Sandcastle Kat

If you want to avoid long term health issues, wear a mask

If you care about disabled people, wear a mask

If you care about being able to resist & fight back, wear a mask

If you know that raw milk, vitamin A and green juice aren’t cures, wear a mask

If you want to fight fascism, wear a mask

Fuck this. Novavax has shown its safety and efficacy over and over and over. It’s the *best* vaccine we have. Please keep calling and emailing FDA to demand BLA for Novavax ➡️ (800) 835-4709 or (240) 402-8020

You can start with these three FDA officials, all directly involved in the #Novavax file. All are addressed as "doctor".
TracyBeth.Hoeg@fda.hhs.gov
Scott.Steele@fda.hhs.gov
Sara.Brenner@fda.hhs.gov

Keep calling and emailing and faxing the FDA every day to get Novavax full BLA approval, under 12 access, extend shelf life

Keep calling the FDA 800-402-8010 tracybeth.hoeg@fda.hhs.gov ocod@fda.hhs.gov commissioner_writein@fda.gov mmakary1@jhmi.edu Julia.Tierney@fda.hhs.gov david.kaslow@fda.hhs.gov

Tomorrow is the last day to get in public comments for ACIP. If you want to stand up against RFK Jr, get your comments in supporting Novavax and expansion for pediatric use of it. You can make a comment here: www.regulations.gov/docket/CDC-2...

Never forget you don’t need a mandate to do the right thing.

You can wear a mask and protect others.
You can get boosted.
You can help someone in need.
You can donate to mutual aid.
You can amplify voices different than your own.

Caring about one another IS a form of resistance.

This is why respirators need to be mandatory in hospitals.

Babies, people with certain disabilities & some health conditions need others to mask to protect them.

This hospital shouldn’t be “scrambling”. Make masks mandatory & protect patients and staff.

Clean & ventilate the air too!

It's really not okay to get COVID. It really isn't mild....What feels like a really mild case can be doing massive internal damage to your body. It's not that you're young and healthy and therefore COVID is not going to hurt you. You're young and healthy and it will feel like a mild cold for some and at the same time be doing massive damage. So you don't want to get COVID. Given that, if you accept that, the next thing is to understand that in order to not get COVID you need to be extremely careful and also fortunate. You can't negotiate with the virus. You can't say "I was really good today and was on my own so l'm going to go to a restaurant and I'm sure it will be fine". That logic doesn't work at all. It's really like the hockey goalie trying to stop the puck from going in. You've got to have your eye on that puck the entire time. You can't let up your guard and you can't say "well my last save was great so I'm sure it won't go in this time. That's not how hockey works, and that's not how COVID works. Colin Furness, epidemiologist, Toronto

A Plea to Maskless Healthcare Workers from Vulnerable Patients If you see a mask - wear a mask. Better yet - wear a mask all the time and show us you understand that we're still IN a pandemic. We are depending on you to keep us safe - please don't betray that.

There are measles outbreaks in the U.S. & Canada. A disease we eradicated is making a comeback due to dangerous anti-vaxx rhetoric

We need mandatory masking in healthcare

A respirator protects against Covid, measles & more

There’s no excuse to expose patients when we have the tools to prevent it:

Whenever you hear of a new measles case, contact tracers invariably list the following as exposure sites:

Airports/airplanes
ERs and walk in clinics
Shopping malls and pharmacies.

Getting vaccinated is the best prevention for measles, but wearing a respirator in high risk places helps too!

medicare telehealth is set to expire in 38 days. Why doesn't anyone at Medicare know anything?

Medicare coverage for telemedicine is set to expire end of March

Telemedicine is a vital accommodation tool for disabled & elderly people.

Many can’t get to in person appointments without risk to baseline & health setbacks

Yet representatives at Medicare don’t seem to know what’s happening?

CMS Must Indefinitely Extend Full Telehealth Services Join us in urging Congress to extend telehealth services indefinitely through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Currently, funding for telehealth services through the Medicare program wi...

Let's go, let's go, let's go - one month to save telehealth!!

Here's a letter campaign, but PLEASE also call your three Members of Congress. They NEED to hear from you about this.

actionnetwork.org/letters/medi...

You’ve been clear in saying that Covid has not gone away. You ask people to wear masks at your events. But that attitude is not necessarily where the rest of the world is. How do you think about continuing to take precautions and advising others to do so when it feels as if society has moved on? I do it for a bunch of reasons. Firstly, I have learned that I enjoy not being sick. I know that the cost of long Covid is real and substantial, and I don’t want to run that risk lightly. I also know that I have many friends and people I’m close to who are immunocompromised. So for the sake of the people around me, I also don’t want to get sick. When I do events, I wear a mask for those reasons, and because I know that every time I do a talk, while the vast majority of people in the audience have probably moved on, there are going to be other people who haven’t. I think it makes a huge difference to them to have the person at the front of the stage wear a mask. It tells them, It’s not weird. So I do it for that reason, too. In terms of holding this line at a point when a large swath of society has moved on, I have written a lot about the panic-neglect cycle.

