#and also the last year before the pandemic

[vladigoros]

Daniil Mikhailovich Monakhov (Part 1/2)

18-year-old Russian vocational boarding school student who carried out the Bolsheorlovskoye shooting on 12 October 2020 in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast.

Note: A long detailed info-post about Daniil because nobody gives a shit about him, but I love him. Because of its sheer length, the post is divided into two parts. Part 1: Covers his personal background - family, education, social life, health history, and other biographical details. Part 2: Delves into the October 12, 2020 shooting - the sequence of events, manhunt, aftermath, motive, and broader reactions. A PDF file is also available for a more comfortable read.

Happy reading.

Background

Daniil Mikhailovich Monakhov (Russian: Даниил Михайлович Монахов) was born on June 6, 2002, in Russia. At the time of the attack, he was 18 years old. He lived with both parents and a younger sister, seven years his junior. He was described as coming from a well-off family, carrying a modern phone, and wearing decent clothing. 

Family and Upbringing

Despite the outward comforts of family life, Daniil reportedly showed little emotional attachment to his parents. His relationship with his father was said to be distant and, at times, tense. A former classmate recalled that Daniil once mentioned having experienced physical abuse. His father also had a history of drinking, and their interactions were otherwise unremarkable, aside from the shared bond over firearms and hunting, which appeared to be one of the few activities that brought them together. 

According to a friend, Daniil had taken an interest in hunting even before the 2020 pandemic. He first began accompanying his father on occasional trips, visited a shooting range several times in the summer, and later resumed hunting more regularly in the fall. A resident of Bolsheorlovskoye, the village where his paternal grandmother lived, recalled that the family had official forestry permission to hunt in the area. “The boy only recently got into hunting,” said a local man. “But the father has been hunting for at least ten years – birds, hares. He’d come out after work on Fridays and leave again on Sundays.”

Over time, weekend hunting trips with his father became a semi-regular routine, often coinciding with visits to his grandmother’s village. Despite these recurring visits, Daniil never made any friends in the area and remained largely unknown among the locals.

His bond with his mother, though seemingly more conventional, was also described to be emotionally flat and was not particularly close. His family dynamics were further complicated by his own mental and physical health struggles, which his friends noted but felt unsure about how much they influenced his relationships at home. He rarely seemed concerned with anything beyond his immediate interests; his world largely revolved around school and the small group of friends he had there.

Medical History

Daniil had been living with significant health issues since childhood. He was diagnosed early in life with a congenital heart defect, a condition severe enough to require medical attention beyond his hometown, which also ultimately disqualified him from military service. He underwent treatment in Moscow and was subject to periodic monitoring throughout his adolescence. In the months preceding the tragedy, his condition deteriorated. It was reported that a thrombus (blood clot) had formed near his heart, placing him at elevated risk. He was expected to undergo cardiac surgery, but this procedure had never taken place. Due to the severity of his condition, it was believed he had only a few years left to live – approximately 5, according to a recollection of his friend. As his condition declined, the frequency of his visits to Moscow became more recurrent and structured. It required him to travel to the capital roughly once a month, with each stay lasting up to 2 weeks. These repeated hospitalizations became a weary routine for him. An acquaintance recounted that it was overwhelmingly boring for him, once claiming to have gone “berserk” at younger patients who disturbed the ward. To pass the time, he scrolled social media feeds for hours or replayed the video game Injustice multiple times in its entirety, activities he had engaged out of sheer boredom rather than genuine interest.

In addition to his cardiac issues, Daniil exhibited signs of neurological or psychosomatic disturbances. He suffered from nervous tics, which could be triggered either spontaneously or through sensory stimuli. One particularly notable trigger involved his ears – any physical contact would cause them to redden and provoke a tic episode. His friends were aware of this sensitivity and avoided touching them. These tics were not attributed to stress or anxiety alone, but appeared to have an involuntary, almost reflexive nature.

School Life and Social Behavior

Daniil attended School No. 101, where former classmates described him as reserved and socially withdrawn, often keeping to himself. Consequently, some peers mocked his aloofness, but there were no reports of overt bullying or abuse. Though generally reserved and distant, he was not entirely isolated: during his earlier school years, he maintained a small circle of male friends, jokingly calling themselves a “gang,” and even had their own logo and matching printed T-shirts. Daniil was said to have dreaded the end of 11th grade, fearing the group would disperse to different universities.

