Why public health experts say it’s unlikely that COVID-19 lockdowns return

October 4, 2023 Vera

Variant-driven COVID-19 cases are increasing and a few U.S. schools and businesses have temporarily reinstated mask mandates to mitigate the virus’s spread.

Now, some are sounding the alarm that more severe restrictions are on the horizon.

“They’re gonna bring back draconian lockdowns. They’re gonna bring back the tortuous mask mandates in schools,” one person said in an Aug. 21 TikTok video. “They’re gonna bring back the injection mandates. They’re gonna close down churches, they’re gonna close down small businesses.”

Another TikTok video, shared Aug. 30, claimed, “If we let this lockdown happen, it’s gonna be permanent.”

Posts warning about the return of COVID-19 lockdowns and mask mandates are trending widely on social media, including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and X, formerly Twitter.

We’ve seen these claims repeated by conservative commentators and politicians, including InfoWars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, former President Donald Trump, Fox News host Laura Ingraham and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

But public health experts say it’s highly unlikely the U.S. will reinstitute the nationwide mask mandates and travel restrictions that were common early in the pandemic. That’s partly because there is significantly more widespread immunity today than there was after the virus first emerged.

Experts say return to early pandemic restrictions is highly unlikely

Several public health and health policy experts told PolitiFact that it’s highly unlikely any level of government — local, state or federal — will reinstate broad mask mandates or stay-at-home orders in response to COVID-19.

“We’re just in a very, very different place (now). Those measures were put into place several years ago, before we had a vaccine, before we had any kind of treatments for COVID,” said Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Immunity to the virus, either through vaccination or prior infection, is drastically higher now than it was at the pandemic’s onset. About 81% of all Americans have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in May. And the Food and Drug Administration approved Paxlovid as a treatment for COVID-19.

Returning to early pandemic mandates also wouldn’t be effective given today’s political climate, experts said.

It would be counterproductive from a public health standpoint to recommend or mandate restrictions to daily life that many people would not follow, said William Schaffner, infectious diseases professor at Vanderbilt

Patients left to wait by Britain’s public health service turn to crowdfunding

June 26, 2023 Vera

London
CNN
—

Holly Reeves has a medical condition where she struggles to swallow food, so doctors fitted the five-year old from Devon with a feeding tube.

But Holly has asthma and if she has a serious coughing episode the tube falls out – leading to her “starving to the point of collapse” with “repeated visits to hospitals,” her mother Amy Thomas told CNN.

The alternative is to have a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG), a flexible feeding tube which is fitted into the stomach – but her family say they were told by the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) that the wait could be up to two years.

“If we had to wait another two years on an NHS waiting list – Holly might not have made it,” Thomas told CNN. So, her family decided to pursue private medical treatment instead and have exceeded their £5,000 target through crowdfunding website JustGiving.

Holly will now have the potentially life-saving operation next month.

A spokesperson for Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The NHS across the country is currently facing long waiting lists in many different specialties, and we are sorry that people in our care are waiting longer for certain procedures or treatments than we would like.”

And Holly is not alone, as an increasing amount of charitable donations online are paying for private medical care.

Figures obtained by CNN from JustGiving reveal that £52.1 million (about $64.7 million) was raised through its website for private healthcare in the UK over the past three years – £11.7 million more than in the preceding three years.

In the United States, people are no stranger to using charitable donations to pay for healthcare.

Unlike the universal, free-at-the-point-of-delivery healthcare provided through the NHS in the UK, the US system works off an insurance model. The standard of care is inextricably tied to your job status, leaving many unemployed and uninsured having to rely on charitable donations to pay for healthcare – or go without.

In the UK, most individuals do not have health insurance, according to Statista’s Consumer Insights. Instead, Brits use NHS services, which are paid for through general taxation and National Insurance contributions. The system is premised on the idea that everybody is entitled to equal and free access to healthcare – regardless of their income.

But following years of government austerity and with an aging population placing increasing

COVID, Mpox, Misinformation: The Way Forward for General public Well being | Healthiest Communities Well being News

February 5, 2023 Vera

The not long ago concluded year was one particular rife with issues but also signs of guarantee for the nation’s community overall health workforce.

