This is a GREAT idea

“For far too long, millions of Americans suffering from long COVID have had their symptoms dismissed or ignored – by the medical community, by the media, and by Congress,” said Sanders. “That is unacceptable and has got to change. The legislation that we have introduced finally recognizes that long COVID is a public health emergency and provides an historic investment into research, development, and education needed to counter the effects of this terrible disease. Congress must act now to ensure treatments are developed and made available for Americans struggling with long COVID. Yes. It is time for a Long Covid Moonshot.”

…

The Long COVID Research Moonshot Act would establish a new research program within the NIH to better understand, prevent, diagnose, manage, and treat long COVID and related conditions. The legislation would also:

And many who didn't die now have to live with permanent disability that prevents them from holding any kind of job (especially because employers are so opposed to making the work accessible).

Those who are able-bodied and still remain have left to fill the higher-paying vacancies left behind by the newly deceased/disabled.

Please, wear a mask.

Please wear a mask.

Please wear a mask.

Please, please, PLEASE WEAR A MASK!

I’m getting real tired of the ableds in my immediate circle proclaiming that the lockdown measures are a form of debilitating inhuman torture and makes life not worth living.

And yeah, this sucks. All of this sucks and is vastly damaging to people’s physical and mental health. We’re enduring a global trauma, the ramifications of which will likely be felt for decades.

But when it was just my daily life being housebound due to my disabilities, it was a-okay for you to abandon me to this life while using phrases like, “must be nice” and “sounds rough,” all said smilingly under the sneering veneer of implied laziness and choice.

So which is it? A fate worse than death you’d never willing choose, or a cake walk? Which is it? *flips table*

And btw, this is not to invalidate anyone who is struggling with the isolation of lockdown. Because this shit is hard. This is so, so hard and I wish none of us were going through this.

But I also need those people to realize that this is the reality of many of us living with disabilities and chronic conditions. We endure this level of isolation constantly. Sometimes for years and years, if not our whole lives. And it is often not our choice. But it can be the choice of those around us.

And I get it, it sucks when your friend is too ill to go anywhere and you just want to do fun shit. But it sucks worse for them. And you can choose. You can choose to be inclusive and do things they are capable of being a part of. Or you can choose to leave them behind and make assumptions that they’re just being lazy or a bad friend because on some level you can’t help but feel if they really wanted to do something, they’d do it.

All I’m asking for, begging really, is for a little mindfulness. Please stop comparing this life to a fate worse to death. Or if you really must make that comparison, ask yourself why you were okay with some of the most vulnerable people in society being left to endure it on their own. And why it took you a global pandemic to realize the inhumanity of it.

I truly do hope thing get better soon, I really, really do. But please don’t forget about us the moment you can safely go outside. Please don’t take away the newfound accessibilities that have been put into place that we were always told was impossible. Please fight for and with us. We’re so god damn tired.

Why? WHY??

U.S. CDC taking comments on potentially limiting COVID vaccine availbility by age or health status. Never mind that the vaccine is crucial to limiting long-term effects that could lead to immunocomprimisation. 🤬🤬🤬

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Comment Period Ends in 3 Days!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(noted on 6/14/2024 0425 EST)

Talk about how you want yourself and your loved ones to be safe. HOw restricting the vaccine will just disable &/ kill more people than if it wasn't restricted. The neurological/cognitive effects of covid affecting your community, children, etc. The thousands and thousands of people with long covid that maybe couldve been saved with masking and boosters. Whatever you want I just made all that up just now.

Unpopular opinion: we should all wear masks as much as possible. Forever.

Thank you and goodnight!

Edit: this is about all mask preventable disease, not just covid.

[ID: Tweet by @JamesSowka 12/2/23 “having none of my progressive friends care about Covid is the same as waking up and all of a sudden none of them care about climate change, or none of them care about abortion rights. It is such a profound level of emotional whiplash that I will never recover from.”]

Hmm. If they can make this strategy work for COVID, that’ll really be something.

Yesterday, I went to Baltimore with the intention of visiting a friend in hospice. Her health had taken a sharp nosedive over the weekend, and on Monday evening, the doctors said she maybe had a week left.

What actually happened was I went to Baltimore to help clean out her stuff, because she died at 8:44 on Tuesday morning and my plane didn't land until 8:50. So me and another friend helped another friend/her roommate (before hospice) find important documents, as well as save sentimental items for her actual loved ones because her family, well.

Her friends were her family. But because she died intestate, the people in her family of choice were entitled to nothing under the law. Instead of her beloved, disabled partner, her estranged family has legal rights to her savings bonds and the rest of her estate. (Sometimes common-law partners can inherit but they weren't together long enough to meet that criterion.)

I knew this was coming for a long time. You don't recover from the brain cancer she had. But it still really hurts. And knowing that people she hadn't spoken to in years are getting that money instead of the person she loved most... well, that hurts too.