School No. 101 in Nizhny Novgorod

Those close to him described him as smart, well-informed, and particularly noted his sharp, albeit morbid sense of humor. He often made dark and humorous remarks about politics, military affairs, and death. “It’s hard to consider Daniil a healthy person.”

Outside this circle, he rarely socialized and remained particularly distant from female classmates, only ever speaking to them to borrow pencils.

Warning Signs, Violent Media Fascination

Daniil, likely in 10th grade

Several classmates recalled warning signs in his behavior and conversations. He was reportedly open about his fascination with school shootings, often referencing Columbine and the Kerch massacre. He also spoke openly about his desire to purchase firearms and explosives, and was impatient to turn 18 to legally acquire them. One classmate said that he repeatedly expressed intentions to “stage a Columbine” of his own, though at the time, peers dismissed it as another example of his dark humor. No one believed he was capable of such violence because he was “weak and skinny.” Others noted that he watched videos related to the massacre as early as 9th grade and began experimenting with homemade explosive devices by the 11th grade. In February 2019, Daniil drew the attention of school authorities after discovering disturbing posts on his VKontakte (a Russian social media platform), where he praised school shootings. At one point, he set his VK profile picture to one of the Columbine perpetrators and updated his status to “Let the judgment day come.” He even changed his listed birthdate to April 20, 1999 – the date of the Columbine massacre. He spoke of launching an attack in the school cafeteria during peak hours. The plan allegedly involved a second student, and both intended to end their lives after carrying out the massacre. Despite the alarming signs, the school seemed to have prioritized damage control over prevention. Teachers and administrators urged students and parents not to spread the information. As stated by classmate Amina Isaeva, the first warnings came not from the school or police, but from a parent with ties to law enforcement. Students were discouraged from “causing panic” and warned that “the school could get into trouble.” Only about two dozen students and their parents learned of the plot, and on April 20, 2019, Isaeva and five others skipped school without providing their reasons, fearing a possible tragedy – though no incident occurred. The Investigative Committee confirmed that both the regional Center for Countering Extremism and the FSB were aware of Daniil’s behavior. Security forces visited the school with detection dogs, and Daniil underwent a "preventative conversation" during which he dismissed his remarks as jokes. The school took no further disciplinary action, and Daniil continued his studies.

College Years, Weapon Acquisition

In September 2020, he enrolled at the Nizhny Novgorod Professional Boarding College of Social Services, a vocational institution for students with disabilities. He studied digital information processing. Teachers described him as polite, quiet, and academically compliant, though he remained socially isolated and did not form close friendships at this school.

Nizhny Novgorod boarding school

According to records from the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardiya), after shortly obtaining his gun license, Daniil legally acquired a Hatsan Escort pump-action smoothbore shotgun on September 17, 2020. Multiple reports claim that it was a gift from his father, likely in acknowledgment of his long-standing fascination with firearms. However, a close friend from school – whom Daniil had known since 5th grade – stated in an interview with Daily Storm that he purchased the gun himself using his disability funds. “He dreamed of owning a gun – he bought it with his disability benefits and sent us pictures. He was as happy as a clam. I thought it would end with duck hunting.” Daniil reportedly spent years studying firearms, their mechanics, and tactics online, actively engaging in gun-related forums and communities. His acquisition of a firearm shocked some peers, given his earlier school attack plot.

In addition to his own shotgun, his father legally owned a second smoothbore firearm. Both weapons were reportedly kept in a safe at his grandmother’s residence in the countryside. Though his father had hidden the keys, Daniil discreetly kept track of their location.

Miscellaneous

Additional pictures of Daniil (because these are what we'll only ever have):

He was fond of playing video games, particularly Assassin’s Creed and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. On one of his social media accounts, he had Assassin’s Creed as his profile picture.

He liked to explore abandoned areas.

The hypocoristic form of his name is ‘Дэнчик’ (Denchik).

A close friend nicknamed him “Rex,” like a dog, which he accepted without offense and became an inside joke. 

He had an extremely low alcohol tolerance. "I remember he even had a birthday, we celebrated it, and that was the first time he drank alcohol. It was tequila – he got drunk right away," a source told Tsargrad.

A friend said that Daniil had once mentioned that if he were to die, it would be a shot to the head.

He had a deep affection for dogs, especially his “fussy” Chihuahua and a miniature pinscher gifted by his parents, a dog he had long wanted. Neighbors often saw him walking them and described him as unusually gentle with animals.

