I’m happy to see that some corporations are stepping in with good corporate citizenship and leadership, especially in areas with vacuums of governance related to deregulation and defunding of oversight.
But I really do think it is sad when people trust antigovernment politicians and businesses more than constructive politicians who sincerely try to help with good government, and professionals who spend their lives honing skills and knowledge that is not just grounded in economics and profit. As a family doctor I’m biased and sensitive I guess.
People first over profits. I’m glad many businesses care about both. But by definition corporations must care about profits first to stay alive. And politicians who undermine and destroy institutions like the CDC and EPA are riding a dangerous wave of misguided populism, and will ride us to the ground.
Cheers to the corporations and businesses who are protecting people, motives and agendas notwithstanding…
Business in Florida, including schools, cannot require masking and cannot inact any Covid mitigation policies because our governor made it illegal. We will not see another mask mandate or better ventilation in schools or business here. If he could have DeathSantis would have made the vaccines illegal.
Business care about their bottom line but they don't see health care as part of that for the most part anyway. I don't trust businesses to protect workers because most business models rely on worker exploitation in the first place. Business that were considered "essential" didn't give their employees hazard pay and many were left entirely unprotected. The vast majority of restaurant workers don't even have the option for health insurance and are punished for being sick and forced to work sick.
Hospital staff aren't even masking anymore. I have taken my mom in for several procedures and I was one of the only people masking and even when they saw my mask the nurses never offered to mask themselves. It's disgusting and disgraceful.
We've sacrificed public health so that people could "go back to normal" and for the economy. All the people disabled by repeat infections and Long Covid won't be able to keep working. This economic growth comes at a cost I'm not willing to pay. Vulnerable communities can no longer safely participate in public life. I'm tired of being a hostage in my own home because I can't safely go out in public. I mask when I have to go out and due to PTSD I cannot mask for more than an hour at a time without it triggering panic attacks. I no longer see a future where I will ever be comfortable in public spaces again because high-risk and older populations have been deemed expendable.
It makes me sad and sick to see even people like yourself praising these policies that are not good for large parts of the population.
One of the interesting events during COVID was Menards setting a mask mandate to enter the store complete with a security guard. John Menard would not usually be linked with the Fauci crowd. My thought is he and the management team looked at the numbers and didn't want their employees getting sick, it wasn't public health, it was "just business." In this quite MAGA friendly red zone there were some rather contentious interactions with the security guard but "No Mask - No Enter" prevailed.
Yes and.... when business productivity drives health initiatives, babies, children, and the elderly may be underserved. How do we increase trust in equitable means and access for all community members?
I would like to see local and national Chamber of Commerce join with EPA, NIH, and Public Health departments to adopt ASHRAE and enforce higher standards for indoor air for all their members. You can argue bottom line, productivity, employee recruitment and retention, reduced absenteeism, duty of care, community well-being, or just do what's right.
I endorse Dr. Jetelina’s push to engage the business community and, in particular, pushing hard to Improve ventilation in buildings visited by the public. This should include healthy building standards, periodic inspections to assure compliance, and a requirement to have prominently placed monitors, such as CO2 monitors, that show the ventilation levels in the building. This could be rolled out in phases, covering key businesses such as schools and hospitals in the first round, for example. I would also be very interested, if Dr. Jetelina has time and inclination, in an interview with Dr. Linsey Marr and Joseph Allen on this topic.
It's hard to understand that some businesses object to public health activity. Even socialized medicine. A healthier America means a more productive America. Socialized medicine would mean businesses would no longer have to pay and administer health insurance. It would also mean more mobility for the American workforce; therefore, more easily filling jobs in demand.
With respect to low vaccination uptake, I wonder if part of the problem is “choice overload”? There are so many different vaccines available (flu, Covid, RSV, pneumonia, shingles, whooping cough, tetanus, etc). Just like Baskin and Robins and 31 flavors, people often retreat to “do nothing mode” when presented with so many choices.
Even within covid shots, there are many choices: Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax. With or without flu and RSV? It’s like do you want mint chip, vanilla chip or chocolate chip - oh, and what about an extra scoop of pistachio or rocky road? We’d be happy to give you three scoops today, but it might give you a stroke. (Now that Novavax is at scale, does the world need two different mRNA boosters?)
What is obvious to someone in Public Health (“Get your flu and covid shot every fall!”) isn’t always obvious to the average person.
