#how to fight coronavirus

[tavina-writes]

I am still thinking about this post on the current plight of danmei authors in China. (Which, for what it's worth, is not new.)

And of course, we should condemn the Chinese government for this. This is entirely in their hands and they have been nothing but hideous towards people who have done nothing wrong.

But there is also another part of me, as Chinese-American Diaspora, who is so so tired and furious of people saying "they should emigrate if they have the money" "these authors should just leave their country and go somewhere else!"

Okay, bear with me here: give up everything they have ever known to go somewhere else? Leave behind their family and friends and communities and lifestyles? Where are they going? Erase their histories to go where to live how exactly?

We certainly aren't welcome in the US right now.

We have historically, in fact, been kept out of the US. (Angel Island, Chinese Exclusion Act). We have traditionally been kept from owning property here - leading to laundries and nail salons being associated with Chinese immigrants because we were not allowed to apply for citizenship or own property until the mid 20th century and even later in the United States. We have had long fights over whether the children of Chinese immigrants could be considered to have birthright citizenship. We are having that fight again here and now in 2025.

My parents left China in the early 1990s, when getting a visa into the United States was so difficult that they had only ever heard of one other family doing it. If you ask any Chinese-American you know when their family immigrated, it is likely to be either: very very early or within the last 25 years or less. We are, even now, seeing the current administration specifically target Chinese international student visas - you really think they'll look at other visas for Chinese people, especially queer Chinese people as "okay! you can come to the US!" ?

During 2020 (and beyond), there was a rising wave of anti-Asian (and especially anti-Chinese) sentiment. Especially stunningly: About four-in-ten Chinese adults (39%) say they personally know another Asian person who has been threatened or attacked since the coronavirus outbreak. (Pew Research Center, 2023)

Do you remember when people said that "oh the Chinese people are dying of that disease overseas because they're dirty." back in December of 2019? I remember. We had Chinese international students camping out on the steps of our library holding signs begging people to reconsider - to have sympathy for Wuhan. In late December of 2019 I came out of a bathroom stall to wash my hands and a woman also in that bathroom pressed herself against a wall to avoid me. Would she have had a heart attack if I told her "oh, my family is from Wuhan" ?

During this time, whenever my father went to sell goods in the nearest city, we were afraid for his life. After all, he was an older Chinese-American man and there had been so many attacks on people fitting his description across the country. In the Chinatown less than an hour from where I grew up, there's been repeated efforts from city officials to destroy it (and furthermore, do we look at Chinatowns across the country these days and think "haha it's so funny that all these Asian people live in an ethnic enclave! they just so funny!"). Research article regarding why older Chinese immigrants often stay constrained in Chinatown. The support for older individuals and prevalence of low income residents within Chinatowns has long been understudied even as Chinese-Americans are pushed as a "model minority" who are obviously taking highly skilled jobs from Actual Americans.

We are often always considered foreign, no matter our citizenship. No matter how long we have been here. Visually, people do not assume we are "American." Regardless of nativity, similar shares of U.S.-born Asian adults (48%) and immigrants (54%) have experienced at least one of these three incidents - these incidents are: 1) being told to 'go back to your home country' 2) having your name mispronounced 3) people assuming that you don't speak English. Every time I get into an Uber, they are always shocked to learn that I grew up in state.

Even as our cultural exports grow more and more popular here in the US as Netflix picks up cdramas, and publishing houses pick up cnovels, and gets more and more acceptable to love your hot boy love dramas and books because they're just so hot! Chinese Diaspora fans are being pushed out fandom, and our livelihoods, citizenship, and right to stay in this country are being threatened. America has a great hunger for our silly historical stories and no love for us as people.

My mother is afraid to leave the country. As the only person in our family without US citizenship, she fears that she will never be able to be let back in despite her green card residency because of the current climate. My cousin died just four months ago. She could not attend his funeral. Everyone I know in this community has thought about if they can return to China, and if they can't return to China, where they might go if we can't stay here.

Leave China? Leave China to go where? Certainly not the US in this political climate.

[bitchesgetriches]

{ MASTERPOST } Everything You Need to Know about Repairing Our Busted-Ass World

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Starting from nothing

How To Start at Rock Bottom: Welfare Programs and the Social Safety Net 

How to Save for Retirement When You Make Less Than $30,000 a Year

Ask the Bitches: “Is It Too Late to Get My Financial Shit Together?“

Understanding why people are poor

It’s More Expensive to Be Poor Than to Be Rich

Why Are Poor People Poor and Rich People Rich?

On Financial Discipline, Generational Poverty, and Marshmallows

Bitchtastic Book Review: Hand to Mouth by Linda Tirado

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Coronavirus Reveals America’s Pre-existing Conditions, Part 1: Healthcare, Housing, and Labor Rights

Developing compassion for poor people

The Latte Factor, Poor Shaming, and Economic Compassion

Ask the Bitches: “How Do I Stop Myself from Judging Homeless People?“

The Subjectivity of Wealth, Or: Don’t Tell Me What’s Expensive

A Little Princess: Intersectional Feminist Masterpiece?

If You Can’t Afford to Tip 20%, You Can’t Afford to Dine Out

Correcting income inequality

1 Easy Way All Allies Can Help Close the Gender and Racial Pay Gap

One Reason Women Make Less Money? They’re Afraid of Being Raped and Killed.

Raising the Minimum Wage Would Make All Our Lives Better

Are Unions Good or Bad?

On intersectional social issues:

Reproductive rights

On Pulling Weeds and Fighting Back: How (and Why) to Protect Abortion Rights

How To Get an Abortion 

Blood Money: Menstrual Products for Surviving Your Period While Poor

You Don’t Have to Have Kids

Gender equality

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Our Single Best Piece of Advice for Women (and Men) on International Women’s Day

Bitchtastic Book Review: The Feminist Financial Handbook by Brynne Conroy

Sexual Harassment: How to Identify and Fight It in the Workplace 

Queer issues

Queer Finance 101: Ten Ways That Sexual and Gender Identity Affect Finances

Leaving Home before 18: A Practical Guide for Cast-Offs, Runaways, and Everybody in Between

Racial justice

The Financial Advantages of Being White

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Something Is Wrong in Personal Finance. Here’s How To Make It More Inclusive.

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Youth issues

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Identifying and combatting abuse

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Are You Working on the Next Fyre Festival?: Identifying a Toxic Workplace

Ask the Bitches: “How Do I Say ‘No’ When a Loved One Asks for Money… Again?”

Ask the Bitches: I Was Guilted Into Caring for a Sick, Abusive Parent. Now What?

On mental health:

Understanding mental health issues

How Mental Health Affects Your Finances

Stop Recommending Therapy Like It’s a Magic Bean That’ll Grow Me a Beanstalk to Neurotypicaltown

Bitchtastic Book Review: Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos and Your Big Brain

Ask the Bitches: “How Do I Protect My Own Mental Health While Still Helping Others?”

Coping with mental health issues

{ MASTERPOST } Everything You Need to Know about Self-Care

My 25 Secrets to Successfully Working from Home with ADHD 

Our Master List of 100% Free Mental Health Self-Care Tactics 

On saving the planet:

Changing the system

Don’t Boo, Vote: If You Don’t Vote, No One Can Hear You Scream

Ethical Consumption: How to Pollute the Planet and Exploit Labor Slightly Less

The Anti-Consumerist Gift Guide: I Have No Gift to Bring, Pa Rum Pa Pum Pum

Season 1, Episode 4: “Capitalism Is Working for Me. So How Could I Hate It?”

Coronavirus Reveals America’s Pre-existing Conditions, Part 1: Healthcare, Housing, and Labor Rights 

Coronavirus Reveals America’s Pre-existing Conditions, Part 2: Racial and Gender Inequality 

Shopping smarter

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[literaryvein-reblogs]

Hello! First of all, thank you for the wonderful content! It's a real joy, and an enrichment, food for both the brain and the heart! I was wondering if through your treasures, you could find some writing notes/words/concepts/vocabulary relating to genetic engineering? Like...creating a virus, and a vaccine for it, modifying the virus so it has certain specific effects.... Thank you in advance!

Writing Notes: Virus & Vaccine

References How Viruses Work; Replication Cycle; Mutation, Variants, Strains, Genetically Engineering Viruses; Writing Tips; Creating your Fictional Virus & Vaccine

Virus - an infectious microbe consisting of a segment of nucleic acid (either DNA or RNA) surrounded by a protein coat.

It is a tiny lifeform that is a collection of genes inside a protective shell. Viruses can invade body cells where they multiply, causing illnesses.

It cannot replicate alone; instead, it must infect cells and use components of the host cell to make copies of itself. Often, a virus ends up killing the host cell in the process, causing damage to the host organism.

Well-known examples of viruses causing human disease include AIDS, COVID-19, measles and smallpox. Examples of viruses:

Viruses are even smaller than bacteria and can invade living cells—including bacteria. They may interfere with the host genes, and when they move from host to host, they may take host genes with them.

Bacteriophages (also known as phages)—viruses that infect and kill bacteria.

Size differential between virus and bacterium

Viruses are measured in nanometers (nm).

