Showing posts with label pandemic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pandemic. Show all posts
Monday, August 2, 2021
Zen and a Post-COVID World
In a conversation on NHK World Japan, internationally renowned garden designer, chief priest of the Sōtō Zen temple Kenkō-ji, professor at Tama Art University, and president of his own design firm Shunmyō Masuno told design strategist Eisuke Tachikawa that Buddhist principles will guide the post-COVID world.
Saturday, June 5, 2021
"40 years ago, the first cases of AIDS were reported in the US"
As a gay man who was 18 when the AIDS pandemic started, this article and the anniversary itself brought back a lot of memories and sadness and anger. And our recent COVID pandemic strongly resonated for me, and reminded me of the fear that was in the air in my community for a decade and more. I feel like I held my breath from anxiety for about fifteen years, from 1981 until the mid-90s, so it is comical for me to see how people this last year kicked and screamed for having to wear a mask and practice physical distancing, while I have a living memory of all of us in my community having to alter our behavior, and wear something that was uncomfortable that we did not want to wear, and live with fear while not knowing exactly how the virus was spread in the early days, and watch as scores of wonderful, talented, valuable men died horribly. Please, I've done this exercise already. A mask is nothing.
40 years ago, the first cases of AIDS were reported in the US
By Harmeet Kaur, CNN
Updated 1:01 PM ET, Sat June 5, 2021
(CNN) On June 5, 1981, a curious report appeared in the Center for Disease Control's weekly public health digest: Five young, gay men across Los Angeles had been diagnosed with an unusual lung infection known as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) -- and two of them had died.
It was the first time that acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) -- the devastating advanced-stage of HIV infection that would go on to claim the lives of more than 32 million people globally -- was reported in the US.
Days after the initial report hit the newspapers, the CDC learned of many more such cases in gay men. Not only did those men have PCP, they also had other secondary infections, among them a rare and aggressive cancer known as Kaposi's sarcoma (KS).
Saturday marks the 40th anniversary of the nation's first reported cases of AIDS. More than 700,000 people in the US have died of the disease since then -- and though medical advancements have drastically changed the prognosis for HIV/AIDS patients, there remains to this day no cure.
President Joe Biden released a statement marking the anniversary and noting the work the US has done to combat the illness at home and around the globe.
About a month after that first report, the write-up in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report counted 26 gay men across New York and California with those diagnoses -- a number that would increase exponentially.
He said he's asked Congress to provide $670 million to fight new HIV cases by increasing treatment, expanding the use of preexposure prophylaxis and ensuring equitable access to treatment.
"In honor of all those we have lost and all those living with the virus -- and the selfless caregivers, advocates, and loved ones who have helped carry the burden of this crisis -- we must rededicate ourselves to reducing HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths," the President said in the statement.
"We must continue empowering researchers, scientists, and health care providers to ensure equitable access to prevention, care, and treatment in every community -- particularly for communities of color and the LGBTQ+ community."
Here's a look back at how the AIDS epidemic unfolded.
Activists drove the early response
The early years of the AIDS epidemic were an uncertain and unsettling time.
LGBTQ communities were losing friends and loved ones to the disease, one after another -- with little idea as to how or why. All the while, it seemed society had turned a blind eye.
"Can you imagine what it must be like if you had lost 20 of your friends in the last 18 months?" Larry Kramer, famed AIDS activist and co-founder of the Gay Men's Health Crisis, said in a 1983 interview with the "Today" show.
"No cause, no cure, people in hospitals. It's a very angry community."
President Ronald Reagan's administration paid little attention to the epidemic, with four years going by before Reagan made a public mention of AIDS.
Exchanges between Reagan's press secretary and reporters in 1982 and 1983 indicate that the nation's top officials and mainstream society viewed the disease as a joke, and not an issue of great concern.
That stemmed from the perception of AIDS as a "gay plague" -- a condition thought to be tied to the lifestyles and behaviors of gay men, even though cases had also been reported in women, infants, those with hemophilia and people who injected drugs.
