> giant hospital system Sutter Health in California appealed a citation from the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, by pointing to the CDC’s shifting advice on when and whether N95 masks were needed at the start of the pandemic. By contrast, Cal/OSHA requires employers in high-risk settings like hospitals to improve ventilation, use air filtration and provide N95s to all staff exposed to diseases that are — or may be — airborne.
> Eric Berg, deputy chief of health at Cal/OSHA, warned the CDC in November that, if it accepted its committee’s recommendations, the guidelines would “create confusion and result in workers being not adequately protected.”
> The CDC’s advisory committee offers a weaker approach in certain cases, suggesting that health workers wear surgical masks for “common, often endemic respiratory pathogens” that “spread predominantly over short distances.” The draft guidance pays little attention to ventilation and air filtration and advises N95 masks only for “new or emerging” diseases and those that spread “efficiently over long distances.” Viruses, bacteria and other pathogens that spread through the air don’t neatly fit into such categories.
> “Guidelines that are incomplete, weak and without scientific basis will greatly undermine CDC’s credibility,” said a former OSHA director, David Michaels, during an October meeting where he and others urged CDC Director Mandy Cohen to reconsider advice from the committee before it issues final guidance next year.
> Outside California, OSHA faces higher enforcement obstacles. At the peak of the pandemic, a dwindling budget left the agency with fewer workplace inspectors than it had in 45 years. Plus, the Trump and Biden administrations stalled the agency’s efforts to pass regulations specific to airborne infections.
> Michaels said the CDC would further curtail OSHA’s authority to punish employers who expose staff members to airborne diseases, if its final guidelines follow the committee’s recommendations. Such advice would leave many hospitals, correctional facilities and nursing homes as unprepared as they were before the pandemic, said Deborah Gold, a former deputy chief of health at Cal/OSHA.
> Although the CDC committee and OSHA both claim to follow the science, researchers arrived at contradictory conclusions because the committee relied on explicitly flawed trials comparing health workers who wore surgical masks with those using N95s. Cal/OSHA based its standards on a variety of studies, including reviews of hospital infections and engineering research on how airborne particles spread.
@trendless At this point in time it is not farfetched to suggest that all these CDC 'efforts' are not lacking x or y resources, or that there hasn't been a or b or c studies, or findings. No. We have to come to the difficult realization that this type of (still in 2023!) standing is intentional and promoted. There's no other viable conclusion, again, based on the plethora of already globally available and decades-old proven facts and science.
@trendless
My sister works as a CO in minimum security women's prison in WI. The policy is if staff gets covid, they are home 5 days. Sick or not they come back to work and wear a mask for another 5. Any mask.
Covid goes round and round there.
Don't ask about maximum security prisons.
In East coast public health systems they all think they are protected wearing level 3 surgical masks.
I don't understand why CDC is hung up on #N95 masks. What the hell is the problem?
@CaroltheCrone I only have really cynical explanations, because there's no way the cost of N95s wouldn't be more than offset by sick days alone. But that's predicated upon bosses/orgs that actually care about the long-term sustainability of their workforce etc.
I dunno how the egoists walk it back now, either. They're up to their necks in negligence.
@trendless
I notice the part about "“common, often endemic respiratory pathogens” with its hidden assumption that anything common isn't a big deal. If smallpox were still common, would the CDC say it was not worth preventing? AIDS? Polio?
Lyme disease is endemic where I live, and we still take precautions against it.
@trendless
1)There's a reason I mention the pernicious, Lectin Pathway of Complement provoking nucleocapsid SARS-like N-protein so much, and it is not just because it is intrinsic to escalation of the disease. It's because it is a toxin. Given that the mass of a single unit of N-protein is only 46 kilodaltons + whatever glycans are attached, it's got to be one of the deadliest substances known to man. Downstream consequences of exposure exceed those of Cobra Venom Factor.
@trendless@novid California is the best state I have ever lived in, there have been six in the US and California is better than all the other others put together. Massachusetts used to be a close second but I don’t think they’re doing too well with a lot these days.
@trendless@novid Our singer is, at this moment, in day 5 of isolation after getting COVID for a second time last week. This latest infection came as a complete shock, as we are all vaccinated and boosted... and we thought we were taking reasonable precautions.
@strangeculprits@novid yeah, the messaging around what vaccines can and can't do has been a huge part of why this catastrophe is still ongoing. It really would have been so simple to say "don't share air" and be done with it. Alas..
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