the United States, the reality is that the same political failures and dysfunctions are at play virtually everywhere. As I demonstrate, Canada is no different. No politician or political party wants to be on the “No Fun” side of any issue. They seem to have a deeply embedded idea that even the slightest indication of Covid-awareness is politically toxic and that they are sure to pay a big price at the ballot box..
Somehow this started as a conservative mindset, but has become pretty well universal across the political spectrum.
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Parasitic Resilience: The Next Phase of Public Health Preparedness Must Address Power Imbalances Between Communities by Mitch H. Stripling and Jordan Pascoe/ Health Security (PhilArchive)
If we accept the idea that resilience as currently practised is parasitic, it is clear that health inequity,economic exploitation, and pandemic mortality rates are not distinct issues; they are each part of the same problem. A better approach would ground public health emergency response in an ethics of care that can prompt community renewal, incorporating both primary and secondary harms into the emergency response mission and ensuring justice for all responders across the networks surging to provide needed care.In this intensely political era, using such an approach might seem improbable, with some of the societal change necessary well outside the control of public health officials. But energy toward this vision is increasing. Justice for App Workers, the coalition that began in the face of COVID-19 and mourned its dead in May 2022, started with 100,000 members. Now it's up to 300,000 and growing, as more workers see the links between these injustices and their own health. Advocacy groups like this show us the investment needed to make renewal work, and public health, guided by harms clearly linked to the social determinants of health, should learn from them.
2023: The year of the total COVID cover-up by Evan Blake / World Socialist Web Site
As the year 2023 draws to a close, the contrast between the objective reality of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the delusional fantasy promoted by capitalist politicians and the corporate media has never been greater.
Surveying the official political and media landscape in the US and throughout much of the world over the holidays, there is virtually no mention of the pandemic anywhere. The last time President Joe Biden even publicly referred to COVID-19 was in September, when he jokingly flouted White House and CDC masking requirements after being exposed to his infected wife Jill.
After two years of continuous efforts to minimize the Omicron variant and all of its progeny as “mild,” the unstated policy towards the pandemic is now simply to ignore it.
Democrats Can’t Keep Ignoring Covid in 2024 by Laura Weiss / The New Republic
This didn’t have to be an all-or-nothing choice. By framing Covid precautions as either “lockdown” or “a free for all,” the Biden administration has missed an opportunity to better protect its citizens and send clearer messages around Covid and the risk of long Covid, and promote the kind of commonsense mitigations that create no significant disruptions to “normal” life. With the 2024 election coming up, it must do better. …
In the first few years of the pandemic, concern over the transmission and mitigation of Covid fell on largely partisan lines. When Joe Biden entered office in January 2021, he promised to “follow science,” unlike the disastrous, delayed, and dangerous approach to the pandemic led by his predecessor, Donald Trump. For a while, things were looking up, with effective vaccines available for free to the public and interventions like Paxlovid becoming available. Biden promoted new initiatives and supported funding for Covid research and long-Covid research. Unfortunately, today, funding is drying up. Republicans are determined to block anything that looks like new spending on Covid; Democrats are seemingly content to let this antisocial stance slide. …
The shadow of the pandemic, whether we like it or not, still hangs over us. By deluding ourselves into pretending nothing is wrong, we’re playing roulette with our own lives and with each other, and allowing new variants to develop more frequently. Our response to Covid mitigation doesn’t have to be all or nothing, but even basic interventions are now being dismissed on both sides of the aisle. Joe Biden said it wouldn’t be like this. And yet, what we’re seeing today feels scarcely different from the denialism and diminishment of far-right Trump-ites who once laughed at our masks. Are we content to stand among their ranks?
The Final Stage Of Public Health by Nate Bear / Do Not Panic
Earlier this week, addressing the mountain of respiratory virus cases across Europe, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said: “no one knows your risk like you do yourself…we all need to use our own judgement when taking steps to protect ourselves, and others around us, based on an individual assessment of risk.”
…
He did not reprimand governments for scrapping mask requirements in healthcare settings, or for making it financially (and socially) difficult, if not impossible, for people to stay at home and not work when sick. He didn’t put any onus on businesses to clean their air.
He said this was all up to us as individuals.
As if the air we breathe can ever be an individual choice.
Lobbied By Impacted Industries, White House Killed COVID Travel Rule by Walker Bragman / Important Context
Last spring, the Biden administration eliminated a key COVID-19 protocol after it had been facing lobbying from affected industries, federal disclosures reveal.
In May, the White House announced it was lifting its requirement that international visitors to the United States provide proof of vaccination prior to travel. It was the final blow for a rule that had already been eased weeks earlier by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the lead-up to these decisions, the airline and tourism industries had been lobbying the administration and Congress, federal disclosures reveal.
