I am very late to this #MedicareForAll floor vote debate, but since it is still raging, I’ll join the fray by telling you a little story.

In 2019, after I testified at the first ever #MedicareForAll hearing, I got back to Santa Barbara and realized that my own Democratic congressman was not a cosponsor of the bill! So I did some organizing.

We pulled together a ragtag coalition of some old timer health care activists, the local DSA chapter, some college students, a women’s political club, and a local elected official. We met in my living room three times to scheme.

We scheduled a meeting with our rep, @RepCarbajal. 25 of us crammed into his office even though his staff said there was only room for 8). We talked, he listened. He talked, we listened. He said he supported a strong public option. He promised to send us questions in writing.

We left, disappointed but eager to win his support. We started planning a rally. We gathered petition signatures at the farmers market and the college housing. His staff sent over 15 really detailed and good questions. We asked the National Nurses Union to help us answer them.

Infant Esoterica:

CONSENSUAL BIRTH PLAN: We did homebirths for both. No meds, no interventions. They went great, wouldn't have changed a thing. Hospital ten minutes away in case we needed it. The important factor is that we CHOSE how we'd give birth. It was fully consensual.

Lack of meds, synthetic oxytocin, pain meds—all that stuff mattered too and if you can skip 'em, it's ideal, but the main thing is engineering a harmonious, celebratory entrance for the kid. That could be in the hospital. That could be at your home.

Figure your plan out.

I won't go into breastfeeding. Obviously you want to do that. To explain fully why would take an entire thread. Maybe later.

Skin-skin contact with both parents is essential. Chest to chest. Doing as as early and often as you can --> lasting connections.

DEAD HANGS: From day one, a baby can hold his own weight dangling from a bar. Many ways to test.

Lay them on their back on bed or soft surface, get them to grab your thumbs and start lifting up. They'll come off the ground and relinquish grip when tired. Repeat.

Your baby will just hang fully from your thumbs and drop when done. Do this over a bed, somewhere soft they can safely drop. Expect laughter.

If you do this from day 1 and never stop, you build powerful grip strength. ie normal grip strength, the grip they're meant to have.

Now that we already have maxed out hospitals and still-rising Covid infection and death rate, mass evictions in winter with many times more looming, and have learned that, actually young people are dying from the virus...

Now that we know these conditions —viral and social—are also killing people at much higher rates through accidents, untreated medical conditions, overdose and exposure ....

Now that we know that warnings haven’t stopped people from traveling or large gatherings at anything like the degree needed and that going to work is a major cause of the continuing intensification of the pandemic

You’d think that a discussion of travel restrictions and more rigorous closure of unnecessary construction, retail, in-person instruction, gyms, restaurants and the like , with actual funding and rent/mortgage freezes to make this possible, would be, at least, on the table

But it’s not. The ruling class is literally banking on another couple hundred thousand preventable deaths.

Hi,just a quick message here about #IDPWD2020 .It's been a tough year for Disabled people, and i wanted to take this thread to reflect on this from my personal https://t.co/M6RAkbs9uh you will see certain organisations providing lip service for exposure...

...here's a reminder to listen to what Disabled people are saying on this day,to get a true perspective on what this day means to Disabled people. When we open up about difficult experiences, it's important that people listen, instead of being ignorant...

In 2020 alone,we have had to contend with Anti-vaxxers,inaccurate portrayals of Disabilities in media,Ableist slurs on both sides of the political spectrum, Parents with Disabled children who believe our views don't matter and during a pandemic, we have been forgotten about...

This highlights to me,that more work needs to be done in order to push for equality and acceptance for the Disabled communities, however Disabled people already share their stories,they already provide educational experiences,non-disabled people have to pull their weight...

...for change to have a chance of happening, so when you see,for example, the British Department of Work and Pensions suggest they support Disabled people, ask them why they are not members of the Disability confident scheme. We must ask these questions to have a chance...

