Please join us in sending a letter to congress via Resistbot, to maintain masking in healthcare settings.
Please text PRIKQU to 50409 and the Resistbot will take care of getting the letter sent on your behalf.
Demand Masks in Healthcare
As my representatives in Congress, I am asking you to intervene with the CDC and with all levels of the Administration in regards to Covid-19.
We MUST have N95 masks or equivalent worn by all staff with patient contact in healthcare facilities-hospitals, outpatient centers, and nursing homes.
The HICPAC advisory committee to the CDC is proposing to weaken infection control measures. They are incorrectly saying that surgical masks are as protective as N95s, cherry-picked their data, and ignored abundant evidence to the contrary.
Further, some hospitals (like MGH) are not honoring requests from patients that staff wear a mask. This would appear a violation of ADA standards for accommodation and is unconscionable, resulting in patients delaying necessary care because they risk a deadly hospital-acquired Covid infection.
Dr. Cohen like the rest of the Administration is pretending that Covid is over and is focusing on the "urgency of normal." They are pushing people to go back to unmasked offices with inadequate ventilation, when teleworking has worked very well.
On July 20, 900 experts sent a letter to Dr. Cohen asking her and HICPAC to make their processes transparent, to seek the input of a variety of stakeholders, and to listen to experts in ventilation and aerosols. See https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10482911231195898. This has fallen on deaf ears.
On 8/25, in "The Check-in with Dr. Cohen," a Q&A session, Dr. Cohen tells people to wash their hands and stresses "it's important to use all the tools we have in our toolbox to protect ourselves." Not once did she mention masks or ventilation, both critically important since we know that Covid is primarily transmitted by aerosols.
The CDC states its mission is Saving Lives, Protecting People.TM They have abdicated in meeting their responsibility.