The demise of the vaccine rule highlights how, at key points, the Biden administration’s pandemic policy decisions have aligned with the goals of big business.
McKinsey’s Effect on Public Health: Almost two years ago, the Canadian government published a Covid response plan that’s largely vague and useless. Who benefits from that? by Marie Snyder / Through the Fog
Of course McKinsey is working with Pfizer. According to Fierce Pharma, Pfizer “hired Aamir Malik from McKinsey & Company as its chief business innovation officer” in August 2021. McKinsey features many Pfizer execs on their website, including Angela Hwang from that gleeful quote at the beginning and Lidia Fonseca, Pfizer’s Chief Digital and Tech Officer, and the CFO of Pfizer, Frank D’Amelio. Like with fossil fuels, tobacco, and opioids, McKinsey doesn’t give a fuck about your health and well being. They care about their partners, Pfizer, making a buck off vaccines and Paxlovid. McKinsey likely has media by the balls, and this is why so much media is about how silly it is for people to still wear N95s. It’s quite possibly why many school boards and public health messaging is along the lines of “please try to be nice to the weirdos still wearing masks”! The more you actually protect yourself and your family with an N95 and filtration units and by cracking a window whenever possible, the more money they stand to lose.
This company convinced you to smoke ’em if you got ’em, and convinced doctors to overprescribe opioids, and they are escalating climate change until the cows keel over! Don’t think they’re above overtly and intentionally convincing everyone that Covid is safe and mild and that masks don’t work and are unnecessary in order to push vaccines and Paxlovid as the only option. Get vaccinated, for sure, but also wear an N95 to avoid ever needing Paxlovid.
We need more supports for dealing with COVID-19 by Michelle Young / The Peak
The tools are supposed to be testing, vaccination, Paxlovid, and masks. However, in BC, none of these tools are being adequately used. Testing is unreliable with no apparent plans to improve. Vaccination is slow with few people getting the reformulated shots. Paxlovid is limited and difficult to access, and a poor mask policy isn’t nearly enough to reduce COVID-19 cases.
While some rightfully continue to test, relying on tests alone has never been enough to ensure no COVID-19 transmission. However, when those who believe they’ve done their due diligence by testing negative then go out into the world maskless, they can still spread illness to others unknowingly. We continue to put the burden to mask on individuals if they want to protect themselves, despite knowing that universal masking is most effective.
If we are going to create a sustainable pandemic response, it needs to move away from individualism. It needs to stop relying on outdated tools, and stop shying away from new strategies — like ventilation. Most of all, it requires solidarity, because COVID-19 continues to disproportionately affect women, racialized communities, frontline workers like cashiers and bus drivers, lower-income, and disabled people.
COVID barely gets a mention these days – here's why that's a dangerous situation by Simon Nicholas Williams / The Conversation
How to fight COVID complacency
First, we need to ensure vaccine uptake is as high as possible. In the UK, like many countries, booster uptake amongst those eligible this year has been significantly lower compared to last year, and fewer population groups have been offered the vaccine. In future campaigns, boosters should be offered more broadly. …
Second, we can still make use of protections that work. For example, fundamental investment in better ventilation is much needed. Cleaner air is essential for public health and will have benefits that extend beyond COVID.
Good ventilation can not only reduce the spread of COVID and other respiratory viruses, but can generally help reduce indoor air pollution, and can even improve things such as school attendance and concentration in the classroom.
Spain, for example, has just reintroduced face mask rules in hospitals and other healthcare settings. Existing evidence suggests that masks do work to help reduce the transmission of COVID. Masks have been controversial, but can be thought of like umbrellas - we can use them as, when and where needed.
Other countries would also do well to follow WHO advice and reintroduce face mask regulation in medical settings, to reduce hospital acquired infections, protect vulnerable patients and reduce sickness and absenteeism amongst healthcare workers.
Beyond breathing: How COVID-19 affects your heart, brain and other organs by Michael Merschel / American Heart Association
Because COVID-19 typically affects breathing and can lead to problems such as pneumonia, many people may think it's primarily a lung disease. It's not that simple, said Dr. Nisha Viswanathan, director of the long COVID program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"I would argue that COVID-19 is not a disease of the lungs at all," she said. "It seems most likely that it is what we call a vascular and neurologic infection, affecting both nerve endings and our cardiovascular system." …
"SARS-CoV-2 is excellent at triggering your immune system to go from zero to 100," said Dr. Lindsay McAlpine, a neurologist who is director of the Yale NeuroCovid Clinic in New Haven, Connecticut. That revving of the immune response leads to both a "wide swath of inflammation" and excessive blood clotting, she said.