He was absent from all photo albums at the Nizhny Novgorod Boarding Vocational School, including those taken during Freshman Day, Teacher’s Day, Health Day, and the October campus cleanup.

Alongside with his heart condition, Daniil was reported to have bronchial asthma as well. However, this claim remains uncertain, as it appears in only a single uncorroborated report (that I can find, at least). A friend did offer a statement that might lend some credibility to the claim: “Lately, even just laughing would cause him to become short of breath.”

References:

https://meduza.io/feature/2020/10/15/da-nastanet-sudnyy-den https://meduza.io/feature/2020/10/13/pod-nizhnim-novgorodom-vsyu-noch-iskali-podozrevaemogo-v-massovom-ubiystve-ego-nashli-mertvym-v-neskolkih-sotnyah-metrah-ot-mesta-prestupleniya https://dailystorm.ru/chtivo/koshek-i-sobak-ne-trogal-on-celilsya-v-lyudey-reportazh-daily-storm-iz-nizhegorodskoy-oblasti-gde-podrostok-ubil-troih-pensionerov https://www.rt.com/russia/503279-russia-bus-shooting-nizhny-novgorod/ https://www.nn.ru/text/criminal/2020/10/16/69506003/ https://ngs.ru/text/incidents/2021/10/13/70189367/ https://radiosputnik.ru/20201013/monakhov-1579593848. htmlhttps://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5669774 https://sledcom.ru/news/item/1507416/?type=news https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/gunman-18-who-killed-3-22836031 https://www.pravda.ru/health/1540443-monajov/ (bronchial asthma claim)

[viktortittiforov]

the 2010s sure were a time in my life

[edgepunk]

I think I need to start drawing for myself again bc I fell into the "must draw fast for social media" trap which has been mentally dragging me down

[milfygerard]

did she specifically make 34 versions of TTPD because shes 34 years old

[snailsandstrawberries]

going insane (again) i have an exam in three days and i wanted to start studying and i went through everything we need to know in an hour. AN HOUR. pathetic excuse of a class holy shit

[comas-are-for-sleeping]

i love things that happen because of a specific thing

[stardustedknuckles]

It's been so long since I've had to exist within a group of people consistently over many days and damn, I nearly forgot I was autistic. I found out yesterday that though I get along with almost everyone at work, most of my coworkers thought I was a huge bitch who hated everyone for a little bit (and one still does, which is how this whole thing came up at all). I was bewildered like. No I'm very often dizzy or in a bit of pain and I'm very focused on taking care of the dogs but I'm not - I don't dislike any of you? I've never been mad at you, you guys thought I was mad?? Just an alarming disconnect between the way I see myself and the way I come off to others. I have never once gotten the hang of behaving like a regular person, but it appears that time has taken me from "generally silly person with an offbeat sense of humor who doesn't take things seriously" to "stoic hardass who doesn't like you and thinks you're stupid also." I did not authorize this change. It's throwing me for a loop. I feel like I'm 6 again being told to stop talking over people's heads because I just learned a new big word and I wanted to use and share it. I like assholes with a heart of gold in media. I don't want to be one??

[apopcornkernel]

one day later and now i wonder if i even like him That much or if it only hurt me bc he's the only safe choice i can ever have and if i can never have him i can never have the life i want

[dykehayleywilliams]

i don't know what it is about october that consistently makes it the busiest month of my year 🥴

[medieval-canadian]

welp, i tested positive for covid this morning, lmao. i had to cancel class tomorrow.

hopefully i can gather the energy to record a little lecture or something so that students get some of the background they're hoping for (basically this week was the "how to read middle english" primer/refresher course). overall it's fairly mild, so as long as i don't have a fever on friday, i'm going to go to class (masked, of course) and we can talk about the poems i'm having them read. i'm gonna struggle to be heard through the mask, but alas. we'll have to make do.

other than that, i have two students from my summer course who didn't submit their work by the extended deadline (last friday), which was the very last day i'm technically allowed to accept late work. one of them might?? maybe???? be submitting something by tonight?? she emailed at like 3 in the morning on saturday asking for a couple of extra days. i answered yesterday telling her that if she got something to me by 10pm tonight, then i would make it work (grades are due tomorrow lol), but if not, then she would have to file a petition for a term work extension with the registrar. the other one is... i think?? in the process of submitting such a petition.

i'm just here sitting on my couch surrounded by tissues and trying to get some of my shit together, lol.

