when reading statistics like 99.5% of recent covid deaths are unvaccinated people please keep in mind that this is not a population of petulant assholes who refuse to be vaccinated. every person who cannot be vaccinated for legitimate medical reasons counts in that statistic.

disabled people are still actively being punished for misinformation pushed by science denialists. don’t forget them

Also when you look at “breakthrough cases” keep in mind a disproportionate percentage of those are going to be immunocompromised people who got the vaccine but it didn’t work for them.

"Business owners around the country are offering up a lament: 'no one wants to work.' A McDonalds franchise said they had to close because no one wants to work; North Carolina congressman David Rouzer claimed that a too-generous welfare state has turned us all lazy as he circulated photos of a shuttered fast-food restaurant supposedly closed 'due to NO STAFF.'

Most of these complaints seem to be coming from franchised restaurants. Why? Well, it’s not complicated. Service workers didn’t decide one day to stop working — rather huge numbers of them cannot work anymore. Because they’ve died of coronavirus.

A recent study from the University of California–San Francisco looks at increased morbidity rates due to COVID, stratified by profession, from the height of the pandemic last year. They find that food and agricultural workers morbidity rates increased by the widest margins by far, much more so than medical professionals or other occupations generally considered to be on the 'front lines' of the pandemic. Within the food industry, the morbidity rates of line cooks increased by 60 percent, making it the deadliest profession in America under coronavirus pandemic.

Line cooks are especially at risk because of notoriously bad ventilation systems in restaurant kitchens and preparation areas. Anyone who has ever worked a back-of-the-house job knows that it’s hot, smelly, and crowded back there, all of which indicate poor indoor air quality. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Environmental Protection Agency recommended increasing indoor ventilation to fight the virus, but such upgrades are costly and time consuming. There is no data available on how many restaurants chose not to upgrade their ventilation systems, but given how miserly franchise owners are with everything else, one could guess that many, if not most, made no upgrades at all.

Ventilation issues are deadliest for line cooks and other back-of-house jobs, but there are other reasons why food workers’ morbidity rates shot up. Food workers are much more likely to be poor and/or a racial or national minority, and poor people and black and Latino workers are much more likely to die of complications from the coronavirus.

Restaurants are often intentionally short staffed, making it difficult to take time off, so sick workers likely still came to work (and infected others in the process). Bars and restaurants are COVID-19 hotspots, and service workers and customers alike get sick after prolonged restaurant exposure. The difference is that many of those customers have health insurance and other safeguards to prevent them from dying of the illness; 69 percent of restaurants, on the other hand, offer their employees no health benefits at all.

When coronavirus is spread at restaurants, and restaurant workers make little money and rarely earn health benefits, it’s no wonder morbidity rates are so much higher for food service workers. But rather than collectively grieve the deaths of tens of thousands of the people who serve us and keep us fed, and keep such tragedies in mind when considering the state of the food-service industry labor market today, business owners and their political lackeys call these workers 'lazy.'

There are, of course, also living, breathing people who have decided they do not want to risk their lives for $7.25 per hour and no health benefits. That is a perfectly rational decision for the homo economicus to make. Given how dangerous restaurant work is during a viral pandemic, if restaurant owners really wanted more workers, they would offer living wages, health benefits, and adequate personal protective equipment. But all the wage increases in the world won’t bring back the dead.

There aren’t enough people working in the service industry, and service bosses have somehow turned that into our problem, into something we ought to be ashamed of. We shouldn’t fall for it. Profits accumulate because of labor — without workers to exploit, the owning class can’t get richer. Capitalists cannot exploit the labor of the dead, so when large swathes of the working class die, they turn their ire on the living.

This is a barbaric response to mass tragedy. Workers across the country and the globe are dead or grieving. We shouldn’t risk further tragedies for a paltry minimum wage."

- Sandy Barnard, "Service Workers Aren’t Lazy — They Just Don’t Want to Risk Dying for Minimum Wage." Jacobin, 5 May 2021.

