I am surely in the toils.

Seeing a marburg virus outbreak in 2024 on the heels of a global coronavirus pandemic reminds me of reading a seanan mcguire interview in 2012ish where she discussed how our societal approach to quarantine is a joke & the individual desire for freedom & autonomy over safety gets people killed. I have to wonder what going through the early '20s as someone well educated in viral mutations and infection vectors must've been like. Prophets screaming from a crumbling parapet

Oh it has been a special brand of chicken-flavored hell! I cry almost every day because people I love continue to flout and ignore basic health and safety rules that could protect their ability to keep on living to raise my blood pressure! We have so much proof that Covid causes brain damage, and yet people keep ignoring it because YOLO and "I don't want to live in fear"! I do! The key word being live.

In case folks, like me, didn't know about the outbreak.

from the WHO article:

Marburg virus disease (MVD) is caused by the same virus family that causes Ebola disease. MVD is an epidemic-prone disease with high case fatality rate (24% - 88%).

There is a risk of this outbreak spreading to neighbouring countries, with cases reported in districts located at the borders. Further risk of international spread is also high as confirmed cases have been reported in the capital city with an international airport and road networks to several cities in East Africa. A contact is known to have travelled internationally, to Belgium, and appropriate response measures have been implemented.

The World Health Organization assesses the risk of this outbreak as very high at the national level, high at the regional level, and low at the global level.  Investigations are ongoing to determine the full extent of the outbreak. 

The research shows that any mask is much better than no mask, and an N95 is significantly better than the other options.

"The research shows that any mask is much better than no mask, and an N95 is significantly better than the other options. That’s the No. 1 message."

So-called “duckbill” N95 masks scored highest in the study. The inexpensive masks, which have two head straps and a horizontal seam, blocked 99% of large virus particles and 98% of small ones, thanks to the design’s tight seal, powerful filter, and large air space for breath to circulate, according to the study published in eBioMedicine.

The researchers also found that - in what might come as a surprise to many - cloth masks outperformed the brand of KN95 mask tested.

If you have any reason to suspect you might have an infection, wear your mask!

a small interesting thing: yesterday, while taking a sunday walk through the neighbouring mountains, I've stumbled upon a shrine - a standard sight in carpathian forests, of course - but this one was very new. freshly erected, clean, stunning - with a little sign explaining why it was erected.

and as so many such shrines, the reason was one of the most classic reasons for them to be created:

to commemorate the town's survival. from plague.

the great plague of anno domini 2020, no less.

The US News Media since 2022: "Covid's over! Drop the masks! What's the best way to cough on strangers? Heartwarming: Celebrity tells new mothers to use urine instead of MMR vaccine!"

The US News today:

There's even more out there too

It is the name of the mutation, not the strain

"According to media reports, these FLiRT variants, which include KP.2, are marked by mutations identified by the letters F, L, R, and T in their genetic codes." I'm not gonna dive into what they all mean because I don't have time to give everyone a crash course in viral evolution, but the little 'i' represents a genetic omission while the capital letters represent genetic additions: FLiRT. This increases infectivity and immune escape among other things.

Please read any of the six articles posted above to learn more.

once again.

The new york times is a rag made by american millionaires who were mad at the daily tribune for publishing Marx's editorials.

They have ALWAYS had a bourgeois class nature, and they will ALWAYS be a bourgeois mouthpiece. They should never be trusted and all their reporting must be taken with a grain of salt.

This seems relevant.

"The long-term effects of [the covid-19 pandemic]... are accumulating slowly enough to be normalised."

this is not a pandemic side-effect our literature or futurists warned us about

but then science fiction is all about unexpected side-effects and unintended consequences of change, so

A Family portrait during the Spanish Flu, 1918 ♡

1) one was easier to see and conceptualize; it's easier to notice something new that didn't used to be there than it is to notice the complete lack of something, much less understand the complexity behind it (also those benefitting worked hard to hide it)

2) assuming this is about America, America has pushed a narrative of individual responsibility for everything for so damn long most of us have forgotten the basic fundamental things a government is supposed to do for its citizens

ID by @mckitterick

[ID: mockup of a vintage cathode-ray screen that reads, "tweet from @/The_Tweedy: How the fuck was everyone somehow convinced that the collective trauma experienced over the past 3+ years was due to remote work and masking and not, y'know, being abandoned to mass death and disablement in the name of unprecedented capital accumulation by the ultrawealthy?" /ID]

I have nothing but bad news for y'all

We were supposed to have until April to leave comments, but the cdc has officially ended the 5 day isolation period as of today, March 1st, 2024.

They're saying as long as it's been 24hrs and your symptoms are improving, you're good.

Nothing about covid has changed. Medical professionals are obviously slamming this decision. All this does is make it even more difficult to avoid long covid, because now workers will have to fight for sick days and time off they already barely have just to fucking heal from an organ damaging virus.

Idk what to say for this one.

this is a nightmarish, indefensible abdication of responsibility to a nation the CDC has already comprehensively failed. im not surprised but i am incredibly fucking disappointed.

It's worse than ideology--dying for ideology would assume that we'd be dying for a belief, a cause, something greater than just one person. Perhaps an awful ideology, mind you, or one we don't believe in ourselves, but at least something bigger.

What we're dying for is to marginally increase the wealth of a small percentage of shareholders. Not only is it horrific, it's also crushingly banal and petty.

I work retail and I wear a mask.

A customer came in and asked, "What's with the mask?" I told her I don't like getting sick.

She went on a rant of how masks don't work, there are studies for decades that prove they don't work, she could see me breathing (?), and I just asked her for her member number and ii she wanted her receipt and she said, "You'll be wearing a mask the rest of your life, honey, good luck with that!" and left.