They lack the cellular structure of bacteria, being just particles of protein and genetic material.

How Viruses Work

Viruses use an organism’s cells to survive and reproduce.

They travel from one organism to another.

Viruses can make themselves into a particle called a virion.

This allows the virus to survive temporarily outside of a host organism. When it enters the host, it attaches to a cell. A virus then takes over the cell’s reproductive mechanisms for its own use and creates more virions.

The virions destroy the cell as they burst out of it to infect more cells.

Viral shedding - when an infected person releases the virus into the environment by coughing, speaking, touching a surface, or shedding skin.

Viruses also can be shed through blood, feces, or bodily fluids.

Virus Replication Cycle

While the replication cycle of viruses can vary from virus to virus, there is a general pattern that can be described, consisting of 5 steps:

Attachment – the virion attaches to the correct host cell.

Penetration or Viral Entry – the virus or viral nucleic acid gains entrance into the cell.

Synthesis – the viral proteins and nucleic acid copies are manufactured by the cells’ machinery.

Assembly – viruses are produced from the viral components.

Release – newly formed virions are released from the cell.

Mutations, Variants, and Strains

Not all mutations cause variants and strains. Below are definitions that explain how mutations, variants, and strains differ.

Mutation - errors in the replication of the virus’s genetic code; can be beneficial to the virus, deleterious to the virus, or neutral

Variants - viruses with these mutations are called variants; the Delta and Omicron variants are examples of coronavirus mutations that cause different symptoms from the original infection

Strains - variants that have different physical properties are called strains; these strains may have different behaviors or mechanisms for infection or reproduction

Genetically Engineering Viruses

Using reverse genetics, the sequence of a viral genome can be identified, including that of its different strains and variants.

This enables scientists to identify sequences of the virus that enable it to bind to a receptor, as well as those regions that cause it to be so virulent.

Vaccine - a special preparation of substances that stimulate an immune response, used for inoculation

Vaccines & Fighting Viruses with Viruses

Common pathogenic viruses can be genetically modified to make them less pathogenic, such that their virulent properties are diminished but can still be recognized by the immune system to produce a robust immune response against. They are described as live attenuated.

This is the basis of many successful vaccines and is a better alternative than traditional vaccine development which typically includes heat-mediated disabling of viruses that tend to be poorer in terms of immunogenicity.

Viruses can also be genetically modified to ‘fight viruses’ by boosting immune cells to make more effective antibodies, especially where vaccines fail. Where vaccines fail, it is often due to the impaired antibody production by B-cells, even though antibodies can be raised against such viruses – including HIV, EBV, RSV & cold-viruses.

Related Articles: Modified virus used to kill cancer cells ⚜ Genetic Engineering ⚜ Engineering Bacterial Viruses ⚜ Benefits of Viruses

A Few Writing Tips

As more writers look to incorporate infectious diseases into their work, there are quite a few things writers should keep in mind:

Don’t anthropomorphize. Really easy to do, but scientifically wrong. Viruses don’t want to kill you; bacteria don’t want to infect you; parasites don’t want to make your blood curdle. None of these things are big enough to be sentient to want to do anything. They just do it (or don’t do it).

Personal protective equipment. This includes wearing gloves, lab coats, safety glasses, and tying your hair back if it’s long. It is the same as Edna Mode’s “no capes.” Flowing hair looks cool all the way to the explosive ball of flames that engulfs someone’s head.

Viruses are small. You can’t see viruses down a normal microscope—they need a special microscope called an electron microscope. These are highly specialized and take a long time to make the preparations to be able to see the virus. Normally viruses are detected by inference—measuring part of them using an assay that can amplify tiny amounts of material, for example PCR.

Viruses don’t really cause zombie apocalypses. 

Vaccines work. But they take time. The best vaccine in the world will still only prevent infections two weeks after it is given. Drugs are quicker, but still take some time. But the good news is an infection is not going to kill you (or turn you into a zombie) quickly, so they both have time to work.

Scientists use viruses as a vector to introduce healthy genes into a patient’s cells:

Your Fictional Virus & Vaccine

When creating your own fictional virus, research further on the topic and consider choosing a specific one as your basis/inspiration.

Here's one resource. For some of them, you'll need a subscription to access, but those that are available give you a good overview of the virus, as well as treatment options.

You can do the same for creating your fictional vaccine:

Here's one resource. And here's one on vaccine developments.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 ⚜ Writing Notes & References

Lastly, here's an interesting article on how science fiction can be a valuable tool to communicate widely around pandemic, whilst also acting as a creative space in which to anticipate how we may handle similar future events.

Thanks so much for your kind words, you're so lovely! Hope this helps with your writing. Would love to read your work if it does :)

[mariacallous]

For Sander van der Linden, misinformation is personal.

As a child in the Netherlands, the University of Cambridge social psychologist discovered that almost all of his mother’s family had been executed by the Nazis during the Second World War. He became absorbed by the question of how so many people came to support the ideas of someone like Adolf Hitler, and how they might be taught to resist such influence.

While studying psychology at graduate school in the mid-2010s, van der Linden came across the work of American researcher William McGuire. In the 1960s, stories of brainwashed prisoners-of-war during the Korean War had captured the zeitgeist, and McGuire developed a theory of how such indoctrination might be prevented. He wondered whether exposing soldiers to a weaker form of propaganda might have equipped them to fight off a full attack once they’d been captured. In the same way that army drills prepared them for combat, a pre-exposure to an attack on their beliefs could have prepared them against mind control. It would work, McGuire argued, as a cognitive immunizing agent against propaganda—a vaccine against brainwashing.

Traditional vaccines protect us by feeding us a weaker dose of pathogen, enabling our bodies’ immune defenses to take note of its appearance so we’re better equipped to fight the real thing when we encounter it. A psychological vaccine works much the same way: Give the brain a weakened hit of a misinformation-shaped virus, and the next time it encounters it in fully-fledged form, its “mental antibodies” remember it and can launch a defense.

Van der Linden wanted to build on McGuire’s theories and test the idea of psychological inoculation in the real world. His first study looked at how to combat climate change misinformation. At the time, a bogus petition was circulating on Facebook claiming there wasn’t enough scientific evidence to conclude that global warming was human-made, and boasting the signatures of 30,000 American scientists (on closer inspection, fake signatories included Geri Halliwell and the cast of M*A*S*H). Van der Linden and his team took a group of participants and warned them that there were politically motivated actors trying to deceive them—the phony petition in this case. Then they gave them a detailed takedown of the claims of the petition; they pointed out, for example, Geri Halliwell’s appearance on the list. When the participants were later exposed to the petition, van der Linden and his group found that people knew not to believe it.

The approach hinges on the idea that by the time we’ve been exposed to misinformation, it’s too late for debunking and fact-checking to have any meaningful effect, so you have to prepare people in advance—what van der Linden calls “prebunking.” An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

When he published the findings in 2016, van der Linden hadn’t anticipated that his work would be landing in the era of Donald Trump’s election, fake news, and post-truth; attention on his research from the media and governments exploded. Everyone wanted to know, how do you scale this up?

Van der Linden worked with game developers to create an online choose-your-own-adventure game called Bad News, where players can try their hand at writing and spreading misinformation. Much like a broadly protective vaccine, if you show people the tactics used to spread fake news, it fortifies their inbuilt bullshit detectors.

But social media companies were still hesitant to get on board; correcting misinformation and being the arbiters of truth is not part of their core business model. Then people in China started getting sick with a mysterious flulike illness.

The coronavirus pandemic propelled the threat of misinformation to dizzying new heights. Van der Linden began working with the British government and bodies like the World Health Organization and the United Nations to create a more streamlined version of the game specifically revolving around Covid, which they called GoViral! They created more versions, including one for the 2020 US presidential election, and another to prevent extremist recruitment in the Middle East. Slowly, Silicon Valley came around.

A collaboration with Google has resulted in a campaign on YouTube in which the platform plays clips in the ad section before the video starts, warning viewers about misinformation tropes like scapegoating and false dichotomies and drawing examples from Family Guy and Star Wars. A study with 20,000 participants found that people who viewed the ads were better able to spot manipulation tactics; the feature is now being rolled out to hundreds of millions of people in Europe.

Van der Linden understands that working with social media companies, who have historically been reluctant to censor disinformation, is a double-edged sword. But, at the same time, they’re the de facto guardians of the online flow of information, he says, “and so if we’re going to scale the solution, we need their cooperation.” (A downside is that they often work in unpredictable ways. Elon Musk fired the entire team who was working on pre-bunking at Twitter when he became CEO, for instance.)