So, mask-wearing. We are being asked to conform our behavior to guidelines in order to maximize public safety. Some people are acting like this is some horrible imposition on their carefree lifestyle.

The thing is - we do that already. All the time. Constantly.

Every time you stop at a red light. Show your ID to buy alcohol. Refrain from smoking in a non-smoking place. Take off your shoes at TSA. Use a designated driver. Regulate your speed on a highway.

Even fundamental behaviors like respecting the social contract inherent in the exchange of money for goods or services are part of a collective agreement to conduct ourselves in a way that enables society to function.

Mask wearing is no different than agreeing to drive on your designated side of the road. It’s just newer.

this is all true... probably a large majority of people already uphold the social contracts as OP mentions.

but this possibly underestimates the numbers of people who run red lights, buy alcohol underage, smoke in non-smoking areas, drive drunk, and speed on the highway. oh yeah and generally (mis?)use society to get their own while cheating others out of theirs.

in my experience, there's always a large-enough-to-be-a-problem number of people who will break those social contract rules if they think they can get away with it. and it seems like the more entitlement ppl come from, the more likely they are to get away with it, and they know it.

so yes, the mask-refusers are being completely unreasonable towards the rest. but we shouldn’t actually be surprised about them. (and i was. i was totally surprised that the pandemic even took off... because i forgot what ppl are like and expected everyone would do the handwashing and the distancing. by the time the WHO/CDC advised mask-wearing, i wasn’t surprised anymore by the asshat behavior, just disturbed.)

It looks like COVID-19 cases are trending downward or even declining in places with active protests (and continued closures), and increasing in states with less protesting (and more “open for business”).

The key summary:

I’ve been somewhat concerned that the right would try to blame an upswing in cases on the protests, but it looks like the actual data is hard to spin – especially since it’s being reported in Business Insider, hardly a lefty revolutionary rag.

Yemen is facing the worlds largest hunger crisis and the world is too quiet.

And it’s the children that pay the highest price. An estimated 85,000 children have lost their lives to extreme starvation alone. Every 10 minutes, a child under 5 dies of preventable causes in Yemen. When choosing what charities or goals you want to support during the last few days of Ramadan, I urge you to keep the children of Yemen in mind. And if you’re not celebrating Ramadan, or are not religious.. you’re still human.

These are a few of charities that I know of that you can donate to:

Remember, it’s the smallest donations that build up or even just rebloging/sharing would help. May Allah smile upon us all, and relieve the children of this world of their heartache.

The entire population of Yemen is expected to die by the end of this year.

If Yemen was 100 people:

80 need aid to survive

60 have nothing to eat

58 have no access to clean water

52 have no access to health care, however since Covid-19 their healthcare system has effectively collapsed

But Yemen is not 100 people

It’s 30.5 million humans

Guys this is a whole country that’s about to be EXTICT. Let’s not fail them

Prioritize this site https://www.muslimglobalrelief.org/yemen-appeal (100% donation policy)

As the UK has a long history of supporting Saudi Arabia

DIY clear facemask for the Deaf, hard of hearing, and anyone who might get hassled for having their face covered. Requires sewing.

If you, anyone in your household, or anyone you are currently interacting with regularly uses lip reading to communicate and would benefit from having this type of mask please message me. I will happily make and send you one for free, though if you live outside of the US I may ask you to help cover the cost of shipping.

Info to include when requesting:

1) Size(s) (child, adult small, or adult large)

2) Number of masks needed

3) Address to mail them to

4) Whether you can afford to contribute towards shipping so that I can send you my Venmo/Cash.app/PayPal if relevant. (I will send lipreading masks to anyone who needs them, and if you can’t afford to pay the cost of shipping I will reach out to the generous people who have offered to donate.)

I will let you know what fabric I currently have available so you can pick the color.

Following steps 1-4 will help me get the masks out more quickly. Thank you!

