This is a quick post designed to voice what I hope are uniform and apolitical concerns and a call for advice for how to make an impact safely and effectively for a young person in the UK who isn't necessarily very financially or time available.
Many changes have occurred in government worldwide, but notably the recent US election. Staying apolitical and avoiding all topics outside a health scope, there seem to be clear biosecurity, global health, pandemic risk and public health concerns that are not isolated to the US.
Aside from suffering and harm caused by these measures in one country, an effective altruism focus seems fitting to the global implications of some of these actions.
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Notably:
Pages that have been deleted or scrubbed already:
Reproductive health guidelines (including birth control policies for doctors and clinicians)
Anything mentioning DEI and LGBTQ, and diversity as a word so includes biodiversity and mistaken deletions
Accessibility pages
Reproductive health
Abortion access
Women's health
POC and minority ethnic group help
Helplines and emergency care for LGBTQ, POCs, Women's reproduction, Accessibility and more
Even in the UK, pages have been deleted from access blanketly and my thoughts are with the clinicians who can't prescribe medication or perform life saving treatment, patients in withdrawal from sudden trial stops, students who lost funding, minority groups being targeted, cancer patients, researchers and scientists, anyone receiving federal funding, NIH and FDA dependant orgs and more
Surely some kind of biological security risk is posed by:
Restricting access to surveillance including the recent US outbreaks of TB, polio, mpox, HIV, quadstrain influenza, human transmissible avian and swine flu, norovirus, and mosquito borne diseases?
Outbreak teams have been called off or placed on leave and public facing tracking of cases have ceased.
Restricting access to allergy and recall alerts which can cause severe poor health outcomes.
Removing guidelines for prescribing clinicians leading to many stating inability to safely prescribe new or continual medications leading to withdrawal
Scrubbing of experimental data remotely and pause on decade long trials which can't be stopped and started, leading to loss of data and participants
Withdrawal from trials and medications leading to adverse health affects
Inability to measure global pathogen risk, eg screening travellers and identifying risk areas to better prepare
I do not know what to do.
That is the truth of the matter. Plain and simple. It feels surreal, overwhelming, demoralising.
The only hope remains is seeing others take a stand, have an impact and reap kindness in the shaky times.
But that is the advice I am hoping to call.
How do I make an impact?
How can a lone person, especially early career, pre uni, young, time and funding constrained, make an effective impact on this? Especially one that doesn't jeopardise personal safety, but makes the most amount of positive change as possible?
I hope everyone is keeping on top of self care. Staying away from constant news sources and discussions, taking a break, unplugging, spending time with safe people, eating, sleeping, and not sacrificing personal wellbeing. But in the moments we do take on the burden of peeking into the current climate, what can we do? How do we safeguard global health from this specific issue? An issue that is not a biological agent or a technological deficit, but an issue of policies and regulations clearly against evidence and logic, that are surprisingly quick, sudden and impactful in their ability to cause harm and reduce biosafety?
Thoughts appreciated 💙