Please, if you don't have one already, make a will. It's not hard. We don't like to think about it, because nobody likes thinking about post-death legal matters, but you need to make a will. If you're in the US, you can use websites like Free Will. You don't need an estate attorney or anything like that. In many states, a notarized letter is fine. I don't know enough about international estate law to say anything in that regard, but take half an hour to google estate laws in your jurisdiction and put together a will.

If something happened to you tomorrow, who do you want taking care of your pets? Do you have a collection of anything that you want looked after? Do you want your money to go to a person, a charity, or something else specific? If you don't have kids, everything reverts to a spouse. If you don't have a spouse, it goes to your parents. I know I don't want to burden my parents with figuring out what to do with my tegu, my skeletal collection, or my library. But if I died tomorrow, my will would take care of all of that. Thinking about mortality isn't fun, but dying intestate is worse. Make a will.

No offence but I feel like some people got a little too comfortable with telling people to touch grass and swung all the way round to just straight up shaming anyone who might have a less active social life than them to feel better about themselves. “She should be at the club” was a really funny meme until people started acting like fucking middle school bullies towards people who don’t go out with their friends a lot. All those drinking/drugs/sex milestone polls were fun to engage with until it became a wierd circlejerk making fun of people who haven’t done those things before. People on twitter are once again dogpiling someone for wanting queer social spaces that don’t revolve around alcohol or loud music and telling them it’s their own fault for not having friends.

Like I get that nightclubs and sex have strong ties to queer culture and are often the first targets in the hellscape of respectability politics. It’s important we remember our roots and protect these spaces from conservative scrutiny. I mean that. They are important. But just on a surface level it seems like people are starting to see having an inactive social life as some kind of moral failing which…it’s not. I feel like an insane person for feeling like I have to say this on the fucking queer autism website but like. You aren’t inherently a bad person if you don’t have friends. You aren’t “falling behind” if you haven’t had your first kiss in your 20s or never done drugs. The real world isn’t a movie. And if you see someone who doesn’t go out much and instinctually think “wow what a terminally online loser. I bet their social life sucks because they’re a sheltered creep and not because of systemic barriers beyond their control” you need to have a long hard look at why you feel that way.

There are very real barriers that prevent isolated people from finding community and connection. Do you think you’re superior for being able to breach them? Time, money, sobriety, accessibility, none of those factors were a problem for you, so it shouldn’t be for them, right? Right?

This is never going to be the popular opinion but it will always be the correct one

And that's not even getting into the discussion around covid protections and the way that nobody gives a shit anymore. I had to get into a screaming match with someone in a union meeting to even get them to CONSIDER basic safety measures like masks and an air purifier. The local pride center told me they refuse to require covid safety measures because "Ron DeSantis said we can't require masks anymore," as if that shouldn't be a call to action instead of apathy. As if they couldn't have made Pride 2023 a "mask up for safety" protest instead of yet another a glorified vendor fair with cops and Wells Fargo booths.

How am I supposed to have healthy social outlets and connections when nobody is even willing to wear a mask?

Why am I supposed to throw caution to the winds and go to the club in a plague if I want to maintain a social life?

Sigh.

My problem is that I developed a hyperfixation on historical diseases and their transmission when I was a kid, so I was basically primed to be the angriest cunt in the world about covid. I was always going to become furious and extra-insane.

The flu never went away, so you get your flu shot and cover your coughs and sneezes.

HIV/AIDS never went away, so you use protection with sex and always use clean needles for any kind of injections.

The bubonic plague, the granddaddy of plagues itself? Also never went away! You're supposed to be careful about any interactions with wildlife, and take flea outbreaks seriously.

Covid hasn't gone away, and it probably won't. So you know what you're supposed to fucking be doing? Limiting exposure, staying home from superspreaders, wearing your masks, getting your updated vaccines, and following the safety protocols from the People's CDC.

You damn sure aren't supposed to just throw up your hands, say, "fuck it, we'll all probably get it, so who cares?" and start licking rats, fucking without condoms, and running around without a face mask.

It’s interesting how diseases rip through schools at incredible speeds despite being in an arguably modern, clean(ish) environment. I wonder if it has something to do with the whole “you need a doctor’s note to excuse your absence of even one day” combined with the average price of going to a doctor, the lack of education on things like “you’re still contagious even after the fever goes away”, and the overwhelming message of “if you don’t struggle through it, you’re a failure!”

On my campus there tends to be a problem where even I you have the doctors note professors will still take points off of your final grade regardless of how sick you are. I’ve seen people show up to class with the stomach flu, pneumonia, respiratory infections and all sorts of other contagious ailments.

