Summary
As wildfires ravage the greater Los Angeles area, COVID-19 mutual aid groups have jumped to action to distribute respirators and air purifiers to minimize the impact of wildfire smoke (and COVID!) on residents and evacuees. Freelance reporter and Long COVID patient advocate Sam Rhodehamel talks with producer James Salanga and co-hosts Miles Griffis and Betsy Ladyzhets about the groups filling public health gaps to keep residents protected during the devastating wildfires. In the first week of the wildfires, Mask Bloc LA distributed at least 43,000 masks.
Also in this episode: another NIH RECOVER-Treating Long COVID update, more proof portable air filters help mitigate airborne disease, and the latest COVID-19 trends.
Find our Long COVID news and commentary podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, or listen below and jump to the start of the podcast transcript.
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Still Here is an abridged version of The Sick Times’ newsletter, which publishes weekly.
Mentioned in this episode (in order of appearance):
- The Sick Times: National COVID-19 trends, January 14
- CDC wastewater dashboard
- Biobot wastewater risk reports
- WastewaterSCAN dashboard
- The Sick Times: Wastewater surveillance for COVID-19 keeps evolving. Here’s what you need to know.
- The Sick Times: COVID-19 advocates are distributing masks to protect Californians from wildfire smoke
- Support Mask Bloc LA
- Help Clean Air LA bring purifiers to LA residents
- The Sick Times: Research updates, January 14
- Still Here: Recapping the NIH RECOVER-TLC Kickoff
- The Sick Times: “A good step”: Long COVID advocates and researchers respond to the RECOVER-Treating Long COVID meeting
- NIH: RECOVER-TLC forms
- Provide general feedback on the initiative
Additional audio in this episode:
- Rude Mechanical Orchestra: Which Side Are You On? (orig. Florence Reece)
- Pixabay: Thunder and the beginning of rainfall
Transcript
Intro (0:00)
[Instrumental snippet of theme song, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra’s rendition of “Which Side Are You On?” begins playing.]
James Salanga: Welcome to Still Here, a Long COVID news and commentary podcast from The Sick Times.
Miles Griffis: I’m Miles Griffis.
Betsy Ladyzhets: And I’m Betsy Ladyzhets.
[Instrumental ends]
Betsy: We’re the co-founders of The Sick Times.
James: I’m James Salanga and I’m Still Here’s producer.
Miles: Many public health authorities are ignoring the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Betsy: But here at The Sick Times, we’re not. We continue to bring you the latest Long COVID news and commentary each week.
Miles: Without pandemic denial, minimizing, or gaslighting.
James: This podcast is an abridged version of our newsletter.
Betsy: We share the latest on COVID-19 trends.
James: And we talk about one or two of the stories that we’ve published on The Sick Times’ website recently. In this episode, we’re speaking with reporter Sam Rhodehamel about how COVID mutual aid groups in Los Angeles have been distributing respirators to help with wildfire smoke.
Miles: We’ll also share some of what’s happening in Long COVID research.
Today’s research updates include a topical study reaffirming portable air filters reducing infections from airborne diseases, and another set of updates from the National Institutes of Health’s RECOVER-Treating Long COVID initiative.
James: And next, we’ll hear from Betsy for our COVID forecast.
[Sound of thunderclap and light rain]
COVID-19 forecast (1:21)
Betsy: Yeah, so this week we continue to be in the midst of a winter COVID surge in the United States. Both wastewater and healthcare system data show that infections have been going up in the last few weeks, with the latest data reflecting early January.
In particular, the Midwest has had really high levels over the last few weeks, according to wastewater data and hospitalization data.
But as of the last week, some indicators are suggesting we might be near the peak of this winter surge.
We’re seeing some slowing of the, kind of, increases in viral activity levels in wastewater, particularly for the Midwest, which has kind of borne the brunt of the surge so far.
