Da(N95)iella

💚💚💚

Now what’s that specific word for this again? 🙃

How to Stop an Epidemic: When SARS Came to the ER — Public Health is Dead How an emergency physician and her team helped prevent a SARS outbreak at Vancouver General Hospital and what public health can still learn from a 2003 success.

They can learn what happened and how to get off the merry-go-round entirely for free here:
www.publichealthisdead.com/episodes/how...

Interesting the handful of people who have signed this who are doing “infection control” at North York General Hospital and Scarborough Health Network (including the former Scarborough Grace Hospital) who might consider learning something from their roles in the airborne SARS outbreaks of 2003 🤷🏾‍♀️

DoNoHarm BC We're a non-partisan action group of British Columbians advocating for evidence-based safety measures in high-risk settings.

3/ Do No Harm BC has posted an excellent website dedicated to this new standard: donoharmbc.ca.

Kudos to Canada for setting an international first in development of such a standard.

Thanks to Dick Zoutman of Queen's Univ for the heads up.

2/ N95 respirators are the default standard for continuous use for all staff and visitors in a hospital or clinic.

The standard also includes patients who can tolerate an N95 respirator.

The draft is under public review until August 19, 2025.

Check it out: publicreview.csa.ca/Home/Details...

1/ Respiratory protection (including respirators)

The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) has released CSA Z94.4, a draft revision of its standard on respirators and respiratory protection.

For the first time they are including healthcare settings in the new draft standard.

Support a National Standard for N95s (and other respirators) in Healthcare The Canadian Standards Association is looking for public feedback on an update of a national standard for N95s (and other respirators).

Want to know more about:

👉 What's included in this guidance?
👉 How enforceable it'll be?
👉 Who it could affect?

Check out our plain-language resource for more - then spread the word, b/c feedback closes Aug 19! donoharmbc.ca/national-sta... #N95sSaveLives #KeepMasksInHealthcare #CovidIsAirborne

A blue, black and yellow graphic features a hand-drawn illustration of a headstrap N95 mask entwined with a stethoscope, with tubing coiled in the shape of a heart. Text reads, Support a National Standard for N95s (asterisk - and other respirators!) in Healthcare. Have your say by August 19, 2025. Summary and template answers available at www.DoNoHarmBC.ca In the corner is the DoNoHarm BC logo and a QR code leading to their website

Advocacy alert 📣 Until August 19, you can give input on a game-changing national standard requiring N95s & other respirators in healthcare (and beyond)!

To make it easier to take part, we've created a plain-language explainer that includes some sample feedback: donoharmbc.ca/national-sta...

If you like “Public Health is Dead” you may like this from another show I made about policing and systemic racism.
Listen to the inimitable @hypervisible.bsky.social talk about the harms of Ring cameras carpeting our neighbourhoods with constant surveillance

episodes.fm/1642623025/e...

Amazon Ring Cashes in on Techno-Authoritarianism and Mass Surveillance Ring founder Jamie Siminoff is back at the helm of the surveillance doorbell company, and with him is the surveillance-first-privacy-last approach that made Ring one of the most maligned tech devices....

“police have used Ring footage to spy on protestors… It is easy to imagine that law enforcement officials will use their renewed access to Ring information to find people who have had abortions or track down people for immigration enforcement.”
www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

The Pandemic Has Been a Portal (for a few of us) It's true that most people keep choosing "normalcy". But the COVID conscious community is showing us a radical new way forward, that centers care

In 2020, Arundhati Roy wrote a gorgeous, prescient essay called “The Pandemic is a Portal”. In this piece, I discuss who actually walked through it: the COVID conscious community, and why I’m proud to be a part of it.

www.thegauntlet.news/p/the-pandem...

Experts call new Canadian Long COVID guidelines “contradictory” and “deeply concerning” - The Sick Times The guidelines recommend exercise and therapy as Long COVID treatments. Despite his attempts, Paul Garner had no influence on the process.