Because my comics have gone around the internet, many people have asked if I’ve “gotten better yet”. The answer is a firm NO because that’s not how post-viral illness triggered by an infection that causes organ and brain damage works. Please consider your behavior and who you are leaving behind.

Check out the People’s CDC here where they provide weekly updates on the COVID situation in the U.S.

ID in alt text and below!

Keep reading

also, folks, with the new mutation Covid is back and as bad as ever:

“The current surge in the U.S. is its second-largest since the pandemic began — after only the omicron surge from late 2021 to early 2022.”

“Hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID are both up. About 5,000 people in the USA are being hospitalized per week, up from under 1,000 per week in June. The weekly death toll has tripled since that point, too, from around 500 a week to more than 1,600.”

“How long ago was this poste..oh.”

Also worth the read...

Yeah- it feels eerily similar to first and second wave covid by the way- taking care of patients in the hospital their bodies are acting exactly like the vicious early strains except they also have diarrhea and muscle breakdown.

They're getting these symptoms even if they're vaccinated (though the vaccine still seems to be cutting down on recovery time from my own anecdotal experience)

Try to get in the habit of masking again for a bit friends it's nasty out there

Hard agree. I started wearing a mask at work again last week bc my husband got a non COVID cold and I have missed a wave that took out 10 clinical staff members and counting.

definitely wear your mask. one of the longterm effects of covid is fucking up your immune system's memory so you're also more like to catch random colds, flus, coughs, fungal crap, other infections, if you get covid or have already had covid.

and consider limiting your outings by necessity. i stopped studying at the library in part because I was worried about spending time in a public space. it SUCKS, but i had long covid and i'm like 90% back a year and a half later and i CANNOT do it again.

If you're still eating in restaurants and drinking in bars, stop. Between the prevalence of presymptomatic/asymptomatic infections and false negatives on rapid tests, it's unethical to risk infecting restaurant staff—especially since restaurant HVAC systems vent air from the dining room to the kitchen, so it's largely customer aerosols sickening kitchen workers and putting them at disproportionate risk of COVID. There is no reason for people who live in places that are temperate year-round not to at least switch to outdoor dining, and for the rest of us to do takeout only.

If you were upset at conservatives in 2020/2021 for being anti-vax and anti-mask, follow the science by doing everything you can to prevent transmission of an airborne BSL-3 pathogen.

think of Covid-19 as airborne HIV in how it messes with your immune system

not that public health matters to the right-wingnuts who brought us screaming in stores that require masking and the January 6 insurrection

genuinely, the people i share zero covid communities with are petrified right now. all walls are down for infection, not even the token of awareness or prevention remain.

your chances of developing a disability from long covid are one in every ten INFECTIONS. most people i know were on their second or third case before they just stopped testing.

the lastest vaccine booster has reached maybe 15% of the population and some states are seeing their highest case numbers of the whole pandemic.

[ ID:  mockup of a vintage cathode-ray screen that reads, "How the fuck was everyone somehow convinced that the collective trauma experienced over the past 3+ years was due to remote work and masking and not, y'know, being abandoned to mass death and disablement in the name of unprecedented capital accumulation by the ultrawealthy?" /ID ]

Back in the 1960s, the U.S. started vaccinating kids for measles. As expected, children stopped getting measles.

But something else happened.

Childhood deaths from all infectious diseases plummeted. Even deaths from diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea were cut by half.

“So it’s really been a mystery — why do children stop dying at such high rates from all these different infections following introduction of the measles vaccine,” says Michael Mina, a postdoc in biology at Princeton University and a medical student at Emory University.

Scientists Crack A 50-Year-Old Mystery About The Measles Vaccine Photo credit: Photofusion/UIG via Getty Images

VACCINATE. YOUR. DAMN. KIDS. 

Everyone please re-blog this. It’s very important.

@takashi0 You re-blogging things tends to get them spread far and wide. Please help us out on this one.

Fun and exciting news! COVID does the same thing, although in a different way. Had COVID a while ago and keep getting sick with everything else? This is why.

COVID weakens the immune system for several months. This is why we’re seeing outbreaks of weird fungal infections in adults, more TB worldwide, mycoplasmic pneumonia outbreaks filling hospitals, plus more children getting severely ill from RSV and strep.

Wear. A. Mask. If you haven’t had COVID, keep it that way. If you have, you are immune-compromised and you really want to avoid catching COVID again, or getting anything else.

Since I’ve had COVID (multiple times, despite my best efforts), I’ve been getting colds rougly 2–3x more than before, some really nasty ones that knocked me down like a flu, and all my colds have taken twice as long as before. And I used to have a really good immune system before, rarely ever got sick.

And since I’ve been keeping up with the vax and wearing a mask everywhere and testing regularly, I’m reasonably certain those were really just colds that fucked over my COVID-weakened immune system, not additional COVID re-infections.

In 2022, I had my 11th surgery, which was less dangerous and less extensive than most of the others. It was healing quite well a couple weeks later, then I got COVID.

Then I got a wound infection. Never had a surgical infection before in my life, and it shouldn’t have happened that late in the healing process, but it did.

Now, these are anecdotes, but the data is there, basically every other kind of infection has grown more common and more serious since COVID started to spread out of control.

Every now and then, I feel kind of silly being the only one in a room - or even building - with a mask.

But then two things happen, every so often, that keep me doing it.

One - I’ll see another person with a mask, and that bit of eye contact that says, “oh thank god it’s not just me”.

Two - articles like this keep showing up.

happy smallpox eradication day to all who celebrate, which is everyone!

“On December 9, 1979, the disease was confirmed to have been eradicated, with the World Health Assembly making the declaration official five months later.”

“On May 8, 1980, more than two years after the last known case, the World Health Assembly formally declared the world free of smallpox.”

celebrate twice!

We’re doing it! There is in fact hope!!!