In a recently published interview with the New England Journal of Medicine, AIDS researcher Alexandra Levine spoke of "the horror of watching as society as a whole turned its back on this suffering, the horror of watching as many of my own colleagues refused to help, refused to care, refused to act as the professionals they were supposed to be."
As politicians and government entities proved slow to act, activists took matters into their own hands, doing what they could to combat homophobia and stigma and make sure their communities received the public health information they needed.
Among those efforts was the 1982 pamphlet titled, "How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach."
Created by Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz, it was one of the first times that gay men were advised to use condoms during sex with other men, according to an exhibit by the National Library of Medicine. Though the two are widely considered to be pioneers of safe sex, many in the gay community at the time criticized their work as "sex negative."
Black gay and lesbian organizations, meanwhile, fought back through poster campaigns against misconceptions that AIDS primarily affected White gay men.
Scientists struggled to understand AIDS
In the early '80s, HIV/AIDS was considered a death sentence.
Scientists and physicians were struggling to understand what caused the disease and how it spread -- making the process of finding a treatment all the more challenging.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who became director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the height of the AIDS epidemic, refers to that period of his career as the "dark years."
"I went from a person who was seeing patients with other diseases and developing cures and adequate therapies for them in the early part of my career, to every day taking care of people who inevitably were going to die, usually within a short period of time," he said in a recent interview with CNN.
It was an experience shared by many clinicians who cared for early AIDS patients: Feeling as though there was nothing they could do to stop the suffering.
"You were really putting Band-Aids on hemorrhages for a while," Fauci added.
In the absence of viable treatments, Gerald Friedland, who worked on early AIDS cases at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, recalled how he focused on empathy.
"The onslaught of death and dying of young men and women was beyond 'usual professional commitments' and terribly hard," he said in a recently published interview with the New England Journal of Medicine. "But I learned how to become skilled at providing people with a 'decent death.'"
Therapies came in the late '80s and '90s
The tide started to turn in the late '80s and '90s, as more effective therapies became available and transformed what it meant for an individual to live with HIV.
On March 19, 1987, the Food and Drug Administration approved an antiretroviral drug known as AZT to treat HIV infection.
Another important change also happened that year.
After pressure from activists fighting for their community's survival, the FDA issued new regulations around clinical drug trials -- making it possible for patients to access experimental, potentially life-saving therapies without having to wait years for official agency approval.
By the late '80s and '90s, public perception of HIV/AIDS was also starting to shift -- thanks in part to high-profile activists and celebrities.
One of those activists was Ryan White, an Indiana teenager who contracted AIDS in 1984 through contaminated needles while being treated for hemophilia. He experienced discrimination in his community after his diagnosis, even being denied entry to his middle school. As White spoke publicly about his experiences and his family challenged his treatment in court, he became one of the early public faces of the disease.
Princess Diana was also instrumental in shattering stigmas and myths around the illness, famously photographed visiting HIV/AIDS patients in hospital wards and shaking hands with them without gloves.
And in 1991, NBA star Earvin "Magic" Johnson revealed he had been diagnosed with HIV -- his identity as a straight, Black man helped demonstrate that anyone could contract the disease.
Another scientific breakthrough came in 1996, when the FDA approved the first protease inhibitors. That development brought into use what's known as highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), turning HIV/AIDS from a fatal diagnosis to a controllable condition.
"We now are giving drugs to people who are living with HIV -- not only do these save their lives and give them essentially a normal lifespan, but you can prevent them from infecting other people," Fauci told CNN on June 1.
Richard Chaisson, a physician who helped lead the fight against AIDS at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in the late '80s and '90s, described the feeling to the New England Journal of Medicine.
"Desperation changed to hope. Hope changed to belief, and belief changed to joy," he recalled. "So many patients returned home from the ship of the doomed and went back to living near-normal lives."
In 2010, researchers announced yet another exciting development: A study had found that taking a daily dose of HIV drugs reduced the risk of infection for men who had sex with other men. In 2012, the FDA approved the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for adults at high risk of infection -- one of the most significant milestones of the epidemic.
