We are now seeing long COVID admissions at my hospital. These pts will not be part of the COVID hospitalization numbers but they will still be taking a bed. They are still hospitalized 2/2 COVID.
Here’s where I’m puzzled. The UK got hit just as hard w/Omicron. They have a higher vaccination rate. They are more boosted than the US. They should have this so called WALL OF IMMUNITY in place. Yet they are suddenly getting hit hard. Why wound it be different in the US?
Leana Wen didn’t get much doctoring or opining yesterday because she was busy blocking ppl. A few ppl she claims are bullying and harassing. Here are the ppl
#BlockedbyWen
a 🧵
The most flabbergasting:
@oni_blackstock
a respected black female MD who works for health equity
Wife’s birth professionals group discussing the increased rates of preeclampsia and postpartum hemorrhage.
THEY ALL SAY ITS BECAUSE OF COVID.
Colds did not do this. Flu did not do this.
Birthing ppl MUST be advised to avoid infection. It’s a matter of life or death.
Real question.
How did COVID become decoupled from social justice?
The leftists won’t mask.
Activist working for racial justice WON‘T MASK.
All those ppl with Black Lives Matter signs in their yards WILL NOT MASK.
@PunchUpPod
any ideas?
Because variants can spread rapidly, COVID-19 cases can increase in our communities. 📈 Protect yourself and others by being up to date on vaccines and by wearing a mask in crowded indoor settings. 😷
@CNN
and
@washingtonpost
you both employ Leana. Look at the people she has blocked. Is this appropriate for someone who represents your institutions? Dr. BLACKSTOCK? Is this who you want to feature?
Wen makes A LOT OF MONEY for being a public figure. It’s fair to block the trolls but her claim is she is facing misogyny and racism. The people she chose to block tell a different story. They show someone with a remarkably fragile ego who wished to remain unchallenged.
@thrasherxy
a queer black journalist/author
@tylerblack32
MD, advocate for kids mental health.
@acweyand
a female pediatric oncologist
@LisaMcCray
a black woman journalist
@MDaware
ED doc
➕a whole lotta tweeps who politely told her that her whine-fest was full of shit.
So my kid is sick. Almost three years with NO illnesses. COVID (-) so far, windows are open, HEPAs at full speed, we’re all masking. PCR tomorrow. One of her teachers at the program she goes to ONCE A WEEK was sick on Friday. My kid was in an N95 the whole time.
Fuck this shit.
This is someone who doesn’t understand how to care for anyone but herself. We are in a pandemic. We have lost over ONE MILLION lives in two years. We are going to deal with this for generations. We cannot afford for our public health to be in the hands of someone like Leana Wen.
Wen IS fragile. Her tenure both in Boston, then at Planned Parenthood demonstrate that. In both places she had handbooks created detailing how to interact with her.
@KiraPeikoff
@Bob_Wachter
Define living. I’d like to live my life but I’m a nurse at a county hospital. I will never have my life back if we don’t protect not only ourselves but our community. But others will at my expense and at the expense of the population I work with. To me this is immoral.
Ready for another edition of Living With COVID? Well my mom is in the hospital, and while it's not for COVID, it's not even WITH COVID, she would not be there if she'd not gotten COVID.
What Leana Wen did yesterday was egregious. She is a PUBLIC FIGURE and she did not improve discourse. Instead shut down dissent and cloaked her actions in words meant to give her the power of victimhood.
And really, DR. BLACKSTOCK.
SMDH
Wen had a fit yesterday, a temper tantrum only the worst kind of bad boss can throw. The public didn’t get her handbook and the marketplace of ideas that is Twitter (for better and for worse) isn’t lulled into complacency by her endless credentialing.
Instead of spending the day being the VIP Leana thinks she is, she spent the day acting like the insecure, emotionally stunted child that is at her very core: never good enough; pushed too far and too fast. She blocked smart, caring people who are important voices in a pandemic.
I like
@DrEricDing
. I get he has a style and that he is trying to sound an alarm in a world that’s not always listening. I get I can take what he says or leave it. This is called responsible media consumption and critical thinking.
At Planned Parenthood people were told to always answer her overnight emails first. She was such a poor manager and leaded that she lasted eight months then had a very public exit.
