The CDC’s HICPAC has proposed guidance that will weaken infection control in healthcare settings. They have a rather short period for written comments, “…opened November 1, 2023, and will close at 11:59 pm on November 6, 2023.” I presume that is Eastern timezone.
Below is the message I sent, including links to more information. Please take a moment and send an email yourself! hicpac@cdc.gov
Subject: Strengthen infection control guidance
To: CDC’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC)
hicpac@cdc.gov
I am writing to join my voice with the National Nurses United (NNU), People’s CDC, and thousands of experts in public health — calling on HICPAC to strengthen the guidance on infection control and fully recognize the aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2. The proposed updates weaken the guidance and do not adequately follow the current science on transmission. This will put more healthcare workers and patients at risk.
I am also urging more openness and transparency in your processes. You should be seeking input from frontline workers and other experts in respiratory health. Draft guidance should be published along with the scientific evidence well in advance, with an ample time for the public to make written comments.
Thank you,
Gregor Morrill
Mike Hoye, writing on Mastodon:
People go to Stack Overflow because the docs and error messages are garbage. TLDR exists because the docs and error messages are garbage. People ask ChatGPT for help because the docs and error messages are garbage. We are going to lose a generation of competence and turn programming into call-and-response glyph-engine supplicancy because we let a personality cult that formed around the PDP-11 in the 1970s convince us that it was pure and good that docs and error messages are garbage.
Mike takes a look at what can go wrong when writing a one-line “Hello World” program in C. It’s dark — an example of the violence that developers inflict on one other.
It’s not just error messages and documentation. Today’s tools and frameworks overflow with violence; violence is so omnipresent that we’re inured to it, typically choosing to cast blame anywhere but where we should. All developers suffer for it; new developers suffer disproportionately more.
The border:none conference was in Germany last week followed by an IndieWebCamp event, so several indieweb people were there. In the chat, the amount of current Covid cases was brought up and a mention of how few were masked in a crowd of about 200.
My heart sank — a feeling I’m unfortunately getting more and more used to. I commented “in-person conferences may just be a thing of the past for me at this rate 🫠.” I followed that with an explanation that it’s the psychological and emotional weight of being in spaces like that. I have to psych myself up. It feels really isolating; the “alone in a crowded room” feeling.
Tantek helpfully tried to put a positive frame on it as “an interesting exercise in independence and not bowing to implied / perceived social pressure” and the idea that it can help train us to be independent thinkers. I’ve been thinking on that for a bit now. I think there is some truth to that, but I also feel pretty well-trained in that regard after almost 4 years of this.
For me, it’s important to remember that the context of this training is the nearly unmitigated spread of a virus with long-term health impacts. That’s a big part of the psychological weight. I can’t emphasize enough how important community care has become to me. It’s not just my health that I’m concerned about when I’m in a crowd. Looking around and seeing that the majority are not taking basic precautions (for whatever reason) really weighs on me. We know these precautions make everyone safer, but so many people have bought into the hyper-individualism of the moment.
I love the work that Clean Air Club is doing in Chicago, crowdfunding and trying to make concerts safer by providing free air purifiers. They posted a reel recently that I think explains the importance of being proactive in prioritizing Covid safety and accessibility. Here is a transcript of the audio (emphasis mine):
Going to shows the past few years, it seems like nobody is masking anymore. But the reality is that Covid cautious people are being pushed out of these spaces. There’s a selection bias at crowded events. If you do attend and choose to mask, you feel like the only one. But you’re not.
This is a classic paradox of inaccessibility. Because a space is inaccessible to Covid cautious people, they aren’t able to join. But because they aren’t able to join, it appears that there is no demand for Covid cautious spaces. It’s feedback loop that entrenches ableism in our music scene. Artists, event hosts, and venues most of all have an obligation to interrupt this loop.
Prioritize Covid safety.
This has me mulling over what policies I will promote if/when I’m in a position to organize in-person events again, as well as what I will request/encourage other event organizers to implement. I hope to write more on that soon.
Welp, the Instagram gods decided that this comment was spam/abusive and immediately removed it. My first guess is the fist emoji, but the common meaning of that is “solidarity,” especially in the context of an activism post like that. I tried to comment again without that emoji but got a generic “try again later” message. Maybe the automated system thinks it’s a misleading comment about IG features, but it’s not.
Today I tried commenting on someone else’s Halloween costume and got a more extensive message:
“Try again later. We restrict certain activity to protect our community. Based on your use, this action will be unavailable for you until 2023-10-31. Tell us if you think we made a mistake.
Learn more in account status (link)”
Of course that learn more link doesn’t work and only takes me back to the homepage. Seems pretty excessive for leaving a friendly comment on a mutual’s post — not even a stranger.
I realized this month has been 6 years of me living in San Diego. That’s wild. That’s the longest I’ve lived in one place since I left Indianapolis in 2011. Of course it hasn’t felt that long because I still feel stuck in time in 2020.
0.0: fixed the https://chat.indieweb.org/ footer to drop #Matrix as an access option since their bridge is disabled (#IndieWeb IRC, Discord, and Slack still work great), and provide an explicit link/encouragement for filing issues
0.5: investigated IndieWeb wiki issues (mobile presentation), possible fixes, and documented them: https://indieweb.org/MediaWiki_customizations#Issues
0.7: add HTML <search> element support to my home page and permalinks as nerdsniped by @adactio.com (@adactio@mastodon.social @adactio); expanded to <search role=search> to also support folks using older browsers / screenreaders that only support #ARIA 1.1.
0.8: replaced my incorrect use of HTML attribute aria-hidden="true" (on my links to #BridgyFed) as pointed out by @jkphl.is (@jkphl@mastodon.social @jkphl) and https://sonja-weckenmann.de (@sweckenmann@mas.to), with hidden="from-humans". Since other values are allowed on the hidden attribute and treated as hidden="hidden", the "from-humans" value communicates a subtle semantic that the element is intended for consumption by robots & crawlers, like #Bridgy.
0.8.1 Update: created a pull-request (https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/pull/701) to update the BridgyFed documentation markup examples to use the 'hidden' attribute accordingly as well.
Time is up for today’s IndieWebCamp Create Day so my remaining projects will have to wait.