#US nationwide test

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Hello everyone,

If you haven’t heard, there’s going to be a nationwide test in United States. According to this article:

Nationwide Alert System Test on October 4, 2023

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and Federal Communications Commission will be conducting a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system on Wednesday, October 4th at 11:20 AM local time. The purpose of the test is to ensure that the systems continue to be effective means of warning the public about emergencies and disasters. The test messages will display in either English or Spanish depending on the language settings of the wireless device.

EAS messages are transmitted through radio and television with an alert tone or scrolling text across the bottom of the screen. The EAS message will say “This is a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System, issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, covering the United States from 11:20 to 11:50 hours PST. This is only a test. No action is required by the public.”

WEA messages are transmitted to cell phones via cell towers and look like text messages that are accompanied by a distinct attention tone and vibration. The message will read "THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed."

All local radio and T.V. stations will broadcast the EAS test, and all cell phones that are on, not on airplane mode, and within range of a cell tower will receive the WEA test.

In the event the test cannot be conducted on October 4, the back-up date is Wednesday, October 11.

The full article will be below:

#nationwide test #October 4 #test starts tomorrow #it will be very loud so please cover your ears #stay safe everyone #US nationwide test #EAS test #emergency alert system #please share to spread the word

[princessag-tv]

The Emergency Alert Goes Off 2 Mins Early What is it that they're not tell you

This is what you saw on your mobile device on October 4th. You might have been alarmed by your electronic devices on Wednesday, and there’s a good reason why. Just before 2:20 p.m. EDT, the federal emergency alert system’s nationwide test began broadcasting to radios, televisions, and cellphones all across the country. Every time zone from coast to coast experienced the test at the same…

View On WordPress

#Breaking News #FEMA #Latest #national wireless emergency system #Nationwide Emergency Alert System #October 4th #Test Alert #Trending #what they&039;re not telling us

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

A Big TB Announcement

Greetings from Washington D.C., where I spent the morning meeting with senators before joining a panel that included TB survivor Shaka Brown, Dr. Phil LoBue of the CDC, and Dr. Atul Gawande of USAID. Dr. Gawande announced a major new project to bring truly comprehensive tuberculosis care to regions in Ethiopia and the Philippines. Over the next four years, this project can bring over $80,000,000 in new money to fight TB in these two high-burden countries.

Our family is committing an additional $1,000,000 a year to help fund the project in the Philippines, which has the fourth highest burden of tuberculosis globally.

Here’s how it breaks down: The Department of Health in the Philippines has made TB reduction a major priority and has provided $11,000,0000 per year in matching funds to go alongside $10,000,000 contributed by USAID and an additional $1,000,000 donated by us. This $22,000,000 per year will fund everything from X-Ray machines, medications, and GeneXpert tests to training and employing a huge surge of community health workers, nurses, and doctors who are calling themselves TB Warriors. In an area that includes nearly 3,000,000 people, these TB Warriors will screen for TB, identify cases, provide curative treatment, and offer preventative therapy to close contacts of the ill. We know this Search-Treat-Prevent model is the key to ending tuberculosis, but we hope this project will be both a beacon and a blueprint to show that It’s possible to radically reduce the burden of TB in communities quickly and permanently. It will also, we believe, save many, many lives.

—

I believe we can’t end TB without these kinds of public/private partnerships. After all, that’s how we ended smallpox and radically reduced the global burden of polio. It’s also how we’ve driven down death from malaria and HIV. For too long, TB hasn’t had the kind of government or private support needed to accelerate the fight against the disease, but I really hope that’s starting to change. I’m grateful to USAID for spearheading this project, and also to the Philippine Ministry of Health for showing such commitment and prioritizing TB.

—

One reason this project is even possible: Both the cost of diagnosis (through GeneXpert tests) and the cost of treatment with bedaquiline are far lower than they were a year ago, and that is due to public pressure campaigns, many of which were organized by nerdfighteria. I’m not asking you for money (yet); Hank and I will be funding this in partnership with a few people in nerdfighteria who are making major gifts. But I am asking you to continue pressuring the corporations that profit from the world’s poorest people to lower their prices. I’ve seen some of the budgets, and it’s absolutely jaw-dropping how many more tests and pills are available because of what you’ve done as a community.

—

I don’t yet have the details on which region of the Philippines we’ll be working in, but it will be an area that includes millions of people–perhaps as many as 3 million. And it will include urban, suburban, and rural areas to see the different responses needed to provide comprehensive care in different communities. This will not (to start!) be a nationwide campaign, because even though $80,000,000 is a lot of money, it’s not enough to fund comprehensive care in a nation as large as the Philippines. But we hope that it will serve as a model–to the nation, to the region, and to the world–of what’s possible. 

—

I’m really excited (and grateful) that our community gets to have a front-row seat to see the challenges and hopefully the successes of implementing comprehensive care. Just in the planning, this project has involved so many contributors–NGOs in the Philippines, global organizations like the Partners in Health community, USAID, the national Ministry of Health in the Philippines, and regional health authorities as well. There are a lot of partners here, but they’ve been working together extremely well over the last few months to plan for this project, which will start more or less immediately thanks to their incredibly hard work.

