BREAKING—With #COVID19 cases and hospitalizations surging, Los Angeles will now *require* indoor mask again, **regardless of vaccination status**. @CountyofLA’s mandate is what needs to be done to slow #DeltaVariant—where is our @CDCgov? @CDCDirector—please rules update ASAP.
2) Los Angeles County's been posting more than 1,000 new cases a day for nearly a week now.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers transmission in LA and in Riverside and San Diego counties as "substantial." audacy.com/knx1070/news/l…
3) Statewide in CA, the average percentage of people testing positive has tripled in a little more than three weeks. And increases are speeding up. In LA County, about 61 % of residents 16 and older are fully vaccinated, but millions more have yet to get jabbed.
4) CDC knows how bad #DeltaVariant is becoming. Just 6 weeks ago it was just a trickled in the US. Now it’s a torrential downpour of Delta nationwide.
6) Not just mask & vax, but we also urgently need to shield the elderly and immunocompromised and chronic illness patients— even if they are vaccinated. We have seen too many breakthrough cases in the elderly in UK (the #DeltaVariant 2-dose vaxxed hospitalizations in 🇬🇧 are real)
7) Let’s travel back in time to early June when I was warning #DeltaVariant is going to takeover the US and become dominant. @WHO warned Delta was a VOC in early May! CDC didn’t declare #Delta a ‘variant of concern’ VOC until June 15th—a full week after my US Delta warning.
10) Businesses and local govts need to take action into their own hands if CDC refuses to act in the face of #DeltaVariant surging nationwide (and worldwide). Part 3 of my interview from back in May 2021 when CDC first announce its ghastly “no mask needed” rule.
11) L.A. County Health Officer Dr. Muntu Davis is solid! Worthy to be a CDC Director someday:
“We’re not where we need to be for the millions at risk of infection here in LA County, and waiting to do something will be too late, given what we’re seeing” ktla.com/news/local-new…
12) The county recorded 1,537 new coronavirus cases Thursday — a 83% increase over the last week.
“Masking indoors must again become a normal practice by all, regardless of vaccination status, so they can stop the trends and level of transmission we’re currently seeing,”
13) It’s unclear how long the new mask requirements will remain in effect. “We expect to keep this order in place until we begin to see improvements,” Davis said.
15) folks, even a small India news outlet knew and warned in June that the #DeltaVariant was going to cause a surge in the US July - let that sink in. But here, people acted like no pandemic. google.com/amp/s/odishatv…
16) Dear @lapublichealth - mad respect to your team for your leadership to protect vulnerable people during the #DeltaVariant pandemic surge.
17) Heads up… #DeltaVariant spreading even in states with high vaccination rates - not because vaccines don’t protect, they do— but that Delta is so contagious it will keep spreading through unvaccinated (and some vaccinated) until double vaccinations much much higher. See 🧵
3) “Kennedy is set to announce Thursday the planned changes, which include axing 10,000 full-time employees spread across departments tasked with responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, providing insurance for the poorest Americans and more”.
SICKENING—Trump’s DHS just deported a surgeon from Brown University Medical School—who is here legally on an H1B visa that doesn’t expire until 2027, and has committed no crimes. Trained in the U.S. at Ohio State, University of Washington, and Yale as a **transplant surgeon** (one of the most difficult surgical fields in all of medicine!!!), she is a highly trained doctor on kidney transplants, which cannot be easily replaced. Her phone was seized at the border. A federal judge handed down an injunction against her deportation—but she was already deported on a plane en route to Paris. Brown’s kidney transplant clinic is now strained by her deportation.
2) Full text:
PROVIDENCE — A Rhode Island doctor who had traveled to Lebanon to see her parents was prevented from re-entering the United States at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Thursday evening, her lawyer and a colleague said.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, who lives in Providence, has been working at Brown Medicine’s Division of Kidney Disease & Hypertension since last July, and she [has] been part of the transplant service at Rhode Island Hospital, according to Dr. George Bayliss, the organ transplant division’s medical director. She has been studying and working in the United States for about six years, he said Friday.
The US consulate in Lebanon had issued her an H-1B visa, which is given to people in specialty occupations requiring expertise. The visa was valid through mid-2027, said Thomas S. Brown, an attorney representing her and Brown Medicine.
Alawieh was detained when she returned to Logan airport, and family members are afraid that she is about to be deported to Lebanon, he said.
“We are at a loss as to why this happened,” Brown said. “I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of the Trump crackdown on immigration. I don’t know if it’s a travel ban or some other issue.”
He said her phone has been seized and he has not been able to contact Alawieh.
Bayliss said a lawyer filed a petition with the US District Court in Massachusetts, and Judge Leo T. Sorokin issued an order saying Alawieh should not be moved outside of Massachusetts without 48 hours notice. But he said that message apparently did not reach immigration officials in time, and a plane carrying Alawieh left for Paris.
“This is outrageous,” Bayliss said in an interview. “This is a person who is legally entitled to be in the U.S., who is stopped from re-entering the country for reasons no one knows. It’s depriving her patients of a good physician.”
A US Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson, Ryan Brissette, was not able to immediately answer questions about Alawieh on Friday evening.
Bayliss said Alawieh graduated from the American University of Beirut medical school and came to the United States for a nephrology fellowship at Ohio State University. She then landed a transplant fellowship at University of Washington and had a residency in the Yale hospital system before starting at Brown Medicine last July, he said.
“She’s really a very humble and able person,” Bayliss said. “She takes care of her patients. She is talented and thoughtful and a great addition to our division.”
Bayliss said Alawieh went to Lebanon to visit parents and planned to be gone for two weeks. He said she texted a colleague at 6:30 p.m. Thursday saying she was back in Boston, but then her family heard from immigration officials.
Dr. Paul Morrissey, surgical director of the organ transplant division at Brown University Health, said Alawieh works on getting people in Rhode Island on the list for a kidney transplants, and that’s a crucial job at a time when there has been a lot of focus on the need for kidneys and their equitable distribution.
He said Alawieh should not have had any problem traveling out of the country with an H-1B visa.
“It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances,” Morrissey said. “It’s putting a strain on our office. Her work has been exceptional.”
3) There is a new Trump ban against many countries, including tourist visa bans against all countries in the red and orange lists. This list is still tentative. And it shouldn’t have affected people with existing visas, such and the Brown kidney transplant surgeon
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… once upon a time, liberals did have our own “Leftist Joe Rogan”… his name was Joe Rogan…
Here he is advocating for socialized medicine, healthcare for all, and supporting labor unions to protect workers.
2) Recall, Rogan was once pro Obama and pro Bernie Sanders, and pro Yang Gang, and anti Trump. It’s sad he has since failed to the dark side. But like Vader… maybe he can be redeemed someday and come back to the light.
Joe Rogan was also pro gay rights and pro DACA and pro helping inner city communities that suffer economic and social injustices. It’s sad what he has become. I feel we should try to pull & welcome him back someday. Everyone can be redeemed.
BREAKING—FDA suddenly cancels meeting to update next season’s flu vaccines, with zero explanations. Any delays will jeopardize next year’s vaccine supply chain.
2) Folks who follow me know that I’m no bullshitter. I criticized past pandemic response right and left, and have called balls and strikes without bias. And I often say things that doctors & epidemiologists are whispering among themselves but don’t say publicly. (Cough cough) ⬇️
3) While I don’t recommend hoarding… I think stocking up on flu antivirals, which you can obtain prophylactically (preventively) from doctors if you ask nicely why you’re high risk, can be a good idea. I know many doctors, epidemiologists and virologists who do for their family.