And also, if you look at emergency department visits and test positivity, which are a couple of the healthcare system metrics that the CDC is still reporting — albeit from specific groups of laboratories and hospitals, rather than from the entire country, as they used to have — that CDC reporting is showing that test positivity and emergency departments both have plateaued and have kind of peaked at much lower levels for this winter than both last winter and the past summer surge.
So it’s kind of good to see in terms of, things might be turning around. We might kind of end up with cases peaking in early January and then coming back down, despite the fact that the surge started later and seems to be a bit lower in magnitude.
But of course, that’s with the caveat that these are all preliminary data from the last couple of weeks. And so we’ll have to see how things continue to shake out.
It’s also always important to remember that when we talk about wastewater numbers, this is really an imperfect reflection of how many people are sick with COVID at any given time, because not every community, not every city or county has wastewater monitoring going on.
It’s only kind of a selection of locations that are doing this.
A lot of people are not even on public sewersheds as well, so they’re not captured in these data. And, you know, people can shed different amounts of viruses based on things like what symptoms they have, how long they’re sick, what variant they have, all of these factors that scientists are still working to understand.
In addition to that, when health agencies and private companies and academic labs report these data, they all have their own processes for analyzing and presenting it.
One kind of update on that front is that the CDC’s National Waste Water Surveillance System this week is starting to update their baselines for their wastewater data.
This is something they do every six months. It’s kind of a complicated mathematical process. I won’t get into all the details, but basically they’re taking an average of the last six months and then using that to compare for every wastewater testing site, what’s high, medium, low, etc.
And so because they’re continually updating this over time, the CDC’s levels are always kind of based on recent data and not incorporating from earlier times in the pandemic where we actually had low COVID spread, such as right after vaccines became available at a broad level.
So, you know, a lot of uncertainty in these numbers.
James: Yeah, that makes sense.
And especially with the changing baselines, it’s always just a good thing to know for people who are maybe wondering why, you know, wastewater today or in a couple months is looking different than the way that baselines were measured two years ago or something like that.
Betsy: Yeah, well, for a lot of sites, we don’t even have a two years ago, which is part of the challenge and part of why the CDC is doing this process because the availability of data kind of changes over time.
But that’s also why I really recommend if you have a state level or local level dashboard that you can look at for wastewater information, definitely look at that and not the CDC, because the CDC really is doing all of this stuff to try and present all of the sites across the country that are doing monitoring on one uniform dashboard.
And that is really hard to do for the reasons that I just shared.
So being able to look at a site that’s more specific to your public health agency or your state or like a university group that is monitoring in your area, as is the case for like WastewaterSCAN in the Bay Area in California, for example, that’s always going to be not necessarily more accurate, because it’s all the same numbers, but it’s going to be presented with context.
It’s more appropriate to you and has less like weird math going on to kind of flatten everything.
James: Yeah, that makes sense.
Shout out to those local and regional initiatives that are, you know, holding it down when it comes to collecting that data and contextualizing it, because I mean, I’ve found like those local sites really helpful for me just to, you know, not necessarily make decisions based off of, but just to have the context of what’s going on around where I am.
Betsy: Yeah, I assume we can put this in the transcript, but if you look at the wastewater data explainer that I wrote a few months ago, I have links and some advice on how to find those local sites if you don’t already know what’s available near you.
James: We’ll have all that stuff in our transcript and you can take a look at our website.
You can poke around about wastewater if you’re curious about learning more.
And after a quick musical break, we’ll hear reporter Sam Rhodehamel talk about the way Los Angeles COVID-19 mutual aid groups have mobilized to kind of fill this gap in public health infrastructure as L.A. residents are grappling with wildfires.
[instrumental segment of theme song plays]
The Sick Times: COVID-19 advocates are distributing masks to protect Californians from wildfire smoke (6:55)
James: In the greater Los Angeles area, devastating wildfires have been burning down homes, forcing many to evacuate and worsening air quality throughout the region.
But community members from COVID-19 mutual aid groups have mobilized to fill the public health gaps in local government response.