#tuberculosis

[reasonsforhope]

"Despite a huge amount of political opposition from the chemical industry, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its first regulations aimed at limiting quantities of PFAs, or ‘forever chemicals,’ in American drinking water.

For decades, Polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAs have been used for coatings that resist fire, oil, stains, and water and are now found in a wide variety of products like waterproof clothing, stain-resistant furniture, food packaging, adhesives, firefighting spray foams, and non-stick cooking surfaces.

There are thousands of PFAS compounds with varying effects and toxicity levels, and the new EPA regulations will require water utilities to test for 6 different classes of them.

The new standards will reduce PFAS exposure—and thereby decrease the health risk—for 100 million people in the U.S.

A fund worth $1 billion for treatment and testing will be made available to water utilities nationwide—part of a $9 billion investment made possible by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to assist communities impacted by PFAS contamination.

“Drinking water contaminated with PFAS has plagued communities across this country for too long,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan in a statement Wednesday.

Under Regan’s leadership, the EPA began in 2021 to establish a roadmap for dealing with widespread PFAS contamination, and so far they’ve gathered much data, including monitoring drinking water, and begun requiring more reports from businesses about use of the unregulated substances.

The agency reported that current peer-reviewed scientific studies have shown that exposure to certain levels of PFAS may lead to a myriad of health issues that are difficult to specify because of the variety of compounds coming from different places.

Regardless, the 66,000 water utility operators will have five years to test for the PFAS pollution and install necessary technology to treat the contamination, which the EPA estimates that 6%–10% of facilities will need. [Note: Deeply curious where they got a number that low, but anyway.]

Records show that some of the manufacturers knew these chemicals posed health hazards. A few major lawsuits in recent years have been settled that sought to hold chemical companies, like 3M, accountable for the environment damage.""

-via Good News Network, April 13, 2024

#united states #pfas #forever chemicals #epa #environmental protection agency #water quality #water pollution #clean water #good news #hope

[fishylife]

I'm going back to saving personal files on a USB instead of Google Drive X'D

#thinking out loud #just as a precaution in light of the recent nationwide internet outage #it definitely still has its risks that's for sure #this is just a test run anyway to see if it's something i could get used to

[hashtagloveloses]

OUT in 2024:

using generative AI of any kind

the state of Israel

giving people and pieces of media farming for engagement for money attention online

live action adaptations of originally animated movies/TV shows

IN in 2024:

going to your library or using your library's resources online (like Libby/Hoopla/Kanopy) often and encouraging friends to do the same

if you're in the US, using Libby/Hoopla or even buying through Libro.fm for audiobooks instead of Audible, and ordering physical books from indie bookstores' websites instead of Amazon bc you can get almost any book and most ship nationwide

using Storygraph instead of Goodreads

wearing a well fitted N95 or KN95 mask indoors, and outdoors in crowded spaces, being vigilant about testing, and encouraging others to the same

using a diary/journal instead of posting online

unionizing your workplace

#original post #happy new year #2024 #new year

[vaspider]

My question about the AIDS crisis, I'm mostly asking you because like I said, I don't think I was googling the right things, so even if you could just suggest some things to google that would be more likely to get me answers, that would be really helpful.

I guess it's mostly how did AIDS (and to some extent, any STD) become so widespread? I know that it spread through sexual contact and shared blood, but can you really "six degrees of separation" (god, that sounds so flippant, but i genuinely can't think how else to describe it) a chain of sexual partners and shared needles through any two people with HIV in the entire world? Maybe it's just because I'm a bit of a hermit, but while I can understand how it was so devastating once it was already widespread, I guess I'm having trouble understanding how it got such a foothold in the first place. If the first person with HIV had happened to not have a lot of sex would the AIDS crisis never have happened?

I swear I have absolutely no judgement for people that like to have a lot of sex, maybe I just have an underestimate of the amount of sex the average person has because frankly I don't have any? So I hope this doesn't sound disrespectful or anything, it's just kind of hard for me to believe those "six degrees of separation" kind of things in general when it's not like, famous people, so the realization that theoretically any two people with the same STD, on different parts of the globe, would have this string of sexual partners connecting them almost feels like there has to be something I'm missing... But when I'm googling things like "how did HIV become so widespread" and "how do STDs spread" I'm just getting things about how you should use protection and histories of *where* HIV spread rather than answering this more specific question (probably didn't help I was trying to do this research at 1am)

I mean this as kindly as possible:

What is your proposed alternate theory as to the spread of a disease which is transmitted through contact with blood, semen (and pre-seminal fluid), rectal and vaginal fluids, and breast milk? The disease does not spread through saliva or through touch which does not involve those fluids.