I respectfully but energetically disagree with the belief that businesses will act in the public interest of their own accord. Case in point, I'm lucky enough to live in a rent regulated apartment in a city that I always wanted to live in. Why? Because my landlord gets a 421(a) tax abatement. That's pretty much the only reason. Not because it's good business (because it isn't), not because they care about their tenants (they could care less) and not because they are particularly civic minded (they aren't). Businesses are, in effect, automata that respond to a combination of stimuli - economics, shareholders, and complex systems of government incentives and penalties. No amount of sweet talking them will convince them to change their behavior - only the government will.
As for the "productivity per person" benefit of clean indoor air - is anyone naive enough to think that a private business, faced with a choice between investing in the health of their workers and replacing them altogether by artificial intelligence - that they wouldn't pick the latter? Companies care about absolute productivity, not productivity per employee. If businesses want fewer people getting sick, or absenteeism - they'll do whatever it takes to eliminate the need for any employees at all, because they'll decide that human workers are a liability. I notice that the linked video you provided was several months before AI took the world by storm - and there's no putting that toothpaste back in the tube.
Visualizing the famed revolutionary Dr. Katelyn Jetelina silently moving from floor to floor through thickets of bureaucracies, affixing revolutionary calls to end all pestilences.
Gotta say, I think maybe some employers may have swung a little too far from surface cleaning, especially as people start coming back into the office - not just talking, coughing, and breathing but also eating, drinking, handling objects, pooping, and peeing. Case in point, in the early part of 2021:
- People at my office had left food at their desks in 2020, creating a rodent problem
- We now have a cockroach problem. A lot of maintenance staff left
- There are four sinks in the bathroom on my floor, but only one soap dispenser
- We do not have a cafeteria. Everyone eats out or at their desks. We recently received a stern email saying we were not to use conference rooms for personal use of any sort
I am concerned that we are sitting ducks for norovirus!!!
Business plays a key role in trust
I’m happy to see that some corporations are stepping in with good corporate citizenship and leadership, especially in areas with vacuums of governance related to deregulation and defunding of oversight.
But I really do think it is sad when people trust antigovernment politicians and businesses more than constructive politicians who sincerely try to help with good government, and professionals who spend their lives honing skills and knowledge that is not just grounded in economics and profit. As a family doctor I’m biased and sensitive I guess.
People first over profits. I’m glad many businesses care about both. But by definition corporations must care about profits first to stay alive. And politicians who undermine and destroy institutions like the CDC and EPA are riding a dangerous wave of misguided populism, and will ride us to the ground.
Cheers to the corporations and businesses who are protecting people, motives and agendas notwithstanding…
Business in Florida, including schools, cannot require masking and cannot inact any Covid mitigation policies because our governor made it illegal. We will not see another mask mandate or better ventilation in schools or business here. If he could have DeathSantis would have made the vaccines illegal.
Business care about their bottom line but they don't see health care as part of that for the most part anyway. I don't trust businesses to protect workers because most business models rely on worker exploitation in the first place. Business that were considered "essential" didn't give their employees hazard pay and many were left entirely unprotected. The vast majority of restaurant workers don't even have the option for health insurance and are punished for being sick and forced to work sick.
Hospital staff aren't even masking anymore. I have taken my mom in for several procedures and I was one of the only people masking and even when they saw my mask the nurses never offered to mask themselves. It's disgusting and disgraceful.
We've sacrificed public health so that people could "go back to normal" and for the economy. All the people disabled by repeat infections and Long Covid won't be able to keep working. This economic growth comes at a cost I'm not willing to pay. Vulnerable communities can no longer safely participate in public life. I'm tired of being a hostage in my own home because I can't safely go out in public. I mask when I have to go out and due to PTSD I cannot mask for more than an hour at a time without it triggering panic attacks. I no longer see a future where I will ever be comfortable in public spaces again because high-risk and older populations have been deemed expendable.
It makes me sad and sick to see even people like yourself praising these policies that are not good for large parts of the population.
One of the interesting events during COVID was Menards setting a mask mandate to enter the store complete with a security guard. John Menard would not usually be linked with the Fauci crowd. My thought is he and the management team looked at the numbers and didn't want their employees getting sick, it wasn't public health, it was "just business." In this quite MAGA friendly red zone there were some rather contentious interactions with the security guard but "No Mask - No Enter" prevailed.