This year, van der Linden wrote a book on his research, titled Foolproof: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity. Ultimately, he hopes this isn’t a tool that stays under the thumb of third-party companies; his dream is for people to inoculate one another. It could go like this: You see a false narrative gaining traction on social media, you then warn your parents or your neighbor about it, and they’ll be pre-bunked when they encounter it. “This should be a tool that’s for the people, by the people,” van der Linden says.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Leyland Cecco at The Guardian:

A lone figure takes to the stage, a giant maple leaf flag rippling on a screen behind him as he gingerly approaches the microphone. “I’m not a lumberjack, or a fur trader,” he tells the crowd. “I have a prime minister, not a president. I speak English and French, not American. And I pronounce it ‘about’ – not ‘a boot’.” The crowd, indifferent at first, grows increasingly enthusiastic as the man works his way through a catalogue of Canadian stereotypes, passing from diffidence to defiance before the climactic cry: “Canada is the second largest landmass! The first nation of hockey! And the best part of North America! My name is Joe! And I am Canadian!” The ad, for Molson Canadian beer, was immensely popular when it aired in 2000. And now, with Canada’s identity and sovereignty under threat, it has roared back into the public consciousness. In recent weeks, Canadian patriotism has surged in response to Donald Trump’s suggestion that the US could annex its northern neighbour. His threats have prompted an outpouring of disbelief and defiance, but – in a very Canadian way – they has also revived questions over the complexities of national identity. Trump began his campaign of diplomatic trolling before he had even assumed office, questioning Canada’s viability as a nation, suggesting that it could become the 51st American state, and deriding the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, as a “governor”. In response, Canadians have taken to acts of patriotism, small and large: one pilot flew his small plane in the shape of a maple leaf; sports fans have booed US teams; hats insisting “Canada is not for sale” have gone viral; consumers have pledged to buy only Canadian-made products – a pledge skewered in a viral sketch in which one shopper berates another for buying American ketchup.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked “We’re in a trade war, you traitor!” “It’s been absolutely crazy and overwhelming,” said Dylan Lobo, who runs MadeInCa, a website that catalogues products made in-country. “We’re struggling to keep up with all the listings. People are really frustrated and they want to find a way to support Canadian and buy Canadian.” Politicians, aware of a looming election, have wrapped themselves in the flag. And in a show of bipartisan unity, five former prime ministers have called for Canadian unity. “We all agree on one thing: Canada, the true north, strong and free, the best country in the world, is worth celebrating and fighting for,” the leaders wrote in a statement. A recent poll found pro-Canadian sentiment has surged in recent weeks – with the biggest leap towards patriotism found in francophone Quebec, a region historically ambivalent towards federal patriotism. The shift marks a dramatic rebound from 2020, when the divisive policies of the coronavirus pandemic shifted how many Canadians viewed the flag – especially after the maple leaf was appropriated by the by far-right Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa. At the same time, new stress has been put on Canadian national identity amid growing recognition of the historical injustices perpetrated against Indigenous peoples. Statues of monarchs and founding statesmen have been pulled down, and buildings renamed amid a heated national discussion about the legacy of colonial rule.

Donald Trump’s comments calling for the annexation of Canada have ignited a fury like no other across Canada, and even Québec (which prefers to show support for its province rather than Canada as a whole) is uniting to show support for Canada.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Endothelial inflammation in COVID-19 - Published Nov 28, 2024

The vascular endothelium forms a crucial interface between tissues and the blood stream and maintains normal blood flow (1). In its homeostatic state, the endothelium resists blood clotting, vasoconstriction, and inflammation and maintains selective barrier functions. This tightly regulated suite of properties can shift rapidly to unleash a series of functions vital to stanch blood loss from wounds or mobilize innate and adaptive immune defenses to repair injury and fight pathogenic microorganisms. But these defensive actions of endothelial cells can, if overexuberant, aggravate disease. Infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV-2) has highlighted how altered endothelial functions contribute to multiorgan health effects during the acute phase of COVID-19 and potentially to the longer-term consequences associated with Long Covid.

The resting endothelial cell has multiple mechanisms that resist thrombosis (blood clotting) and favor fibrinolysis (clot clearance), including anticoagulant heparan sulfate proteoglycans (1) (see the figure). Nitric oxide and prostacyclin produced by the endothelium combat platelet aggregation and promote vasodilation. The cell surface protein thrombomodulin binds thrombin and paradoxically confers anticoagulant properties on this usually procoagulant molecule by enabling thrombin to activate protein C. This protein, in turn, proteolytically inactivates coagulation factors Va and VIIIa. The resting endothelium further promotes fibrinolysis by expressing plasminogen activators on its surface.

Endothelial function can quickly switch from the homeostatic state to a potentially pathogenic defense posture (see the figure). In response to proinflammatory cytokines, released in response to viral sepsis, the endothelium can produce tissue factor, a potent procoagulant, and plasminogen activator inhibitor–1 (PAI-1), an inhibitor of blood clot breakdown. Many endothelial cells release von Willebrand factor, a key mediator of thrombus formation. Proinflammatory cytokines also stimulate endothelial cells to increase their own production of cytokines and to express adhesion molecules that bind leukocytes as well as chemoattractant chemokines that beckon the adherent inflammatory cells to traverse the endothelium.

Pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2, which presumably first encounter respiratory epithelial cells, elicit an initial burst of cytokine release, including the proinflammatory interleukin-1 (IL-1) and interferons. Local phagocytes and the neighboring extensive pulmonary endothelial cell network amplify this cytokine release. The initial wave of IL-1 can induce the production of large amounts of IL-6 by many cell types. IL-6, in turn, instigates the acute phase response in hepatocytes, augmenting the production of fibrinogen (the immediate precursor of blood clots) and stimulating local endothelial production of PAI-1.

In diseases such as COVID-19, the early onset of fever indicates that IL-1 is acting on the hypothalamic thermoregulatory center. Thus, fever provides a clinical indicator of the systemic cytokine storm that can flip homeostatic functions of the endothelium to properties that promote thrombus accumulation and inflammation in many organs, even in early phases of the disease (2). In COVID-19 and other forms of severe sepsis, the endothelial barrier can become leaky, resulting in extravasation of fluid and blood constituents, notably into the lung’s gas exchange spaces (3). Instead of the low leukocyte trafficking in the homeostatic state, the inflamed endothelium expresses adhesion molecules for white blood cells, and local bursts of chemoattractants can direct the migration of inflammatory cells into tissues such as the lung, impairing oxygenation or impairing gas exchange. Inflammation can further cause vasoconstriction. In the presence of superoxide anion that is produced by activated leukocytes, the endogenous endothelial dilator nitric oxide can form the highly pro-oxidant species peroxynitrite, thereby propagating tissue damage. The potent vasoconstrictor endothelin produced by endothelial cells can also promote inflammation.

By disrupting normal endothelial functions, thrombosis can complicate many severe infections, including SARS-CoV-2 infection. The early and consistent elevation of D-dimer, a product of fibrin breakdown, and the correlation of its plasma concentrations to poor outcomes in COVID-19, support a systemic and ongoing activation of coagulation during the disease. COVID-19 can drive increased clot accumulation through changes to the endothelial cell surface and contents of the blood. In addition, activated polymorphonuclear leukocytes (also known as granulocytes) can undergo a specialized form of cell death that forms neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). NETs at the endothelial surface can promote thrombosis by entrapping platelets and fibrin and activating the contact coagulation pathway.

During the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, cases of ischemic strokes were attributed to the obstruction of arteries that feed the brain. This complication represents an example of thrombosis of large arteries (4). In addition, microscopic postmortem examinations of the heart, kidney, and lungs in individuals who succumbed to COVID-19 have revealed widespread thrombosis in microvessels and evidence of NET formation (5, 6). These findings indicate that thrombosis contributes to multiorgan system failure in this disease by impairing local blood flow. Myocardial injury in COVID-19, affecting up to a third of hospitalized patients, can arise from such microvascular blood clots and can include vasomotor disorders that affect smaller arteries, increased oxygen demand owing to fever and tachycardia (rapid heartbeat), decreased coronary artery blood flow, and even direct infection of cardiomyocytes by SARS-CoV-2 (7). Venous thrombosis can also complicate COVID-19 (8) and is evident in up to 20% of patients. Clots in veins can travel to pulmonary arteries and provoke pulmonary embolism (9). Both microvascular blood clots and emboli in larger pulmonary arteries also contribute to the morbidity of COVID-19. Given the frequency of pneumonia in SARS-CoV-2 infection, the decreased gas exchange owing to concomitant pulmonary thromboembolic disease can contribute to worsened clinical outcomes.

Considerable interest in the long-term consequences of SARS-CoV-2 infection has emerged (10). Resolution and healing of acute inflammation can cause fibrosis in organs, including the lungs, kidneys, and heart. Magnetic resonance imaging indicates edema and fibrosis in many individuals recovering from COVID-19. Studies show impaired myocardial blood flow capacity persisting for more than 4 months in more than 40% of individuals who have recovered from COVID-19 compared with contemporaneous controls (11). Derangements in autonomic cardiovascular control resembling postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which is characterized by inappropriate rapid heart action upon standing, can also affect people with Long Covid.

Endothelial function in health and disease In its resting state, the vascular endothelium promotes homeostasis through multiple mechanisms that resist blood clotting, vasoconstriction, and inflammation. Injury or infection [and their associated damage- and pathogen-associated molecular patterns ( DAMPs and PAMPs)] can trigger a rapid shift to an activated state to stem blood loss and mobilize immune defenses. Overactivation can lead to endothelial dysfunction and aggravate disease, as observed with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection.

