Newsletter: May 2025

Greetings, public health PHANs! The news and events for May 2025:

If you know of events that should go in our next newsletter, please email us at media@phan.community. 

update on our “safer” resources directory and our “CLEAR” Smart-AI CHAT-BOT

We’re making great progress on two projects for the COVID-conscious community: 

 

SAFER is intended to be the most comprehensive directory of COVID-conscious businesses and organizations on earth. It will include COVID/Long-COVID/clean-air advocacy and support organizations, COVID-conscious businesses and healthcare providers, mask blocs, clean airAir free of pollutants, including viruses, bacteria, and harmful particles. clubs, Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. providers, C02 monitoring, and other related businesses and groups around the world. We’ve included information from over fifteen different maps and resources lists, including… and we now have over 5000 entries that are continuing to be vetted, and that’s just to start! Anyone will be able to access the directory by browsing categories, searching by name or area, or finding entries geographically on a map. It will have location and contact information, business hours, services offered, and what masking precautions they use, like “mask on demand”, “mask-only days/hours”, or “always masking”. Ultimately we’ll let people create accounts where they can rate the business and organizations, post comments, and submit new entries or updates to existing ones.

 

This data will all be free with no account or login required, and we’ll be happy to share our collected resources data back with anyone. We hope to be able to release this directory to the public this summer.

 

CLEAR is an innovative tool that we are really excited about. It’s a “smart chat-bot” that’s linked to thousands of papers (and adding more all the time) dealing with COVID, Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19., masking, and related topics. You can enter any kind of question about COVID or Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19., with any degree of knowledge from simple to highly technical, and it will search the papers and return an answer in the level of language the question was in as well as use it to write e-mails with citations and data. You can then click on suggested follow-up questions, or ask a new one, or ask it to restate the answer in simpler or more technical language. CLEAR is currently just for English-language questions and responses but we’re hoping to make it multi-lingual. We think this could be a real asset towards public health communications in the U.S. and ultimately globally. We hope to release this project before the end of the year.

Phan hosting a room at the pandemicA global outbreak of a disease. pals zoom meeting this Saturday

We are delighted to announce that this Saturday, May 31st, we’ll again be joining the PandemicA global outbreak of a disease. Collaborative’s regular weekly meeting on Zoom at 5pm PDT/8pm EDT. We’ll have our own breakout room where PHAN staff will introduce our organization, talk about our mission and our team, talk about some of our upcoming projects, and provide a demonstration of the SAFER global resources directory – and a look at a demo of our new CLEAR “smart chatbot” linked to over 1500 research papers that will answer nearly any question you have about COVID and Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. in plain language with links to the relevant papers.

 

You can call into the Zoom meeting by going to their Google Doc and using the Zoom link that they’ll put in the document sometime today or Saturday. We’re excited to be able to talk with folks directly in these meetings!

online covid-AWARE communities

We’re hearing about more online COVID-aware communities which can be great sources of friendship and information, as well as great ways to overcome the sense of isolationSeparating sick individuals from healthy ones to prevent disease spread. that many of us are feeling. Check out our new Online COVID-Aware Communities webpage for our continually updated list of Zoom meetings, Discord groups, and Reddit groups.

new long covidPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. section of our website

In case you missed it, our website now has a section of pages with information about various aspects of Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19., all with citations leading to research papers: 

Start with this overview of what Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. is, then follow links to other topics in that section. We also have a series of essays from folks with Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19.: “Living with Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. Stories”

 

We’ve also created a list of over 400 Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. clinics throughout the United States, and we plan to continually update this list and expand this list to include other countries. 

 

We hope these will be useful resources to you. If you find them useful, please share them with friends!

ME/CFS AWARENESS MONTH

ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis, as known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) is a devastating and frequently disabling disease, with many cases seen prior to COVID but with many more cases that seem to be part of Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19.. It has no specific bio-markers and no treatment for the disease itself, only for symptoms. Our hearts go out to everyone affected by this disease. Learn more about this terrible illness at our website.

LATEST NEws and articles

May 20th, 2025: FDA may limit future COVID-19A disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, leading to respiratory illness. shots to older people and those at serious risk of infection. “The change means the updated shots will probably be available this fall for adults 65 and older and those with underlying conditions that may put them at higher risk of a severe Covid-19A disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, leading to respiratory illness. infection, but they may not be for everyone who was previously eligible. Nearly three-quarters of Americans 6 months and older have at least one of these underlying medical conditions, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

 

May 28th, 2025:  U.S. cancels contract with Moderna to develop vaccines for flu strains, including H5N1 (bird flu). “The Department of Health and Human Services has notified Moderna that it is canceling a nearly $600 million contract with the company to develop, test, and license vaccines for flu subtypes that could trigger future pandemics, including the dangerous H5N1 bird flu virus. Though the possibility of the cancellation had been anticipated — the new leadership at HHS told the company in February that it was reviewing the contract, signed with the Biden administration — the move is being seen as a significant blow to the country’s capacity to respond to pandemicA global outbreak of a disease. influenza.”

 

May 28th, 2025: COVID surge with new variant being seen in Asia: “Last week, the World Health Organization designated NB.1.8.1 as a “variant under monitoring”, owing to its growing global spread and some notable characteristics which could set it apart from earlier variants.” 

 

UPcoming events of interest

June 3rd, 2025: Canadian Covid Society’s Annual General Meeting, featuring guest speaker Dr Ziyad Al-Aly. Register for their Zoom session.

 

June 10th, 2025: Public Health Communications Collaborative is hosting a webinar, “Media Relations Today: How to Build Trust in Public Health Guidance”. Register for their Zoom session.

pandemicA global outbreak of a disease. denial isn’t anything new

This cartoon from 1930, provided by the American Public Health Association, shows a parade of characters, the first one labelled “Anti-Vaccinationist” with a blindfold reading “Prejudice”, as he’s leading several other characters variously labeled as “Faddist”, “Mr. Careless”, and “Anti-Everything”, off a cliff labeled “Misinformation” into the sea below labeled “Smallpox”. 

We’re seeking volunteers!

If you’d like to help make a world that supports folks being COVID-conscious, where anyone can find the Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. healthcare they need, and where everyone has access to clean indoor air, we want you! We’re ramping up quickly and would love to have you on our team. We’re looking for volunteers in the following areas: 

 

Project Management

Volunteer Coordinaters

 

SAFER: people who can call and vet businesses and organizations; people who can organize spreadsheets, look up URLs and find addresses, locations, download images, etc.; and website/Wordpress developers

 

CLEAN/CLEAR: fullstack developers, AI (Deepseek, LLM trainers, etc), researchers, NLP experts, psychiatrists

 

AIRWISE: Game Developers (Unity preferred) who understand physics engines

 

Communications: social media, graphic designers, writers, storytellers, fundraisers, photographers, videographers, news curators

 

If you match any of those needs, fill out our contact form on our website and one of us will get back to you as soon as we can. If you have other skills or experience that you think might help our work, go ahead and fill out our form, and we’ll find a way for you to help! 

Thank you to everyone who’s considering volunteering with us – we really appreciate it!

We NEED YOUR SUPPORT!

If you’re able to donate to make it possible for us to create tools that will benefit folks around the world and then let people know about those tools, we will gladly accept your donation.  

 

Another way to help support us is to follow us on social media and share our posts, on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. When you follow us, like our posts, replay to our posts, and share our posts, it all adds up to help increase our visibility.