Mask blocs and clean air organizations in the area already had the infrastructure to respond quickly to the crisis, and they’ve been mobilizing to provide air purifiers and thousands of respirators to residents in the LA area who have been affected.
Freelance reporter Sam Rhodehamel, who grew up in fire-affected Altadena, joins us to talk about his reporting for the sick times.
Welcome, Sam.
Sam Rhodehamel: Hi, thank you for having me. I listen to the podcast every week, so it’s great to be here.
James: Yeah, glad to hear that, and thanks for joining. First off, how are you doing?
I’m sure it’s been a lot to see this happen to the place that you grew up.
Sam: Yeah, I’m doing okay.
I’m safe right now up in the Bay Area, but it has been really heartbreaking to see the neighborhood I grew up in burning down on my TV screen. But mostly I’m just relieved my family in LA were able to be safely evacuated on the very first night, so that’s the most important thing.
And I also think a lot of people had never really heard of Altadena before this.
But it’s a really special place. It’s like a bit of an oasis in LA in general. It’s very quiet and tucked away, and there’s a lot of history and a lot of nature, and it’s a really tight-knit community, so I think it has been really inspiring to watch everyone come together and help however they can.
James: I know that a lot of coverage has focused a lot on the fire affecting the Palisades area because that’s — that fire is bigger, but obviously, Pasadena and Altadena are, uh, deeply affected by the fires.
I’ve seen a lot of coverage about how this is also, like you said, a neighborhood with a lot of history and a lot of Black history, specifically.
So it is just heartbreaking to think about all the, the loss that is happening, but [it] also really echoes the spirit of the community to see how people are banding together to try and rebuild.
Sam: Yeah, 100%. And I think over the coming weeks and months, we’ll continue to see just, like, that outpouring of support from the people who’ve lost things and from people who just want to help.
Miles: Living in Los Angeles, there’s been a lot of talks within the COVID-conscious community and others just kind of showing how local leadership, Karen Bass, our Los Angeles mayor — the city controller showed that she had cut Los Angeles fire department funding and last summer, was considering a mask ban.
So the city really [chuckles wryly] didn’t seem to be quite prepared to handle this devastation, both from the actual fires and then from the smoke that came from them.
There’s been so much COVID denial in America within Los Angeles, so it didn’t seem like they were really prepared to hand out masks quickly and protect people from this smoke.
What did you find in your reporting on how they responded or did not respond?
Sam: From the people I spoke to on the ground that very first night, it did not seem like there was much preparation. There was no PPE distributed.
And it seems like on the very first night, it was mainly just the mask blocs who were able to jump to action.
Uh, the people I spoke to who were at the Pasadena evacuation shelter on the first night found that there were just, you know, no masks available and they spoke to the Red Cross there, they spoke to the police, they asked the shelter staff, and there was just no planning ahead as far as — it is an evacuation center for wildfires.
So you’d think they would be thinking about hazardous air quality and having respirators available and just having those things ready to go.
But clearly that was not planned for. In the first few days, it really was just the local COVID advocacy groups and then also a lot of local businesses and other, you know, mutual aid organizations that stepped up and were distributing them.
It wasn’t actually until yesterday, yeah, on the 6th day, the LA County Health Department or the Public Health Board started distributing them [respirators] or saying they were available at public libraries.
But until then, it had just been local organizations and these mask blocs distributing them, um, which doesn’t really come as a surprise to me.
As we’ve seen, “mask” has become a dirty word with Mayor Bass considering a mask ban and multiple other mask bans going into effect across the country.
It’s pretty ironic because I heard from some of the organizers at Mask Bloc LA, you know, some employees of the city actually reached out to them and were asking for some of their resources and supplies.
Betsy: So obviously, you know, Mask Bloc LA, other mutual aid groups have been around for a few years at this point.
What kind of infrastructure did they have in place or what was the process like that allowed them to actually get thousands of high quality masks really quickly and start getting them out to people?
