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Reposted by Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis

Sam Halpert @samhalpert.bsky.social · 5h

It’s impt enough to be explicitly required by law: The Secretary of Health and Human Services “shall publish weekly reports of health conditions in the United States…and other pertinent health information for the use of persons and institutions concerned with health services.” (42 U.S.C. §242o(b)

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 4h

This

Ron Campbell @roncampbell.bsky.social · 4h

The very first report on AIDS was in MMWR.

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 4h

Yup when my seasonal depression is really bad I can struggle to shower esp during WFH but like I'm not bragging about it or elevating it to a higher status.

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 4h

It means though having spaces where even if ICE breaks in they don't know to check.

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 4h

NYT has been like this dating back a century. From the old timers this is an IMPROVEMENT from the days when they would basically only hire white dudes who had gone to yale.

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 4h

Also one note: when I say "harassers' desk" read "desk" as "team"

Desk just means team. So like I worked on the climate desk, that means I worked on the climate team etc.

I don't mean they literally sat like in the harassers old physical desk.

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 4h

can you tell me the title?

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 4h

no it's deliberate cruelty

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

When I say I've only told a fraction of the fucked-up shit I mean it. Because telling the whole truth means roping in people whom the institution has harmed. And I was a "keep my head down and work no drama" person.

That place needs to go out of business.

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

Everyone related to the case got the message. If you complain we will make it difficult for you.

Out of respect for the person harassed I'm not going to get too specific on the timeline but it was in my first year.

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

I never shared it because like it's not MY story. But yeah when I say NYT sucks I mean it.

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

And mind you the person who lodged the complaint lived in a different city.

They made them move cities to sit with the harasser's old team.

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

The person who lodged the complaint?

They moved them to the harasser's old desk. Everyone there knew why the harasser had been fired (newsrooms leak like a sieve) and that this person was the reason why.

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

Look, I've never skeeted about this before but when I was at NYT I was involved in a sexual harassment thing. I was not the person lodging the complaint (nor was I the harasser). I was a corroborating witness let's say. Anyway, NYT did the right thing and fired the harasser.

BUT

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

Yes, because NYT is a fascist institution

David Roberts @volts.wtf · 5h

Douthat is laundering hard core white Christian supremacy into the mainstream, with the NYT's blessing.

Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 6h

Ross Douthat treats this guy like they're having some deep conversation about the relationship of Christianity and the government, but the dude is a garden-variety dull, shallow, hateful, worthless bigot with nothing interesting to say, just endless riffs on "God hates everything/everyone I do."

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

I know it's easy to dismiss this as, "just a report"

But weather forecasts are "just a report"

But you kind of want to know if you're driving into a hurricane you know?

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

A good way to think of this is it's the main vehicle that states use to stitch together a comprehensive understanding of public health shit - like outbreaks - that are happening in other parts of the country. It gives states a chance to prepare.

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

oh no

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Reposted by Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis

Maggie Fox @maggiefox.bsky.social · 5h

For more than 20 years I relied on the MMWR for news every week on what was going on, disease-wise, around the country. You often got excellent blow-by-blows about disease outbreaks.

Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

For some context the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report in addition to being just a good read, to quote wikipedia, "is the main vehicle for publishing public health information and recommendations that have been received by the CDC from state health departments. "

Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 5h

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

If you're like "why do you read MMWR for fun" because human bodies are wacky! and some of the reports are wackadoodle (in a good way pre-RFK!)

But I cannot stress enough how bad this is. Like state epidemiologists read this shit.

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

I'm not an epidemiologist or a health journalist, I mostly read MMWR for fun and occasionally when I found something related to climate change in there. One time a friend with a rare illness got written up. It sounds like no big deal, but they have been publishing for almost a century for a reason.

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

I'm going to quote from Wikipedia again because it's friday night and I need to head to bed:

Political pressure during the Trump administrations
During the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, MMWR came under pressure from political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to modify its reporting so as not to conflict with what President Donald Trump was saying about the pandemic.[20] Starting in June 2020, Michael Caputo, the HHS assistant secretary for public affairs, and his chief advisor Paul Alexander tried to change, delay, suppress, and retroactively edit MMWR stories about the effectiveness of potential treatments for COVID-19, the transmissibility of the virus, and other issues where the president had taken a public stance.[20] Alexander tried unsuccessfully to get personal approval of all issues of MMWR before they went out.[21] Caputo claimed this oversight was necessary because MMWR reports were being tainted by "political content"; he demanded to know the political leanings of the scientists who reported that hydroxychloroquine had little benefit as a treatment while Trump was saying the opposite.[20] In emails to the head of CDC, Alexander accused CDC scientists of attempting to "hurt the president" and writing "hit pieces on the administration".[22] On September 14, 2020, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis of the U.S. House of Representatives requested "transcribed interviews" with seven CDC and HHS personnel "to determine the scope of political interference with CDC's scientific reports and other efforts to combat the pandemic, the impact of this interference on CDC's mission, whether this interference is continuing, and the steps that Congress may need to take to stop it before more Americans die needlessly."[

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

States report shit to the CDC and the CDC synthesizes that into a heads-up report.

Firing a good chunk of the staff who put that together is essentially blinding the country on public health. Trump has hated it since 2020 because they published stuff (the truth) contrary to what he was saying

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

For some context the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report in addition to being just a good read, to quote wikipedia, "is the main vehicle for publishing public health information and recommendations that have been received by the CDC from state health departments. "

Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 5h

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 5h

It did leave me to discover this

(Which I cannot afford and I rent so like)

Flush Mount Hidden Bookcase Door

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