Then she sucked up sympathy from either outright sycophants or the usual suspects who are nice and will always lend their support to calls for civility no matter how suspect the author is, and Wen is nothing but SUS.
Stating that vaccinated and boosted ppl are dying is NOT ANTIVAXX.
It’s proving accurate information about risk.
Ppl were told vaccination eliminated risk and that was used as a carrot to increase vaccination.
If vaccination doesn’t eliminate risk, WE NEED TO KNOW.
In Boston a handbook told employees to write down everything Wen indicates she needs, “including for herself” and to make sure to randomly look at Wen in case she’s randomly communicating something.
I keep saying this. I review vaccination status for my job. When the initial vaccines came out I saw how public health mobilized: mobile vans, vaccine clinics, a huge outreach.
All of of that? Gone.
How many people do I see who are fully boosted?
Almost none.
Mass failure.
This isn’t “vaccine skepticism” or “vaccine denial.” People didn’t become hesitant after their intiail vaccines. After the intiail emergency rush for vaccination, this is an utter failure of the US to build or continue a vaccine delivery system.
@kprather88
@ashishkjha
I review charts from area hospitals. There are outbreaks on floors. I’m seeing pts get COVID in circumstances where they are not directly exposed, not near the original pt. But one was walking in the hallway. It’s clear it’s airborne and refuses to stay behind doors.
Well my 78 y/o mother has fully symptomatic COVID. Thanks
@POTUS
for your leadership on this. Her living facility followed your protocols and now she’s sick.
The need for school disguised as daycare is more important than human lives.
Missed vacations are more important than human lives.
Airlines are more important than human lives.
Some days it seems like EVERYTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HUMAN LIVES.
Two year study showing twice as many Black kids died from COVID yet I just saw a community event in a primarily black community in LIBERAL Seattle in a FUCKING surge and NO MASKS.
There seems to be a new breed of annoying Twitter personality.
They are male.
They are in science and/or medicine.
They are NOT COVID minimizers but FEARMONGER minimizers. OMG, don't scare the masses!!!!
They are skilled at gate keeping and credentialing.
So vaxxed and relaxxed COVID minimizing privileged WHITE PEOPLE 🖕🏻 your brunch and 🖕🏻you vacations. 🖕🏻 you Joe Biden and the CDC. 🖕🏻 you Leana Wen and the other COVID minimizing grifters. 🖕🏻 you GBD.
You didn't keep my mom safe.
@WalkerBragman
This is White Parent syndrome. It’s the privilege you get when you can reasonably expect nothing bad will ever happen to your kid leaving you to only be concerned about their achievement and anything that might impede it.
But it won't be a COVID hospitalization. Nope. Ppl will just shake their heads and wonder exactly WHY our healthcare system is in crisis between bites of french toast at their favorite brunch spot before moving on to tell the story about their recent trip to Paris.
If the CDC had not decided to no longer fight community spread; if my state hadn't decided to follow Biden/CDC, if the mask mandates hadn't been removed; if people had kept masking anyway; if my mom's facility had shut things down earlier MY MOM WOULD NOT BE IN THE HOSPITAL.
All this while my mom is sitting in a fvcking hospital bed because those people are over COVID and the leadership who can provide guidance that would encourage them to keep her safe has failed her because the economy is more important than human lives.
The people who can participate are the ones who DO NOT CARE ABOUT COVID. How is this right????? How do we get any social justice when the most vulnerable are entirely cut out.
Adding - I ask my union to organize events on Zoom. MY UNION. I get that always pleasant dismissive little chuckle as a response. I am too disabled and too at risk to make my way to an in-person meeting to BARGAIN for my rights at work and I have to fight to be included.
COVID and masking isn't hugely different than smoking.
💠Smoking is a personal choice. Masking is a personal choice.
💠Choosing to smoke puts a dangerous carcinogen in the air, choosing not to mask puts a dangerous virus in the air
💠Both choices put other people at risk.
But the thing that got me was when someone found the flag
@DrEricDing
had left on the mall amid thousands. It wasn’t placed for public consumption, it wasn’t performative, and on it he said he didn’t do enough.
Question for the COVID minimizers:
“Do you think we can live like this forever?”
-overloaded healthcare system
-cancelled flights
-restaurants closed because they can’t staff
-can’t get parts for car repairs
-disrupted school because education staff is sick
All for what?