Some individuals who have had COVID-19 report cognitive impairment, commonly referred to as “brain fog.” According to recent mouse studies (12), inflammatory activation within the central nervous system, mediated by the cytokine chemokine 11, may lead to central nervous system abnormalities that can impair cognition. Long-term consequences may accrue from multiple acute infectious processes caused by viruses or bacteria. These observations raise concerns about continued cardiovascular complications, such as impaired cardiovascular reserve and the persistence of microscopic fibrotic areas in the heart muscle that could become substrates for arrythmias in the long term.

What are the therapeutic implications of systemic inflammatory activation and dysregulated coagulation and thrombosis in SARS-CoV-2 infection? Given the evidence for a high prevalence of thromboembolic disease in vessels of all types, anticoagulant and/or antiplatelet therapy might be expected to improve outcomes. Yet, the current clinical evidence suggests the contrary: Antiplatelet therapy (with aspirin or a class of drugs known as P2Y12 inhibitors) confers no net benefit while augmenting bleeding risk (13). Likewise, anticoagulant administration has not improved outcomes and is also associated with increased bleeding risk in acute patients. Bleeding risks counterbalance the potential beneficial effects of these interventions. Thus, current practice guidelines recommend “prophylactic” or low-dose anticoagulation with heparin products only for hospitalized patients.

Because proinflammatory cytokines likely mediate much of the systemic inflammation in advanced COVID-19, many studies have evaluated anticytokine therapies. Glucocorticoids, such as dexamethasone, have proven useful in treating acute COVID-19. Neutralizing IL-6 has also received considerable attention (14). Indeed, the case of anti–IL-6 receptor therapy with the monoclonal antibody tocilizumab provides an instructive example of the confusion stemming from the rush to validate treatments for advanced COVID-19 (15). Despite glimmers of efficacy in retrospective observational or nonrandomized evaluations, the prospective randomized trials of tocilizumab have provided mixed results. Current guidance recommends anti–IL-6 therapy or baricitinib—an inhibitor of Janus kinase 1 and 2 implicated in COVID-19–associated inflammation—only in severely ill COVID-19 patients. Anti-inflammatory interventions may impair host defenses, providing a possible explanation for the lack of clear benefit of some such therapies.

The complications of SARS-CoV-2 infection highlight the key role of endothelial functions in health and disease. Unfortunately, the rush to respond to the public health emergency led to a proliferation of observational and nonrandomized studies that sowed more confusion than illumination. This experience should inform responses to future public health emergencies, encouraging a more concerted fashion. Coordinated public health messaging and deployment of proven preventive measures would limit the need for expensive advanced therapies with mixed results regarding efficacy and would lessen potential adverse effects when we confront the next pandemic.

Acknowledgments P.L. acknowledges support from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (1R01HL134892 and 1R01HL163099-01); the American Heart Association (18CSA34080399); the RRM Charitable Fund; and the Simard Fund.

References and Notes 1 M. A. Gimbrone Jr., G. García-Cardeña, Circ. Res. 118, 620 (2016).

2 P. Libby, T. Lüscher, Eur. Heart J. 41, 3038 (2020).

3 S. Xiong et al., J. Clin. Invest. 130, 3684 (2020).

4 S. Nannoni et al., Int. J. Stroke 16, 137 (2021).

5 M. Ackermann et al., N. Engl. J. Med. 383, 120 (2020).

6 J. E. Johnson et al., Am. J. Pathol. 192, 112 (2022).

7 P. Libby, J. Am. Coll. Cardiol. Basic Transl. Sci. 5, 537 (2020).

8 A. Di Minno et al., Semin. Thromb. Hemost. 46, 763 (2020).

9 Ò. Miró et al., Eur. Heart J. 42, 3127 (2021).

10 T. J. Gluckman et al., J. Am. Coll. Cardiol. 79, 1717 (2022).

11 B. Weber et al., J. Am. Heart Assoc. 11, e022010 (2022).

12 V. Venkataramani, F. Winkler, N. Engl. J. Med. 387, 1813 (2022).

13 J. M. Connors, P. M. Ridker, JAMA 327, 1234 (2022).

14 J. B. Parr, JAMA Intern. Med. 181, 12 (2021).

15 E. J. Rubin et al., N. Engl. J. Med. 384, 1564 (2021).

[luna-rainbow]

Hello, hello, long rant incoming

When I reposted this on AO3, I had intentionally minimised tagging and summary because I wanted to archive it rather than attract readers. I didn’t even tag it Steve/Bucky because there just wasn’t enough mention of Bucky in it. Importantly, P*ggy was not tagged.

The user calls themselves “Rebuttal” and their only work is another essay rebutting someone else’s post on Civil War, which they had to post separately because I guess the OP blocked them. So we have a serial offender with too much time on their hands going around to directly suck the joy out of other people’s fandom experience.

They begin with this:

Although I don't particularly care for Steve's ending, this essay does not offer support for a different one.

*Inhales* Honey, can you please Google analytical essay and narrative essay before you unload your drivel on other people? This "essay" is a fic - while there's some character analysis, the emotive language should be sufficient clue that the focus is the story. It’s like reading The Fifth Elephant then writing to Sir Pratchett to argue his “essay on Discworld” is factually incorrect because it offers no support for the idea that the Earth is flat.

Steve is self-sufficient. He is not shown as requiring Bucky as foundational to his being. (…) We do know Steve was willing and expecting to go it alone after Sarah's death and that he is fully confident in his own abilities; he can "do this all day." Bucky's offer at the apartment earns a small smile, not a great overcoming.

I enjoyed how you, at multiple points in your essay, pick at certain turns of (evocative) phrasing while ignoring actual canon mentions. Explain why you deliberately omitted my mention of the canon phrase "Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky". Sure, Sarah was Steve's touchstone, but Steve's words clearly indicated that upon Sarah's death, that touchstone role shifted to Bucky.

Steve's "I can do this all day" is said a total of 4 times during all the movies. Each time he says it to a bully (one time he specifically says it to protect Bucky), and never in relation to his emotional turmoil. Also just, factually, he never references "I can do this all day" when Sarah dies can you be real for a sec.

It's mighty rich of you to say a grieving person who had JUST BURIED HIS SOLE LIVING RELATIVE that a) "he is willing to do it alone" - I can guarantee no one who has lost their sole beloved family member feels "willing" in that situation; and b) downplaying the smile that took all of Steve's energy to muster. All I can conclude is you know nothing of grief. (And since you love the word "disservice" so much - your interpretation of the scene is a fucking disservice to CEvans' acting.)

Steve's choice to go to war has nothing to do with Bucky. Steve has tried five times to enlist and stated his reasons, which have nothing to do with Bucky and everything to do with not liking bullies.

Because, you know, saying “I want to join the 107th cos I’m gay for my best friend” is going to go down real well in the 1940s military *snerks*

Can you get your head out of your ass for one minute and consider that people make decisions based on multiple factors? By acknowledging that Bucky is an important factor in Steve wanting to join the war DOES NOT MINIMISE STEVE'S MORAL COMMITMENT TO FIGHT BULLIES.

Steve is also not aghast at hearing Bucky's assignment. - Back this up.

Bucky does not believe in pre-serum Steve as much as pre-serum Steve believes in himself. - Right. *In Bucky’s tired voice* Because simply ~*♫~believing in yourself~*♫~ is going to stop you getting killed. This is a fucking war, not a back alley. Do you know the death rate for US soldiers in WW2? 1 in 40. For perspective, the death rate from coronavirus is currently sitting at 1 in 70.

Whether Bucky went to war or not, Steve wanted to go. - Again, back your ass-umptions up.

Steve was told Bucky was dead. He was going to try to rescue the rest of the 107th. Again, to suggest that Steve's courageous act is about Bucky is a disservice to Steve.

So not only do you remember fuck all about the movie where it doesn’t involve your fave, you apparently remember fuck all about the scenes where YOUR FAVE APPEARS.

P*ggy: “What do you plan to do, walk to Austria?” Steve: “If that’s what it takes.” P*ggy: “You heard the Colonel. Your friend is most likely dead.” Steve: “You don’t know that.”

NOW LOOK THOSE WORDS IN THE EYES AND TELL ME HIS RESCUE MISSION IS NOT ABOUT BUCKY.

Also, Steve wanting to rescue his best friend is a "disservice" to his character? Condolences to your friends and your character, I guess.

It is strange to ignore Steve's interactions with people other Bucky. Okay here we go, we’re finally getting to why this steaming trash heap landed in my inbox. It's Peggy who - I knew it. I fucking knew it. Of course it came from someone who likes Miss I-need-to-make-everything-about-me - appreciated pre-serum Steve at the flagpole - Oh you mean the appreciation she showed by not uttering a single word to him?

Peggy and Erskine supported pre-serum Steve's drive to do his part when Bucky did not. It seems truer to say that they more likely "kept Steve afloat" during his basic training, of which Bucky had no part.

Hold on. *walks off to cackle* *walks back, wheezing*. P*ggy kept Steve afloat? Miss-never-said-a-single-word-to-Steve-P*ggy, “supported” Steve during his basic training??