Sam: The biggest thing was that they already have, you know, huge stockpiles of respirators and of air filters and all these different resources that they’re already distributing, you know, every day to their local communities.
So they already kind of have these networks and they know who to reach out for if they need someone to drive masks to a certain location or who could be available to pick things up, and they already have all these things going on internally.
And so this was just kind of like a heightened emergency version of all that, since they are already, you know, doing this work and distributing the masks.
And I also think a big thing is they have really personal connections with the suppliers of respirators now.
Um, one of the people I spoke to was saying that when all this started, they were able to send, you know, a really casual, quick message to a company that makes respirators.
And because they already have an established relationship and this company has, you know, donated masks to their organization before — they were able to get, you know, donations of masks really quickly because they already have all these relationships.
And then also, I think, just the people who choose to be a part of something like a mass bloc are a lot more likely to be, you know, super dedicated organizers and people who would want to jump on this and get acting as soon as they can.
And so because of, you know, all those existing structures and — all the organizations work together as well, so it was really easy for one organization or group of people to say, “We have, you know, a thousand masks here. Can anyone drive it to here?”
And we have people saying, “I’m at this shelter. We need this many masks.”
And they were really able to work together because they’re already doing this on a bit of a smaller, less, you know, time crunch scale, but they’re already distributing these masks.
James: That makes sense.
And on the first night there were, it seemed like only the mask bloc had resources, had PPE to distribute.
Tell me a little bit about like, just the timeline that organizers went through and maybe what that looks like right now compared to the pace of the first few days.
Sam: It seems like the mask blocs were getting into work pretty immediately.
I think obviously they spent a lot of time learning about clean air and that obviously is mainly focused on indoor air and pathogens, but also, we know that outdoor air can be just as harmful with pollution and wildfire smoke.
So they immediately started posting onto X and on Instagram, educating people, you know, saying, you know, “If you have a respirator, wear it, we have these here, like, we’d like to distribute them.”
And I know that in the first two days, Mask Bloc LA alone distributed 14,000 masks, which is just, I mean — the fact that that is a small grassroots organization doing that and not the government and you know, who was at the shelters — it was people who were working with Mask Bloc LA.
And that’s actually how I first got on board with this story, is on the very first day I was just watching updates and I saw a video from Joaquin Beltran and he had driven to one of the shelters in Pasadena because he wanted to help the community.
And he was there and he saw, you know, people choking, people having trouble breathing, and he saw that there were no respirators available.
So he was able to connect with Mask Bloc LA and then, you know, I actually talked to him on the phone while he was in between driving masks back and forth.
[Joaquin Beltran: I know there’s a difference between it just being on the table, whatever, and someone saying, Hey, here’s a mask available to you.
It’s like, okay, well, that’s going to take longer, a lot more work, but it’s actually going to be the thing that makes the difference here and people, more people being protected there, especially so many elderly.
So yeah, the other big takeaway is that, you know, our government is unprepared for this, very unprepared.]
And him and a few people who are with him were able to distribute thousands of masks and this was all just through social media and word of mouth, like almost immediately in the first day.
And then as time went on, more local organizations began distributing them in the community.
And you know, there was a lot more action with the mask bloc.
But as I said earlier, it wasn’t until quite a few days that the actual LA government was distributing masks themselves a bit too little too late, I think.
Miles: Yeah, and I think one thing that I’m curious about is these masks … they sort of have a double use right now.
We’re in this higher time of COVID right now and the surge in the winter, people are being displaced, people are in evacuation centers, evacuating to friends places. What kind of role do these masks also have in not only this wildfire smoke and wearing it outside, but also in COVID prevention?
Sam: That was one of my main concerns as well when I first started learning about the story is, I was thinking about, you know, being in a very crowded evacuation center in the winter, we’re seeing peak COVID levels right now.
And just the fact that, you know, these weren’t provided in these centers for smoke, but also for possible respiratory viruses was a really big thing.
