Notes, references (including the video referenced), & transcript: https://chloehumbert.substack.com/p/dont-listen-to-monica
Now is the time to make your voice heard about vaccines.
Request for Written Comments—2025–2026 Formula for COVID–19 Vaccines for Use in the United States: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/FDA-2025-N-1146-0001 The meeting is scheduled for May 22, 2025, 830am-430pm US Eastern.
Instructions and talking points for public comments to FDA VRBPAC can be found here: https://precaution.substack.com/p/urgent-action-for-updated-covid-vaccines
This podcast is based on a written essay (includes my written public comment to FDA VRBPAC): https://teamshuman.substack.com/p/dont-listen-to-monica
References:
The Pritzker Family Opens a New Clinton Subsidiary: A Study In Clientelism Posted on March 10, 2016 by mikethemadbiologist I believe that the Clintons and the Pritzkers both think they did the right thing: some people in Flint got jobs, and the Pritzkers, in part due to long-standing enmity with the Trump family, really do want to stop Trump and believe Clinton is the best chance to do so (the House of Trump versus the House of Pritzker). So what’s wrong with doing well by doing good? The problem is that the Pritzker family, owners of the Hyatt hotel chain, have had long-standing conflicts with labor: when workers in Boston fought for a living wage, Hyatt fired them and replaced them with lower-paid outsourced workers.
Psychology Today: Giving Up: Informational Learned Helplessness. It's exhausting when it’s hard to figure out what is true and what is false. By Susan A. Nolan, Ph.D., and Michael Kimball, Reviewed by Jessica Schrader Posted December 23, 2021 Learned helplessness can explain why some people become depressed; when we don’t perceive we have an effect on our own lives, we can give up. Informational learned helplessness expands this concept to our online lives, explaining why we may become overwhelmed by a quest for truth. Better practices by media organizations might make it easier for us to discern truth from fiction and reduce our cognitive exhaustion.
Risk-Based Vaccination Strategies Can Build Back Public Trust — CDC's advisory committee will vote on the updated COVID vaccine guidelines in June by Shira Doron, MD, MS, and Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH April 22, 2025
Don’t wait for everybody before speaking up. Chloe Humbert Aug 08, 2023 The polio campaign in the U.S. was successful because of a concerted effort to do a door to door campaign that started before the vaccine was even available. The idea that vaccination was just a default and that everyone easily got on board back then is nostalgic fantasy, it took some work by some people to make that happen. The propaganda resisting public health was as toxic and bonkers as what spreads perhaps just more prolifically today on social media. Back then some even blamed paralysis from polio on Americans who made inferior dietary choices. Sound familiar? Some people made sure we countered that and had a proper vaccine drive. There was indeed resistance to the polio elimination campaign, and it was overcome.
NPR Can't Help Falling In Love With A Vaccine: How Polio Campaign Beat Vaccine Hesitancy. May 3, 2021 By Susan Brink An army of volunteers for the March of Dimes, largely mothers, went door to door, distributing the latest information about polio and the effort to stop it; they also asked for donations. As little as a dime would help, they said. And the dimes and dollars poured in, Oshinsky says, handed to the volunteers, or inserted into cardboard displays at store checkout counters or placed in envelopes sent directly to the White House. Cases of polio may have peaked in the U.S. in 1952 with nearly 60,000 children infected. More than 3,000 died. (By comparison, roughly a year's worth of comparable statistics for the COVID-19 pandemic reveal more than 32 million reported cases in the U.S. so far and more than 573,000 deaths.) The years-long campaign of information and donations to the polio eradication effort made anxious Americans feel they were invested in a solution, Stewart says.
