HomeMy WebLinkAbout050225 - KPTZ Listener Questions for Monday May 5_ 2025 BOCC Health UpdateALERT: BE CAUTIOUS This email originated outside the organization. Do not open attachments or click on links if you are not expecting them.
County Commissioners, Dr Allison Berry, and Willie Bence,
Please see the KPTZ listener questions for Monday, May 5, 2025 BOCC health update listed below.
Submitted questions are increasingly reflective of the changing political implications in providing healthcare in this country.
Thank you,
Lynn Sorensen
KPTZ Virus Watch Team
Questions for Dr Allison Berry:
1. Will Federally-imposed campus mask bans like this <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9q499x3v4yo> make UWMC and other university hospitals less safe from transmissible airborne
diseases?
Federal research grants to university hospitals are now conditional on mask bans that facilitate the surveillance of the objectionable speech of foreign students. If foreign medical
and nursing students know they are endangering their Federal research grants by wearing masks to class, won't they be more likely to become vectors of transmission?
When I choose a hospital I'm more interested in reducing my risk of catching something than in making sure the workforce is being surveilled for objectionable opinions. Should I be choosing
non-university hospitals whenever possible?
2. Can foreigners still safely seek medical care in the U.S. without increasing the risk of being disappeared by ICE? Now that DOGE has access to Medicaid data and foreigners no longer
have due process rights when detained and rendered to prisons abroad, won't DOGE provide personal/medical information from Medicaid system to help ICE locate and remove sick foreigners?
Here's the article about DOGE's access to Medicaid data: https://www.newsweek.com/migrants-criminal-records-got-medicaid-benefits-doge-2058744
3. Will the HHS Secretary Kennedy’s demand that new formulation of the Covid vaccine for this Fall undergo placebo testing hold up the authorization for this vaccine booster to those
most at risk?
4. Would you please talk about the number of deaths in the U.S. from Covid in the past 6 months and if a surge of new cases is predicted?
5. What are the current numbers related to the Measles outbreak? Are more parents seeking the MMR vaccine for their children in WA state?
Question for Willie Bence:
1. Are there recent changes to FEMA under the new administration that would affect Jefferson County’s reimbursement for services or response time in the event a disaster?