I think it just further shows how interconnected all these different issues are because obviously the masks that these mask blocs have stockpiled are for COVID and the pandemic, but they’re also so useful in these spaces as well.
And I think that’s another thing we’ve been seeing is a lot of these mask blocs have been posting tons of information about air quality, about when to wear masks, and how important it is to wear masks in wildfire smoke.
And then also they’re pushing this message that also, you know, if you’re wearing a mask right now outdoors in LA because of the smoke, why not keep it on when you go inside and you’re at a donation center or you’re in a crowded place or you’re with people who are sheltering, because if it can be useful to prevent disease, why would we not continue using it?
I just think it’s interesting how, you know, we’re just trying to continue fostering this community care and the government really hasn’t done much. So it’s been up to the people.
But yeah, all these issues are interconnected and masks are tools that can be used for a lot of things.
Betsy: For sure. Yeah.
Are there any updates you would want to share, uh, since the story published last week or anything else that you learned in your reporting that you would want folks to know?
Sam: Yeah, most of the updates have been along the lines of just further distribution.
There have been a lot of organizations outside of California or in different parts of California that have also begun, you know, shipping over or driving over donations of masks as well.
And we’re also just hearing a lot more about unpacking the government’s involvement or lack thereof in protecting people from the wildfire smoke.
So I’m really interested to see how that develops as we learn more.
I think it’s really interesting the reactions we’ve gotten online. Um, I’ve seen people responding to the mask bloc posts, making fun of them for wearing masks in wildfire smoke outdoors, which is — kind of just shows how politicized these tools of clean air have become.
I mean, it’s just an air filter on your face, but there’s a lot of backlash online.
And I think disabled organizers are kind of used to this.
Mask blocs and these local organizations and mutual aid groups are the first ones on the scene and on the ground helping.
Because as we see in the vitriol online, a lot of times disabled organizers are called shut-ins.
[People will say] it’s all online, it’s all talk, “agoraphobic”, and “they need to touch grass” and these things are said, but I think it’s really telling to see who is actually there on the ground working and doing things.
And yeah, I would say their donation links are still up and they’re taking funds for their ongoing work.
So that’s also really important.
James: Yeah. Well, thanks again for joining us, Sam.
For those who are looking to read more about these local LA-area groups’ work and learn more about where to support it, you can visit our website and read Sam’s reporting at thesicktimes.org.
James: Thanks, Sam.
Sam: Thank you.
James: So that’s our podcast featured story for this week, and next, we’ll have a research update.
Research (18:28)
[Miles’ voice echoes the word “Research” accompanied with a sound excerpted from the theme song]
Miles: Today in research, we’re looking at a new review in the Journal of Infection and Public Health that found that portable air filters — [which] they abbreviated to PAFs in the study — reduce infections of airborne diseases.
The authors called it “settled science for decades” and it highlights what a lot of these mask blocs and clean air groups in LA are doing by distributing these purifiers and filters to these evacuation centers and it really just kind of, yeah, highlights what we know about the importance of clean air and protecting yourself from smoke and from viruses.
The portable purifiers help filter out viruses and allergens along with, of course, wildfire smoke.
The authors wrote, “We share this science here with the expectation that, going forward, public health authorities will position PAFs appropriately in infection prevention and control plans for both health care and community settings in order to more effectively address airborne infectious diseases.”
We chose to highlight this this week [because] I just think it’s, it shows how important clean air is, especially in public spaces and doing so many things on top of each other like [wearing] a mask.
You know, they work with the smoke, they work with these airborne infections, so it can really be these helpful tools and it’s just so disappointing that they’re so stigmatized because they improve public health so much.
This week has really shown us the importance of this and I hope that, I think these authors are sort of calling on public health authorities to really, you know, set cities and communities up for success in the future, whether it’s the [protecting against the] continuation of COVID spread or more wildfire smoke or other pollution going forward.
Betsy: Yeah, always cool to see the science backing up what the organizers are doing.