(In case you are wondering: These do fog up a bit after being used for a while, but are still usable for lip reading.)

i know there’s a lot going on but ICE are now one step closer to literally creating gas chambers. they are spraying a chemical called HDQ neutral roughly 100 times a day, every 15 minutes at the adelanto detention center (one of the biggest in the country). people are getting rashes, headaches, their insides are bleeding, etc. the guards are wearing gloves and masks but the detainees have NOTHING. and here’s a quick reminder - america inspired the nazis to create gas chambers when they gassed latino people during the 1917 bath riots. 

here’s a petition to sign. it’s close to it’s goal. if there’s anything else we can do to help i’ll update this post.

I don’t have the words to properly explain how horrifying this is. In April, the advocacy group Freedom For Immigrants published a report about unsanitary conditions at the detention center, where the immigrants were made to clean the facilities with only water, or shampoo. According to their report, there were sick detainees there - possibly with COVID-19, but it’s unclear since they weren’t being tested - and the conditions could easily lead to a situation in which the virus exploded among those there.

The guards are spraying this disinfectant in retaliation for the report. To be clear - HDQ is an industrial-strength disinfectant, which according to the manufacturer is “harmful if inhaled” and “causes severe skin burns and serious eye damage.” The guards are spraying it on everything every 15-30 minutes, according to sources, and immigrants in the center have already experienced severe symptoms including blisters, rashes, bleeding, fainting, breathing difficulties, headaches, stomach pain, and nausea.

And let’s be real - ICE doesn’t give a shit, either about protecting these people or about preventing a COVID outbreak. ICE, according to their own reports, currently has 25,911 people in custody, of which only 2,670 have been tested. 1,392 of those were positive. In simple terms - less than 10% of detainees have been tested. Of those, more than half are positive. We cannot estimate how many sick people ICE is currently holding, or how many more will get sick without any kind of prevention or care.

ICE is killing people through neglect, and when they dared complain - they started gassing them.

Unfortunately, with Trump in the white house, petitions aren’t doing much. What we can do, however, is donate to the advocacy group that is bringing these things to light, allowing them to continue their work and hopefully free more immigrants. Their donation page is here. Please spread this.

The chemical they are spraying, HDQ, is manufactured by Spartan Chemical.

Spartan Chemical also holds responsibility for allowing this to happen. They should not get to have a shiny, clean brand image.

Spartan’s phone number is (419) 531-5551. They have a facebook page here, where you can leave them a review saying what you think of them supplying ICE.

They also have a contact us page on their website.

They follow/repost stuff from the hashtag #spartanchemical on Facebook and Instagram.

Please contact them through one of these means and ask them to denounce this abuse and stop supplying ICE (or stop supplying the distributor who is then selling to ICE). Post publicly on their facebook and in their hashtags so that their brandname is tied to these atrocities.

SC has a twitter, too. https://twitter.com/spartanchemical

People in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Chile are protesting because they have no food. The government, instead of immediately sending over help, decided to once again repress them with teargas and rubber pellets. If you have been following the Chilean protests since October 2019, you'd know the very same government is directly responsible for the mutilation of over 500 eyes from their own citizens.

This is happening today May 18 2020, I'll keep you posted

Mind you, they have no food because we just entered a full lockdown with no immediate help for casual or without contract workers. Additionally, up until now big companies are free to fire anyone or to reduce their pay / ask them to use their unemployment insurance in order to get paid.

You can see a testimony of a protestor here

The police directly impact a protestor via a high pressure water beam. This is forbidden by law, the high pressure can cause people to lose balance and hit their heads on the road

La Victoria, another neighborhood in the south of Santiago, on the Pedro Aguirre Cerda commune, has joined the protests

In response to the police brutality suffered today by protesters, along with the null support offered by the government, the people from Santiago have taken to the streets to initiate a cacerolazo (banging pots together as a form of protest). The official call is at 9 pm, but neighbours from Southern Santiago have already begun protesting

Hello.

