I've decided to end all of my relationships where the other person is choosing to spread covid.
I thought boundaries would be enough. That if I didn't hear about their trips, conferences, parties, dates, going to the bars.. if I didn't see it, I'd be okay.
I was wrong.
If I had a choice between being in a room with a bunch of vaccinated maskless people or unvaccinated people in high quality masks?
I'm picking masked and unvaccinated people every time.
And with that intersection, they are probably medically vulnerable too
I was more sick overnight than I've been in years. Truly brutal.
During the worst of it, I couldn't shake the thought that I can't go to the hospital because of Covid.
That's what your maskless "normal" has done to immunocompromised people.
I'm immC and someone who's masking almost all the time is not what's causing issues for my life.
It's the 90% of people who aren't masking at all, who make community spread high and indoor air full of viral particles.
We need to stay focused on the bulk of the harm happening.
I am not aiming to be “better” than anyone at all, I’m just eating my fucking mozzarella sticks 😭 be mad at the entities that have left us for dead. I’ve chosen to mask 98% of my time for as long as I have to. That 2% gon have to be ok
This week:
Someone else at the dog park was masked. IN AN N95.
An apt building neighbor has a masks sign on their door.
I saw several tiktoks about people deciding to start masking again!
I've been on 1 date since mask mandates ended.
Idk if I have it in me to try to trust someone, but I saw this in a dating profile and it hit my heart.
I feel like no one would want to date me because I'm immC and severely isolated.
If everyone was wearing N95 masks indoors, I would have SUCH a different life.
I'd be able to go indoors occasionally + see friends outdoors. I'd still mask around everyone, even outside. I could actually exist places.
I am currently alone 95% of the time.
There's no real option to survive if you're disabled/chronically ill
1. Continue to work and get more sick
2. Fight for years to get benefits that aren't enough to survive on
3. Have a spouse/family that supports you, but also high risk for abuse
4. Crowd options, m*t*al aid
I have done my best to educate other people in my life about covid. Only to be disappointed in their choices again and again.
Public health failed us all and it is not on the most marginalized and vulnerable people to fix this.
Disabled people don't owe you anything.
I'm a former computational biochemist and I lost a scientist friend from grad school because I said covid is more like HIV than the flu. He said I was spreading misinfo 🥲
That being said, this is a modeling paper and people seem to be jumping on it mostly because of the name.
Maybe after the next million people die, others can also say "I was wrong". I'm not waiting for that.
The universe has given me stable health now. I am so so grateful. I know I could lose it at any time.
I will choose my health and safety over any relationship.
I'm not doing this because I think I'm better than other people. I'm not being smug, self-righteous, judgmental, or virtue signaling.
It's actually the opposite. I don't want their behavior to influence me, to risk my safety and values.
I can only love them from a distance now.
I was maskless in some situations early last summer. I thought vaccinations would be enough, so I made sure everyone around me was vaccinated.
I was wrong.
My behavior became more restricted with each variant until now, with no mask mandates I am more isolated than March 2020.
I'm not sure what words I could say about how much each of you in the Covid cautious community means to me.
No matter how much the world convinces us to accept mass death and disability, we refuse.
No matter how much we are ostracized or threatened, we mask up 😷
Grey's Anatomy used to have a disclaimer at the beginning and end of the show that said in their fictional world the pandemic was over, but in ours it isn't.
What happened to that?
Mask bans will spread the same way covid does.
We need to stop transmission of fascism, not abandon people in those states.
Set your guilt aside for the bans not affecting you yet and focus on our shared fate.
I spent a decade going from infection, to med side effects, to autoimmune flare.
Over and over and over.
I know what it's like to spend weeks in a bathtub wanting to peel my skin off because I'm allergic to a med built up in my system. A med meant to help me.
I didn't think I'd go through anything worse than estrangement from my parents and family.
It took years to build a chosen family. I have lost almost all of them.
Love that only comes with harm and lack of accountability is abuse. I'm not interested in pretending it's okay.
The people I am angry at are mostly white middle/upper class leftists/liberals who have every bit of knowledge and access and money needed to take precautions. They were already doing it.
And now they won't.
They choose consuming. Bars, restaurants, travel, parties.
Most of my life, I've only been praised and exploited for my brain.
But when the rest of your body fails.. I call it the twilight zone. Being barely alive. Brain fog that buries you.
Who do you become when you lose everything you can do? I hope you never find out.
@hellozeik
It's the worst place for me. And the place where people were most likely to touch my service dog, approach us or talk about us.