I’m just sad today. I am okay missing out on most things but I’d really love to safely do more around the issues I care about. I can’t because even the people who share my values don’t when it comes to COVID.
So do I want gaslighting ⛽️💡or do I want alarm 🚨. Actually I want f*cking TRUTH. Gaslighting and truth cannot exist together. Alarm can. I get that
@DrEricDing
may not always be right. Who is? But he’s been right A LOT.
@thrasherxy
I just told my beloved MIL our family won’t go on a cruise for her anniversary. She’s 82 and I prob have few celebrations left with her. But my kids have 60-70 years of living to do. It is so so hard but nothing right now feels worth their future. It’s lonely alright.
And they will mention that their toddler just got over their second case of COVID from daycare, and their grandma got it but she didn't get hospitalized, thank goodness, and another friend got it but he was healthy, and then ask for a refill of their coffee.
@rkaviate
@SashaRN
At least provide robust options and money for families. If it’s up to us to keep our kids safe, provide the tools. Drives me CRAZY. I’m literally not allowed to keep my family safe and have a varied life but they blah blah blah about needing normal.
@cmclymer
As someone who works in harm reduction, this is true. It’s not about stopping behavior, it’s about opening doors as many times as we need to in order to help people. I personally will never stop opening the door to recovery.
So, um, this guy is a SCIENCE WRITER. He just praised the ART DEALER, a known anti masking COVIDiot on Twitter. And begged him for a RT.
I think this defines BAD LOOK.
Zoiks.
JFC. The headline on an article full of anecdotes from ppl who have had five or more COVID infections vs. WHAT THOSE PPL ACTUALLY SAY. You can’t make this up.
@PostOpPrincess
@CassieY4
About $50/hour, sixteen years experience, Seattle. No retention bonus at all - administration refusing to give them. A traveler can make my entire annual wage in 12 weeks working at my hospital. We are officially holding a strike vote this month.
She got COVID after her senior living facility followed the CDC/state guidelines. They went along with the narrative that the most important thing was that their residents indoor dine and participate in activities.
I want to go to
@labornotes
Troublemakers school in a few weeks. Masks “strongly recommended”. Called to ask about about their general masking rates at the last one. Very few. These are the people who annoy their own unions. THEY WILL NOT MASK.
@NorVirginia1982
@fitterhappierAJ
You saw your 5 y/o granddaughter w/out a mask. A 5 y/o is likely in school or daycare and is a risky contact. Don’t make choices like this. We saw no family at thxgvg for exactly this reason. It’s hard and takes work but it’s not true that you have no control.
There are a lot of us who are quietly angry. We are not the Vaxxed and Relaxed or Brunch Nation. We are the people who saw that the world could be better then saw it ripped apart so a political party could maintain power.
Dr. Ding is a cancer childhood cancer survivor, an immigrant, a POC living in the cradle of whiteness. I think about how I got osteoarthritis in my hips in my 40s and now live w/chronic pain or how my daughter spent a year in and out of the hospital for asthma. Experience counts
@CovidDataReport
I’d just like one person to give me an explanation WHY it would be different. I’m totally open to not heading into another wave. Down with it!
I work every day to better my community. I’m lucky to have a job that lets me do that, so my commitment to social justice is far from lip service. But I cannot gather and organize safely so I am cut out from the social justice causes that I care about.
Am I pissed? Well, I had to deal with my mom refusing to go to the hospital because her low sodium was making her delirious. Then I had to sit in an emergency room taking a bed that I knew was direly needed for someone else on a holiday weekend that brings in a lot of traumas.
It’s funny when some Tweep declares “no one” is pro-infection then you provide one person who actually told ppl to go get infected quickly at the beginning of Omicron and are told “that’s just a Twitter rando” then you say “no, it’s a UK epidemiologist” and you get blocked. 🤦🏻♀️
When the outbreaks started, they didn't immediately close things down but decided to follow a focused strategy. They ended up with 70 COVID cases. Then they shut things down. My mom spent ten days isolated in her apartment.
She spent almost two days in the emergency room on a gurney. She finally got a bed but had to spend some time in the hallway. They can't get her sodium corrected. Every day there risks delirium and deconditioning. She's there again tonight, so maybe tomorrow we can get her home.