There are relatively rare cases of HIV spread through accidental needle sticks - according to WebMD, there are approximately 385k accidental needle sticks among health care workers per year in the US. WHO says that .7% of the global population has HIV, so for some back-of-the-napkin math, at most, you'll have about 2,700 of those needle sticks involving someone with HIV. Since (again, according to that WebMD article on accidental needle sticks), in cases of an accidental needle stick where the patient has HIV, the health care worker only has about a 1 in 300 chance of catching it (as opposed to 1 in 3 for an unvaccinated person catching hepatitis B via accidental needle stick from an infected patient). So - nationwide - you have approximately 9 people per year catching HIV from a needle stick.

And, to be clear, that fucking sucks. However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2022 there were approximately 14.7 million health care workers in the US. Not all of these people have equal risk for accidental needle sticks, but there's only so much research I'm gonna do for rough math to answer an ask on Tumblr.

The average US health care worker has approximately - again, based on my back-of-the-napkin math - 0.00000544% chance of contracting HIV from an accidental needle stick. It's astronomically more likely that a random health care worker will die from tripping over an extension cord or breathing in a caustic chemical than that they will catch HIV.

The chances of getting HIV via blood transfusion before we started routinely testing for it were all but assured if you got blood from someone with HIV. Testing now is so stringent that you have about a one in two million chance of getting HIV from a transfusion. The last recorded case I could find was in 2010, and before that, it was 2002, and the 2010 case happened in part because the donor lied about his risk profile and often participated in anonymous and unprotected sex with partners of multiple genders. He really shouldn't have been accepted as a donor at all. Approximately 4.5 million Americans receive blood transfusions per year, so, like, nowadays, it is excessively unlikely, but even in the 80s, it was an edge case means of infection, not a main source of pandemic spread.

A breastfeeding parent with a detectable viral load has about a 15% chance of transmitting HIV through breast milk. Likewise, HIV can be - and was - transmitted to babies during birth because of contact with vaginal fluid or blood, but, again, these relative edge cases are not the things pandemics are made of.

I want to stress that I am not in any way minimizing the absolute tragedy of the AIDS crisis, and I am not dismissing the fact that these methods of transmission are possible and did cause significant disruption to blood banks, stress for pregnant people with HIV, and so on. They just simply are not major methods of transmission, and never were.

With all of that said... what is your proposed alternate method of transmission, with these facts in hand? What do you think happened? Genuinely, this question is so baffling to me.

I think it's important to understand that before the emergence of HIV, most of the STIs we had were at that point either considered an annoyance (warts, HPV) or were extremely easy to treat and cure (syphilis, once a death sentence, became basically a non-issue for most people in the US as long as they were getting tested relatively frequently, and most other common STIs even today can be cured with a single course or even a single dose of antibiotics).

With that in mind, a lot of people, including a lot of queer people, were having a lot of unprotected sex. For people who could become pregnant, the advent of the pill and access to legal abortion meant that they didn't have to become or stay pregnant if they didn't want to, and for cis gay men, the prevalence of antibiotics meant that the vast majority of STIs were a brief inconvenience at worst.

So allo people did one of the things that allo people (and some ace people!) love to do:

They fucked. A lot. They fucked without fear of much consequence in terms of infection, and because it was much riskier to bring someone home where you could be seen, a lot of gay men cruised, fucking in parks or in literal back alleys or the bathrooms of clubs. They worried about getting arrested or getting caught and having their names in the newspaper much more than they worried about STIs. Sex workers, including trans sex workers, fucked in cars or hotels or... wherever the money was, because survival sec work is ... survival.

So... yeah. What is your proposed alternate theory, here? I am truly baffled at what you think otherwise happened, given a disease with a very narrow route of infection.

#hiv #aids

[qqueenofhades]

As someone whose country went through a brutal dictatorship, we still see the bleeding wounds it's left- even 50 years later. The idea of not exercising the right to vote is absolutely unthinkable to most citizens. Granted, voting is obligatory, but everyone I know does it voluntarily and enthusiastically. The discourse I hear around it in the US evidences a narrow perspective, which is so upsetting to see, especially within leftist spaces.

The right to vote is something every citizen must, sadly, defend. Most Latin American countries know all too well what happens when fascism and treason disguised as conservatism take centre stage. I hope it won't be too late when the people peddling anti voting crap to younger generations realise the harm it causes.

All around the world, the reason fascist authoritarian dictatorships of whatever ideology stay in power is precisely either because citizens aren't allowed to vote, the vote is outrageously rigged (think of the 99% margins routinely racked up in places like Russia and Venezuela) or they rely on repressing the vote through intentionally disheartening liberal, left-wing, progressive, or other similarly oriented voters, who often do much of the work themselves with constant internal attacks and purity tests and adopting the rhetoric of anti-voting propaganda in the name of purity. Despite all their populist claims to enact a monolithic Will of the People, all these anti-democratic authoritarian movements are terrified of a genuinely representative popular vote and will do anything to stop it, because it turns out that if you give them the choice, people anywhere in the world don't super like being repressed, extorted, and terrorized in the name of Ideology, and will give your tiresome fascist ass Das Boot.