As new treatments for HIV/AIDS have made the diagnosis more manageable and even help prevent infection, public health challenges remain.
About 1.2 million people in the US were living with HIV at the end of 2018, according to the CDC.
There are disparities in access to treatment, and Black and Hispanic Americans are disproportionately affected by HIV. Resistance to HIV/AIDS medications has also become increasingly common.
Some researchers and clinicians began to shift their attention and efforts elsewhere after the toll of the early years, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. And despite the US setting a goal in 1997 to find an HIV vaccine within 10 years, four decades later, there is still no vaccine or cure.
Link to original article:
Updated 1:01 PM ET, Sat June 5, 2021
(CNN) On June 5, 1981, a curious report appeared in the Center for Disease Control's weekly public health digest: Five young, gay men across Los Angeles had been diagnosed with an unusual lung infection known as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) -- and two of them had died.
It was the first time that acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) -- the devastating advanced-stage of HIV infection that would go on to claim the lives of more than 32 million people globally -- was reported in the US.
Days after the initial report hit the newspapers, the CDC learned of many more such cases in gay men. Not only did those men have PCP, they also had other secondary infections, among them a rare and aggressive cancer known as Kaposi's sarcoma (KS).
Saturday marks the 40th anniversary of the nation's first reported cases of AIDS. More than 700,000 people in the US have died of the disease since then -- and though medical advancements have drastically changed the prognosis for HIV/AIDS patients, there remains to this day no cure.
President Joe Biden released a statement marking the anniversary and noting the work the US has done to combat the illness at home and around the globe.
About a month after that first report, the write-up in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report counted 26 gay men across New York and California with those diagnoses -- a number that would increase exponentially.
He said he's asked Congress to provide $670 million to fight new HIV cases by increasing treatment, expanding the use of preexposure prophylaxis and ensuring equitable access to treatment.
"In honor of all those we have lost and all those living with the virus -- and the selfless caregivers, advocates, and loved ones who have helped carry the burden of this crisis -- we must rededicate ourselves to reducing HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths," the President said in the statement.
"We must continue empowering researchers, scientists, and health care providers to ensure equitable access to prevention, care, and treatment in every community -- particularly for communities of color and the LGBTQ+ community."
Here's a look back at how the AIDS epidemic unfolded.
Activists drove the early response
The early years of the AIDS epidemic were an uncertain and unsettling time.
LGBTQ communities were losing friends and loved ones to the disease, one after another -- with little idea as to how or why. All the while, it seemed society had turned a blind eye.
"Can you imagine what it must be like if you had lost 20 of your friends in the last 18 months?" Larry Kramer, famed AIDS activist and co-founder of the Gay Men's Health Crisis, said in a 1983 interview with the "Today" show.
"No cause, no cure, people in hospitals. It's a very angry community."
 |
| Gary Walsch, who was living with AIDS, leans on a friend's shoulder before a candlelight vigil in San Francisco in 1983. The vigil was held to bring attention to the AIDS crisis affecting the gay community. |
President Ronald Reagan's administration paid little attention to the epidemic, with four years going by before Reagan made a public mention of AIDS.
Exchanges between Reagan's press secretary and reporters in 1982 and 1983 indicate that the nation's top officials and mainstream society viewed the disease as a joke, and not an issue of great concern.
That stemmed from the perception of AIDS as a "gay plague" -- a condition thought to be tied to the lifestyles and behaviors of gay men, even though cases had also been reported in women, infants, those with hemophilia and people who injected drugs.
In a recently published interview with the New England Journal of Medicine, AIDS researcher Alexandra Levine spoke of "the horror of watching as society as a whole turned its back on this suffering, the horror of watching as many of my own colleagues refused to help, refused to care, refused to act as the professionals they were supposed to be."
 |
| Demonstrators in New York in 1987 hold hands during a moment of silence while demanding more government action in the fight against AIDS. |
As politicians and government entities proved slow to act, activists took matters into their own hands, doing what they could to combat homophobia and stigma and make sure their communities received the public health information they needed.