Another important research update from this week comes from the NIH’s RECOVER-Treating Long COVID Initiative.
So this past Friday, the initiative’s leaders held a webinar to share some progress.
This is the second time they’ve done this. The first one happened in November and all of their work is kind of following through on a big research meeting that happened in September of last year.
We covered that kickoff meeting both in our podcast and on our website if you’re interested in learning more, kind of catching up about what this initiative is doing.
But really, the main goal is to operate new clinical trials for Long COVID treatments that are going to be really prioritizing treatments that members of the community are most excited about.
And so to that end, RECOVER-TLC has been soliciting suggestions from people with Long COVID and from researchers and clinicians.
They have an online form that continues to be open. We can put a link to it in the transcript.
And they said at this webinar last week that they have gotten over 400 treatment submissions.
And also over 1000 people have applied to be part of working groups who are going to be discussing and evaluating these submissions with groups kind of formed around different categories of treatments.
So there’s like an antiviral working group, there’s a metabolics working group, and a few others in that vein.
These groups, you know, have started forming, some of them have started meeting, but there’s also still time for people to apply or express interest in joining the groups and share more suggestions for treatments they want to try.
You can find out more about that in our past coverage.
And also there is a RECOVER-TLC website as well that we will link.
Miles: Yeah, I look forward to more updates from this.
This was kind of a helpful update, but I’m really hoping that in the coming months they will just have more for us because I feel like some of the RECOVER updates have just sort of been like, “We have all these things coming.” [chuckles]
And it’s like, I —
James: Yeah, we’re doing things. [laughs]
Betsy: Yeah, this update really is just like, “We’re forming working groups and we’re discussing things.” [Miles laughs]
That was why we didn’t we didn’t publish a news article about it, because it’s just like, “Okay, we’re like having meetings.” Like, okay, great. [laughs]
James: Yeah, yeah, and exactly, like, it’s just stats on how many, you know, potential treatments have been submitted and how many people have applied to these working groups.
So hopefully, yeah, like you both said, that future updates will be more substantial.
Betsy: Yeah.
James: And when they close these forms, you know, later this year, hopefully that will start to accelerate the rate at which things are starting to progress.
Betsy: Yeah, I will say it’s helpful, not only the webinars that they’re doing, but also the website page that they put up and that they talked about last week, which actually has a list of all the treatment suggestions that people have submitted.
I think that is an improvement transparency wise from the kind of main RECOVER program and the initial round of clinical trials that came out of that effort, because that process was very, very opaque.
There was no publicity or no public information about what treatments were being considered until we started to get those rumors about the potential exercise trial and all of this stuff.
So it’s good to see that they are being more proactive about sharing information. And at the webinar, they also said that the website page is going to be updated with information from what the working groups discuss and stuff like that.
So hopefully they follow through on that.
James: Yeah, and I mean, more transparency, especially when it comes to programs like this, is always better than less.
It’s good to see that, you know, they are at least making a lot more of an effort at that with this specific initiative.
Betsy: So it seems so far, anyway.
Outro (25:35)
James: Yeah. Well, on that note, that’s all we have for you this week. You can stay up to date with The Sick Times newsletter and our coverage at thesicktimes.org.
[Instrumental theme song excerpt plays underneath the rest of the podcast]
Miles: We’ll continue reporting the information you need to better practice care.
Betsy: Solidarity with everyone still here.
James: This podcast and The Sick Times are supported by you. You can help us keep this work going by donating on our website.
Still Here is a production of The Sick Times, a nonprofit newsroom chronicling the ongoing Long COVID crisis.
Our theme song for this episode is the Rude Mechanical Orchestra’s rendition of Which Side Are You On?, originally by Florence Reece. I’m James Salanga and I produced this episode. Our engagement editor is Heather Hogan. Sophie Dimitriou designed the cover art for our podcast, and Miles Griffis and Betsy Ladyzhets are your co-hosts and The Sick Times’ co-founders.
Thanks for listening and catch you next year.
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