I live in El Bosque, the same municipality where the food protests begun.

The particular neighborhood where this happened is very close to mine and I have very close info about what happened.

The local municipal government closed down the street markets recently for non-registered and non essential sellers, causing the flow of income for the people who worked without a license in them (usually very low income, very hard working people) to dry up almost without warning.

The municipality and the local and nearby neighborhoods did their best to try to support the people that lost their source of work, but the municipality has seen the government take away most of the resources they had due to the local government being from an opposition party, and the neighborhoods nearby couldn't give more help when total quarantine was declared (far too late), which dried up most of the income the people in this municipality had.

Santiago is a highly socioeconomically segregated city, and El Bosque is a mostly low income, old age suburban municipality, with very crowded areas and middle to bad infrastructure. This wasnt a big center of protest during the October Awakening, but the people here did participate quite a bit in demonstrations. Now, the people, who had spent the last 2 MONTHS telling the government they needed help, made a demonstration that was very brutally repressed, which sparked several other protests around the city.

Turns out, the economical situation was severely bad, and the media had been hiding it.

The same "oh but they should have protested peacefully" bullshit argument was immediately released by government, but more alarmingly, several figures of the right wing coalition that is in power have said that people should be prosecuted and arrested for demanding help.

Not just that but also there have been several disgusting comments from accommodated people trying to pretend that the hunger was fake and that the protests were politically motivated. Its a textbook example of the same distraction tactics the media and the government is also using in the US rn.

Several political figures have said since February and March that a full lockdown and an emergency program of economical support was necessary, but the current government has refused to apply or take any actions in the latter, and the lockdown was only progressively applied in areas and stages, with the government's actions being too optimistic until a few weeks ago the cases exploded due to the bad management of the crisis. Chile is on the list of countries with the highest rise of cases, but interestingly it has very low deaths. (Though, the government has decided to keep a lot of information secret, which combined with some alarming discoveries such as many corpses of people dead of Covid19 related complications not being marked as Covid19 Deaths in their certificates... making our own conclusions is all we can do in this regard, especially since the minister of Health is a very aggressive mafioso type person who has been criticized many times for many reasons, far too many to list. He's the guy who said that "the virus could mutate into a better person". Literally. Those were his words.)

The governments response was to make several token overtures of support, and give tiny emergency funds that are still swirling around the state bureaucracy, and give out extremely publicized boxes with food supplies to central and crowded areas, in a extremely slow process that barely started a few days ago, with municipalities like ours being apparently last in the list to receive food aid.

The Comunas (communes/municipalities) of south and west santiago are some of the most crowded, poorer and most vulnerable ones of santiago, and the government has been the most scarce around here, with even majors of the same coalition of the government denouncing the abandonment of the government.

Cacerolazos, Demonstrations, Ollas Comunes (Communitary Driven Soup Kitchens) and Protests have flared up in many places in these areas, and its expected that they repeat if the government is still being slow in following the recommendations of experts and keeps refusing to help.

One final thing that needs to be mentioned:

The Cacerolazos are a protest form that started before and during the Dictatorship times. People protested the lack of food by banging on empty pots from the doorstep of their homes and on the streets. They were seen during the October Protests as a way to criticize the economical and social policies of the last decades and are being seen now in a more literal way, which is a very telling thing of the very vulnerable place we are in. The fact that the Ollas Comunes have had to be organized again, is making a lot of people remember the economical crisis of the 80's during the dictatorship.

There arent many online fundraisers to help people here because our online financial services are internally oriented, but if you want to help, telling people what is going on helps a lot. If international media picks up on what's going on here, even if passively, it demolishes the government's narrative of "international praise" that they are using a lot to deflect criticism.

From Seth Tobocman and Tamara Wyndham.