I appreciate this response from Ed Yong on why he requests that people mask at his events. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/m...

We’re Witnessing the Fall of Public Health… and Your Best Tool is a Mask Measles in Texas, bird flu in Louisiana, tuberculosis in Kansas and Covid everywhere. Public health has been dying a slow death for years, we can’t count on it anymore. What can we count on? A mask!

If you want to fight fascism? Wear a mask.

If you want to show solidarity with disabled people? Wear a mask.

If you want to protect your own health? Wear a mask.

If you recognize that no one is coming to save us? Wear a mask.

My ultimate guide to respirators:

CDC Posts, Then Deletes, Data on Bird Flu Transmission Between Cats and People (Gift Article) The data, which appeared fleetingly online on Wednesday, confirmed transmission in two households. Scientists called on the agency to release the full report.

SCOOP: Cats that became infected with bird flu might have spread the virus to humans in the same household and vice versa, according to data that briefly appeared online in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but then abruptly vanished.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/h...

World Health Organization "We cannot talk about COVID in the past tense. It's still with us, it still causes acute disease and Long COVID, and it still kills. The world might want to forget about COVID-19, but we cannot afford to." Dr. Tedros, WHO Director 12/10/24 Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Director-General WHO leader says COVID-19 is "still a pandemic" Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 Project Lead, WHO says she is worried people are still too eager to move on from COVID "It's still a pandemic causing far too many (re)infections, hospitalizations, deaths and long covid when tools exist to prevent them," "Cases and hospitalisations for #COVID19 have been on the rise for months; hospitals in many countries are burdened and overwhelmed from COVID and other pathogens, and deaths are on the rise." Dr. Van Kerkhove said governments and individuals can't give in to complacency, emphasizing that the world has gone through something "traumatic." "I'm worried that too many think #COVID19 is not something to worry about, that they need a new variant with a Greek letter to take this virus seriously," - Jan, 2024

Alt text included

#COVIDisNotOver

#COVIDisntOver

#WeAreStillinApandemic

The Minnesota Star Tribune https://bit.ly/4jewGCA Headline: Minnesota ERs stressed by waves of COVlD, flu, RSV, norovirus patients Subhead: Weekly reports of COVlD-19 and influenza show rising activity, but it’s the combination of multiple infectious diseases at once that’s causing problems. By Jeremy Olson Visual: Two Emergency Room medical staff wearing PPE, shields and surgical masks, which are not protective against airborne viruses. Caption: Screeners waited at Park Nicollet Methodist Hospital emergency room, where they checked patients for COVID symptoms, in St. Louis Park on June 4. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

“We’re seeing patients in hallways, in triage bays, in every kind of nook and cranny of our hospital that we can find.” —Dr. Brandon Trigger, M Health Fairview, shared signs of a "Quaddemic."
Jeremy Oslon @startribune.com reports. bit.ly/4jewGCA
Stay safe! #MaskTogetherAmerica

Find Out Why Health Insurance Denied Your Claim You likely have the right to access records that explain why your insurer denied your claim or prior authorization request. Use ProPublica’s free tool to generate a letter requesting your claim file f...

I don't know who needs to know this, but Pro Publica has an online thing that will format a letter to your US health insurance company to demand the records behind a claim denial. (which the insurance is then legally required to provide in most cases)

projects.propublica.org/claimfile/

The disastrous #LAWildfires spread toxic air. Steve Patterson @stevepeterson.bsky.social @nbcnews.com reports on the threat & how N95+ respirators & air purifiers can reduce health risks. We are indebted to Patterson and all news crews for their bravery and sacrifices in keeping the world informed.

If you're in an evacuation zone in SoCal, please check in with any disabled/aging neighbors you have to see if they need help evacuating.

I’ve been told
that there’s no point
trying to stay safe
that it’s just inevitable
that I will catch it again
and then catch it again
and again
and while I recognize
that death and taxes
may be inevitable
I refuse to believe
that the same is true
about catching this virus.

No one wants to spend Christmas in the hospital - but if you DO need the hospital over the holidays - please wear a mask.

For the staff, for yourself, for all the other patients.

The period between Christmas and New Years is rife for virus spread - mask up and stop transmission!

UK doctors and nurses with long COVID to sue for compensation | Context Health workers who fell ill on COVID pandemic frontline sue employers as they battle life-changing disabilities

“They say they were not given adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), including high grade masks, and often had to rely on flimsy surgical masks…”

www.context.news/socioeconomi...

You can look up contact information for your local House and Senate reps here: www.congress.gov/members/find...

www.congress.gov/members/find...

www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

⏰With a gov’t shutdown looming for Saturday, let’s make sure #telehealth doesn't end up on the chopping block!

“Johnson had pledged he would try to move…a narrow bill…to avert a government shutdown”

Contact your reps now and request telehealth extension support

#callyourrep

This doesn't look good for extended Medicare coverage for telehealth unless a new plan is developed and voted on by Friday.