In the American context, the Republicans have gone full masks-off illiberal authoritarianism and they desperately hate the idea of people voting, which is why they have filed endless lawsuits, passed endless restrictive laws, disenfranchised even their own voters, shrieked election fraud, and everything else to try to jerry-rig their position as extremist minority oligarchic rulers for life. Which is why it is befuddling, to say the least, to see people insist that voting doesn't work, it doesn't matter that much, it isn't an effective tool against fascism, it's Morally Wrong, or all the other idiot "justifications" they come up with. All you have to do is look at how fucking terrified the bad guys are of a minimally equitable electoral system (such as getting rid of the Electoral College, which would pretty much ensure a Republican never won the presidency again if it had to be selected by -- gasp! -- an actual nationwide popular vote). That's why I don't even buy into the "voting sucks and is the bare minimum" rhetoric that gets peddled as a sort of tempting carrot to get the recalcitrants to do it -- don't worry, you can still post your mean tweets about Biden and that totally is more effective! Voting is A BIG DEAL. Voting works. Americans don't realize this because they are lucky enough to never have lived in a country where it wasn't available to be taken for granted and therefore scoffed off.

Voting, having the right to vote, and the large-scale ability that it confers to change the structures of society, is a MASSIVELY powerful tool that has largely not been available to most people throughout history (and is still unavailable to a large chunk of the world today). That's why there were bitter and protracted battles to get women and African Americans the right to vote in America. That is why the GOP still particularly targets those voters today, because the simple act of exercising your civic franchise in your best interests (and therefore not in the MAGA TrumpCult's interests) is so terrifying to them. If it was meaningless, none of this would matter. But it does.

Here, Imma make it real easy for you. If you have any reason to think your voter registration is lapsed, inactive, or nonexistent, if you have recently moved and don't know your status or your polling place or whether you get a mail ballot or whether your evil DeSantis governor has recently taken you off the rolls, or if you have never done it before, or if you want to do one basic thing to oppose fascism today, click this simple link. Do it.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #VOTE YOU FUCKERS #then get off my lawn

[yamameta-inc]

For those who don't know, there's going to be a demonstration for Long Covid on March 15, which is Long Covid Awareness Day since 2023. You can find the LCDC website here.

Their stated goals:

1. Declare Long Covid a National Emergency. 2.  Implement Emergency Use Authorization for drug repurposing and trials. 3.  Establish annual funding for Long Covid programs and research to find a cure. 4.  Ensure racial and gender health equity in research, access to clinical trials, antiviral drug repurposing, preventative measures, educational campaigns, and social services.  5. Enact Clean Indoor Air Laws to prevent SARS-CoV-2 forward transmission in public spaces and forced-congregant settings. 6. Implement respirator use and clean air protections in healthcare facilities. Additionally, devise strategies to ensure immunocompromised patients or those with Long Covid are given reasonable accommodations and are not penalized. Enforce protected class status for people with Long Covid as disabled. 7.  Fast-track compassionate allowance and sufficient social support for people with Long Covid in addition to increased funding for Home and Community Based Services.  8.  Develop guidelines for physicians on Long Covid and continuing education on breaking research. 9.  Acknowledge that Long Covid affects children and implement specialized care immediately. 10. Public tracking of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater at Publicly Owned Treatment Works and provide affordable PCR testing nationwide.  11. Establish regular White House press communication regarding progress toward stated goals and real time data for Covid transmission awareness.

There's a gofundme here to raise funds for a stage, sound equipment, respirators, and multimedia equipment in order to stream the event to those who can't physically attend. If you can spare a few bucks I encourage you to donate. Any leftover funds will go to Long Covid research.

If you have Long Covid or know someone who does, LCDC is also looking for stories/personal accounts for their media projects.

#covid #long covid

[degloved]

apprentice strahm who gets trapped and subsequently recruited in the early days of the jigsaw op, when it's still a little underground and not nationwide knowledge. as to why, take your pick—the coke, the barely-concealed violent tendencies, the unhealthy obsession with any given case, the disinterest in his marriage because of it. hoffman's already there when john brings him round, this visibly unhinged fed that will certainly raise to the occasion. and this is right. he's the whole package. he's got amanda's fervent devotion to the cause, he's got hoffman's strength and taste for brutality (and very handily, the access to even more confidential information), he's got lawrence's attention to detail and meticulousness—bringing to the table also his own brand of acolyte insanity as well as the innate ability to tick off every task off his serial killer to-do while popping benzos like it's candy. the first hoffstrahm meeting goes as well as you'd anticipate, if by "well" i meant "catastrophically wrong." they're like two equally rabid stray cats forced into a small room with no preparation. this does not prevent the development of fucked up codependency btw. everything is a battle and a competition except actual physical fighting (in which they engage frequently), which is of course sex. something something you construct intricate details just to touch the skin of other men. or just this one particular slightly repulsive other man. they turn the kidnapping of test subjects into a fine art; it's a hunt, is what it is, and they're off the bat infuriatingly good at reading each other's body language and facial expressions and understanding nonverbal cues. in eight cases out of ten, they have to fight it out again after the fact. yeah i know they're just like that. the whole experience leaves them sooo riled up but it hasn't occurred to them yet to fuck it out. strahm constructs the water cube in his spare time, a little side project made up of odd bits of other devices. who is the trap for? him <3. but no not like that. he wouldn't use it. just... hypothetically. he's surrounded by these things day in and out, a man's mind will take him places he wouldn't normally go with a gun. it's a private thing, and it remains private until hoffman stumbles into the gideon plant at ass o'clock in the night, tipsy because old habits die hard. seats himself at strahm's bench, asks about the weird cube he's never seen before. strahm hesitates but explains, quietly softly. he has to try not to let his eyes wander to hoffman, even if they want to, because hoffman has folded his arms on the bench, head resting atop them because he can never keep it upright after he's had a few, and his hair is all mussed and his eyelids look heavy and he's watching strahm with these big ass eyes, hanging off of every word strahm deigns to tell him. they don't talk about it the next morning but everyone feels the resulting shift in the space-time continuum—even if they don't know where it came from. amanda hates them so bad btw

