Why do I have deep respect for HCW? I’m the child of two RPNs. I did 3 months of clinical pastoral education prior to ordination in an acute care hospital with ER & ICU. 3 months mostly with RNs and patients, gave me a deep appreciation for what they deal with. In an era with adequate resources.

Seeing more and more weighing in about how the GNH Triage nurse/ED team should be held to personal account makes me realize that the avg AB just doesn’t understand what an utter dumpster fire our major EDs have been for months/yrs. 1/9

Our teams need help NOW… We are operating in disaster mode everyday, but cannot activate the disaster plan everyday Only the Premier and govt can make something actually happen at a system wide level… Balls in their court. The blame for further poor outcomes should be too. 9/9

This is also very true in many many cases.

#Cdnpoli Exceptional post thread about the ED death of a forty four year old husband and father in #Edmonton #Alberta. "It’s a truism about complex systems, they rarely fail *splat*, and leave a smoking hole. Rather they fail in complexity."

Saw this in cancer treatment where an automated treatment data management system (TDMS) that integrated directly into the LINAC control system wasn't able to properly represent actual treatment plans, so the techs had to create multiple "patients" in the TDMS to represent real treatments.

I presented my opinion on this very poorly (apologies). I have been through heavy duty healthcare reviews where HCPs were maimed and patients killed. You are absolutely right the language of “root cause“ is wrong here. Lazy language use on my part. 1/

@altcdc.altgov.info -

I try to make it clear, as often as possible, that what I'm doing is #BootlegPublicHealth I try to explain the limits of my own understanding. It turns out "I'm not an expert" can work well as a message. bsky.app/profile/nina...

What we're rejecting is the false binary that we either accept that the medical establishment speaks for science, or we're with Bhattacharya, Kulldorf and the rest of those loons. From where I'm standing, both sides are just power grabs inside the EBM country club. Science is locked out.

I’m probably being unfair. Likely am. As we’d say in uniform, my gaf meter is at zero. An AI can explain. The same infectious disease and public health people are saying the same things they were in 2020 - demonstrated learning ability is approaching zero. While I studied EBM, they ignored us.

How do you even begin to explain to them how and why they are wrong?

Yeah, we don't want to take out our very justified anger about the way pre-RFK public health mismanaged COVID on this person. That said, no one who doesn't know about and acknowledge that mismanagement this far along has any business running anything in public health ever again.

Part of what needs to be done is covered here, following the exploration of several examples of recent relevant failures and tracing them back to the systems-level issues that underlie them.

Last year there was a mandatory mask notice on the door at the mammogram unit. Almost same thing. The only person wearing one was the receptionist, a baggy blue under her nose. When I asked the tech why she wasn’t wearing one she said ‘ I don’t need one’ 🤷🏻‍♀️😷

1000%. ☝🏼☝🏽☝🏽☝🏽☝🏾☝🏾☝🏿☝️ His whole thread!! Absolutely infuriating!

And the institutional failure is what convinced more and more of the general populace to listen to con artists and conspiracists instead of people who knew what public health was missing all along.

😕

🧵 @sameo416.bsky.social is right. F**king up SARS2 transmission was inexcusable. SARS1 was airborne. 🇨🇦 had huge commission slamming public health. Experts spoke out asap. What compounds my anger? Whining about learning yet here we are end 2025 still spreading airborne sars2, flu etc everywhere 🤬

Was just at an Ottawa hospital mid December and same thing. Signs everywhere that masks were mandatory and I was one of maybe 3 people masked - period.

Wait. You’re claiming you knew but you didn’t warn the public or manage COVID as airborne? You allowed people saying it was airborne to be vilified for spreading a ‘conspiracy theory’. Isn’t that worse than not knowing?

We don't even need a next time around. Record flu year after year lately. Preventable suffering and deaths, inc children. IPAC and gov public health learned NOTHING. #FluIsAirborne

I think this and other failures will eventually lead to the creation of a new better system, but we may be stuck in the weeds of failure for a long to come.

Some Toronto hospitals have posters up saying masks are mandatory but I didn’t see any doctors or staff wearing masks when I was in for an appointment last week. Only the patients followed the rules.

It’s interesting I was at Sick Kids hospital recently in orthopedics and they still have the plexiglass barriers and a very large and loud hepa filter but don’t require masks and I just don’t get the logic? There’s nothing in emergency which would make more sense, not even masks.