Among those efforts was the 1982 pamphlet titled, "How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach."
Created by Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz, it was one of the first times that gay men were advised to use condoms during sex with other men, according to an exhibit by the National Library of Medicine. Though the two are widely considered to be pioneers of safe sex, many in the gay community at the time criticized their work as "sex negative."
Black gay and lesbian organizations, meanwhile, fought back through poster campaigns against misconceptions that AIDS primarily affected White gay men.
Scientists struggled to understand AIDS
In the early '80s, HIV/AIDS was considered a death sentence.
Scientists and physicians were struggling to understand what caused the disease and how it spread -- making the process of finding a treatment all the more challenging.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who became director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the height of the AIDS epidemic, refers to that period of his career as the "dark years."
"I went from a person who was seeing patients with other diseases and developing cures and adequate therapies for them in the early part of my career, to every day taking care of people who inevitably were going to die, usually within a short period of time," he said in a recent interview with CNN.
 |
| Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, talks to his team about HIV/AIDS during a meeting in 1990. |
It was an experience shared by many clinicians who cared for early AIDS patients: Feeling as though there was nothing they could do to stop the suffering.
"You were really putting Band-Aids on hemorrhages for a while," Fauci added.
In the absence of viable treatments, Gerald Friedland, who worked on early AIDS cases at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, recalled how he focused on empathy.
"The onslaught of death and dying of young men and women was beyond 'usual professional commitments' and terribly hard," he said in a recently published interview with the New England Journal of Medicine. "But I learned how to become skilled at providing people with a 'decent death.'"
Therapies came in the late '80s and '90s
The tide started to turn in the late '80s and '90s, as more effective therapies became available and transformed what it meant for an individual to live with HIV.
On March 19, 1987, the Food and Drug Administration approved an antiretroviral drug known as AZT to treat HIV infection.
Another important change also happened that year.
After pressure from activists fighting for their community's survival, the FDA issued new regulations around clinical drug trials -- making it possible for patients to access experimental, potentially life-saving therapies without having to wait years for official agency approval.
 |
| Princess Diana visited patients with AIDS at a hospital in Rio de Janeiro on April 25, 1991. Her advocacy and compassion for people with HIV/AIDS helped destigmatize the disease and change public perception. |
By the late '80s and '90s, public perception of HIV/AIDS was also starting to shift -- thanks in part to high-profile activists and celebrities.
One of those activists was Ryan White, an Indiana teenager who contracted AIDS in 1984 through contaminated needles while being treated for hemophilia. He experienced discrimination in his community after his diagnosis, even being denied entry to his middle school. As White spoke publicly about his experiences and his family challenged his treatment in court, he became one of the early public faces of the disease.
Princess Diana was also instrumental in shattering stigmas and myths around the illness, famously photographed visiting HIV/AIDS patients in hospital wards and shaking hands with them without gloves.
And in 1991, NBA star Earvin "Magic" Johnson revealed he had been diagnosed with HIV -- his identity as a straight, Black man helped demonstrate that anyone could contract the disease.
Another scientific breakthrough came in 1996, when the FDA approved the first protease inhibitors. That development brought into use what's known as highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), turning HIV/AIDS from a fatal diagnosis to a controllable condition.
"We now are giving drugs to people who are living with HIV -- not only do these save their lives and give them essentially a normal lifespan, but you can prevent them from infecting other people," Fauci told CNN on June 1.
Richard Chaisson, a physician who helped lead the fight against AIDS at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in the late '80s and '90s, described the feeling to the New England Journal of Medicine.
"Desperation changed to hope. Hope changed to belief, and belief changed to joy," he recalled. "So many patients returned home from the ship of the doomed and went back to living near-normal lives."
 |
| Visitors and volunteers walk on the 21,000-panel AIDS Memorial Quilt on October 10, 1992 in Washington. |
In 2010, researchers announced yet another exciting development: A study had found that taking a daily dose of HIV drugs reduced the risk of infection for men who had sex with other men. In 2012, the FDA approved the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for adults at high risk of infection -- one of the most significant milestones of the epidemic.
