WP Perspectives – Sept. 6, 2022

Monkeypox Scam

The Hanover County Sheriff’s Office has released a public service announcement concerning a scam that spreads misinformation about monkeypox. According to officials, cybercriminals have been sending emails about the latest monkeypox outbreaks and providing links to “mandatory safety awareness training.” This training is a scam. In order to avoid falling victim to scams such as these, Hanover County Sheriff’s Office recommends hovering over the link and avoiding clicking if the link shows a different domain than the original website. Those who do accidentally end up clicking the link will be taken to a fake Microsoft login page. Any personal information provided to this page will immediately go to the scammers behind the scheme. The scam is the latest in a series of health-related online scams that grew in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. 8News 9/2/22 (We are not aware that this scam has made it to our area, but as always - remain vigilant and protect your personal information!)

Don't Delay Routine Non-Emergency Healthcare

For much of the pandemic, Americans put off nonemergency health care. That could haunt us for years to come.. …Early in the pandemic, when much of the country was in lockdown, forgoing nonemergency health care . . . seemed like the right thing to do. But the health-care delays didn’t just end when America began to reopen in the summer of 2020. Patients were putting off health care through the end of the first pandemic year, when vaccines weren’t yet widely available. And they were still doing so well into 2021, at which point much of the country seemed to be moving on from COVID.

By this point, the coronavirus has killed more than 1 million Americans and debilitated many more. One estimate shows that life expectancy in the U.S. fell 2.41 years from 2019 to 2021. But the delays in health care over the past two and a half years have allowed ailments to unduly worsen, wearing down people with non-COVID medical problems too. . . . But it’s still possible to prevent an acute public-health crisis from seeding an even bigger chronic one. The Atlantic Read more.

Quarantine.

….in the fifteenth century, the Office of Health in Venice constructed facilities on outlying islands where all arriving ships had to sequester for forty days – which is the origin of the word quarantine (based on the Italian word for “forty,” quaranta). This duration had its foundation in the Bible, which frequently refers to the number forty in the context of purification, such as the forty days and nights that the flood in Genesis lasted, the forty days that Moses spent on Mount Sinai before receiving the Ten Commandments, the forty days of Christ’s temptation, and the forty days of Lent.  Appolo’s Arrow, by Nicholas A. Christakis

You Asked. (From the Washington Post 9/2/22)

How should new parents handle friends and family visiting a baby? Should they continue to ask them to mask and require vaccines? Dilpreet, Md. 

Pediatricians say precautions should be taken, especially when a baby is younger than 6 months old, because they have immature immune systems. Ensuring visitors are vaccinated and requiring them to wear masks is the safest way to minimize your child’s exposure to the coronavirus.

Babies are born with passive immunity, which they acquire from their mothers during pregnancy, rather than from direct exposure to viruses. This type of immunity wanes after the first few weeks of birth, and their immune systems become more vulnerable to viral infections.

Understanding Bias Toward Veterans

An important factor in recruiting, hiring, engaging, and retaining veterans is understanding how to prevent bias. Bias refers to people's conscious or unconscious judgments that are a result of our own experiences or cultural background.

These judgments are often harmful to diversity initiatives because they limit our ability to see people as individuals with unique talents to contribute. For example, bias against veterans includes assuming they have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or mental health problems just because of their military background, or assuming they have a particular personality type, such as being rigid or stern. Some may assume that they do not have the skills to work outside of a military setting. It is essential to put assumptions aside and ask meaningful questions to learn the truth instead.

There are many benefits to including veterans as part of your DEI strategy. When organizations increase the diversity of their staff, they grow, and they save money. Different cultural backgrounds in the workplace create an environment with several talents and many problem-solving perspectives.

The most significant benefits of hiring veterans include the many skills that they bring. Soft skills and engagement are often the most critical determining factors of employee success. Hiring veterans increases your human capital value and provides tax breaks for your company. If your company can apply veteran skills to hiring needs and effectively recruit and engage veterans, they can contribute to your organization in invaluable ways.

How to Include Veterans in Your DEI Plan by LaKisha Brooks

~Pamela Chitwood, Population Health Community Coordinator,  540-484-0292 ext. 223

Epidemiology is the science at center of public health.

• The bivalent vaccine is a mix of two versions of vaccines. It contains two mRNA components of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, one is the original strain, and the other is in common with BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of omicron. These updated boosters are expected to provide increased protection against the omicron variants. Patients can expect similar side effects as with the original COVID-19 vaccine, including potential fever, headache, and fatigue. . .  Residents can register at Vaccinate.Virginia.gov, contact their call center at 877-829-4682, or ask their healthcare provider. DCist 9/3/22
  

• Do vaccines make the coronavirus more likely to mutate? No, the coronavirus mutates when the virus is able to adapt to its surroundings, which occurs among populations with low rates of vaccination. In such communities and countries, the virus is able to replicate faster because it spreads through hosts who do not have the ability to fight the virus (something that a vaccine provides). This increases the likelihood of a mutation — leading to new variants and strains.“While some might wish to claim that vaccine-induced immunity could exert a sort of selective pressure to promote new variants, the reality appears to be the opposite,” Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, told The Washington Post in an email.

  The variant dominant in the United States is highly transmissible omicron. It was identified in southern Africa in November 2021 and emerged from a largely under-vaccinated population where only 6 percent of the population received a coronavirus vaccine by July 2021; a year later, that number had risen to 22 percent. Experts are concerned that low vaccination rates and an overall waning immunity could lead to a surge in coronavirus variants.

  “On that basis, I would say our inability or loss of interest in ensuring global vaccine equity means new variants of concern might continue to spin off and haunt us,” Hotez said.

  The best way to combat the arrival of a new variant is to increase the number of vaccinated people.  WAPO 8/29/22

September Awareness Days, Weeks & Months

● World Suicide Prevention Day (Sept 10)
● National Folic Acid Awareness Week
(Sept 11-17)
● SepticSmart Week (Sept 19-23)

○ Food Safety Education Month
○ Healthy Aging Month
○ National Infant Mortality Awareness Month
○ National Newborn Screening Awareness Month
○ National Preparedness Month
○ National Sickle Cell Awareness Month
○ National Suicide Prevention Month