☝️ what he said. The goal for those of us who've been paying attention is absolutely *not* to just put the other team of high priests back in control of the same old public health cargo cult. If the structural problems with public health are not fixed, we'll have to replace it from the ground up.

I think we probably have to start over. 😢

And obviously, engineering ignorance about physiology etc is also astounding, but I know that’s outside my practice competence (and there are biomedical engineers who span both worlds). It’s not the ignorance, it’s the refusal to acknowledge it and to seek interdisciplinary partners.

As with aviation disaster reviews, while a series of events unfold that are all reversible until they‘re not, there is also always the initial glitch or root cause. 1/

This one is the classic example. To the extent that public health leaders were forced to back down on this misinformation (and many still haven't), it's because they were forced to - by the kinds of grassroots efforts and public education campaigns they would ban in an instant if they could.

🧵 TBH I'm a bit stunned by that statement. Denial of airborne transmission was the central theme of the public health establishment's response from the start. Jumping straight to the supercut in this thread (but do read the rest - and then watch that lecture I posted):

Before 2020 I might not have understood how badly this would be abused to silence scientists speaking out about the pseudoscience rampant in medical policy and guidance. This is absolutely not a power the medical establishment that rejected the science showing COVID is airborne can be trusted with.

I don't know how you missed the fact that the world's top experts in aerosols, bioaerosols and disease transmission tried to highlight the fact that COVID is airborne and were shouted down by the infection control establishment on the basis of nothing more than a lethal dose of Dunning-Kruger.

We need to #ReleaseTheEngineers on covid. Revamped HVAC systems, proper air filtration, good masks - these are all mechanical engineering solutions ... if we'd only implement them.

There was a ton of absolutely clueless behavior from CDC/HICPAC on airborne transmission and aerosol mitigations, to the point that they were using junk studies to push the ridiculous idea that a medical mask is as good as an N95, which is not what you hear from anyone who understands aerosols.

1. Sometimes, the absurdity of the situation we're all in just hits me. Going forward, ongoing and continuous transmission of SARS-CoV-2 will lead to an ever-increasing percentage of the global population developing chronic illnesses due to sequelae of infection.

Historians: Quibbling Over Exact Definition Of Concentration Camp Sign Of Healthy Society https://theonion.com/historians-quibbling-over-exact-definition-of-concentration-camp-sign-of-healthy-society/

Deep respect for the HCW struggling through present reality (except for the ones who continue to refuse to accept respirators as an effective and cheap mitigation against viral transmission), But, A catastrophe like a death awaiting care can’t be simply attributed to one cause or another.

Common Ravens have remarkable neck feathers (“hackles”) that they can raise or lower to punctuate their vocalizations. How I love these amazing creatures! #birds 🌿

If I were paid to do this job, I'd be in the media and on social media every day. I'd say: 1)get vaccinated for covid and the flu. 2) wear a respirator (N95) mask in crowded indoor spaces like public transit. 3) keep your holiday get-togethers safe by keeping things well ventilated and filtered.

I've been asked by 3 media outlets in the last week to do interviews on the influenza season. I still haven't seen our new CMOH, appointed Dec 18th, (or old one, for that matter. Or any public health official) in the media on this topic. For the record, they are acutally paid, to do this. 1/2

Filming them committing terrorism is now itself an act of terrorism?

Amazing that this review paper from 2021 just became my most cited paper of my 30+ yr career. I am honored to have been the lead first co-corresponding author with @ChiaWang8. COVID is indeed airborne--as are most other respiratory viruses. @ucsandiego.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Exactly, there is zero evidence that we have passed the "height of the pandemic"

Oh.

“I tend to put weight on actuaries as their motivation is accuracy and precision in underwriting, in order to determine how much insurance should cost. If they get it wrong, it's huge impact on the insurer. Capitalist motivations are the purest in producing accurate data about such things.” 🧵 ⏬

Urgency of normalcy as well.

If you’re wondering why your friends in academia are a little on edge right now, it’s because an eighteen-year-old who hasn’t done the reading, doesn’t look at the assignment, and has does no critical thinking skills more complex than “because I think it’s in the Bible” can literally end your career

A warning from the lawyer representing the unjustly fired Oklahoma TA! Beware of GFM scams: her client is NOT crowdfunding at this time.