Again, I urge you to actually watch CATFA, where *checks notes* your fave has her biggest movie role. AFTER STEVE FINISHES BASIC TRAINING, the two of them sit in a car and exchange the infamous lines:

P*ggy: “You have no idea how to talk to a woman, do you?” Steve: “I think this is the longest conversation I’ve had with one.”

They have, by their own admission, not had a conversation before this, so which bull’s ass did you pull the “P*ggy kept Steve afloat during his basic training” shit out of?

There is nothing in the scenes to suggest he finds it a great miracle. The whole assumption of Steve's reaction seems to be a Bucky-centric projection rather than Steve-centric.

No, honey, I think you are just blinded by your Bucky hate. You looked at a scene where 2 characters (including your fave) claimed that Bucky is no longer alive, and Steve himself said, "I thought you were dead" - and Bucky was, against all odds and expectations of at least 3 different characters, found alive...and said, NAH NAH NAH NAH there's nothing here! There's nothing~here~to~suggest~it's a miracle.

Honestly I think you're the one living in a different plane of projection.

When Steve awakens in the future, his line to Fury is "I had a date." With Peggy, not Bucky.

Pfft he said “I had a date”, not "I had a date with P*ggy". So your interpretation is just as invalid.

And just, realistically, do you really think Steve is deluded enough to expect he’d wake up in time for a dance? And...do you really think Steve is desperate enough that he'd go for a woman who blasted him with live rounds for locking lips with another woman? When in your own words you said he hates bullies?

We do not know what Steve thought as he died, so saying he is content with death is not supported.

How about this -- "we do not know what Steve thought as he died, so saying he is not content with death is not supported". It’s my conjecture against yours and you’ve come onto my turf to be a presumptuous prick.

He has Peggy and Natasha. To ignore these two relationships seems to do a disservice to both characters.

Ah yes, the great relationship with P*ggy, who in 5 minutes of her screen time is characterised by: 1) mocking Steve as “dramatic” when he asks for guidance, and 2) her florid delirium in which he had to pull the emotional labour to placate her, and 3) her being grateful that she's led a great life without Steve.

If oldwoman!P*ggy was such an important relationship to Steve, he wouldn't have lamented to Natasha that "it's not easy finding someone with shared experience".

If there is any lesson Steve should learn in the modern day, it is that Steve sacrifices and Bucky leaves. Once involuntarily with the Snap, but twice voluntarily.

WHO THE FUCK HURT YOU AND MESSED UP YOUR BRAIN. I don't know how you can look at those scenes and pretend that the sole victim is Steve.

(Actually I can, because it's a common refrain from certain shit!stans who can't deal with the idea of Bucky being morally good)

Bucky sacrificed his own freedom and lived time in order to protect other people from getting hurt. And Bucky being involuntarily "Snapped" only counts as "Steve's sacrifice"?? The one who actually dies/gets Snapped isn't making a sacrifice? My gods the logic in this one is strong. (Also by referring to Bucky's death as Steve's sacrifice you have inadvertently acknowledged just how important Bucky is to him but I guess that flew over your head like the rest of this story)

It also ignores that Steve lived five years without all of those people. He had accepted the loss and changed into someone they would never truly know or understand.

Mate…

Do you hear yourself…

YOU LITERALLY WROTE THE COUNTERARGUMENT TO YOUR ENTIRE ESSAY.

Steve lived TWELVE YEARS WITHOUT YOUNG P*GGY. He had ACCEPTED THE LOSS (although, in my mind, it's really no big loss) and BOTH OF THEM HAD CHANGED INTO COMPLETELY UNRECOGNISABLE PEOPLE, not to mention they never truly knew or understood each other to begin with. So if your logic is that Steve has changed too much in 5 years to be around his old friends, why the fuck would he want to be around a woman he last saw 12 years ago and who he knew got an entire happy married life with another man. Eww.

I mean if NTR is your kink that's fine but no need to flaunt that on my turf.

The fun thing about fandom is that canon is open to different interpretations. You could read the tavern scene to say P*ggy is inviting Steve to be her right partner, just as I could point out that Steve’s pointed silence is a resounding rejection of that invitation.

But there is incorrect fandom etiquette, and that’s when you stomp into an innocuous narrative musing and start a ship war.

And I beg of you to learn another word from "disservice".

(The whole pile of horse shit for anyone needing to have their blood boiled)

[meret118]

COVID isn’t just spreading like wildfire through the Olympic Village in Paris — we are undergoing surges across the globe, with the World Health Organization tracking steep rises in infections in 84 countries. After more than four years fighting this thing, it is still knocking us out.

In some parts of the U.S., the amount of COVID is so high that experts are claiming this summer surge is on par with winter waves of the virus. But none of this should be unexpected at this point. This is no longer the “novel” coronavirus that once terrified people with its unpredictability. We know how it behaves, with surges in both summer and winter, and we know how to fight against it — yet our apparent strategy at the moment is to pretend it doesn’t exist at all, even when it swipes us off our feet.

. . .

Deaths aren’t the only concerning metric, of course. Sometimes a COVID infection is asymptomatic, while at other times, the symptoms last for months or years or never fully go away. Patients call this long COVID and public health experts have described it as a mass disabling event. Lyles isn’t just lucky he won a bronze medal — he’ll be lucky if he doesn’t experience months of headaches, lung issues or extreme fatigue that never goes away.Yet long COVID is rarely factored into discussions about this pandemic, even when kids get it. Instead, it’s treated as if infections are merely a mild cold at this point.

. . .

Millions of patients can attest that COVID is anything but mild — and it's definitely not the flu. The SARS-CoV-2 virus can worm its way into nearly every part of our bodies, trashing our immune system and damaging our organs. We tend to think of the disease as a respiratory problem, given all the coughs and sniffles it produces, but it’s really more of a vascular disease, impacting any system that relies on blood vessels. That can include damage to the brain, which can manifest in symptoms like long-term cognitive impairment and Parkinson’s disease.

--------

I was absolutely appalled he knew he had covid, but was out there without a mask hugging people. Incredibly fucking selfish.

[domoralactsmvmt]

Reading List (in progress)

Feel free to contact me with suggestions to add, or reblog with your own:

Books:

Alexander Michelle: The New Jim Crow

Carol Anderson: One Person, No Vote

Carol Anderson: White Rage

Azeem Rafiq: It's not Banter; It's Racism

Erica Armstrong Dunbar: Never Caught

Slavoj Žižek: Against Progress

James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time

Robin DiAngelo: White Fragility

Ibram X. Kendi: How to Be an Antiracist

George Lakey: How We Win

Kiese Laymon: Heavy

Michie, Feinstein, Rogers & Corbyn: Monstrous Anger of the Guns

Crystal Fleming: How to be Less Stupid About Race

Walter Johnson: The Broken Heart of America

Heather McGhee: The Sum of Us

Khalil Gibran Muhammad: The Condemnation of Blackness

Tanuro, Wilder, Achcar, Hannah and Fortune: Resisting Trumpism

Clara Zetkin: Fighting Fascism: How to Struggle and How to Win

Leon Trotsky: Fascism - What it is and How to Fight it

Leon Trotsky: The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany

John Foot: Blood and Power - The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism

Hope & Mullen: The Black Anti-Fascist Tradition - Fighting back from lynching to abolition

Richard Rothstein: The Color of Law

Glenn Singleton: Courageous Conversations About Race

Cornel West: Race Matters

Isabel Wilkerson: Caste

Williams & Blaine: Charleston Syllabus

Derald Wing Sue: Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence

Articles: -Hannah-Jones, Nikole. (2019). The 1619 Project. The New York Times Magazine. -Coates, Ta-Nehisi. (2014). The Case for Reparations. The Atlantic. -DiAngelo, Robin. (2017). Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism. Huffington Post. -McIntosh, Peggy. (1989). White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible -Knapsack. Peace and Freedom. -Serwer, Adam. (2020). The Coronavirus Was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who Was Dying. The Atlantic. -Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem. (2020). Don’t Understand the Protests? What You're Seeing is People Pushed to the Edge. Los Angeles Times. -Hinton, Elizabeth. (2020). The Minneapolis Uprising in Context. Boston Review.

Podcasts: -Hannah-Jones, Nikole. 1619. The New York Times. -Muhammad, Khalil Gibran and Ben Austen. Some of My Best Friends Are. Pushkin. -Carroll, Rebecca. Come Through with Rebecca Carroll. WNYC Studios. -Biewen, John. Seeing White. Scene On Radio. -Raghuveera, Nikhil and Erica Licht. Untying Knots. SoundCloud. -Moyo, Thoko. A historic crossroads for systemic racism and policing in America. PolicyCast. Featuring Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Erica Chenoweth.

If you need help getting your hands on any materials, please don't hesitate to reach out to me or another trusted person with inter-library access.

[beardedmrbean]

JERUSALEM (AP) — An American biochemist whose research has helped scientists make inroads into treating coronavirus and HIV has won this year’s Wolf Prize, a prestigious Israeli award in the arts and sciences.