[al-mayriti]

okay I LIED (sorta)

[galariangengar]

💭

[phantomrose96]

If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

[miercolaes]

below cut is vero having an existential crisis & requires additional help before doing something drastic.

context : i'll go on a beach trip for a couple of days starting this sunday. and i like to read while on the actual beach. i have found a pdf book but i don't know if my phone would take many hours of reading with the mobile data on. im also thinking of bringing the tablet, but its battery life is worse than phone's battery life + i'd worry leaving the tablet out of my sight even for a couple of hours. if i go with either of these choices, i think i might need an external battery, which isn't that much, but it's still some money spent (~50 usd). on the other hand, i could easily go to the nearest library and look for the book, although i am not sure if i would find it and even if i do, it may not be in its original language (english is not my first language and its a miracle i can spell wednesday correctly). i do love translations, it's how i fell in love with many books especially throughout my childhood but i want to be able to read the og version, written in its og language; that way information isn't lost in translation. so my question is...

[infiniteglitterfall]

know someone who enjoys horror stories? share this one! it's true!

hahahahahahahahahaha aarrggghhhhhhhhhh 3,000,000 deaths due to COVID-19 last year. Globally. Three million. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. The reason people are still worried about COVID is because it has a way of quietly fucking up your body. And the risk is cumulative.

I'm going to say that again: the risk is cumulative.

It's not just that a lot of people get bad long-term effects from it. One in seven or so? Enough that it's kind of the Russian Roulette of diseases. It's also that the more times you get it, the higher that risk becomes. Like if each time you survived Russian Roulette, the empty chamber was removed from the gun entirely. The worst part is that, psychologically, we have the absolute opposite reaction. If we survive something with no ill effects, we assume it's pretty safe. It is really, really hard to override that sense of, "Ok, well, I got it and now I probably have a lot of immunity and also it wasn't that bad." It is not a respiratory disease. Airborne, yes. Respiratory disease, no: not a cold, not a flu, not RSV.

Like measles (or maybe chickenpox?), it starts with respiratory symptoms. And then it moves to other parts of your body. It seems to target the lungs, the digestive system, the heart, and the brain the most.

It also hits the immune system really hard - a lot of people are suddenly more susceptible to completely unrelated viruses. People get brain fog, migraines, forget things they used to know.

(I really, really hate that it can cross the blood-brain barrier. NOTHING SHOULD EVER CROSS THE BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER IT IS THERE FOR A REASON.) Anecdotal examples of this shit are horrifying. I've seen people talk about coworkers who've had COVID five or more times, and now their work... just often doesn't make sense? They send emails that say things like, "Sorry, I didn't mean Los Angeles, I meant Los Angeles."

Or they insist they've never heard of some project that they were actually in charge of a year or two before.

Or their work is just kind of falling apart, and they don't seem to be aware of it.

People talk about how they don't want to get the person in trouble, so their team just works around it. Or they describe neighbors and relatives who had COVID repeatedly, were nearly hospitalized, talked about how incredibly sick they felt at the time... and now swear they've only had it once and it wasn't bad, they barely even noticed it.

(As someone who lived with severe dissociation for most of my life, this is a genuinely terrifying idea to me. I've already spent my whole life being like, "but what if I told them that already? but what if I did do that? what if that did happen to me and I just don't remember?") One of its known effects in the brain is to increase impulsivity and risk-taking, which is real fucking convenient honestly. What a fantastic fucking mutation. So happy for it on that one. Yes, please make it seem less important to wear a mask and get vaccinated. I'm not screaming internally at all now.

I saw a tweet from someone last year whose family hadn't had COVID yet, who were still masking in public, including school.

She said that her son was no kind of an athlete. Solidly bottom middle of the pack in gym.

And suddenly, this year, he was absolutely blowing past all the other kids who had to run the mile. He wasn't running any faster. His times weren't fantastic or anything. It's just that the rest of the kids were worse than him now. For some reason. I think about that a lot. (Like my incredibly active six-year-old getting a cold, and suddenly developing post-viral asthma that looked like pneumonia.

He went back to school the day before yesterday, after being home for a month and using preventative inhalers for almost week.