Action During A Time of Social Distance

The coronavirus provides a unique challenge to organizers because, although it lays bare so much of the cruelty of our system and leaves many people in vulnerable situations, many actions are difficult or impossible when you’re stuck inside. However, there’s still a lot of good work happening and I wanted to create a master list:

Please, please add more resources if you have them! As you can probably tell, I’m more aware of actions happening near me (Northeast US) and so I would love for people from other areas to add things that are happening around them. Stay safe and healthy everyone ☀️💚

You can also donate or share the Mutual Aid Fund for LGBTQ+ BIPOC folks

I can’t stop thinking about how the coronavirus may affect people in the detention centers... Professionals are urging people to avoid crowds yet ICE is packing thousands of people, young and elderly, into prison-like areas with a dangerous lack of basic hygiene products. Just TODAY ICE arrested someone at a hospital in the middle of a PANDEMIC. Please keep these people in your thoughts.

I know lots of people know this, but prisons and concentration areas are hotbeds of disease. TB was a huge concern even when I worked as a guard in Louisiana about twenty years ago. You put a ton of people together in an area where the health access is seriously limited and you are essentially creating a human petri dish.

There’s a call to action for WA residents to call the governor and Sec of WADOC to provide sanitation and medical attention and free testing for the virus for those in prisons. Here is the Instagram post with more info: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9sIqbLJNkA/?igshid=hjhrcmwbdtie

A post shared by COVID-19 Mutual Aid (@covid19mutualaid) on Mar 13, 2020 at 2:53pm PDT

If ur part of a community org, consider contacting ur members in signing this petition in freeing immigrants detained in ICE detentions, as the virus is a public health threat. Here’s the Instagram page for more info: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9rz18MFZo0/?igshid=16y3776kswg8s

To read the petition is here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdM12oUrLacET8HpWJkkWcvOYogQ7C9-U62ZJ11tGz4hKTw1w/viewform

A post shared by Detention Watch Network (@detentionwatch) on Mar 13, 2020 at 11:51am PDT

[LINK HERE] for organizations (not individuals) to support this effort

https://twitter.com/owensd/status/1238219993566740481

in 2008 Italy sent équipes of highly-specialized surgeons & first responders to the Chinese region of Sichuan, in order to help with the devastating effects of an earthquake that killed more than 80k people and injured hundreds of thousands of civilians. today, march 2020, China’s sending some of its top doctors from one the best hospital of the country, situated in Sichuan, to help us face an epidemic that they’ve come to know how to fight. 

italy had faced the 1976 Friuli earthquake, and although that may seem relatively small when compared to the absolutely monstrous numbers of what happened in Sichuan, it was one of the worst climate-related tragedies our country’s ever had to deal with. that we rushed to help China when it was facing something like that, but bigger and more devastating, and that - twelve years down the line - they’re choosing to do something about us suffering for something they’ve already had to fight against… means a lot.

knowing that as much as you suffer, if you act on that pain and prevent others from going through that as much as possible, it might actually make a difference. I hope we can keep this event close to our hearts for a long time. we need all the good fuel we can get.  

stay strong China, stay strong Italy.

even better news: in 1988 the Italian government helped China pro bono to establish Sichuan’s largest emergency medical service centre. over the next 30 years that medical service centre was of great help to medical services in Sichuan. turns out that the help we’re receiving from China had been literal decades in the making. :’)

waves from the same sea, flowers from the same garden.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is telling Americans that they should be prepared for the possibility of a COVID-19 outbreak in their community.

But what does preparedness look like in practice? The short answer: Don’t panic — but do prepare.

That “means not only contingency planning but also good old-fashioned preparedness planning for your family,” says Rebecca Katz, director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University. In other words, what you’d do in case of a possible hurricane or another natural disaster.

We spoke with Katz and other health experts about common-sense things you can do to be ready should the virus hit where you live.

A Guide: How To Prepare Your Home For Coronavirus

Photo: Max Posner/NPR

it seems like most of this advice is good for regular flu season as well (which, if you look at the statistics, in an everyday sense the seasonal flu is far more dangerous)