#one thing that mike and i can do so well is get on discord and talk about hoffstrahm for so many hours #saw #hoffstrahm #mark hoffman #peter strahm #n #thinkpieces

[disastertrash]

Ham radio license 101

*Please see safety note added to the end of this post.

The Cost:

Exam is $14. If passed, the license fee is $35. Optional classes and study materials vary in cost.

(How much are Ham Radios? You can get a basic handheld model for $50. Start with one of those before deciding whether to spend big bucks on anything.)

License Levels:

There are 3 licensure levels for amateur radio operators. (There used to be more.) In the order: Technician, General, and Amateur Extra.

Study Time:

Average is 10-14 hours of study time to pass the exam.

The exam itself is 36 multichoice questions, randomly selected from a pool of 411 questions.

Is There Math??

Yes. But only a little at the Technician Class level. (Edit: you can use a calculator too!) I encountered long division with decimal points and multiplication. This was only required by a couple of questions on the test.

If you have a math disability, I hope it reassures you to learn that folks allowed to miss up to 9 questions on the test.

The more licenses, the more priviledges. But you can start using a ham radio with just the Technician Class license.

Morse Code?

No longer required for the exam.

Study Materials:

I didn't attend a class. Instead, I used these two resources:

1. Godon West's book "2022-2026 Technician Class: FCC Element 2 Amateur Radio License Preparation". (Options: paperback or audiobook.)

2. HamStudy (it's a free phone app).

How I Studied:

I started by reading the book. When I reached the questions and answers section, I focused on reading the questions, followed by their correct answers only. I purposefully avoided reading the wrong answer options. This helped heaps during the test. The right answer stood out as the familiar pair with the question.

I studied for Q&A portion for 30 minutes at a time, then took a break. When I returned from break, I would go back through the previous section's questions and try to recall the answers.

Taking a break, then attempting recall, helps develop memory retention.

After finishing the book, I used the free, HamStudy phone app. I adjusted settings to focus on 1 section at a time until I could get 100%. Once I had covered each section like this, I changed the settings to include and randomize the entire, 411 question pool.

Scheduling The Exam:

You will need to sign up to get an FRN number from the FCC, before scheduling your exam. (It's like an FCC social security number.) I got the instruction for how to do it from the Gordon West book. But they are posted various places online as well.

You can find both on and offline testing teams (VEC's) here:

I chose to test online with W5YI-VEC for 3 reasons: Their header pun. ("Promoting ☢️Radio-Activity☢️ Nationwide with Friendly, Untimed Exams!"). Their profile page emphasizes accessibility accomodations. And they let me text their phone number to schedule a more convenient date and time.

Taking The Exam:

I took the exam online. A panel of 6 people from the W5YI-VEC team observed through my webcam. The exam layout was reminiscent of the HamStudy app, which I appreciated. On average, people complete the test in about 20 minutes. I completed it in under 10. Some people take an hour. We dont all get the same 36 questions. So some tests will take longer than others. You've made it this far. Give yourself enough time in your day to not rush, no matter how confident you are.

My advice: this is where you want to carefully read every answer option. Don't just quick scan for key words between the questions and the answers. You'll make unnecessary mistakes that way.

After The Exam:

My VEC team gave me my results right after I submitted the test. Then they emailed me a certificate. (This certificate is not your license.)

That evening, I got an email from the FCC with instructions for how to pay the $35 license fee. (My least favorite part of the entire process. For being the FCC, their instructions and website both suck.)

IMPORTANT: Dont try to pay your fee using your phone! That whole process is not mobile friendly. Trying can cause a bit of a glitch in their system. You could add more than a month to your wait time for a license. Just use a desktop computer for this part.

Your License:

The FCC no longer issues a physical license. Instead, they post a record of your license to their "FCC ULS" database. You do not have a license until it is posted there.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to keep a current email on file with the FCC. If the FCC emails go to an address you're no longer using, or get lost in your spam box, the FCC can yank your license. No fun.