As new treatments for HIV/AIDS have made the diagnosis more manageable and even help prevent infection, public health challenges remain.
About 1.2 million people in the US were living with HIV at the end of 2018, according to the CDC.
There are disparities in access to treatment, and Black and Hispanic Americans are disproportionately affected by HIV. Resistance to HIV/AIDS medications has also become increasingly common.
Some researchers and clinicians began to shift their attention and efforts elsewhere after the toll of the early years, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. And despite the US setting a goal in 1997 to find an HIV vaccine within 10 years, four decades later, there is still no vaccine or cure.
Link to original article:
Monday, March 22, 2021
Why you can't compare Covid-19 vaccines: What a vaccine's "efficacy rate" actually means
Nicely and clearly explained: why all the vaccines will work...if people will just take them!
Saturday, March 13, 2021
President Biden Addresses the Nation on the Anniversary of the COVID-19 Shutdown
As an American who lived through the horror of the last four years of the last administration, I can't even begin to tell you how relieving and wonderful it is to hear our leader--and dare I say it, the leader of the free world, once again--speak in coherent sentences, and speak with intelligence and compassion.
Thursday, January 21, 2021
Reasons To Be Optimistic About The Vaccine
We explain why the vaccine news is better than you may think.
by David Leonhardt
January 18, 2021 for New York Times
‘We’re underselling the vaccine’
Early in the pandemic, many health experts — in the U.S. and around the world — decided that the public could not be trusted to hear the truth about masks. Instead, the experts spread a misleading message, discouraging the use of masks.
Their motivation was mostly good. It sprung from a concern that people would rush to buy high-grade medical masks, leaving too few for doctors and nurses. The experts were also unsure how much ordinary masks would help.
But the message was still a mistake.
It confused people. (If masks weren’t effective, why did doctors and nurses need them?) It delayed the widespread use of masks (even though there was good reason to believe they could help). And it damaged the credibility of public health experts.
“When people feel as though they may not be getting the full truth from the authorities, snake-oil sellers and price gougers have an easier time,” the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci wrote early last year.
Now a version of the mask story is repeating itself — this time involving the vaccines. Once again, the experts don’t seem to trust the public to hear the full truth.
This issue is important and complex enough that I’m going to make today’s newsletter a bit longer than usual. If you still have questions, don’t hesitate to email me at themorning@nytimes.com.
‘Ridiculously encouraging’
by David Leonhardt
January 18, 2021 for New York Times
‘We’re underselling the vaccine’
Early in the pandemic, many health experts — in the U.S. and around the world — decided that the public could not be trusted to hear the truth about masks. Instead, the experts spread a misleading message, discouraging the use of masks.
Their motivation was mostly good. It sprung from a concern that people would rush to buy high-grade medical masks, leaving too few for doctors and nurses. The experts were also unsure how much ordinary masks would help.
But the message was still a mistake.
It confused people. (If masks weren’t effective, why did doctors and nurses need them?) It delayed the widespread use of masks (even though there was good reason to believe they could help). And it damaged the credibility of public health experts.
“When people feel as though they may not be getting the full truth from the authorities, snake-oil sellers and price gougers have an easier time,” the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci wrote early last year.
Now a version of the mask story is repeating itself — this time involving the vaccines. Once again, the experts don’t seem to trust the public to hear the full truth.
This issue is important and complex enough that I’m going to make today’s newsletter a bit longer than usual. If you still have questions, don’t hesitate to email me at themorning@nytimes.com.
‘Ridiculously encouraging’
Right now, public discussion of the vaccines is full of warnings about their limitations: They’re not 100 percent effective. Even vaccinated people may be able to spread the virus. And people shouldn’t change their behavior once they get their shots.
These warnings have a basis in truth, just as it’s true that masks are imperfect. But the sum total of the warnings is misleading, as I heard from multiple doctors and epidemiologists last week.
“It’s driving me a little bit crazy,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown School of Public Health, told me.