I would just buy the exact same stuff, organize my list according to store layout + try to get through the store as fast as possible 🙃
I'm disabled and immC. I love the CC community, all of my friends are CC, I've spent years on CC activism and organizing.
There are a whole bunch of CC people that won't say what they think because of their fear of the rest of the community.
I've pissed not only blood, but tissue. And then dealt with oral thrush so bad from antibiotics that I couldn't eat or talk.
I've felt like my bones had termites. Searing nerve pain in my hands and arms.. thinking I would never be able to type again.
I know what it's like to be so weak from colitis malnutrition that I can't walk. To not be able to eat anything besides liquid meals and plain white rice.
I know what it's like to not have answers and to be desperate for any kind of help. While fighting systems meant to help me.
Alt text is meant to be as close as possible to what a sighted person would see.
Imagine if the only thing you knew about the photo was the alt text you wrote - would you feel included in the conversation?
@SamLShep
I was robbed and my books were stolen and while I'm aware that sounds made up, I had photos and a police statement. No exam rescheduling. I also went through housing and food insecurity with little to no support.
Academia is so cruel in order to pretend to be a meritocracy.
1. Covid is airborne, it spreads like smoke
2. Long Covid is a risk for everyone
3. Vaccines don't fully stop covid damage or transmission + most people aren't up to date on vax
4. A well fitting N95 in indoor and crowded outdoor spaces is the best protection for everyone
We failed at this pandemic the moment we made going maskless a reward for getting vaccinated, as if it was either/or instead of layered mitigations.
And we aren't doing either well.
"What is it like being in a room where four years ago this would have been a superspreader event?"
There is so much misinformation in this interview. The DNC convention is a superspreader and happening during the peak of one of the largest summer COVID surges of the pandemic.
I’m currently going through COVID after the DNC. For a claim the DNC didn’t care: everyone attending knew the risk & increase in cases. We’re at risk every day.
The good news? Dems get vaccinated & boosted. There’s a level of herd immunity. If high risk, be safe. Get vaccinated.
It's wild to me that people who are vaccinated + take tests think they are the "courteous" ones. No matter what else they do.
Even N95 mask requirements wouldn't be enough for 50k+ people to hang out in the desert for a week.
Giant events will always be superspreaders.
It's year 4.
Masks work. We've known that for over a 100 years now.
Cases + deaths are WILDLY undercounted.
The burden of proof is on Covid deniers + minimizers.
Maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen anyone act surprised that they got covid at the DNC.
It seems more like we are projecting our surprise/confusion that people are still willing to get infected.
Most people are fine with getting infected, because they think they'll be okay.
Nazis learned it from America.
Eugenics was a subject at most American colleges.
Jim Crow laws were their inspiration. Rockefeller Foundation funded German eugenics.
America was forcibly sterilizing "undesirable" people and infecting patients in mental institutions with TB.
@queenjenkins
@BeccaLizz
@AnnaCaudill4
Hydroxychloroquine (plaquenil).
I was on it years ago and had a terrible full body allergic reaction that took weeks of prednisone to clear.
Having to switch treatments or fail some to get the right one is hell.
I hate these people.
People have to believe health is a result of choice and "personal responsibility".
Otherwise they'd have to confront their own mortality, risk, and lack of control.
It's victim blaming.
I feel more confident lately because I've made online covid cautious friends to replace the friends I lost.
I literally lost every single pre-pandemic friend I had. It still stings even with new people I'm super fond of.
People who I would've asked for support from to get through this in the past are not in my life anymore.
Because they are in pretendemic land. They are killing, disabling, isolating others.
@AlsJane_therapy
Laziness is just a bullshit concept created to sustain capitalism. Rest is normal for anyone, it's efficient energy use and is necessary for learning and creativity.
I highly recommend the book Laziness Does Not Exist by
@drdevonprice
Your issue is with social media algorithms, not activists.
When you're actually in CC relationships and community, your feed becomes LOTS of online/offline actions.
When you're not, it just shows you whatever will piss you off.
The largest COVID accounts do not use their platforms to encourage mobilization. There is a lot of information but no action. Judging and no resources. No desire to form an actual movement offline because that would require more work than tweeting insults
If Karofsky wins despite all the blatant fuckery the GOP has pulled in Wisconsin.. wow.
As a Wisconsinite and someone who despises voter suppression, I have so many emotions happening right now.
#wisconsinsupremecourt
With a huge dump of votes in the Dem stronghold of Milwaukee County, progressive Jill Karofsky is now up 53-47 over conservative Justice Dan Kelly in Wisconsin's Supreme Court race. Based on what's still out, things are looking pretty good for progressives
When you're isolated and then you go through the vetting process of making sure someone's not going to give you a deadly infectious disease..