I tweeted yesterday about clinical engineering and the vital role they play and had a reminder about all the other incredible staff in the NHS that no one ever hears about and so to try and change that

NHS Covid unsung heroes list

Perfusionists - magicians. From the crucial role they play in cardiac surgery to the unbelievable role they have in providing ECMO (using the machine below) to the sickest covid-19 patients. Barely anyone knows about them but they are an incredible profession.

Estates - built new high dependency and intensive care areas almost overnight in hospitals up and down the country. They make what often seems impossible happen and we would not be able to treat as many patients without them and their vital work.

Laboratory scientists - I dread to think how many samples they receive and process each day but we absolutely cannot care for patients without them and their technical skills. Their workload has soared and they are working consistently flat out.

Porters - the backbone of the hospital. The transferring patients, running samples, getting blood, making the impossible happen staff that simply keep the hospital running.

Really trying to find the words I want to say in the letters I’m going to write to the ED and the GI clinic for 1. Minimizing my symptoms, asking me in a condescending way if I have tried icy hot. 2. Not treating my pain appropriately and making me feel like a drug seeker.

3. Brushing me off numerous times and not taking me seriously. And 4. Legitimately making me question myself and making me believe it was all in my head.
I cannot put into words how this experience had been.

The ONLY reason I was able to get a HIDA and get a confirmed diagnosis of biliary dysfunction was because I was working with a surgeon on ICU and I had an attack. I was double over in pain, pale, shaking, and diaphoretic when he sat down next to me

And started to do an assessment. He opened my chart reviewed everything and within 5 minutes was concerned about my gallbladder and ordered a HIDA through his clinic. If it was not for that encounter with him (which was all by chance) who knows where I would be.

I got lucky because I am a nurse and I was working with a surgeon who listened to me and decided to bypass all the BS and get me in for a scan that my PCP and 2 ED docs didn’t want to order. I could not imagine what would have happened if I didn’t talk to him about it.

There are two issues with the English variant, as it is now referred. One issue is "what it could do" and the other issue is "what it could represent". They are both important and we know just enough to make hyphoteses that can drive to experiments. I'll try and explain 1/

Let's start with the latter: what does it represent? Mutations happen all the time and variants have been recorded in the thousands. The website below shows several 1000s different variants recorded in different countries. Why is this SO special?

The most special aspect of this variant is that the number of changes it shows is a large disconnect from its parental line as if this lineage made a big sudden jump rather than the usual slow progress to which we are used. 3/

There are a few (certainly not many) scenarios that are compatible with this jump and one of them is the one in which the virus has tried to escape its way out from an organism that had a static and relatively weak immune response.

4/

Such an organism is an immunosuppressed patient who tries to fight the infection with injections of donated plasma from a recovered patient. Someone who cannot produce antibodies and can be helped with plasmapheresis from a donor who could. 5/

If you want to get in the best shape of your life by 2023 read this:

1. Get 80-90% of your calories from single ingredient nutrient dense foods.

2. Avoid processed foods as much as possible because they're addictive, devoid of nutrients & leave you feeling empty.

3. Eating similar meals every day is an underrated way to get lean.

4. Lift weights 2-4x a week. Use progressive overload to build muscle.

5. Progressive overload is simply doing more through reps, weight or frequency,

6. Eat .8 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. This helps you build & retain muscle. Eat protein with every meal.

7. Avoid trying to lose weight. Focus on creating good habits. The first is focused on an outcome the latter is focused on your lifestyle.

8. Your aim is to become the type of person who stays in shape. In order to change your body your identity must come along for the journey.

9. Eat your meals on a schedule. This will help train your hunger & circadian rhythms.

10. Replace snacking with water & drink it before meals. You usually want to snack because you're bored or dehydrated. Water also helps you feel full & increases energy.

These are two remarkable virologists: Pyotr (on the left) and Konstantin Chumakov. They are brothers, Pyotr us one year older. Their parents were famous Soviet virologists Mikhail Chumakov and Marina Voroshilova.

