Thread by @LazarusLong13

Are you tired of screaming at the CDC and seeing absolutely no change in healthcare masking?

I propose an alternative. But first? I need to set the context.

Analysis: the CDC is used to being yelled at. Walensky is a political appointee, so obviously, her loyalty lies with

It is ineffective to yell at the CDC when there are far more effective targets.

Targets who are not used to the sheer onslaught of public attention we can bring in a never ending surge.

Targets who are FAR less likely to be beholdened to lobbyists.

Are Hospital Acquired Infections (aka nosocomial infections) even a a serious issue?

According to the federal and state governments, no.

1.6% in this Politico Article.

politico.com/news/2022/02/1…

H/t @laurieallee

But surely that's not every hospital, right?

They don't

publish WHICH hospitals have bad HAI rates.

Is your local hospital bad? You have no idea. Right there is just one reason you should care about this issue.

But...don't worry. Hospital lobbyists say such transmission is rare.

But is it? Remember, they said 1.6%. Lets look at

other similar countries.

Here, in 2020, we can see it's 17.6% as reported by Heneghan & Jefferson, in the UK.

They, of course, wrote the cochrane review that is being used by IPC to say N95s don't work.

cebm.net/covid-19/the-o….

And in 2021? It was 20%
frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…

Now, with Covid rampant? Use your imagination.

But, we know that 40% of those in the hospital with Covid? Were in there previously for something different, previously.

But, still no big deal, right? I mean you are weakened from whatever you had

https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1644489879492132865?t=1c2FDnzmGITkT4HxE83rGQ&s=19

before, but....oh.

"Nosocomial COVID increases in-hospital mortality by 30% for non-immunocompromised inpatients & doubles it for immunocompromised patients."

https://twitter.com/LadyDoctorSays/status/1641956600188477443?t=RsJ-ywU7d446m5nYYNJfcg&s=19

To sum up...if you go to the hospital for something else, you have a 1 in 5 chance of being infected by the hospital's IPC policy.

And if you end up staying there, or returning, because of Covid, as a regular person, you now have a 1 in 3 chance of dying because of their policy.

What shall we do?

Change our target.

This was taken from the most recent episode of @DeathPanel_ .

This link opens to 30:31 in the DeathPanel podcast, where they start talking about who else we should target.

They say F*** Walensky multiple times, btw.
open.spotify.com/episode/122pWg…

Long story short? CMS.

Who?

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, CMS, is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

cms.gov

What can they do? :)

They can demand changes in IPC by saying that if someone caught...oh Covid? The hospital doesn't get to charge Medicare for it.

Conservatives? Hate government waste? Here you go. People are catching Covid in hospitals and the government is having to pay.

They can just stop.

They did before. They stopped paying as much for certain types of infections - and the hospitals responded.

Infection rates went down.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

And this is something CMS can do right now.

RIGHT NOW. The law is established, there is no appeal to the Supreme Court. Or if it does, it gets returned, marked no comment.

Here is what I think the Ask should be:

HOSPITAL Acquired Infections per hospital to be reported. They

tell us to make our masking decisions based on the data? Knowing how bad my local hospital is? Is vitally important.

Hospital Covid infections to not be paid by Medicare. Period.

But, I'm open to other ideas. And open to who EXACTLY in CMS we target.

What do you think?

I just wanted to bring this into our Zeitgeist. To get us moving again.

We damn well made #Masks4All happen once before.

We can do it in hospitals.