North Carolina's House has rejected the anti-mask bill! The bill will now go through a compromise process, which could include re-adding a health exemption.
More work needs to be done, but this shows that advocacy is making a difference. Keep going!
The new review showing the effectiveness of masks addresses the flawed Cochrane study, which was deliberately misinterpreted by anti-maskers & some media to spread misinformation around masks.
This new review will serve as a gold standard reference to debunk mask misinformation.
News: Biobot is sunsetting its COVID-19 wastewater public data visualization platform.
While Biobot will continue to publish their contextualized weekly respiratory risk reports, this represents another decrease in data transparency, and a step in the wrong direction.
Republicans complained about government overreach at the start of the pandemic. Yet they are now justifying the use of legislative power in order to ban wearing a mask for health reasons. What an absolute farce.
"So this bill will protect the Ku Klux Klan to wear masks in public, but someone who's immunocompromised like myself cannot wear a mask?" — North Carolina Senator Sydney Batch, who is a cancer survivor
There is zero evidence that mask bans help prevent crime. The goal of mask bans is to scare people away from exercising their First Amendment rights to protest, and to give cops more power to target Black and Brown communities.
Republicans are trying to take away and criminalize the right to make decisions around our own health, whether that’s the right to wear a mask or the right to have an abortion. Unacceptable.
"The Raw Milk Institute called the warnings "clearly fearmongering." The institute's founder told the LATimes his customers are specifically requesting raw milk from H5N1-infected cows."
This is an example of how minimizing COVID is destructive to public health far beyond COVID.
"Since March 25, when the bird flu virus was confirmed in U.S. cattle for the first time, weekly sales of raw cow’s milk have ticked up 21% to as much as 65% compared with the same periods a year ago."
The current COVID vaccines have reduced deaths but governments are in denial that there’s still a too many deaths, too many getting Long COVID, & too many locked out of society. Better COVID vaccines (with treatments & other public health layers) would make a huge difference!
What is also ridiculous is that the North Carolina anti-mask bill would ban people from wearing a mask for health reasons, but allows mask wearing for holiday costumes, work, theatrical productions, and parades.
Senator Buck Newton, who presented North Carolina's anti-mask bill that also penalizes protestors blocking traffic, says people "do not have the right to risk people’s health and safety." Shameless hypocrisy. Removing the right to wear a mask increases health risks for everyone.
This North Carolina bill is ridiculous. It justifies punishing protestors for blocking emergency vehicles, yet bans wearing masks for health reasons. This bill is dangerously anti-public health and restricts people's ability to protest and exercise their First Amendment rights.
Last week, the requirement for US hospitals to report key COVID data to the federal government ended.
But there's a proposed HHS/CMS rule that would change this, and require hospitals to report key COVID, flu, and RSV hospitalization data *outside* of public health emergencies.
We don’t talk about it enough but it’s a huge failure that there isn’t more urgency to develop better COVID vaccines.
An Operation Warp Speed for nasal vaccines and more variant proof vaccines would transform our ability to deal with COVID and help us mitigate future pandemics.
📢 Scientist and organizer working in public health, climate justice, and science communication🎓 Columbia, Cornell, Cambridge, Adelaide➡️ Contact/Links: https://linktr.ee/luckytran