Callsigns & Vanity Callsigns:

You are automatically issued a callsign with your license. If you want to choose your own callsign (aka, getting a "vanity callsign") you must wait until after you have your license and the original call sign that goes with it. Your pool of vanity call signs are limited by your level of license.

I'll exand on the Technician Class vanity callsign options, once I get the Gordon West book back. (It's on loan to a friend until December.)

Your First Radio:

The Gordon West book has things to say about this too. (I'm waiting on my license before I get my first radio.)

What I'm personally looking forward to:

(Aside from gaining a skill for disaster response.) As a backpacker, I want to learn how to make a homebrew Garmin InReach. Amateur radio can do cool things with gps, send text messages, etc. I'm not tech savvy. And I'm not sure if I'll need a higher license class to do whatever that requires. So, I imagine that project could be much further down the road from where I am at present. It's an exciting thing to look forward to though.

Safety Note:

Whichever address you get your radio license under will become public record, forever. My advice? For safety, use a PO Box from the very start. If you have a stalker, look into getting a forwarding PO Box in a different city if it's legal. Ask if you can use initials or shortened versions of your name before submitting any information to the FCC. Be consistent. Name on your exam and the name on your FCC account must match.

#ham radio #disaster preparedness #cert #portlandnet #community prepper #disaster response #backpacking #camping #disaster preparation

[ms-demeanor]

So there is, apparently, some variety or other of nationwide gluten-free bread shortage which I have been noticing in the last two months because Trader Joe's has been out of the bread that I can eat for about 2 months.

This is complicated by the fact that I am *extremely limited* in the kinds of pre-made breads that I can eat because in addition to celiac I am also allergic to corn, and corn meal or corn starch are extremely common ingredients in gluten-free bread.

When I first got diagnosed it took me a very long time to find bread that I could eat. One of the very unique feelings I got used to from that time was the brain fog that I got from not enough carbs.

I was apparently relying on the Trader Joe's rice bread as a much bigger diet staple than I had realized because the last month has really sucked in terms of the dizzy/sleepy/confused feeling of Not Enough Carbs.

Anyway, that is why fixing the oven has become an extremely high priority for me. I need to bake bread like it is April 2020.

I found a good diagnostic test that I'm going to attempt tonight to see if it's the igniter or something else. I'm hoping it's the igniter because that looks like a quick and easy fix.

[gumjrop]

The Weather

This week we see a sharp increase of COVID in all regions, likely due to increased travel around the recent holiday long weekend and dropping temperatures that bring a lot of gatherings indoors. As the holiday season continues, we remind our readers to use layers of protection — such as ventilation, air purification, masking with a KN95/N95 or better, and testing via PCR or NAAT or testing serially with rapid antigen tests — to protect themselves and their loved ones both during travel and at your holiday gatherings.  Repeat COVID infection has serious implications for everyone, not just the elderly or those with preexisting conditions. Even if you experience a mild case, COVID is a vascular disease that causes multiple organ damage, autoimmune conditions, inflammation and immune system dysregulation that you might not necessarily experience at the time of your infection. It’s important to note that if you or your loved ones have experienced previous COVID infections, you may have entered a high risk group for severe effects and hospitalization without realizing it.  Some people may feel worn down by the current state of the virus, by fatigue of lack of resources, or from the energy spent protecting one’s self from an infection; with increasing wastewater levels and the onset of a new dominant variant this week, now is really the crunch time to stay strong and endure. For those who have stopped precautions, we invite you to return to masking and other levels to minimize transmission. This is the most important time to return to masking to protect yourself and others.

The Current Wastewater Viral Activity Map shows viral activity by state. As of 12/02/23, many states are reporting “very high” to “high” COVID levels with 5 states reporting low levels. Seven states reported no data. The CDC currently rates our nationally reported COVID wastewater viral activity levels as “high”.

Levels are at an incline in all regions, but the Midwest takes a strong lead with a viral activity level of 10.94. This is a wastewater value that surpasses all readings for the Midwest in the past 2 years, and is the third highest of any reading since the onset of the Omicron variant in January of 2022 where we saw the highest levels of spread we have experienced in the entirety of the pandemic. Current Midwestern wastewater levels were surpassed only by a viral activity level of 13.02 in the South on 12/31/2022 and of 11.79 in the West on 07/02/2023. As with Biobot data, the most recent two weeks (indicated by gray shading on the graph) are subject to change due to reporting delays. As we enter the cold and flu season when many in-person gatherings are held, we encourage you to continue monitoring local reports for a more accurate measure of levels. Also, please continue to use and support others in using layers of protection. And as we continue to report on advocacy successes, remember that our actions and voices can enact change — this level of unchecked spread is unacceptable and we must demand better resources and protections from our policy makers!

Deaths

Percentage of total deaths in the US caused by COVID has risen 25% in the past week. Remember that these numbers are an undercount related to reporting delays in place since the Biden Administration ended the Public Health Emergency. Alarmingly, the current increase in deaths is large enough to show despite these changes.