Today Konstantin Chumakov is an associate director of vaccine research at the FDA and a US citizen. Pyotr Chumakov used to be the director of an laboratory in Cleveland but returned to Russia after accepting a “mega grant” and becoming the head of

the Laboratory of Cell Proliferation at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow. Both brothers were educated at the Moscow State University.

Konstantin Chumakov started his scientific work in molecular biology and eventually moved to medical applications. Pyotr studied medicine and although he become famous because of an important discovery in biology, he has always treated patients.

According to Konstantin Chumakov the two of them are in constant contact by Skype and are very close.

🧵.@ama_media GPs will soon be able to access new telehealth Medicare items for smoking cessation consults where they can write scripts for nicotine e-cigarettes.

From October, a doctor’s prescription will be required before a person can legally import nicotine e-cigarettes and

liquid nicotine.

The move is designed to curtail use of e-cigarettes, particularly among the young.

But it will also mean more GPs will be able to prescribe them to patients as a smoking cessation product of last resort, and potentially without having to go through the TGA’s

special access scheme.

To support the change new telehealth MBS items will be rolled out from March — although as yet there are few details on which patients will be eligible, what the consults will involve or the rebates.

The AMA says it fears they could be used by a small

group of doctors happy to prescribe e-cigarettes long-term to individual patients.

It has called on the Federal Government to prevent patients claiming the item without an existing face-to-face relationship to their usual GP or their practice.

“We are very concerned about the

idea of a specific item number that would be purely there to facilitate vaping to people with no intention to quit,” @amapresident president @omarkhorshid82 Dr Omar Khorshid said.

“The normal telehealth item numbers are linked to a patient’s usual GP and we wouldn’t want this

A request for comment from people living with life-limiting diagnoses:

I am developing a workshop for the general population on creating a healthier relationship to mortality- and I want to amplify the voices of those engaged in the confrontation.

If there is something that you feel you want the wider culture to understand about living with life limiting illness, but is hard to get others to hear or withstand,

and you want me to share it in workshop- please contact me here or through my

What do you feel the culture does not understand about the labors of confronting mortality? What do you have to protect others from about your experience? What do you have to edit away from people who think this will never happen to them?

So much of what is talked about in these space, is offered by people who are vicariously impacted, or who are trying to stay near

What would you want your wider community to integrate and understand about your experience that they turn away from?

I will attribute your comments to you in the workshop, or I can keep them anonymous if you prefer.

🔥The unexpected consequence of too much sitting 🔥

The negatives of a sedentary lifestyle are widely known❗️

One issue that doesn't get mentioned enough is GLUTEAL AMNESIA, also known as the "dead butt syndrome".

Thread - Read more 👇

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GLUTEAL AMNESIA, also known as the "dead butt syndrome" simply means:

➡️ Your gluteal muscles have been "unused" for so long that they now fail to activate whenever your body needs them to

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Role of the Glutes:

➡️ Play a major role in the way our body moves

➡️ Not just there for aesthetics

➡️ Crucial for keeping our torsos upright, moving/rotating of the thighs & walking/running

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GLUTEAL AMNESIA ⁉️

➡️ Glutes get so weak that they forget to activate

➡️ Consequence: Other muscles need to compensate - such as your lower back muscles or hip flexors

➡️ This can cause all sorts of problems such as lower back pain, knee pain & poor posture

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How do you know if you suffer from the "dead butt syndrome"?

➡️Glute amnesia can vary in severity

Here's a simple test:

➡️ Do 10 glute bridges (video 👇)

🛑If you feel them more in your quads or hammies than in your glutes, you know you have some work to do.

@tbroyer If you are wearing a mask you should replace your mask with a clean one after every cough into it. Should you wear a mask is a different question. Masks saturate with water sufficiently to create microdroplets long before they feel wet or damp, perhaps within 5 min.