“We’re underselling the vaccine,” Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said.
“It’s going to save your life — that’s where the emphasis has to be right now,” Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine said.
The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are “essentially 100 percent effective against serious disease,” Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said. “It’s ridiculously encouraging.”
The details
These warnings have a basis in truth, just as it’s true that masks are imperfect. But the sum total of the warnings is misleading, as I heard from multiple doctors and epidemiologists last week.
“It’s driving me a little bit crazy,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown School of Public Health, told me.
“We’re underselling the vaccine,” Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said.
“It’s going to save your life — that’s where the emphasis has to be right now,” Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine said.
The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are “essentially 100 percent effective against serious disease,” Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said. “It’s ridiculously encouraging.”
The details
Here’s my best attempt at summarizing what we know:
*The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines — the only two approved in the U.S. — are among the best vaccines ever created, with effectiveness rates of about 95 percent after two doses. That’s on par with the vaccines for chickenpox and measles. And a vaccine doesn’t even need to be so effective to reduce cases sharply and crush a pandemic.
*If anything, the 95 percent number understates the effectiveness, because it counts anyone who came down with a mild case of Covid-19 as a failure. But turning Covid into a typical flu — as the vaccines evidently did for most of the remaining 5 percent — is actually a success. Of the 32,000 people who received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine in a research trial, do you want to guess how many contracted a severe Covid case? One.
*Although no rigorous study has yet analyzed whether vaccinated people can spread the virus, it would be surprising if they did. “If there is an example of a vaccine in widespread clinical use that has this selective effect — prevents disease but not infection — I can’t think of one!” Dr. Paul Sax of Harvard has written in The New England Journal of Medicine. (And, no, exclamation points are not common in medical journals.) On Twitter, Dr. Monica Gandhi of the University of California, San Francisco, argued: “Please be assured that YOU ARE SAFE after vaccine from what matters — disease and spreading.”
*The risks for vaccinated people are still not zero, because almost nothing in the real world is zero risk. A tiny percentage of people may have allergic reactions. And I’ll be eager to see what the studies on post-vaccination spread eventually show. But the evidence so far suggests that the vaccines are akin to a cure.
Offit told me we should be greeting them with the same enthusiasm that greeted the polio vaccine: “It should be this rallying cry.”
The costs of negativity
*The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines — the only two approved in the U.S. — are among the best vaccines ever created, with effectiveness rates of about 95 percent after two doses. That’s on par with the vaccines for chickenpox and measles. And a vaccine doesn’t even need to be so effective to reduce cases sharply and crush a pandemic.
*If anything, the 95 percent number understates the effectiveness, because it counts anyone who came down with a mild case of Covid-19 as a failure. But turning Covid into a typical flu — as the vaccines evidently did for most of the remaining 5 percent — is actually a success. Of the 32,000 people who received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine in a research trial, do you want to guess how many contracted a severe Covid case? One.
*Although no rigorous study has yet analyzed whether vaccinated people can spread the virus, it would be surprising if they did. “If there is an example of a vaccine in widespread clinical use that has this selective effect — prevents disease but not infection — I can’t think of one!” Dr. Paul Sax of Harvard has written in The New England Journal of Medicine. (And, no, exclamation points are not common in medical journals.) On Twitter, Dr. Monica Gandhi of the University of California, San Francisco, argued: “Please be assured that YOU ARE SAFE after vaccine from what matters — disease and spreading.”
*The risks for vaccinated people are still not zero, because almost nothing in the real world is zero risk. A tiny percentage of people may have allergic reactions. And I’ll be eager to see what the studies on post-vaccination spread eventually show. But the evidence so far suggests that the vaccines are akin to a cure.
Offit told me we should be greeting them with the same enthusiasm that greeted the polio vaccine: “It should be this rallying cry.”
The costs of negativity
Why are many experts conveying a more negative message?
Again, their motivations are mostly good. As academic researchers, they are instinctively cautious, prone to emphasizing any uncertainty. Many may also be nervous that vaccinated people will stop wearing masks and social distancing, which in turn could cause unvaccinated people to stop as well. If that happens, deaths would soar even higher.