Yes and.... when business productivity drives health initiatives, babies, children, and the elderly may be underserved. How do we increase trust in equitable means and access for all community members?
I would like to see local and national Chamber of Commerce join with EPA, NIH, and Public Health departments to adopt ASHRAE and enforce higher standards for indoor air for all their members. You can argue bottom line, productivity, employee recruitment and retention, reduced absenteeism, duty of care, community well-being, or just do what's right.
I endorse Dr. Jetelina’s push to engage the business community and, in particular, pushing hard to Improve ventilation in buildings visited by the public. This should include healthy building standards, periodic inspections to assure compliance, and a requirement to have prominently placed monitors, such as CO2 monitors, that show the ventilation levels in the building. This could be rolled out in phases, covering key businesses such as schools and hospitals in the first round, for example. I would also be very interested, if Dr. Jetelina has time and inclination, in an interview with Dr. Linsey Marr and Joseph Allen on this topic.
It's hard to understand that some businesses object to public health activity. Even socialized medicine. A healthier America means a more productive America. Socialized medicine would mean businesses would no longer have to pay and administer health insurance. It would also mean more mobility for the American workforce; therefore, more easily filling jobs in demand.
Five years ago when a company or campus held a vaccine clinic, it was viewed as a convenience.
But thanks to Covid vaccine mandates (no vaccine, no job/college), clinics are more likely to be viewed as threats.
It’s important to “meet people where they are,” yet offer clinics in neutral locations, i.e., places other than office or campus.
With respect to low vaccination uptake, I wonder if part of the problem is “choice overload”? There are so many different vaccines available (flu, Covid, RSV, pneumonia, shingles, whooping cough, tetanus, etc). Just like Baskin and Robins and 31 flavors, people often retreat to “do nothing mode” when presented with so many choices.
Even within covid shots, there are many choices: Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax. With or without flu and RSV? It’s like do you want mint chip, vanilla chip or chocolate chip - oh, and what about an extra scoop of pistachio or rocky road? We’d be happy to give you three scoops today, but it might give you a stroke. (Now that Novavax is at scale, does the world need two different mRNA boosters?)
What is obvious to someone in Public Health (“Get your flu and covid shot every fall!”) isn’t always obvious to the average person.
I respectfully but energetically disagree with the belief that businesses will act in the public interest of their own accord. Case in point, I'm lucky enough to live in a rent regulated apartment in a city that I always wanted to live in. Why? Because my landlord gets a 421(a) tax abatement. That's pretty much the only reason. Not because it's good business (because it isn't), not because they care about their tenants (they could care less) and not because they are particularly civic minded (they aren't). Businesses are, in effect, automata that respond to a combination of stimuli - economics, shareholders, and complex systems of government incentives and penalties. No amount of sweet talking them will convince them to change their behavior - only the government will.
As for the "productivity per person" benefit of clean indoor air - is anyone naive enough to think that a private business, faced with a choice between investing in the health of their workers and replacing them altogether by artificial intelligence - that they wouldn't pick the latter? Companies care about absolute productivity, not productivity per employee. If businesses want fewer people getting sick, or absenteeism - they'll do whatever it takes to eliminate the need for any employees at all, because they'll decide that human workers are a liability. I notice that the linked video you provided was several months before AI took the world by storm - and there's no putting that toothpaste back in the tube.
Visualizing the famed revolutionary Dr. Katelyn Jetelina silently moving from floor to floor through thickets of bureaucracies, affixing revolutionary calls to end all pestilences.
Cool, actually.
Could you speak to your thoughts on the safety of the RSV Vaccine?
It's so new, and some of the reports leave me a bit concerned.
Gotta say, I think maybe some employers may have swung a little too far from surface cleaning, especially as people start coming back into the office - not just talking, coughing, and breathing but also eating, drinking, handling objects, pooping, and peeing. Case in point, in the early part of 2021:
- People at my office had left food at their desks in 2020, creating a rodent problem
- We now have a cockroach problem. A lot of maintenance staff left
- There are four sinks in the bathroom on my floor, but only one soap dispenser
- We do not have a cafeteria. Everyone eats out or at their desks. We recently received a stern email saying we were not to use conference rooms for personal use of any sort
I am concerned that we are sitting ducks for norovirus!!!