Pamela Björkman of the California Institute of Technology won the prize for “offering new hope in the fight against infectious diseases,” the Wolf Fund, which awards the prize, said Monday.

Björkman’s research “unlocked the secrets of how the immune system identifies and battles pathogens, developing game changing approaches to combat some of humanity’s most formidable viral enemies,” the fund said.

Eight others also received the state-funded prize, which has been awarded annually for 47 years. Many of the award winners have gone on to receive Nobel prizes.

Björkman grew up in Oregon and studied at the University of Oregon, Harvard and Stanford before moving to Caltech to begin teaching in 1989. Her research focuses on how the immune system identifies invading pathogens. She has broken ground, the fund said, in how scientists understand T-cell recognition and immunization strategies for HIV. T cells are white blood cells that help fight off diseases.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, she has worked on developing a new strategy to design immunogens that trigger certain antibodies against coronaviruses.

“Pamela Björkman’s work provides a glimpse of a new rational design strategy for future vaccines to deal with humanity’s greatest immunization challenges,” wrote the fund.

This year’s prize in architecture was awarded to Chinese architect Tiantian Xu for her work in rural China, which the prize committee said “transformed villages throughout China economically, socially, and culturally.”

Xu studied architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design before returning to China, starting her own firm and working on a number of public projects that have kickstarted village economies, the fund said. They include a bridge connecting two villages separated by a flood, factories for tofu and brown sugar and renovating abandoned stone quarries.

It lauded her “pioneering approach to rural development — one that contrasts with the sweeping, uniform strategies that characterized China’s urban expansion.”

Other recipients of this year's award include Jeffery Dangl of the University of North Carolina, Jonathan Jones of the Sainsbury Laboratory in England and Brian Staskawicz of the University of California, Berkeley for agriculture.

Also receiving the prize are professors Jainendra Jain of Pennsylvania State University, Moty Heiblum of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science, James Eisenstein of Caltech in physics and Helmut Schwarz of the Technische Universität Berlin in chemistry.

Past laureates include astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, artist Marc Chagall, conductor Zubin Mehta and musician Stevie Wonder.

[banabiohazard]

This post will likely be tmi

Just so you know

I had a flashback to 2020 earlier, made me think about it all day

I was a 14 year old egg that refused to crack in 2020

I was a frequent Reddit user

r/dankmemes doomscroller

I still remember the first post I ever saw that referred to ‘coronavirus’

Then by the next day my mom was talking about it

I remember my parents fighting about masks

How my mom was adamant that ‘god is her mask’ and she didn’t need it even after it took my grandmother’s life

I remember going to my local grocery in a mask for the first time

I remember feeling bad for my siblings that would barely have memories of a pre Covid world

I was already in online school so that didn’t change for me

I remember hating the ‘stench of masks’ because I never ever brushed my teeth

I remember loving not leaving the house because I wouldn’t ever have to shower or change clothes

I remember posting explicit images of myself on Reddit while I was very underage

I remember long long nights gaming with my online friends because they finally didn’t have anything better to do either

I remember getting my act together and taking care of myself seriously for possibly the first time

I remember having a genuinely obstructive to my life porn addiction born almost entirely out of boredom

I remember my room reeking all the time but I didn’t care

And that’s all of 2020 I remember

Then was 2021

I remember almost nothing

Like I didn’t exist

2022



I remember my egg finally cracking

I remember getting in my first serious relationship with a boy named Ray

I remember really truly loving him

But I remember something never feeling right

I remember we were strained

I remember making YouTube videos with my friends on a channel I still look back on

I remember waking up from the cult like grip religion had on me

I remember my mom hating that

I remember doing things with Ray I regret now

I remember coming out to my best friend

And he supported me and still does

I love that fucker

I remember my family getting covid due to my mom’s carelessness and feeling like I was truly honestly about to die

2023

I remember one of my close friends of 10 years being outed as a pedo

I remember Ray breaking up with me

I remember a lot of my friends being divided between if they wanted to stay friends with a pedo or cut him out

I left with way less friends but on the right side of history

I remember spending an entire weekend camping trip high out of my skull with my friend and greening out

I remember realizing I wasn’t pan but in fact a lesbian but keeping it to myself for a year for some reason???

And that was the end of the covid era for me

2024 was the first year of my actual life

And I’m rather happy now, but I was just thinking about that

[bopinion]

2024 / 33

Aperçu of the week

“All we have to do is call our opponent a communist or a socialist or someone who will destroy our country.”

(Donald Trump. We'll see about that...)

Bad News of the Week

Since the end of the coronavirus pandemic - although there hasn't actually been one - I've been waiting for its successor in a slightly anxious mood. Another rapidly infecting virus that spreads worldwide, is potentially deadly and, above all, restricts all our lives again. Now it's here: Mpox. For the first time since Corona, the WHO (World Health Organization of the United Nations) has declared the highest alert level, a “public health emergency of international concern”. Because of the virus that was previously called “Monkey Pox”. Discovered in Congo at the end of 2023, it has now also broken out in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya.

The initial figures spoke of 14,000 suspected cases. Based on the usual 50% rate and the reported 500 deaths, this means that one in twelve people who become infected will die. That's a lot. So it's certainly a virus that should be taken seriously. One day later, it was reported that the first case in Europe had emerged in Sweden. Then the first three in Asia in Pakistan. It's the usual pattern: on the one hand, every infectious disease spreads faster and more uncontrollably in times of international travel. On the other hand, specific cases are only discovered when they are specifically sought or tested for. So the numbers will now quickly go through the roof. Because the spread is already more advanced than we know.

What will happen now? What will the states do? How will society react this time? And above all: what have we learned? There is a lot of talk in Germany about the need to come to terms with everything that has happened around COVID. Also to learn from the mistakes. There is a lot of need for clarification - for example with regard to the procurement of masks, the closure of schools, compulsory vaccination, curfews and unequal treatment in the retail sector. And what has happened since (drum roll please!): Nothing. What applies to politics also applies in private life. Some friends turned out to be conspiracy theorists, others were law and order hardliners, most were simply irritated and unsettled. There were even rifts right through families. Rifts that still exist.

And now we could all be facing the same situation, just as ill-prepared. And if Mpox doesn't develop into a pandemic, perhaps swine fever will spread to humans. Or bird flu. Or something else entirely, be it from the South American jungle or from the secret laboratory of some deep state. Or a revenant from the past spreads again - cholera still exists after all and first cases of polio are reported from Gaza. No, I'm not panicking. But I do have one or two worries. After all, humanity has shown itself more than once to be incapable of learning from the past. I would love to be wrong about that.

Good News of the Week

Venezuela is not giving up. It is wonderful to see how the people are fighting for democracy, no longer wanting to put up with the corruption of their “elites” and finally wanting to have a perspective worth living in. Just under a month ago, elections were held in the Latin American country, which could actually live in prosperity and peace but is suffering from dramatic economic decline, inflation and poverty since years. Or as investigative journalist Sebastiana Barráez says in the news magazine Der Spiegel: “Maduro has couped!”

Initially, the state electoral authority declared President Nicolás Maduro Moro, who has been clinging to power since 2013, the winner without providing any evidence - as is actually required by the constitution. The opposition has now had access to more than 80 percent of the printed protocols of the individual polling stations and has made them public. According to these, their candidate Edmundo González won with around 67 percent of the vote - compared to 30 percent for the incumbent head of government. So did Maduro commit electoral fraud? It looks like it.

The United Nations and the Carter Center had sent election observers to Venezuela. They have now criticized the election authority's actions and declared that the official result was not achieved democratically. The panel of experts speaks of an “unprecedented process in recent electoral history”. No wonder that most Latin American countries as well as the USA and Europe did not recognize the “official result”. And Maduro? He doesn't give a damn. The despot has further intensified the repression against the population with the help of the military, the National Guard and other state organs loyal to him. According to the independent rights organization Foro Penal, over 2,000 people have been arrested since the election. These include opposition politicians. And journalists. That speaks a clear language.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the US government has now offered Maduro and close associates of the regime an amnesty if they relinquish power. I wish the Venezuelans would keep up the pressure. And the international stage too. Until Madura and his clan really abdicate. Because then the country, which has already been abandoned by 20% of its population in recent years, could return to better times. In a survey conducted by the Gallup polling institute in December 2012, the country's inhabitants were among the happiest people on earth. It would be nice if this vague memory could become reality again.

Personal happy moment of the week

“Your application for an Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) has been approved. You are now authorized to travel to Canada by air.” Nothing more to add here. Taking off this sunday. Boy am I excited...

I couldn't care less...

...about the discussion that Germany “only” came 10th in the medal table at the Summer Olympics in Paris - behind hosts France and Great Britain, even though their populations are smaller. “What does it take for more medals?” asks the Tagesschau news channel. That is of little interest to me. Much more important is the charisma of athletes as figures of identification for a nation, the role model function for children, the motivation to surpass oneself. After all, it's not for nothing that the Olympic motto is “Taking part is everything”. In that sense, Eddie the Eagle really did fly.

It's fine with me...