But the best way to persuade people to behave safely usually involves telling them the truth. “Not being completely open because you want to achieve some sort of behavioral public health goal — people will see through that eventually,” Richterman said. The current approach also feeds anti-vaccine skepticism and conspiracy theories.
After asking Richterman and others what a better public message might sound like, I was left thinking about something like this:
We should immediately be more aggressive about mask-wearing and social distancing because of the new virus variants. We should vaccinate people as rapidly as possible — which will require approving other Covid vaccines when the data justifies it.
People who have received both of their vaccine shots, and have waited until they take effect, will be able to do things that unvaccinated people cannot — like having meals together and hugging their grandchildren. But until the pandemic is defeated, all Americans should wear masks in public, help unvaccinated people stay safe and contribute to a shared national project of saving every possible life.
Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/briefing/donald-trump-pardon-phil-spector-coronavirus-deaths.html
Again, their motivations are mostly good. As academic researchers, they are instinctively cautious, prone to emphasizing any uncertainty. Many may also be nervous that vaccinated people will stop wearing masks and social distancing, which in turn could cause unvaccinated people to stop as well. If that happens, deaths would soar even higher.
But the best way to persuade people to behave safely usually involves telling them the truth. “Not being completely open because you want to achieve some sort of behavioral public health goal — people will see through that eventually,” Richterman said. The current approach also feeds anti-vaccine skepticism and conspiracy theories.
After asking Richterman and others what a better public message might sound like, I was left thinking about something like this:
We should immediately be more aggressive about mask-wearing and social distancing because of the new virus variants. We should vaccinate people as rapidly as possible — which will require approving other Covid vaccines when the data justifies it.
People who have received both of their vaccine shots, and have waited until they take effect, will be able to do things that unvaccinated people cannot — like having meals together and hugging their grandchildren. But until the pandemic is defeated, all Americans should wear masks in public, help unvaccinated people stay safe and contribute to a shared national project of saving every possible life.
Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/briefing/donald-trump-pardon-phil-spector-coronavirus-deaths.html
Monday, October 19, 2020
Saturday, October 3, 2020
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
200,000
By Theresa Waldrop, CNN
Updated 7:40 PM ET, Tue September 22, 2020
Even as the nation surpasses 200,000 Covid-19 deaths, there are still people who think the coronavirus is a hoax. Survivors of the disease and members of victims' families beg to differ and are sharing their very real experiences with the deadly disease.
Ann and Marvin Robinson, a married couple in Casper, Wyoming, got the virus almost three months ago. Marvin, 73, still has shortness of breath, and both are battling fatigue.
"We have friends who still believe it's a hoax. They think that it's going to go away on Election Day," Ann, 72, told CNN's Brianna Keilar on Tuesday.
"It's trying to convince people that the 200,000 people who have died were important," Ann said of her efforts to assure people of the reality of the virus.
As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 6.88 million people have contracted the virus nationwide, and at least 200,477 people have died.
Covid-19 is now the second-leading cause of death in the US, just after heart disease, according to the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
Heather-Elizabeth Brown, a 35-year-old police chaplain and corporate trainer in the Detroit area, spent about 100 days in the hospital with Covid-19. More than a month of her hospital stay was spent on a ventilator and in a coma in intensive care.
She said she still has trouble breathing and with fatigue.
"I find that I can't get through a whole day without having to stop and lie down and rest, just because I'm absolutely exhausted from doing everyday simple tasks like, you know, getting a shower or making breakfast."
"I absolutely want people to know that Covid is a real disease," Brown told Keilar. "It's not fake, it's not made up, it's not a conspiracy. It is something that is communicable and it is something that can be very dangerous."
Sondra Wolfe lost her husband to Covid-19. She is frustrated that the pandemic has become a political issue in the United States.
Diana Berrent was one of the first in her New York community to be diagnosed with the virus on March 18, she said.
She founded a support group for survivors, Survivors Corps, that has more than 90,000 members.