NEW: Long COVID experts are concerned about Canada's new guidelines for "Post-COVID Condition", stating that some recommendations, like exercise, could harm people with the disease. @spichaksimon.bsky.social dives into the guidelines and the how they were created:

thesicktimes.org/2025/07/08/e...

PLEASE SHARE!
I'm reporting on #H5N1 #BirdFlu (#AvianInfluenza #HPAI) for @thesicktimes.bsky.social, & want to talk to farmworkers or people who work with them re impacts of H5N1 on farmworkers. I'm especially interested in hearing re human cases since Feb 2025. Sources can be anonymous! (1/4)

That’s awesome! Happy the conversation is useful

First up, the Atlantic’s “ever maskers” article!

Public Health Media Club - Still Masking After All These Years | Public Health is Dead Welcome to "Public Health Media Club", a crossover episode of "Public Health is Dead" and "Everything is Public Health".

It’s a crossover episode with @everythingisph.bsky.social! “Still Masking After All These Years”. We chat, we critique, we cringe, and it’s live now! Public Health Media Club. If you like it, we’ll do more in between regular episodes.

public-health-is-dead.simplecast.com/episodes/pub...

One day I will write a dark comedy TV show about this place but that day is not today

Somehow still not as bad as the time my manager thought another ad agency’s pitch for “cards against inhumanity” as a Cards Against Humanity expansion pack using data from human rights violations was a good idea

In no way are most people prepared for the surveillance ramifications of these technologies.

The IRS Is Building a Vast System to Share Millions of Taxpayers’ Data With ICE ProPublica has obtained the blueprint for the Trump administration’s unprecedented plan to turn over IRS records to Homeland Security in order to speed up the agency’s mass deportation efforts.

ProPublica has obtained the blueprint for the Trump administration’s unprecedented plan to turn over IRS records to Homeland Security in order to speed up the agency’s mass deportation efforts.

Remembering one time an agency tried to convince my team at work that it would be a good idea to do a campaign with a fake police Instagram account “following” Black activists/organizers to make a point about police surveillance 🫠🫠🫠
(and, yes, they were)

Paraphrasing a bit of this episode I keep thinking about:

"The pandemic brings forth people's relationships with feedback, conflict and political accountability... I don't think I've ever had to do this many checkins about my friends' political praxis and integrity—never to this degree."

SPECIAL: “But my therapist said…” COVID-Informed Therapists Chat — Public Health is Dead Three mental health professionals speak on collective care and the importance of being informed about COVID as a practitioner.

More things I wish everyone would listen to, this time from @sharpflower.bsky.social & co. Really appreciating the perspectives of these therapists about internalized ableism, healing ourselves & healing our communities, & lots of pithy stuff. Thanks! www.publichealthisdead.com/episodes/spe...

SPECIAL: “But my therapist said…” COVID-Informed Therapists Chat — Public Health is Dead Three mental health professionals speak on collective care and the importance of being informed about COVID as a practitioner.

It’s full of gems about ableism, the whiteness of the wellness industry, and what collective care really means.
Check it out and let me know what you think! www.publichealthisdead.com/episodes/special-but-my-therapist-said-covid-informed-therapists-chat

And you do not want to miss Pierre’s mic drop moment at the end. Part of it: “The mind and body are connected deep down, you know this. And so do you want to give your client the wrong information? Can you live with that? …Face your fears, therapists.”

Pierre asks, does anxiety come up because we’ve been systemically abandoned by public health? Of course.

So, we ask on the show: is “COVID anxiety” a real thing? Not everyone still protecting themselves is doing it for the same reasons and it’s not unreasonable to be concerned about an ever growing mountain of scientific research into COVID’s harms. AND…

And @theBrianaMills reminds us, there’s a difference between an anxiety disorder—which is “irrational”—and being concerned about an airborne disease that can seriously harm you or others.

"...healthcare workers, and especially therapists...have so much power in the shaping of societal narratives about what is healthy and unhealthy." - Ji-Youn