Notices by Gregg Gonsalves (gregggonsalves@med-mastodon.com), page 2

God help us all.

"But what happens when overlooking and tolerating greater levels of harm becomes a shared cultural habit? Like the proverbial frog in boiling water, we acclimate to ignoring more and caring less at our own peril." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weve-hit-peak-denial-heres-why-we-cant-turn-away-from-reality/

Watching H5N1 extend its host range, now show respiratory symptoms in a human case, should concern us all. We are whistling past the graveyard, not remotely prepared for what comes next. Perhaps H5N1 will not acquire the mutations necessary to ensure efficient human-to-human transmission, but counting on good fortune is not a strategy.

"...no one is being compelled to send in the cops on students & faculty...the vision of university presidents, newspaper editors & our current president is aligned around repression of dissent as the first & best response to what is happening on our campuses." https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2024/05/23/why-was-police-repression-default-response-opinion

My Yale colleague Jason Stanley in The New Republic. Be afraid, be very afraid (and then start organizing): The End of Civic Compassion--On education in a fascist America. https://newrepublic.com/article/181274/end-civic-compassion

Nothing says racist authoritarianism more than what the Board of Trustees at University of North Carolina is serving up. https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article288473709.html

This piece by Rick Perlstein may be the best analysis of the current moment. Far more thoughtful than anything else I've read. Read and share: "The New Anti-Antisemitism: the response to college protests against the war on Gaza exemplifies the darkness of the Trumpocene." https://americanprospect.bluelena.io/index.php?action=social&chash=c4f796afbc6267501964b46427b3f6ba.2708&s=29b9f9a5745d23de79eae7a288e3ddd6

I really don't know who Uri Berliner is, but he gets it wrong on COVID19 origins. He castigates NPR's reporting on the subject for not giving ample credence to the lab leak theory, when in fact, it is less-well supported by the data. He wants us to talk "both sides" to show his independent bona fides when it simply speaks to his scientific ignorance.

Nice piece by CDC Director Mandy Cohen in NEJM on Integrating Public Health & Health Care. However, the relationship between public health & healthcare isn't that simple. First, a piece on the medicalization of public health and the consequences of that move. 1/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2791244/

Now, along with public health being essentially taken over by physicians and slated as a poor relative of biomedicine, we've seen the rise of the financialization of medicine. This piece by the great Don Berwick, puts it bluntly. 2/ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2801097

And let's face it, medicine is vastly, vastly more well supported than public health. This creates a problem that isn't just solved by "partnerships." The late Elizabeth Fee described this 20 years ago. We simply do not invest in public health. 3/ https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.21.6.31

So, yes, we need to talk about the relationship between public health & healthcare, but if you do not talk about the role of politics, money & power that are central to how both fields are constructed in this country, this is just happy talk. There are structural problems we need to face now. end/

"During the past four years we lost our focus on how to combat a pandemic. Somehow, someway, our fight against Covid-19 became an individual battle about my safety, my finances, my health, and my freedom." https://troytassier.substack.com/p/reflections-on-why-i-wrote-the-rich?r=1l7clc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

The
@nytimes.com
likes to insist it has no point of view, that it is just "doing journalism," and criticism is meant to intimidate independent reporting, as publisher A.G. Sulzberger says here. 1/ https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/new-york-times-publisher-g-sulzberger-our-industry-needs-think-bigger

Well, it wasn't true then and it isn't true now, the paper has a viewpoint and it wraps itself in the mantle of neutrality again and again. Case in point. The homophobia at the Times was legendary. But of course, they were just reporting the straight facts. 2/ https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/10/the-new-york-times-discovered-gay-people-in-1987.html

And dear reader, they are still at it. When you're the
@nytimes.com
you never have to say you're sorry. end/ https://glaad.org/new-york-times-inaccurate-coverage-transgender-people-being-weaponized-against-transgender/

I was on Twitter/X for several years and as the COVID pandemic started it became a key way for people to communicate--scientists, clinicians, policy-makers, advocates. But since Musk took over many have fled and the place has become incredibly toxic (yes, I am slow to learn that not all things get better...). It's just really filled with hate now of all kinds. I just deleted my account. I feel free.