It's high stakes and it hurts much more when things don't work.
If you're still taking any kind of precautions, you're amazing and I'm so proud of you.
You're not alone and I'm not alone because of you.
Thanks for being in this with me 🧡😷
@visgrrl
@diannaeanderson
I'm from rural Wisconsin and my highschool has gender neutral bathrooms now.
Had* gender neutral bathrooms. A boy exposed himself to someone + they closed it. 🙃
But still. They made the attempt.
We don't have herd immunity for covid:
1. Neither vaccine nor infection provides long lasting immunity or fully prevents transmission
2. Rapidly mutates
3. Can be asymptomatic
4. Vaccine disparities, low uptake, and majority aren't up to date
I’m currently going through COVID after the DNC. For a claim the DNC didn’t care: everyone attending knew the risk & increase in cases. We’re at risk every day.
The good news? Dems get vaccinated & boosted. There’s a level of herd immunity. If high risk, be safe. Get vaccinated.
When a CC friend confides in me that they went out maskless and got infected and their existing health issues got worse?
I'm not going to tell them they fucked up, because they already know and are bearing the consequences of it.
They need friendcake not covidcake.
I'm in this informal covid cautious advocacy/support group + in a discussion of healthcare providers celebrating unmasking..
One of my friends called it healthharm instead of healthcare 🤣 Another said it was healthcareLESS.
@MeaghanBurden
Teach educators that there is no universal definition of "healthy", including for food. It looks different for every person. Children are just developing people.
Deciding you know what's best for another person's body is ableist.
We don't all have the same context.
We don't have the same lived experiences.
We won't practice identical mitigations.
I accept that.
I define CC as broadly as possible, to invite others into the movement.
@GergelyOrosz
Women would naturally always be part of the interview process if a company/team prioritized diversity from the beginning.
If women are only 10-20% of engineers, aren't they going to be expected to do more interviewing than male peers? On top of their other work?
Me: I'm going to stop being sad and just accept this
Also me: *new thing every day that proves I can't accept this*
Has anyone out there accepted their exclusion from the world? How do we keep going?
@Itisallacademic
I'm immunocompromised. People's choices are stunning.
I will not get past how many people are/were okay with us dying.
I'm masked + I'm with you 🧡
I don't know anyone who lives a completely "normal" life but does it in a mask.
I don't know any CC person whose life hasn't been fucked in one way or another by this.
I'm not saying some people aren't impacted more, they are. And I'm not saying I'm the most impacted either.
@HeydonEmily
My PhD advisor could've written this.
She said pretty similar things, especially about student or faculty complaints against her. "Coming back to bite me in the ass".. yup.
I'm immunocompromised and waiting for Novavax 🥲
I couldn't get a spring vaccine because of 3 months of ear infections, so it's been 10 months since my last covid vaccine
Novavax EC presentation contains interesting information about neutralization against different JN.1 variants. Protection against KP.3.1.1, currently the dominant sub lineage, is really good, second best after JN.1 itself.
Have to wonder, why FDA and EMA delays Novavax again.
I wasn't that afraid in 2020 of getting Covid at the hospital.
Now?
Why the fuck did we do this? We really saw the worst possible choice and thought "Yeah, that one. Parties and healthcare collapse!"
If I see another CC or immC person maskless in a photo, I'm not going to assume the worst.
They might have pain with masking. There might be other circumstances I'm not aware of.
Were they maskless by force or choice? I don't know.
Not only is this a curse on vulnerable people, it's a fucking brick wall between us and others.
How can I let anyone new into my life, how could I date.. when I'd basically have to ask them to become a recluse with me?
I don't eat in restaurants etc and someone still felt the need to tell me a KN95 mask "isn't super protective".
I understand the CC community is responding this way because of the polarization/isolation/ostracization we've been subjected to.
And I don't think it's helping us.
These are extremely difficult times. A lot of people ran from the pandemic into denial without grieving or adapting.
Yes, I've been pissed at them. And I'm trying to express that anger in ways that help *me* move forward. I fuck that up often 😅
I'm not saying it's easy to do this or that others have to.
This is the choice I've come to, especially in the past year.
Part of this is my commitment as a Buddhist. It's one of the only things holding me together some days, through years of isolation.
@the_tweedy
Back when I was in public with my service dog, people would follow us around, talk about us to others and sometimes take pictures. I always wondered what was going on.