Here’s a fun story:

The school system I grew up in put an absolutely ungodly amount of pressure on kids to Show Up Every Day No Matter What. Many schools are like this, but looking back, my town’s was borderline fucking dystopian. They asked me why I didn’t just “postpone” a surgery at one point— when I was fifteen— to give you an idea of how monumentally obtuse these people were.

So, in elementary school, I started having chicken pox symptoms, right? They were mild because I was vaccinated (yay!) but my mom recognized them quickly and took me to the doctor, because my mom is a reasonable human being with standards. The doctor said “yup, you’ve got those pox, it may seem mild but please for the love of god DO NOT take her to school, she is very contagious even though she may FEEL okay.”

So I had to stay home from school until I got clearance from my doctor to go back. I was an angry little gremlin the whole time, because I wanted to go to the school library and read books about the human skull, but my mother said, “no, you cannot leave this house, and do not scratch the bumps please.” So I sat at home and tried not to scratch the bumps, like a good little gremlin.

A few days into my Chicken Pox Related House Arrest, we got a letter from the school. I was far from the only person with chicken pox, as it so happened. Like… a tenth of my second grade class had Confirmed Pox. We all fell ill within DAYS of each other.

So how did this happen, you ask? Well, a kid had chicken pox, and he came to school anyway. “Ah, well perhaps they didn’t know,” you may very well say. “Maybe his parents didn’t notice!” No. No, they noticed. In fact they KNEW it was CHICKEN POX. They sent him to school anyway.

The kid’s parents…….. were, in fact, teachers at the school. And they KNOWINGLY made him go to school sick, because they didn’t want to risk hurting his precious “perfect attendance” record. They figured that since he wasn’t, like, Literally Dying, it was better for him not to miss school. Never mind the fact that they were actively endangering hundreds of little kids.

Fast forward to my freshman year of college. A kid came to class with mumps because he ‘couldn’t afford to miss’. Guess what happened? Mumps outbreak! Diseases are, as it turns out, good at being diseases! Vaccinations are phenomenal, but they can only do so much, and some people rely on herd immunity to not be killed by preventable illness.

This entire attitude needs to die. It’s dangerous. Food service workers are forced to show up sick, little kids are forced to show up sick, college students show up sick because they’re afraid of flunking out.

And on top of it all, misinformation campaigns are encouraging people not to get vaccinations! It’s 2019 and we’re flirting with the plague! Next thing you know some blogger is gonna be like “actually we should all be fucking rats and eating our meat raw, death to all science and god bless america”

Many kids at my school will show up really sick because we only get like three days of excused absences without a doctor’s note.

this is what those in literary academia call “foreshadowing”

(note the dates)

this post aged like an ice cube in an oven

worst part is! IT’S STILL HAPPENING! SCHOOLS AND WORKPLACES ARE STILL LIKE THIS!!! THEY LEARNED NOTHING!!!!!!!

I love that the pandemic actually definitively proved a lot of those "hard" questions for us. Masking up reduced cases of the flu to almost nonexistent numbers and we had zero flu deaths for a time. The welfare and social service and unemployment programs helped keep people living paycheck to paycheck out of poverty, and those stimulus checks some folks keep complaining about actually massively benefitted the common man and the economy. Individual personal travel was so extremely restricted on a global scale that we basically have concrete proof that individual restraint in terms of driving cars or travelling means absolutely nothing by comparison because the mass pollution is coming from the fisheries and the corporations with private jets and container ships. Working from home actually has massive benefits for a company like productivity boosts and better mental health of employees while also saving gas

and we're just. Willingly going back to how everything was before. We were shown how to do things better and the people in charge said "that's nice but we just want to get everything 'back to normal' :)"

we’re not willingly going back to how everything was before. we are being forced back into it by members of the ruling class who found out that making things better for almost everyone else made them feel bad.

Covid-19 is not over. We are not "post-covid." If you mean "post-lockdown," say "post-lockdown."

Activist Larry Kramer spoke about the AIDS Crisis in 1991. Watching his words today, they hit damn hard, because it describes about the same rage I'm feeling about covid these days.

"Until we get our acts together, all of us, and until we learn to plug in with each other, and fight, and make this president listen, we are as good as dead."

Tonight I lost my temper while participating virtually in a hybrid meeting. The topic of covid came up, and I finally fucking snapped and yelled at everyone on the other side of the webcam who wasn't wearing a covid mask, and told them that their refusal to keep masking was why I couldn't be there in person. I don't feel great about the situation, but what the fuck else am I supposed to do anymore? I don't want to die. God damn it, I'm human, and I don't want to die.

I'm angry. I'm tired. I'm isolated from any sense of community. Time to reblog Larry Kramer's AIDS speech again.

Wear your fucking masks.

(Photo credit @M_uh_lee) From David Wojnarowicz in 1988 to @Anna_Snackz in 2018. 

“I don’t just want my death to be politicized, I want it to be weaponized” is on a whole other level.

wE ARE ALL JAPAN OMG