Individuals in the subject can glance back again on a 2022 that observed continued COVID-19 exercise merged with other respiratory menaces – particularly, an early resurgence of influenza and circumstances of RSV that have strained clinic potential.

In the meantime, wellbeing departments experienced to facial area added threats normally extra distant to Individuals. Considering the fact that the initially scenario of mpox, formerly identified as monkeypox, in the state was documented in May well, virtually 30,000 folks have contracted the ailment and 20 have died. A latest measles outbreak in Ohio and the 1st identified case of polio in the U.S. in virtually a decade also stored the nation’s currently overburdened community health community on inform.

“This year in unique, what’s happened in community wellness confirmed us the hazards of ongoing threats from close to the globe,” claims Lori Freeman, CEO of the Nationwide Affiliation of County and Metropolis Wellness Officials.

Throughout the U.S., all those concerns have been compounded by enhanced general public scrutiny of health officials and their function, as nicely as an erosion of believe in in the institutions they represent.

Polling from the Robert Wooden Johnson Basis and the Harvard T.H. Chan University of Community Overall health found that 52% of Us residents in early 2021 said they experienced “a fantastic deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in tips from the Centers for Ailment Management and Prevention, although only 37% reported the exact same concerning the National Institutes of Well being and the Foodstuff and Drug Administration. Only 44% of Individuals claimed they experienced a good deal of rely on in their neighborhood overall health department, and 41% shared the identical sentiment about their state well being department.

Survey outcomes released in February by the Pew Investigate Centre located that the share of American grownups who claimed they had “a fantastic deal” of self-confidence in healthcare scientists to act in the most effective passions of the community fell from 43% in April 2020 to 29% in December 2021. Pew polling also discovered that only 52% of grownups this past May believed community wellness officers like these at the CDC have been undertaking an great or great work responding to COVID-19, down from 79% in March 2020.

“Trust in govt was low

Sens. Warren, Smith urge Biden to declare public health unexpected emergency next abortion ruling

July 7, 2022 Vera

Two of the major Democratic senators in the reproductive legal rights room are urging President Joe Biden to declare a general public health unexpected emergency as nearly two dozen states move to ban the method following Roe v. Wade’s formal repeal Friday.

In an op-ed published by The New York Instances Saturday, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tina Smith of Minnesota claimed the emergency declaration would help “protect abortion entry for all Americans” and unlock “important resources and authority that states and the federal authorities can use to meet the surge in need for reproductive health providers.”

Ending the constitutional proper to abortion has introduced the nation to “a perilous time that threatens hundreds of thousands of gals,” Warren and Smith wrote in the op-ed, incorporating that now “the federal government — not the individual who is pregnant — will make the critical conclusion about regardless of whether to keep on a being pregnant.”

Each senators also proposed shifting the court’s composition, reforming Senate filibuster regulations and remaking the Electoral Higher education, which they say permitted presidential candidates who misplaced the common vote to nominate the five justices who finally voted to overturn Roe.

“Simply put: We should restore our democracy so that a radical minority can no extended drown out the will of the people,” the senators wrote in the piece. “Roe might be long gone, but the protections it once certain are on the ballot.”

6 in 10 Individuals believe that abortion should be authorized in all or most cases, according to a national NBC News poll conducted in Might right after the leak of a draft opinion striking down Roe and the constitutional right to abortion. In distinction, 37 % stated abortion really should be unlawful in most or all conditions.

“The public is overwhelmingly on our facet,” Warren and Smith wrote in the op-ed. “The two of us lived in an America without having Roe, and we are not heading back. Not now. Not ever.”

The two senators are amongst more than 20 Senate Democrats who sent a letter to Biden previously this thirty day period, outlining govt steps he could consider to guard reproductive

A yr in, Montana’s rolled-back again general public health powers leave some areas in limbo

April 18, 2022 Vera

A year soon after a new Montana regulation stripped area well being boards of their rulemaking authority, confusion and power struggles are making a patchwork oversight technique that may possibly alter how general public wellness is administered long following the pandemic is more than.