"Perhaps the viral replication is going on in the lungs and nasopharynx (the area at the top of the throat that connects the nose to the respiratory system). But the inflammation that the virus triggers is systemic," McAlpine said.
Study: Infection-control measures stemmed COVID spread in hospitals from 2020 to 2022 by Mary Van Beusekom / CIDRAP
Implementation of ventilation standards of at least five clean-air changes per hour, COVID-19 testing, the use of personal protective equipment (PPE), and universal wearing of respirators prevented most SARS-CoV-2 transmissions in a California healthcare system from 2020 to 2022, suggests a study published yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
COVID Isn’t Going Anywhere. Masking Up Could Save My Life by Alice Wong / Teen Vogue
Like millions of other high-risk people who are service workers, older, chronically ill, disabled, or immunocompromised, I have done everything I can to remain as safe as possible. Due to neuromuscular disability and respiratory failure, my chances of surviving an infection are slim to none. With the latest JN.1 variant likely even more contagious – or better practiced at evading immune system defenses – than previous ones, I wonder if this is the surge when I will become infected, which is terrifying.
In 2022 a series of medical crises left me even more vulnerable: I now have a tracheostomy, a hole in my throat where a tube enters that is connected to a ventilator full-time. Since I can no longer breathe through my nose and mouth, masks are less effective, and the filter attached to my ventilator does not provide the same protection as a K95 mask. When I am in public spaces and see most people unmasked either because they think the virus is a hoax, that masking is virtue signaling and a sign of weakness, aren't thinking about it, or that they simply don’t care, I feel like an expendable burden not worth saving.
RSV, flu and COVID: demystifying the triple epidemic of respiratory viruses by Nathalie Grandvaux / The Conversation
SARS-CoV-2, the instigator of the COVID-19 pandemic, is still with us. Despite limited access to screening tests, analysis of the number of hospital admissions shows that the virus is still going strong.
Québec’s Institut National de Santé Publique counted more than 33,000 hospitalizations in Québec in 2023 affecting all age categories, including 648 children under the age of nine.
The virus is not seasonal. It has a strikingly efficient capacity to spread through aerosols, especially as we take refuge indoors to escape the cold. The virus currently circulating is actually a mixture of different viruses, known as variants, each of which has the potential to partially evade the immunity an individual has acquired through a previous infection or vaccination.
COVID levels are up to 19 times higher than reported, WHO says as it warns of the potential dangers of repeat reinfection: ‘We don’t know everything about this virus’ by Erin Prater / Fortune Well
“Five years, 10 years, 20 years from now, what are we going to see in terms of cardiac impairment, pulmonary impairment, neurologic impairment? It’s year five in the pandemic, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about it.”
The concerns regarding COVID infection are multipronged, she said, and include potential acute implications like hospitalization and death, the development of long COVID, and “even longer-term effects” like those she referenced. …
Still, the world isn’t prepared for a more severe variant of the virus, should one evolve, because countries no longer see COVID as a global threat, she said. Consequently, there’s no agility to “scale up and scale down” the flow of tests, antivirals, medical oxygen, and other necessary supplies.
“We are concerned—deeply concerned—that this virus is circulating unchecked around the world, and that we could have a variant at any time that would increase severity,” she said. “This is not meant to be a scare tactic. This is a scenario we plan for.”
As most have probably noticed, there is no paid subscription option for this newsletter. However, Substack does have an option where subscribers can pledge to subscribe “just in case” and a few kind subscribers have made that pledge. I very much appreciated the vote of confidence in what I’m doing here. What I’ve decided to do on a trial basis is to set up a “tip jar” on the Ko-fi platform. I’m not anticipating a huge surge of income from using Ko-fi but whatever revenue I do end up with, I plan to spend on supporting artists on Bandcamp. Sadly, who knows how long that will seem like a good idea.
What Are We Even Doing
Disabled people must work from home to do ‘their duty’, says UK minister | Benefits | The Guardian
CDC Advised To Weaken Infection Protections As Mysterious Pneumonia Brews Overseas
Get used to it: COVID is a part of the holidays. Here’s how to think about risks now | WBEZ Chicago
Toronto to permanently close four COVID-19 fixed-site vaccine clinics - Toronto | Globalnews.ca
One in nine Canadian adults have had long-term symptoms from COVID infection, StatCan says
Got COVID for Thanksgiving and I’m grateful | News, Sports, Jobs - Minot Daily News
Naima by John Coltrane. Enjoy!