Slate - The Loneliest Anti-Vaxxer. Even the popular polio shot had its haters. By Nick Keppler, Nov 26, 2021 Under the banner of his organization, Polio Prevention Inc., Miller distributed hair-raising mailers with claims like “Thousands of little white coffins will be used to bury victims of Salk’s heinous and fraudulent vaccine.” A self-made shampoo magnate, he was one of the few malcontents who publicly campaigned against the polio vaccine. His crusade shows that even during a public embrace of the polio shot that many people frustrated at COVID anti-vaxxers have held up as the ideal reaction to a new lifesaving vaccine, there was dissent, some of it as vitriolic as that you find in the corners of Twitter that swap anti-Fauci memes and Bill Gates rants—and just as weird. To Miller, “polio” was not an infectious disease. It was a state of malnutrition caused by midcentury American diets, particularly soft drinks—his mortal enemy. “Disease and malfunction do not ‘strike’ us; we build them within ourselves,” he wrote in one of his two-sided handbills.
American Nurses Association - Vaccines/Nurses Practice & Advocacy Nurses give a lot of vaccines. But they also need vaccines! By the nature of their work, nurses come into contact with many infectious diseases, the most notable of which is influenza. Vaccination is an important way to stay protected from contracting a disease at work.
IAMAT - Foundation for the Support of International Medical Training (FSIMT) - How to choose a good mosquito net - Last reviewed and updated: December 11, 2020. Remember that in malarious areas, insecticide-treated mosquito nets are required in bedrooms without tightly-fitting window screens or broken screens
Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions – October 16 Day 35 of Public Hearings Webcast Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “Oui. On a vu des messages antivax pendant le convoi et pendant la pandémie qui ont été amplifiés par la propagande russe, particulièrement dans les médias de droite, a continué par des messages dans les mêmes... sous les mêmes gens qui partageaient des messages antivax. Maintenant, pas pour dire qu'il n'y avait pas des gens légitimement et authentiquement antivax au Canada, mais ça a été amplifié énormément par la propagande russe.” (Google Translation to English): “Yes. We saw anti-vax messages during the convoy and during the pandemic that were amplified by Russian propaganda, particularly in right-wing media, continued by messages in the same... under the same people who were sharing anti-vax messages. Now, not to say that there weren't legitimately and authentically anti-vax people in Canada, but it was amplified enormously by Russian propaganda.”
Comment from Wallace, Rob - Posted by the Food and Drug Administration on Jun 13, 2023 Constraining vaccination to once a year would only further handcuff a public health response already limited by an abandonment of nonpharmaceutical interventions.
(Read or listen to other public comments on blog.)
https://www.longdom.org/open-access/infection-prevention-and-control-65496.html
Ignaz Semmelweis - From Wikipedia In 1847, he proposed hand washing with chlorinated lime solutions at Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had three times the mortality of midwives' wards. The maternal mortality rate dropped from 18% to less than 2%, and he published a book of his findings, Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever, in 1861. Despite his research, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. He could offer no theoretical explanation for his findings of reduced mortality due to hand-washing, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it. In 1865, the increasingly outspoken Semmelweis allegedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. In the asylum, he was beaten by the guards. He died 14 days later from a gangrenous wound on his right hand that may have been caused by the beating.
BBC – Fox host says he ‘hasn’t washed hands in 10 years’ – 11 February 2019 Fox News host Pete Hegseth has said on air that he has not washed his hands for 10 years because “germs are not a real thing”. Speaking on Fox and Friends, Hegseth said the infectious micro-organisms did not exist because they could not be seen with the naked eye.
Humanities 54: The Urban Imagination 1854-1856: Florence Nightingale It was late 1854 when Nightingale was called by Sidney Herbert to organize a group of nurses to aid fallen soldiers in Crimea. After organizing a corp of 34 nurses, Nightingale rose to the occasion and served at the Scutari barracks in Crimea. At the time is the British base hospital and housed men in the most horrid of conditions. Circumstances were so bad that there were soldiers laying in their own feces when she’d arrived. History will tell you of the great improvements that she made to the site after her arrival.
History.com - Florence Nightingale More soldiers were dying from infectious diseases like typhoid and cholera than from injuries incurred in battle. The no-nonsense Nightingale quickly set to work. She procured hundreds of scrub brushes and asked the least infirm patients to scrub the inside of the hospital from floor to ceiling. Nightingale herself spent every waking minute caring for the soldiers. In the evenings she moved through the dark hallways carrying a lamp while making her rounds, ministering to patient after patient.