COVID remains the third leading cause of death according to the CDC in the US. COVID is the highest single cause of death, only second to Heart Disease and Cancer which are both umbrella headings for more specific diseases. We mourn all those who have died due to COVID, and in that mourning, call you to take measures to prevent death and disablement for yourself, your loved ones, and your communities.

Ventilation and Air Filtration

Moving activities outdoors or ensuring your indoor setting has consistent fresh airflow is key to ensuring high quality ventilation. We recommend monitoring carbon dioxide levels and making adjustments as needed. Air filtration is important as well. If you’re looking for a HEPA air purifier or Corsi-Rosenthal Box for your family, it is important to get a filtration device that is powerful enough to change out the air for your particular room size. Clean Air Stars has created a free tool to calculate which filter could be right for you depending on the size of the rooms that you wish to clean and how many people will be attending your gathering.

Testing

Whether you are making the trip home or staying in one place this holiday season, with the current level of spread it is important to know your COVID status before engaging in social activity. Rapid antigen tests are designed to be “the most rapid” at telling those who are symptomatic whether the symptoms they are experiencing are or are not caused by COVID. If you are asymptomatic, presymptomatic, or less than 5 days out from your COVID exposure, using one single rapid test is not an effective way of determining whether or not a person is currently infected with and contagious with COVID. Persons using rapid antigen tests should take at least 2 rapid antigen tests 48 hours apart from one another and isolate in between, in order to avoid spreading their unconfirmed case as well as avoid exposure to COVID during this waiting period, which could produce a false test negative result. Persons who are experiencing COVID symptoms but test negative on an initial rapid antigen test also need to isolate themselves from others, assume they have COVID, and test again in 48 hours. Persons who are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic who experience 2 negative serial tests must mask or isolate and wait a final 48 hours to test a third time in order to confirm a negative COVID case. For this reason, rapid antigen tests are only ideal to use in preparation for events where the user has a week prior available to test multiple times and isolate. FDA approved home Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests or NAATs are a more sensitive home test option, some brands of which have been found to, with only one test, verify both positive and negative results at 92.9% and 98.7% respective accuracy. NAATs can be a more sensitive, quicker option to use in preparation for events. Another more recent clinical trial found that performing a combined throat and nose sample increased sensitivity for healthcare worker and self-collected specimens. When testing at home with a rapid antigen test, it is worth it to take a combination sample like this one. To ensure the most sensitive results for both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases, get a PCR test. No-cost PCR testing sites that are available via the federal ICATT program can be found via this search tool. Remember to also check for regional offerings such as NYC’s COVID express test centers that test for COVID, RSV, FLU A and FLU B free of cost with results typically returned by end of day, that could be a more convenient option for you. PCR testing is the gold standard if you are making plans to be in a social setting.  If you do not have fast free PCR testing in your area, demand that it be made publicly available by the government at all levels!

Wins

Grassroots organizing group and “Mask Blocs” continue to take to social media encouraging Pro-Palestine protesters to continue to wear masks in their organizing spaces and during protests highlighting historic use of unrestricted and eugenic viral spread as a weapon of occupation and colonization. The National Institutes of Health’s Home Test to Treat program has upgraded its free test offerings and now instead of rapid antigen tests, will provide LUCIRA by Pfizer home NAAT tests can that effectively detect asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic COVID infections as well as Flu A and Flu B. Those who are uninsured or underinsured can sign up for this program to access free NAAT testing, telehealth services, and treatment medications for COVID and the Flu. If your household has not placed a new order for more rapid tests from the federal government through covidtests.gov, you can still place an order for 4 free rapid antigen tests here.    

Take Action

If you are out protesting this weekend or planning your trip home to visit family for the holidays, connect with your local COVID advocacy group to pick up high quality masks for yourself and to pass on to those around you. This Tuesday, December 12th, the director of the CDC and the American Medical Association are hosting a virtual fireside chat to discuss Fall & Winter Respiratory Virus Season (prior registration required). We encourage you to attend. You might ask the CDC why they aren’t ensuring precautions in healthcare settings? Or you could ask why they’re relying on a reactive, vaccine-only approach instead of layers of protection to proactively prevent COVID?

#op #img #covid #covid news #covid pandemic #covid 19 #covid-19 #covid19 #coronavirus #pandemic #medical #medical news #pcdc #people's cdc #wear a mask #covid isn't over #described in alt text

[rosewiltd]

Hey, everyone. Just want to give a heads up for anyone that didn't know or maybe forgot about it — If you live in the US, there will be a FEMA test conducted on October 4th at 2:20 pm ET.

FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) in accordance with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will conduct a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA). You can read the full press release that was posted in August on the official FEMA website here, but here is the basic breakdown for you:

The nationwide test is to ensure emergency systems, which aim to alert the public of national-level emergencies, are still working properly. If there is severe weather or another significant event which prevents them from broadcasting the alert, it will be rescheduled for October 11th.

What does this mean for you?