He told me that it was GREAT - except that he couldn't run as much at recess, because he immediately got really tired. Like how I went outside with him to do some yard work and felt like my body couldn't figure out how to increase breathing and heart rate.

I wasn't physically out of breath, but I felt like I was out of breath. That COVID feeling people describe, of "I'm not getting enough air." Except that I didn't have that problem when I had COVID.) Some people don't observe any long (or medium) term side effects after they have it.

But researchers have found viral reservoirs of COVID-19 in everyone they've studied who had it.

It just seems to hang out, dormant, for... well, longer than we've had an opportunity to observe it, so far.

(I definitely watched that literal horror movie. I think that's an entire genre. The alien dormant under ice in the Arctic.)

(oh hey I don't like that either!!!!!!!!!) All of which is to explain why we should still care about avoiding it, and how it manages to still cause excess deaths. Measuring excess deaths has been a standard tool in public health for a long time.

We know how many people usually die from all different causes, every year. So we can tell if, for example, deaths from heart disease have gone way up in the past three years, and look for reasons. Those are excess deaths: deaths that, four years ago, would not have happened. During the pandemic, excess death rates have been a really important tool. For all sorts of reasons. Like, sometimes people die from COVID without ever getting tested, and the official cause is listed as something else because nobody knows they had COVID. But also, people are dying from cardiovascular illness much younger now.

People are having strokes and heart attacks younger, and more often, than they did before the pandemic started. COVID causes a lot of problems. And some of those problems kill people. And some of them make it easier for other things to kill us. Lung damage from COVID leading to lungs collapsing, or to pneumonia, or to a pulmonary embolism, for example. The Economist built a machine-learning model with a 95% confidence interval that gauges excess death statistics around the world, to tell them what the true toll of the ongoing COVID pandemic has been so far.

Total excess deaths globally in 2023: Three million.

3,000,000.

Official COVID-19 deaths globally so far: Seven million. 7,000,000. Total excess deaths during COVID so far: Thirty-five point two million. 35,200,000.

Five times as many.

That's bad. I don't like that at all. I'm glad last year was less than a tenth of that. I'm not particularly confident about that continuing, though, because last year we started a period of really high COVID transmission. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. Here's their data, and charts you can play with, and links to detailed information on how they did all of this:

Here's a non-paywalled link to it:

https://archive.vn/2024.01.26-012536/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates

Oh: here's a link to where you can buy comfy, effective N95 masks in all sizes:

Those ones are about a buck each after shipping - about $30 for a box of 30. They also have sample packs for a dollar, so you can try a couple of different sizes and styles.

You can wear an N95 mask for about 40 total hours before the effectiveness really drops, so that's like a dollar for a week of wear.

They're also family-owned and have cat-shaped masks and I really love them. These ones are cuter and in a much wider range of colors, prints, and styles, but they're also more expensive; they range from $1.80 to $3 for a mask. ($18-$30 for a box of ten.)

[incorrectbatfam]

Honey, I want you to know, I mean this with love when I say it. We are all going to be fine no matter what happens. Nothing is going to change. If Harris gets elected then Harris gets elected. If Trump gets elected then Trump gets elected. Nothing will change. Your life won't change. If you want to see what will happen if Trump gets elected then look at his last term. He did nothing of importance and if he did, none of it went away while we had Biden. Harris won't do anything of any importance either. Your life won't change. I promise you, you and everyone else will be just fine.

Every time I hear someone say this, I think of this picture:

This is the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus. The ones in white are the members who survived the AIDS epidemic. The rest did not.

I was a teenager when Trump was elected in 2016. I was 16 years old, just beginning to question my sexuality while also supporting my best friend who had come out as trans. The only adult I could trust to talk to about it was my geography teacher. After Trump was elected, corporations had the greenlight to price gouge every imaginable necessity, including the insulin my teacher relied on. He couldn't afford all the payments even with insurance so he started rationing. The last day of school before winter break, I wished him happy holidays, gave him a Christmas card, and never saw him again.

I know you mean well, but I say this in the nicest way possible: you are speaking from a place of luck. Just because you haven't lost anyone or anything as a result of the past Trump administration does not mean everyone had the same experience. I know my experience is not a unique one. I could cite the widely available statistics about abortion restrictions and maternal mortality, or gender-affirming care bans and trans suicides, or the pandemic, anything else we've been seeing when conservatives take power.

A lot of us are right to be scared, either because we've gone through this before or because we stand a real risk of losing something.