...that the Democrats' party conference is now turning into a coronation mass. Because the most important decisions have been made: Presidential candidate and his (better in this case “her”) running mate. Normally, I would now say that political program content should not be completely secondary. But I don't care about that at the moment. The main thing is momentum. The main thing is optimism. The main thing is not to go back. The main thing is that Donald Jessica Trump doesn't triumph in November. Harris Walz!

As I write this...

...we're trying to catch a mouse. Apparently it was raining too hard outside and it wanted to get out into the dry. Now she's hiding behind a bookshelf and is afraid of us - even though we want to rescue her and set her free. Update: we've got her and she's fine. Second update: there seems to be another one...

Post Scriptum

It's good when someone doesn't look away but points. Even if it's about Israel committing an injustice. After all, you are then almost reflexively vilified as an Anti-Semite. In this respect, I am pleased that the European Union is showing more and more backbone in this regard. In this case, I am not referring to the maltreated Gaza Strip, but to the West Bank, where the Palestinian population is suffering more and more from brutal attacks by militant Israeli settlers - who can be sure of the backing of Benjamin Netanyahu's increasingly right-wing extremist government.

Once again, there have been attacks by extremist Israeli settlers on the population of the West Bank. And now EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has had enough. He will “present a proposal for EU sanctions against the supporters of the violent settlers, including some members of the Israeli government”. Including the government! That's a bombshell. I very much hope that he finds the necessary support for this. Because this massive problem is currently all too easily overlooked in the great shadow of Gaza.

[bitchesgetriches]

{ MASTERPOST } Everything You Need to Know about Self-Care

Take care of your body

Why You Should Take a Break: The Importance of Rest and Relaxation

I Think I Need to Go the Emergency Room?

Run With Me if You Want to Save: How Exercising Will Save You Money

Your Yearly Free Medical Care Checklist

Ask the Bitches: Ugh, How Do I Build the Habit of Taking Meds?

Blood Money: Menstrual Products for Surviving Your Period While Poor

On Pulling Weeds and Fighting Back: How (and Why) to Protect Abortion Rights

Ask the Bitches: How Can I Survive in an Apartment with No Heat?

The Expensive Difference Between Recreation and Recovery 

Take care of your mind

Our Master List of 100% Free Mental Health Self-Care Tactics

How Mental Health Affects Your Finances

Ask the Bitches: “How Do I Protect My Own Mental Health While Still Helping Others?”

Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos and Your Big Brain

Everything Is Stressful and I’m Dying: How to Survive a Panic Attack

Stop Recommending Therapy Like It’s a Magic Bean That’ll Grow Me a Beanstalk to Neurotypicaltown

Making Decisions Under Stress: The Siren Song of Chocolate Cake

Ask the Bitches: I Know How to Struggle and Fight, but I Don’t Know How to Succeed

Update: I Know How to Struggle and Fight, but I Don’t Know How to Succeed

Ask the Bitches: How Can I Absolve Myself of Financial Guilt Over My Pricey PS4?

The Frugal Introvert’s Guide to the Weekend

Take care of your time

Stop Measuring Your Time in Beyoncé Hours

Help! I’m Procrastinating and I Can’t Get Up!

You Won’t Regret Your Frugal 20s

Actually, Fuck Big Goals

How to Insulate Yourself From Advertisements

I’ve Succeeded at Every New Year’s Resolution I’ve Ever Made. Here’s How.

Romanticizing the Side Hustle: When 1 Job Isn’t Enough

8 Free Time Management Systems To Try in the New Year

My 25 Secrets to Successfully Working from Home with ADHD 

I Am So Over Productivity Porn 

Take care of your career

High School Students Have No Way of Knowing What Career to Choose. Why Do We Make Them Do It Anyway?

The Actually Helpful, Nuanced, Non-Bullshit Way to Choose a Future Career

Woke at Work: How to Inject Your Values into Your Boring, Lame-Ass Job

Are You Working on the Next Fyre Festival?: Identifying a Toxic Workplace

My Secret Weapon for Preparing for Awkward Boss Confrontations

Freelancer, Protect Thyself… With a Fair Contract

I Hate My Job and I Don’t Know How To Leave It: A Confession

A New Job, a New Day, a New Life, and I’m Feeling Good

Season 1, Episode 9: “I’ve Given up on My Dream Career. Where Do I Go From Here?”

How Abusive Workplaces Mirror Abusive Relationships 

Take care of your space

How to Successfully Work from Home Without Losing Your Goddamn Mind (Or Your Job)

Leaving Home before 18: A Practical Guide for Cast-Offs, Runaways, and Everybody in Between

Ask the Bitches: I Want to Move Out, but I Can’t Afford It. How Bad Would It Be to Take out Student Loans to Cover It?

How To Maintain Your Car When You’re Barely Driving It

Take care of your people

How Dafuq Do Couples Share Their Money?

Ask the Bitches: “How Do I Protect My Own Mental Health While Still Helping Others?”

How Can I Tame My Family’s Crazy Gift-Giving Expectations?

Ask the Bitches: I Was Guilted Into Caring for a Sick, Abusive Parent. Now What?

Love in the Time of Coronavirus: How to Protect Your Community and Your Soul from COVID-19

Be Somebody’s Eliza with a Simple Yet Life-Changing Act of Kindness 

The Ultimate Guide to Helping a Sick Friend 

Learning To Reverse the Golden Rule

I Have Become the Rich Relative I Always Wanted  

Take care of your financial well-being

Ask the Bitches: How Can I Make Myself Financially Secure Before Age 30?

How to Save for Retirement When You Make Less Than $30,000 a Year

Ask the Bitches: Is It Too Late to Get My Financial Shit Together?

Slay Your Financial Vampires

Should Artists Ever Work for Free?

Don’t Spend Money on Shit You Don’t Like, Fool

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Financial Math

Share My Horror at the World’s Worst Debt Visualization

Stop Undervaluing Your Freelance Work, You Darling Fool

A (Somewhat) Comprehensive List of Fun Job Perks that Won’t Pay Your Rent

We will periodically update this list with newer articles. And by “periodically” I mean “when we remember that it’s something we forgot to do for four months.”

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[the-real-zhora-salome]

In the stillness of London’s Harold Pinter Theatre, as David Tennant crouched on stage to deliver a pivotal soliloquy in Macbeth, chaos erupted.

A patron, incensed after being asked to wait before returning to his seat after a loo break, began shouting indignantly from the wings. Demanding immediate access, he disrupted the performance with his cries of, “two hours without a loo break! I paid £250 to see David Tennant in Macbeth and I was really looking forward to it!”

Staff intervened, but the situation escalated when the man shoved security personnel. Frustrated, fellow theatergoers began slow-clapping and chanting “out, out, out!” until he was forcibly removed, booed all the way to the door.

The incident spread rapidly across social media, sparking debates about audience etiquette. One commenter encapsulated the frustration many felt:

"Some people just do not know how to behave in public, and at the theatre, they feel they should be able to get up and move around, talk, and even look at their mobiles. They behave as if they are at home."

Others, however, sought to clarify the sequence of events, pointing to a misunderstanding that framed the outburst. Another user explained:

"The disgruntled ticket holder caused a furore when he was told he would have to wait to return to his seat after returning from the toilet. He wasn’t refused re-admission completely, just asked to wait for a suitable moment to retake his seat. All this person’s rage was because he couldn’t sit back down immediately – he HAD to wait a few minutes."

This raises a troubling question: How could such a minor inconvenience – a short wait for an appropriate pause in the performance – escalate into such aggression? And why does this kind of behaviour seem to be happening in theatres more frequently?

The Macbeth incident is part of a broader trend of escalating audience disruptions. Theatres across the UK have reported an increase in violent, aggressive, and antisocial behaviour since the pandemic.

Earlier this year, a performance of the Bodyguard at Manchester’s Palace Theatre ended in chaos. Audience members, determined to sing over the cast during the final number, sparked a confrontation so intense that the production was stopped and police were called, arriving in riot vans.

Disruptions have ranged from heckling and shouting to physical altercations and even instances of public urination in seats. One front-of-house worker described to the Guardian how, since the beginning of the pandemic, she and her colleagues have faced escalating violence and abuse, breaking up fights and enduring verbal attacks on a weekly basis.

A recent survey by the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph, and Theatre Union (BECTU) found that 90% of theatre workers had experienced or witnessed unacceptable behavior from audiences, with 70% saying such incidents have worsened since the beginning of pandemic.

What’s driving this rise in impatience, aggression, and disregard for others? The answer may lie in the lingering neurological effects of Covid-19 (coronavirus).

Initially dismissed as a result of post-lockdown awkwardness or direct sales of alcohol to audiences at theatres, this behavioural shift now appears to have a biological component. Covid-19, widely understood as a respiratory illness early in the pandemic, is now recognised as a vascular disease that affects multiple systems in the body, including the brain.

Even infections whose symptoms appear ‘mild’ can lead to long-term neurological changes, with symptoms such as emotional dysregulation, impulsiveness, and aggression becoming more common.

Neuropsychiatrist Dr. Adam Kaplin of Johns Hopkins University describes a phenomenon he calls “Covid-induced disinhibition,” in which individuals exhibit drastic personality changes after infection.