At the end of August, Berrent was "still having terrible GI issues, massive headaches, and what feels like a deep ear infection," she told CNN's Jake Tapper. "But it pales in comparison to what many of our members are experiencing, really dramatic things, neurological issues, tachycardia, things as dramatic as Covid-onset diabetes and Covid-onset lupus."
What she wants people to know, she said, is that "this is not a matter of either getting the flu or dying. There is a very, very large bucket in the middle, which seems to constitute a huge proportion of people who get Covid, who are not recovering. You do not want to end up in that group of people."
Maureen Fagan's sister Adeline Fagan, 28-year-old and a second-year OB-GYN resident living in Houston, died Saturday after battling Covid-19 for a few months. Fagan's family has been speaking out since in an effort to save other lives.
"Everyone could be an Adeline and that's the scary part of this," Fagan told CNN's Kate Bolduan, asking people to follow the guidelines to protect other people.
"If you can do something as simple as wearing the mask, social distancing, even just using hand sanitizer, to do your part," she said.
"I think you have a right to do that, just as a human being and trying to be a good person."
Link to original article:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/22/us/covid-19-survivors-say-virus-not-a-hoax/index.html
Monday, August 10, 2020
VOTE BY MAIL 2020
As mentioned, voting by mail has been happening in the United States since the Civil War! And there is no evidence or proof of widespread fraud in the system and there is no proof that voting by mail benefits one political party over another.
So this year, consider voting by mail. I live in California where all registered voters will be mailed a ballot to return either by mail, in person on election day, or in my case, I can drop it off anytime at my country courthouse. If you are planning on voting by mail, please check your state's timing requirements at vote.org to see by when you need to request a mail-in ballot (if one is not being automatically sent to you like here in California), and by when it needs to be returned in order to be counted.
This page has vote by mail information listed by state but your situation may have changed due to the pandemic.
This page has Voting and COVID-19 information listed by state. Check to make sure you understand the most updated requirements for voting by mail.
https://www.vote.org/covid-19/
And of course check to make sure you are still registered to vote and that you have not been secretly purged from the roster.
Check here:
https://www.vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote/
And of course check to make sure you are still registered to vote and that you have not been secretly purged from the roster.
Check here:
THIS IS IMPORTANT.
WE MUST VOTE TO SAVE OUR COUNTRY AND OUR LIVES.
LITERALLY.
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Meanwhile, back on Earth...
100,00 dead.
More than the Vietnam War plus the Korean War plus 9/11 plus every school shooting ever.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CAjxp4Anhj-/
More than the Vietnam War plus the Korean War plus 9/11 plus every school shooting ever.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CAjxp4Anhj-/
Friday, May 1, 2020
Just Wear The Damn Mask Already
Digital art of famous statuary around thew world wearing a mask.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/94384459/Coronavirus-and-how-its-changed-our-world
Thursday, April 2, 2020
A Casual Reminder...
...that they are vicious monsters.
And he cancelled the Open Enrollment period, at a time when millions of people have lost their jobs and their employer-tied health insurance. CANCELLED. DENIED PEOPLE ACCESS TO HEALTHCARE. AS IN: NO, YOU CANNOT HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE. Virtually guaranteeing that even more people will die from COVID-19. Not only cruel, but intentionally malicious. Way to go, Republicans.
And he cancelled the Open Enrollment period, at a time when millions of people have lost their jobs and their employer-tied health insurance. CANCELLED. DENIED PEOPLE ACCESS TO HEALTHCARE. AS IN: NO, YOU CANNOT HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE. Virtually guaranteeing that even more people will die from COVID-19. Not only cruel, but intentionally malicious. Way to go, Republicans.
Thursday, March 26, 2020
Monday, March 23, 2020
From The GOP Playbook: Kick 'Em When They're Down
A single $1,200 check will do nothing for people who might be out of work for a full year or more. We need expanded unemployment benefits. And of course the GOP don't want to do that because they think that's "evil Socialism." The $1,200 check makes it look as if they are doing something when in fact it is literally the least they can and will do.
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