If you are sound-sensitive, this is your warning that your phone is going to emit a loud sound (as well as any televisions and radios) and the alert itself will last about thirty minutes. They don't clarify whether it is the notification itself or the sound as well, so to be on the safe side, just prepare to hear it for that long. Set yourself a reminder if you need to, and it is highly recommended that you remove headphones/earbuds during this test.

Unfortunately, because this is a national security test, you cannot opt out, and if you turn your phone off, the alert will still go off once you turn your phone back on.

For more information on what to expect, please see the linked article at the beginning and feel free to spread this to let others in the US know what to expect on October 4th!

#✧ ❬ 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 ❭ psa. ❜ #ok to reblog!

[reasonsforhope]

"Lead is a neurotoxin; it causes premature deaths and lifelong negative effects. It’s said “there is no safe level of lead exposure” — as far as we know, any lead causes damage, and it just gets worse the more exposure there is.

After a 20-year, worldwide campaign, in 2021 Algeria became the final country to end leaded gasoline in cars — something the US phased out in 1996. That should make a huge difference to environmental lead levels. But lots of sources remain, from car batteries to ceramics...

Bangladesh phased out leaded gasoline in the 1990s. But high blood lead levels have remained. Why? When researchers Stephen Luby and Jenny Forsyth, doing work in rural Bangladesh, tried to isolate the source, it turned out to be a surprising one: lead-adulterated turmeric.

Turmeric, a spice in common use for cooking in South Asia and beyond, is yellow, and adding a pigment made of lead chromate makes for bright, vibrant colors — and better sales. Buyers of the adulterated turmeric were slowly being poisoned...

But there’s also good news: A recent paper studying lead in turmeric in Bangladesh found that researchers and the Bangladeshi government appear to have driven lead out of the turmeric business in Bangladesh.

How Bangladesh got serious about lead poisoning

The researchers who’d isolated turmeric as the primary cause of high blood lead levels —working for the nonprofit International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh — went to meet with government officials. They collected samples nationwide and published a 2019 follow-up paper on the extent of the problem. Bangladesh’s Food Safety Authority got involved.

They settled on a two-part approach, starting with an education campaign to warn people about the dangers of lead. Once people had been warned that lead adulteration was illegal, they followed up with raids to analyze turmeric and fine sellers who were selling adulterated products.

They posted tens of thousands of fliers informing people about the risks of lead. They got coverage in the news. And then they swept through the markets with X-ray fluorescence analyzers, which detect lead. They seized contaminated products and fined sellers.

According to the study released earlier this month, this worked spectacularly well. “The proportion of market turmeric samples containing detectable lead decreased from 47 percent pre-intervention in 2019 to 0 percent in 2021,” the study found. And the vanishing of lead from turmeric had an immediate and dramatic effect on blood lead levels in the affected populations, too: “Blood lead levels dropped a median of 30 percent.”

The researchers who helped make that result happen are gearing up for similar campaigns in other areas where spices are adulterated.

The power of problem-solving

...When the Food Safety Authority showed up at the market and started issuing fines for lead adulteration, it stopped being a savvy business move to add lead. Purchasers who were accustomed to unnatural lead-colored turmeric learned how to recognize non-adulterated turmeric. And so lead went from ubiquitous to nearly nonexistent in the space of just a few years.

That’s a better world for everyone, from turmeric wholesalers to vulnerable kids — all purchased at a shockingly low price. The paper published this month concludes, “with credible information, appropriate technology, and good enough governance, the adulteration of spices can be stopped.”

There’s still a lot more to be done. India, like Bangladesh, has widespread adulteration of turmeric. And safety testing will have to remain vigilant to prevent lead in Bangladesh from creeping back into the spice supply.

But for all those caveats, it’s rare to see such fast, decisive action on a major health problem — and impressive to see it immediately rewarded with such a dramatic improvement in blood lead levels and health outcomes. It’s a reminder that things can change, and can change very quickly, as long as people care, and as long as they act."

-via Vox, September 20, 2023

#lead #lead poisoning #turmeric #bangladesh #south asian food #south asia #public health #public safety #government #good news #hope

[dark-raven-feathers]

For the Tumblrinas in the US:

On October 4th there will be a nationwide FEMA alert sent out. This will just be a test notification for the emergency system. If you are in a situation where you are hiding a secondary electronic for whatever reason (DV, DA, etc), power it off completely or even drain the battery before that date. The alert will make noise and vibration, which you will not want. There is no way to block or silence the alert otherwise. The alert will most likely last for a full minute while the government does stuff with it.

You’ll note my use of secondary ‘electronic’. If all goes to plan this alert should be going to all electronics, not just cellphones. This will include the following: Phones (not just the cellular type) Radios TVs

If you’re not a fan of your TV suddenly switching to the EAS screen without any real emergency, switch off/unplug all of the following before testing time, which will be around 2:30 EST (10:30 AKT, 1:30 CST, 12:30 MST, and 11:30 PST)

#dark raven feathers #USA #US #october 4th #emergency alert system #psa #This has been an American psa done by a Canadian citizen