According to Kaplin, it is not the virus itself but the immune system’s inflammatory response to Covid-19 that can alter brain function, particularly in areas governing impulse control, empathy, and emotional regulation. These changes can manifest as uncharacteristic aggression, a diminished capacity for social norms, and a skewed sense of entitlement.

Covid isn’t just changing how we feel physically, it’s reshaping how we think and act.

Impatience, like that exhibited by the audience member who refused to wait for an appropriate moment to return to his seat, might seem like a minor issue. But in the context of Covid-19’s neurological impact, it represents something much larger: a fundamental shift in the way we think, process emotions, and interact with the world.

One person’s impatience at a play can be irritating, but in other contexts it can be lethal.

A 2024 study published in Neurology revealed that Covid-19 survivors were 50% more likely to be involved in car accidents compared to those who had never been infected. Researchers compared this increased risk to driving under the influence, linking it to heightened impulsivity and reduced attention spans.

Traffic fatalities in the U.S., which had been steadily declining for decades, have risen sharply since the pandemic. Between 2018 and 2023, speeding-related deaths increased by 21%, while fatalities linked to distracted driving climbed by 16%.

Brain imaging studies have revealed that Covid can thin the gray matter in the frontal and temporal lobes – areas critical to moral reasoning, impulse control, and empathy. Thinning of these areas doesn’t necessarily result in cognitive symptoms or forgetfulness in the early stages. Instead, it often manifests as disinhibition, with individuals exhibiting uncharacteristic impulsivity, poor judgment, or aggressive behaviour that might not seem immediately related to intelligence or memory.

Damage to these regions of the brain can induce what has been called ‘a slow and insidious loss of the capacity for moral rationality’. What begins as disinhibition – minor lapses in patience or self-control – can escalate over time into more sociopathic behaviour, with profound consequences for society at large.

This crisis extends beyond theatre etiquette; it is a public health issue. If the whole of society are experiencing cumulative damage to our nervous systems, the consequences for society, even geopolitics, are cause for alarm. Theatre can lead the way, not only with protecting performers, crew, venue staff and audiences, but in modelling how governments and institutions can prevent further damage to the nation’s health and intellectual capital.

Advocacy groups like Protect the Heart of the Arts argue that addressing these disruptions requires tackling their root cause: COVID itself.

Theatres can lead by example by adopting measures that prioritise clean air and accurate on-site testing.

In 2021, the National Theatre in London upgraded their ventilation with HEPA air filtration. In April 2024, this may have allowed performances to continue when Michael Sheen, the lead actor of Nye, fell ill. Instead of the illness spreading to the rest of the cast, Sheen was replaced with understudy Lee Mungo for several performances.

By contrast, David Tennant’s Macbeth was cancelled for four consecutive performances and returned with the support of six understudies. Other venues can follow suit, combining air quality improvements with on-site molecular testing, like PlusLife, that delivers PCR-level accuracy in minutes.

Audience masking, though politically contentious, is a cost-effective measure that could protect both patrons and performers.

But the responsibility extends beyond theatres.

Governments, institutions, and individuals must recognise Covid’s connection to anti-social behaviour and invest in policies which will curb transmission, including face masks in healthcare settings and on-site molecular testing, such as PlusLife.

If Covid is contributing to the erosion of moral reasoning and impulse control, then preventing further infections isn’t just about health—it’s about preserving the fabric of our social lives.

Theatre has always reflected our individual and collective struggles, and Macbeth itself serves as a cautionary tale about moral decay.

Today, the challenge is to confront the slow erosion of our collective empathy and impulse control, not from ambition, but from infectious disease.

The question cannot be more urgent: if Covid-19 is silently reshaping our brains and behaviours, what kind of society will we become? The answer, as always, lies in our willingness to confront the truth and to act before we find ourselves having lost our grasp on morality – just like the play’s titular character.

[cognitivejustice]

Meet Valdirene Militão: An Urban Farmer and Creative Recycler Fighting for the Self-Reliance of Favela Women

Valdirene Oliveira Militão, affectionately known as Val in the Roquete Pinto favela in Complexo da Maré, located in Rio de Janeiro’s North Zone, where she has lived for 52 years, embodies the possibility of everyday sustainable practices accessible to favela residents.

Agroecology and sustainability, which increasingly gain space in public debate, are knowledge passed down in the favela in an affectionate and local manner by elders.

Yet, these grassroots insights are made invisible and delegitimized for being practical, conceived through lived experience and need, through “pretagogias” [Black pedagogical practices]. Such values only become accepted and seen as a solution when they are whitewashed and transformed into commodities, into tools of control.

In this sense, reusing waste and (re)creating from scrap materials Val resignifies life and her community with her hands. This fusion of perspectives encapsulates Valdirene Militão’s initiatives toward sustainability and the economic empowerment of women. Through workshops, she teaches other women how to repurpose leftover materials to transform and market them, generating income.

In the area surrounding her home studio, where she carries out recycling activities, Val gathers milk cartons to craft protective blankets for animals. Additionally, the visual artist collects coffee capsules, costume jewelry, and PET bottles to fashion decorative objects and clothing. Notably, she gathered 204 coffee capsules to create a futuristic-style garment worn by digital influencer Yá Burihan at the 2024 Vogue Magazine Carnival Ball.

In addition to her career as a visual artist, Val promotes other sustainable initiatives. She was one of the founders of the Ricardo Barriga Project, which emerged during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 to generate income for Maré residents and promote food security. The initiative was named in honor of Ricardo Barriga, Val’s former brother-in-law, who died of Covid-19.

The activities aim to promote a culture of sustainability, such as workshops on making soap from used cooking oil, distribution of baskets of basic foodstuffs, face masks, and eco-friendly soap.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Oliver Darcy at CNN:

Vladimir Putin’s information war in U.S. media paid off this weekend with a key victory halfway around the world. [...] As a Republican, Johnson is in a tough spot, politically speaking. While the Republican Party was once vehemently hawkish toward Russia, viewing the post-Soviet country as its chief adversary on the international stage, it has softened considerably in recent years and much of the party actively opposes sending additional dollars to Ukraine to continue fighting Russia. It was little more than a decade ago when Mitt Romney, then the party’s standard-bearer, famously declared Russia to be “our number one geopolitical foe.” In the years since, the party has dramatically changed its tune on Russia. A CNN poll conducted last summer found that a staggering 71% of Republicans do not support additional aid to thwart Putin’s war on Ukraine.

Much of the GOP’s softening toward Russia is owed to a near-total reversal in rhetoric from right-wing media personalities and outlets, prompted in large part by Donald Trump’s ascension to power in GOP politics. While the biggest players in right-wing media once fervently championed the foreign policy doctrines of the neo-conservatives, they now follow in the footsteps of Trump and vehemently reject the views once held by the George W. Bush administration. This transition is perhaps best exemplified by Tucker Carlson. The former Fox News host was once sharply critical of Putin, characterizing him in no uncertain terms as a cruel “dictator.” But in recent years, Carlson has reversed his stance, flooding the right-wing information space — which he once reigned as king over — with pro-Putin rhetoric that effectively amounts to Russian propaganda. Carlson’s stance was put on display in stark fashion recently when he traveled to Moscow to conduct a widely denounced softball chat with Putin and then proceeded to record a series of propaganda videos touting Russia’s supposed greatness.

While figures like Carlson have promoted Russia and Putin, they have simultaneously trashed Ukraine and its leader Volodymyr Zelensky, promoting conspiracy theories that the country interfered in the 2016 election and was hiding biological weapons labs. Carlson, for example, has likened Zelensky to vermin and vigorously spoken out against U.S. support for Ukraine. Right-wing commentators like Carlson have questioned why taxpayer dollars are being spent to help Ukraine defend its borders when the U.S. struggles to secure its own southern border (though a recent bipartisan bill intended to tackle both issues was rejected by hardline Republicans.)

[...] “The GOP’s shift away from support for Ukraine shows how in the Republican Party, everything flows downstream from the obsessions and priorities of right-wing propagandists,” Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at the progressive watchdog Media Matters, told me Tuesday. “Tucker Carlson and his ilk wanted to back Putin’s invasion, their relentless lies won over the party’s base, and ultimately its elected officials have adopted their position.” “We’ve seen this same pattern time and again: Fox News and the like take basic concepts like ‘it’s a good idea to get vaccinated against the coronavirus’ and ‘the January 6 insurrection was bad’ and turn them on their heads — and Republican elites inevitably follow,” Gertz added. “Governing based on what gets ratings for B.S. artists is no way to run a country.”

CNN's Oliver Darcy wrote in the Reliable Sources newsletter that the right-wing media's anti-Ukraine/pro-Putin disinformation campaign has had fatal consequences in the fight against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The Republican Party and much of the right-wing commentariat were once resolutely anti-Russia; however, beginning in the 2010s that began with Vladimir Putin's enactment of anti-LGBTQ+ laws and then Russian asset Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and eventual "Presidency", the GOP shifted from anti-Russia to pro-Russia (and consequently anti-Ukraine).