She had a very low sodium. So low it was dangerous. It was a hard decision to take my 78 year old mom into the hospital when I know we're in crisis and I know she may end up in a hallway. I'm glad I did.
My mom got pretty sick with COVID but she was able to get through it. While she was sick, she drank a lot of water. This week she started getting confused then on the 4th of July she was disorganized and paranoid, and i spent the holiday trying to get my mom into the hospital.
Found out today I’m no longer going to be able to get my pts vaccinated in the hospital.
I’m devastated. Gutted.
Since they rolled out the COVID vaccines I gave worked tirelessly to get my pts vaccinated. I’ve had countless conversations and gotten MANY to yes.
I hear criticisms that he doesn’t stay in his lane, sneering at the nutritional epidemiologist. Okay. Sure. But kinda credentialing, right? Credentials aren’t everything. Sometimes ppl have the ability to see the forest through the trees. Can’t get a degree in that.
Many ppl are profiting off tragedy right now, getting 10K to go on CNN, building their media profile by selling cherry picked stats, tweeting out talking points to back up a focus group driven narrative that the pandemic is over made to win a political election. Gaslighting. ⛽️💡
@DrNeilStone
I would love for docs to stop opining on Twitter about the zero COVID zealot boogeyman and actually work to minimize COVID so we can all simply be safer. Oh well.
I know how it feels to hold a life in your hands and know you didn’t do enough. I know what it’s like to have everyone tell you that you did and still know you didn’t. It’s hard and it’s human. I cried so much when I read that because I know the truth of those words.
In order to attend I have to hope to Jeebus that the people who attend just happen to decide to mask that day, hope I can get info about ventilation and HOPE my mask works. Or they could require masks. IN A SURGE. I don’t get it.
I left my family and the bbq we had prepared in tears; worked hard to calm my heart and breathing because I was so scared for my mom. Then the next day we lost all our plans because I was so tired. So it's not just my mom who was affected - me, my family, my brother's family.
@Bob_Wachter
You seem to keep waffling around COVID. How about we actually do what needs to be done to fix this. 1. Vaccinate 2. Mask 3. Test 4. Clean the air. Get enough paxlovid out to protect the healthcare system. Then remove NPIs and mitigate until pan-Corona vaccine. Not now.
@KiraPeikoff
@Bob_Wachter
A safe life can be meaningful - super meaningful when you know you are saving the lives of others. But I get it. People need to brunch meaningfully and keeping others safe might get in the way. In the meantime HCW have no way out.
I never have understood the “nutritional epidemiologist” dig. Again, credentialing. My EPI is better than yours. Makes me think about how stupid the LPN vs. ADN vs. RN argument is. We’re all in the same team. We’re all trying to save lives.
5) Just for total fun—here is my 2006 Harvard epi doctoral epidemiology exam qualification letter. It doesn’t say some tangential “policy” program or health program—it’s EPI proper. It’s also the **same** qualifying exam whether ID or general epidemiology or environmental epi.
My 78 y/o mom needs to know. It’s cruel to let her think she’s safe.
My 82 y/o MIL needs to know. Not telling her is cruel as well.
None of this is antivaxx.
Unless your goal is to hide the truth.
@CT_Bergstrom
Carl - the just feels like another form of pile-on. Gregg made his choices. I wish he’d stuck around and let things die down but he deleted his account and now it’s all gone. And the abstinence rooster post was simply uncalled for. He chose to post that and he chose to leave.
@risahoshinoMD
We’re in that moment where ppl holding the truth will be called on to have extraordinary bravery. COVID is not mild and it’s not over. ✊🏼
@greg_travis
West coast here. We had no drop in reading and 5 points in math. That’s a 2% backslide.
We have a strong masking culture.
We had less in person.
This kind of seem to indicate that neither were any issue.
And it seems 2% drop in the middle of a pandemic is kind of…okay?
@kmpb25
@emmaogreen
Thank you for this article. It’s quite good and and reasonable. I don’t understand the quickness to judge people who have been traumatized. Let us all have our process. Also, too many of us still have unvaccinated kids. I’ll be extra careful until my kids are safe.
@luckytran
A few points: we do count rain drops. Large amounts of rain can cause flooding, landslides, etc so we actually count them. Does she live in ARIZONA???? We count raindrops, we forecast rain, we use science to keep our communities safe. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️