Forbes: Public Pushes Back On CDC’s Plan To Weaken Infection Control

[ahimsa]

[I'm not sure where to post this ... it's related to COVID and pandemic but also more generally about issues with the CDC]

Public Pushes Back On CDC’s Plan To Weaken Infection Control

https://www.forbes.com/sites/judyst...back-on-cdcs-plan-to-weaken-infection-control

A CDC advisory group met this week but did nothing to assuage concerns that it will further roll back protections for patients and healthcare workers in nursing homes and hospitals.

As noted in an earlier post, the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee advises the CDC on guidelines for infection control in healthcare settings. HICPAC met in June and initially published slides outlining its draft guidelines, which suggest that N95 masks are no more protective than surgical masks. The guidelines caused an uproar within the medical community over concerns that the CDC would put workers and patients at increased risk by weakening infection control measures.

Registration for Tuesday’s teleconference was robust. Interest in this little-know working group was intense enough that the CDC added a YouTube link; it was the first time that HICPAC had live-streamed its public meetings, per a CDC spokesperson. The link went dead after the meeting, and viewers saw a notice that it was now “private.” After complaints from the public, the CDC re-posted the video.

Given the public backlash about the draft recommendations, I expected the August 22 meeting to discuss Covid-19, masking and respiratory protections. I was mistaken. HICPAC’s discussion on isolation was focused solely on contact, or barrier precautions, which are used primarily for wounds and contact with secretions from patients infected with MRSA or resistant organisms. There was no mention of respiratory isolation by the committee.

 

[RedFox]

HICPAC met in June and initially published slides outlining its draft guidelines, which suggest that N95 masks are no more protective than surgical masks.

I'm so angry that the CDC is considering publishing such utter lies that I don't have a constructive response.

Edit, I picked my jaw up off the floor:
What's informing the CDC's advice here? A rational approach might be to base recommendations on acceptably low chance of getting severe long Covid (<1%) for example. An irrational approach would be to simply stop recommending masks because nobody wants to wear them anymore. I'm pretty sure the CDC has consistently done the latter since roughly May 2021.

The CDCs job is to tell people what courses of action are healthy, not socially acceptable. They don't say medium rare is good enough because everyone eats it that way. They say to cook it to ~70 degrees.

For the record, I'm the only person I know who still masks and the only person I know who likes my meat and eggs fully cooked.

 

[rvallee]

Somehow, it's so bad it actually reminds me of the TV series V, about alien reptiles replacing human beings, and so many humans siding with the alien reptiles. It's a common trope, not just this series.

I never thought humans could actually side with a virus, do everything to maximize its spread and harm, ensuring its long-term survival. I definitely never thought that of all people doing that, it'd be the medical profession doing the heavy lifting. It would never work without their full incitement and cooperation. It's almost some odd version of the fungus that controls ants through their brains.

We are such a weird, irrational species. And wow is everyone just winging it all the time. I'm actually amazed we aren't still drinking radioactive stuff at this point. I guess there's a threshold that can't be crossed, and viral infections are just perfect for it. Probably the visible stuff. As long as there aren't pustules and rashes, it's all good.

Also: wow did the movie Contagion get everything comically wrong. It really lacked that whole Don't look up quality to it.

 

[duncan]

I wonder who the science advisor was for the Contagion script.

 

[Amw66]

I wonder who the science advisor was for the Contagion script.

Lipkin

 

[rvallee]

It probably made sense from the comfort of a lab and public health models.

Reality simply has a way of asserting itself that doesn't care much about those models, how people and politics end up driving everything in the end. No model could have predicted that medicine would end up basically cooperating with the virus, in some weird twisted way.

It's like military plans, they're built with the knowledge that every assumption will be wrong and how to react to what couldn't get predicted. Modern warfare is very different from the old type, with lots of leeway for decisions on the ground. Except here it's without actually doing that, and insisting that the plan must proceed as intended. And not even following the original plan anyway. And really just winging everything the whole time.