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.
We sent over the answers and scheduled a second meeting. And, as we settled down, expecting a long debate, Rep. Carbajal surprised us. He would cosponsor the bill, he said! https://t.co/BM7NEdLgPM
Now, I know that it won’t always be this easy. Some representatives will require press conferences, protests, civil disobedience, and a primary challenge. Some will never sign on. But this is the work that needs to happen if we want to make real progress.
You want #MedicareForAll? Let’s build local coalitions like the Santa Barbara one in 150 districts around the country. The pieces are there. We need to get organized.
My assessment is that a floor vote would not be very helpful right now.
. @AOC is right that a floor vote is no more real or “on the record” than the cosponsor list. Especially with the Senate in Republican control. We know who is willing to publicly support us right now.
Another day of news coverage (especially of a loss) is not going to advance our agenda in a big way. We had an enormous amount of attention and debate about this during the primary.
What we need now is deep organizing to build support and hard district by district pressure for more cosponsors. Sure, a floor vote will be a good leverage point. But we aren’t ready for it right now. We haven’t done the work.
Plus, a floor vote is not nearly enough. We need structural changes to the House rules and organization that sheandothers are negotiating. We need a more democratic House, where power is distributed more widely.
But, look, this is not a foundational point. It’s tactics. It’s okay if we disagree. The Squad and @PramilaJayapal are hearing your thoughts, and they will do what they think is best. That is what we elected them to do.
But if you wanna do more than argue on Twitter, then let’s work together. Send me a DM with your name, phone number, congressional district and email address. I’ll be in touch in the new year. We’ll get our floor vote in this coming Congress. And, soon, we’ll win it.

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This is the $1mln question still without an answer: why were these workers cleaning bat guano from that abandoned mine?

Surprisingly we simply don't know.

China would have all interest in clarifying that point if for instance they were prospecting or selling guano. It did not.


What we know is that EcoHealth + WIV were sampling bat sites in the vicinity at the exact time of the workers being in that mine.

#DRASTIC wrote about this and about other oddities in the official story:

Maybe it's just one of these coincidences.

Then it gets interesting: about a year after the miners death, Olival & Epstein from EcoHealth Alliance co-authored a paper about the coronavirus risk infection from bat guano collection.

No mention of the

That paper oddly used some old bat samples collected by DARPA in 2006/7 at the famous Thai bat cave.

It never mentioned that the Thai monks have been doing this every Sunday for many many years without infection.

But most interestingly it never mentioned the Mojiang mine accident, even if the perfect timing and recycling of old DARPA bat samples seem to point to a likely knowledge of it.

Anyway, the idea was to ask for more money, as you correctly
I applaud the #EUCancerPlan *BUT* caution: putting #meat 🥩 (a nourishing, evolutionary food) in the same box as 🚬 to solve a contemporary health challenge, would be basing policy on assumptions rather than robust data.

#FollowTheScience yes, but not just part of it!
THREAD👇


1/ Granted, some studies have pointed to ASSOCIATIONS of HIGH intake of red & processed meats with (slightly!) increased colorectal cancer incidence. Also, @WHO/IARC is often mentioned in support (usually hyperbolically so).

But, let’s have a closer look at all this! 🔍


2/ First, meat being “associated” with cancer is very different from stating that meat CAUSES cancer.

Unwarranted use of causal language is widespread in nutritional sciences, posing a systemic problem & undermining credibility.

3/ That’s because observational data are CONFOUNDED (even after statistical adjustment).

Healthy user bias is a major problem. Healthy middle classes are TOLD to eat less red meat (due to historical rather than rational reasons, cf link). So, they

4/ What’s captured here is sociology, not physiology.

Health-focused Westerners eat less red meat, whereas those who don’t adhere to dietary advice tend to have unhealthier lifestyles.

That tells us very little about meat AS SUCH being responsible for disease.

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Viruses and other pathogens are often studied as stand-alone entities, despite that, in nature, they mostly live in multispecies associations called biofilms—both externally and within the host.

https://t.co/FBfXhUrH5d


Microorganisms in biofilms are enclosed by an extracellular matrix that confers protection and improves survival. Previous studies have shown that viruses can secondarily colonize preexisting biofilms, and viral biofilms have also been described.


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