Now what happens next depends on different factors:
if you are not infected, any viral droplets that your mask catches will now be turned into microdroplets that you are repeatedly inhaling... increasing your risk of infection... but droplets evaporate fast

It’s typically sub-millisecond in dry (ie indoor) air to get down to ~100nm (ie basically just one virus and a mono layer of water) which your mask will likely not catch anyway... so the mask does not protect you

Now the counter case, if you are infected:
1. If symptomatic, STOP! stay home and isolate.
2. If pre-symptomatic/ asymptomatic the question is are you breathing out the virus with your normal breathing. If no => masks useless. If yes... we’ll the studies are not done

Stuff like the JAMA meta analysis and the Chinese Wuhan study says it’s unlikely that you are spreading the virus, suggesting masks are useless. On the counter, if you wear cloth mask for more than ~5-10min you are now spreading the virus more, mask would be worse

“Sexual & reproductive health” is a euphemism for abortion and contraception I run into constantly, so too is the topic of vaccines which are now a hot topic, but have you ever heard of contraceptive vaccines whose use for population control is never off the table for globalists?

The Special Programme of Research, Development, and Research Training in Human Reproduction was started by the WHO in 1972 to conduct research basically targetting developing countries. Abortive vaccines were developed as a result of this programme. Interesting, eh?!

Enter the 'Good Club', a group of billionaires who agreed to tackle population growth as a threat to industry, society and the environment. Here's some of their prominent figures: Bill Gates, George Soros, Oprah Winfrey, Rockefeller, Eli+Edythe Broad, Warren Buffett, & Ted Turner

Billionaire globalists love to tout the 1970's myth of overpopulation, using it as a scare tactic to promote/further their own agendas which, coincidentally, props up $$ makers like abortion, eugenics & sterilization as solutions. Another money guzzler they also fund are vaccines

Talking points elites use to sell the need for their vaccines are starvation levels, coming catastrophes & climate shifts (climate change is most common). Children are painted as pollutants, therefore, people "need" to have smaller families. Humanity is now painted in this light.

A day in the life of a junior doctor on covid ward. By Jane Smith (not her real name) in the UK. /thread
"I begin my shift at 8am. Before I can even head to my allocated bay, a nurse is already asking for a doctor to help her. One of the patients won’t put on his mask

and his oxygen levels are dropping. It takes me a few moments to get on my PPE before I can get to him. I try to talk to the man, but it’s difficult for him to hear me through my mask and the noise of all of the CPAP oxygen machines. He tells me that he’s tired of fighting,

and that he wants to be left alone. I have to be sure that he understands the risks, so I ask him to explain to me what he expects will happen if he takes off his mask and doesn’t put it back on. He says he doesn’t know. I tell him that he has to understand that he will die

and that he needs to say those words to me if that is what he really wants. Eventually we compromise; he will put his mask on for another hour, then phone his wife and tell me his decision. This man is 61.

I am allocated B Bay, in which there are five patients. My patients are mostly men, ranging from their early 30s to their 60s. This is younger than normal on HDU because — as I explained to the man — we only have beds for people with a fighting chance.

A lot of talk about NHS comms
I’m not sure sure that showing pictures on the news of busy ICUs or Ambulance queues will convince the naysayers and covid deniers of anything
They would still say it was staged or a hoax
Of course we need robust and honest information

But having a communications strategy based purely on images to fight the conspiracy theorists and covid hoaxers is a recipe for disaster
What we need is a high profile, properly funded public health campaign, but perhaps more than that we need ...

To accept that nhs isnt t a film set and patient confidentiality is important
Everyone says they love the NHS - show it by following advice

When working in nhs Comms I always took the view that media access and cooperating with media requests was important, this was often unpopular and at times I was a ‘lone voice’ often fighting both medics and the ‘corporate’ NHS side of things on the issue

And I think most health or other journalists who know me will say that I was fair and arranged access where others refused
One thing I never did was to forget it was a hospital/clinic/etc and patients were at the centre of it all