Popular Mechanics: Why Heron's Aeolipile Is One of History's Greatest Forgotten Machines By Addison Nugent, Nov 29, 2020 Some debate has been put forth as to whether or not Heron was truly the first to invent the aeolipile. One Heron’s idols Ctesibius (285 B.C. - 222 B.C.) wrote several treatises on the science of compressed air and its use in pumps. Later, Vitruvius (c. 80 B.C. - 15 B.C.) described a device, also called the aeolipile, that consisted of a metal ball partially filled with water placed above a fire to produce steam forced out of an aperture at the top. But Vitruvius doesn’t describe any moving parts, a key distinction from Heron’s vision.
Democracy Now - Vaccine Inequity: Meet the Doctor Refusing a Booster as Rich Nations Get 16x More Doses Than Poor October 28, 2021 Infectious disease expert Dr. Monica Gandhi says she will not receive a booster as a healthcare worker because of the global vaccine inequity, and argues the push for boosters “detracts from the fact that we in no way have fulfilled a moral and ethical obligation to the world.”
DENY, DECEIVE, DELAY Exposing New Trends in Climate Mis- and Disinformation at COP27 (Vol 2) Climate Action Against Disinformation, January 2023 Shellenberger was active in so-called ‘woke-washing’ discourse that attacked Western Elites for withholding fossil fuels from the Global South and/ or framed Net Zero targets as a form of colonialism that contravene the global human rights agenda. Shellenberger is symbolic of the growing overlap between climate scepticism and wider culture wars, ‘anti-woke’ or so-called ‘intellectual dark web’ content. In previous years, his public persona and outputs were primarily associated with the environment, but he now posts just as regularly on issues such as migration, homelessness, gender identity or Democratic policy agendas. During COP, this included the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband and the collapse of crypto-currency platform FTX
Twitter post by Neil R. Powe @Neil_R_Powe 6:49 PM · Jun 16, 2021 San Mateo County celebrates Dr. Monica Gandhi Day! We are thrilled to see our UCSF Professor of Medicine and ZSFG expert in infectious disease honored. She has helped to guide us all through the pandemic with science and wisdom! Monica Gandhi MD, MPH and 2 others
Monica Gandhi mask cutting celebration in San Mateo County (video) 2020-06-15
Mehdi Hasan Questions Doctor On Covid Predictions | The Mehdi Hasan Show - MSNBC Feb 4, 2022 Mehdi interviews Dr. Monica Gandhi about her claims about the pandemic and ending restrictions early.
Axois - Aug 31, 2023 - Health - Omicron was the deadliest pandemic wave for cancer patients Mortality for cancer patients overall was 4% higher during the winter Omicron surge that peaked in January 2022 compared with when the original, or wild type, lineage of the virus was peaking in January 2021.
National Deaf Children's Society - Lip-reading - Last reviewed: 11 June 2024 Lip-reading on its own isn’t enough. It's estimated that only 30% to 40% of speech sounds can be lip-read even under the best conditions. A deaf person will usually need extra information to understand what’s being said.
Then they came for the Deaf- Trash Discourse Feb 5, 2025
Erica S. Shenoy, Hilary M. Babcock, Karen B. Brust, et al. Universal Masking in Health Care Settings: A Pandemic Strategy Whose Time Has Come and Gone, For Now. Ann Intern Med.2023;176:859-861. [Epub 18 April 2023]. doi:10.7326/M23-0793 Figure. Key milestones and contextual factors during the pandemic to endemic phases. Phase 3 Supply chain improvements.
Annals of Internal Medicine - Ideas and Opinions - 18 April 2023 - COMMENTS SECTION Lara Z. Jirmanus, Eiryn Griest Schwartzmann, JD Davids, Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Colin Killick "Health Facilities Must Ensure the Safety of All, Especially the Most Vulnerable A fundamental responsibility of health facilities is to ensure the safety of all patients and employees."
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