Do they not think we are aware of them watching us?
Hope you're okay 🧡
@LaurenRKayes
"I didn't know it would be a superspreader event, everyone was supposed to test + mask. Some weren't masking tho. I made the best choice for my business." - former friend who went to a conference of 12k people
If your business relies on spreading infectious dx, it should fail.
"Hi all!
I'm on day 34 of testing positive from my latest infection with Covid. Rapid tests have been getting fainter for a while but for the last few days they're back to a proper red line - I don't know what to do anymore."
'Covid every 12 weeks like clockwork.' Currently on their 7th infection, day 34 of testing positive. 4x vaccinated for a total of 11 presentations of antigen. Can we stop lying to people about immunity yet?
400 million people with Long Covid.
I can't comprehend all these newly disabled people struggling to come to terms with it. And then realizing how fucked they are.
How fucked we are.
Just like the people complaining about the person who brought masks to a con.
Sure, we can do better and prioritize resources. But the way people react feels like dogpiling and punishment.
That's not the way to encourage people to get or stay involved.
It's not good enough to write alt text that says "diagram of notes from a talk".
That would be like translating an entire convo for a person who didn't speak the language as "we're just talking". There's no meaningful info.
The best mask is the mask you will wear regularly.
Any amount of masking helps. You don't have to be perfect about it!
It's never too late to start masking again.
If you've ever masked during this, thank you 🧡
My delivery guy said I was lucky to stay home, as he had me sign for my immune suppressing medications. For the genetic condition that's ravaged mine + my families health + finances.
He was maskless. It was an odd moment of intersecting identities for me.
If I die of covid, I'm haunting the fuck out of any maskless person who even pretends to grieve me
I played Marley in a Christmas Story in 5th grade, so I have some experience with haunting to build upon
@terribadgerdgaf
I feel like people don't care enough to try and mitigate risk to help but they'll be soooo devastated if I die of covid.
Easier to grieve than mask up and not infect people
The last time I was this sick was a severe concussion in fall of 2020.
We delayed calling an ambulance for an hour or two (idk how long, I was ralphing on the floor).
When I still couldn't stand up, we caved.
Why wait? Money, of course.
What will have more impact, expecting people who are already stretched thin to keep meeting a higher and higher bar?
Or getting more people involved, by being a welcoming and supportive community?
I reassured a CC activist friend recently that they would never burn a bridge with me.
Because they are afraid of our community. They are afraid of saying what they think on here. Of losing what they've built.
That's heartbreaking.
One of my disabled friends tonight was saying maybe they have 20 years left now.
I was thinking 10 for myself.
We are both early 30s.
We are all just shortening our life expectancies at this point.
@Ofdinosanddais1
@Chesaysthings
This is also not necessarily polyamory if they are just looking for a threesome.
I don't know any poly people (myself included) who would do this. Unless their profile explicitly said they are a couple and don't date or play solo.
3 and 4 are ridiculously hard in a world where a lot of people are asking, many of which are being brutalized/genocided.
And many are unemployed or struggling.
People who use screenreaders are shut out of so much of the internet.
Twitter is one of the only places with a generous alt text allowance, a 1000 characters.
#YallMasking
?
Yes those are bones in my necklace 🦴📿
Accumeds are the best KN95 fit for me so far, these are Powecom and they are decent. A bit of gaping on my cheeks but just at the edge and nose wire doesn't fit as tightly.
By the way, I wouldn't use the phrase "airborne AIDs".
When I compare covid and HIV, it's due to their effect on T cells. And similarities in how they affect already oppressed groups.
There are still many differences between them.
Some covid research is more readable and approachable.
This is not one of those papers.
There aren't many interdisciplinary biochemists who can read and understand the implications of folding proteins and docking them.
And I hope people would be willing to say that to me. To ask me to pause and nudge me back into compassion, curiosity, nuance. If possible.
This isn't a lecture, I just want to do better. And I would like to be doing that with others, because it's fucking hard.
I'm not judging others for how they want to express their anger or cope with all of this shit we didn't ask for.
I would like it if we could consider drawing a line somewhere though. Having some shared standards of behavior.
Saying "hey, maybe that's too far?"
this is a very emotional town hall. Harris takes a question from a homeless woman whose life was wrecked by long covid about what she'll do for people like her
Admittedly, I'm more of a tiktoker. I left this hellsite once and I didn't think I'd ever come back.
But I missed disabled people I'm only connected to here. And I missed covid Twitter, esp the research since I'm a scientist.
And we might lose Tiktok someday.