The law, which took impact last April amid criticism of mask mandates and other covid limits on corporations, gave community elected leaders the final say in making public overall health principles. Supporters said elected officers would be accountable to voters if they abuse that authority, even though opponents claimed the adjust would inject politics into wellbeing conclusions.

Matt Kelley, CEO of the Montana General public Health and fitness Institute, a nonprofit centered on strengthening public wellness techniques, explained nearby well being boards however have a obligation to secure their communities, but the regulation restrictions their ability to do so.

“Anybody who has at any time been in a task the place they have a responsibility for something but not the authority to actually get that completed knows how tricky that is and how bad that feels,” Kelley explained.

The law was section of a wave of charges handed in statehouses amid a pandemic backlash. At least 26 states adopted guidelines rolling back again public overall health powers. Montana legislators passed some of the most restrictive changes, which includes preventing limitations on religious gatherings and banning businesses — even hospitals — from demanding vaccination in opposition to covid-19 or any other sickness.

Just before the new legislation, well being boards comprising appointees by nearby governments established community health procedures and authorized emergency health and fitness measures for their locations. The evaluate limiting well being boards’ powers makes it possible for them to move orders in an unexpected emergency, while the elected officials can modify or revoke individuals orders. Elected officials also have remaining say in appointing a wellbeing officer. But neighborhood wellbeing departments’ and health boards’ working day-to-working day operations are intended to be untouched by the new regulations.

The regulation left county commissions to oversee county health boards and city councils to oversee city overall health boards. But for local governments with joint overall health departments, the legislation is imprecise they’re left to determine their have “governing body” to supply oversight.

As a consequence, people metropolitan areas and counties have to rework agreements that define how their joint boards work, explained Kelly Lynch, govt

Tennessee general public health professor sells natural and organic food stuff on line | Overall health and Health and fitness

February 14, 2022 Vera

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The omicron variant and winter storms continue to harm provide chains and labor shortages throughout the nation, and grocery stores in East Tennessee are sensation the effects.

The empty aisles and deliver displays imply East Tennesseans have a lot less accessibility to wholesome foods. But Jen Russomanno, an assistant professor of public health and fitness at the College of Tennessee at Knoxville, is trying to mitigate the challenge.

Russomanno and her associate Kim Bryant, the homeowners of Two Chicks and a Farm, have produced organic and natural foods at honest selling prices given that 2012. Now, with the aid of Marketplace Wagon, an on the web farmers market, Russomanno and Bryant can distribute their solutions to extra people today across the area.

“I feel the pandemic has get rid of a light-weight on challenges with food items systems in standard,” Russomanno explained. “We noticed early on the shortages with paper merchandise, bathroom paper, you know, that sort of things. But in my impression, now is when we’re actually seeing the outcomes of the shortages of the pandemic when it comes to foods.”

In accordance to data from Feeding The united states, 12.7% of persons in East Tennessee had been food items insecure in 2019.

Russomanno, whose analysis focuses on food access and affordability and chairs the Knoxville-Knox County Meals Policy Council, has felt the have to have for obtainable, community food stuff given that she and Bryant bought their assets in Jefferson County 10 a long time ago.

“At the time, there was really no very affordable organic and natural food items to be uncovered in Jefferson County,” Russomanno reported. “I actually feel that was ahead of Whole Food items and Trader Joe’s even received developed in Knox County. So we made a decision to grow our very own.”

A Interest TURNS INTO A Job

Russomanno experienced under no circumstances farmed ahead of, but that did not cease her and Bryant, an East Tennessee indigenous whose father owned a farm, from having a stab at it. Right before they knew it, their pastime experienced turned into a complete-time vocation.

But Russomanno already had a full-time position at UT, and paying every Saturday at farmers markets was reducing into her by now scarce cost-free time. When Marketplace Wagon recruited Two Chicks and a Farm to be a part of their on-line farmers marketplace

Experts say return to early pandemic restrictions is highly unlikely

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