#op. 19

[sibmakesart]

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[charredpages]

[Alt text] ten screenshots of text posts by the user themme_fatale on Instagram. The text reads:

(1/10)

Do you remember the exact moment that anti-masking stopped being a far-right talking point

And became advice you were willing to follow?

(2/10)

I try to make the ways I communicate about COVID as compassionate and non-judgemental as possible because I understand that we have all been failed in this and my primary anger is always upwards.

BUT

I also need you to understand - if you are not taking precautions, you are aligning yourself with eugenicists.

The person who actively says “fuck disabled people they deserve to 💀” and never masks, and the person who never masks because “It’s annoying and besides-no one else is” are BOTH devaluing people’s lives.

(3/10)

And that might feel confronting for some of you, and I know the knee-jerk reaction is probably going to be to deflect by accusing me of “shaming people” or whatever.

I’m not shaming anyone though - it’s just uncomfortable to sit with because if you’re the kind of person who follows me chances are you don’t actually want to be engaging in eugenics.

And re-engaging with the idea that COVID is not only still around, but still actively dangerous is asking a lot of you when the alternative is the comfort of denial.

Especially when so many of the tools to keep ourselves and each other safe have been taken away from us. But the thing is none of that is actually a reason not to act.

(4/10)

There are people IN YOUR COMMUNITY relying on you to take precautions so that they don’t d1e.

(5/10)

With love, and compassion for the fact that this shit is hard - ignorance is running out as an excuse. It’s time to do better, and help your mates do better too.

People in your community shouldn’t have to constantly remind you not to put their lives in danger. Surely you can see that’s a pretty fucked up dynamic, right?

(6/10)

We shouldn’t have to push so hard on “it’s good for you to protect yourself too!” Like it still absolutely is, but saving the lives of people in your community should actually be enough to motivate you to act.

It’s genuinely fucked up to be ok with a whole proportion of the population being either being locked in their homes indefinitely or at risk of 💀 on the daily.

(7/10)

It should be considered more socially awkward to engage in eugenics by k1lling and isolating disabled people in your own community than it is to put on a mask

The fact that it’s not should embarrass all of us until we change it.

(8/10)

It should be considered more selfish to put people’s lives at risk than to ask to be kept safe

Your choices can change or reinforce that culture.

(9/10)

Government inaction puts a weapon in your hand

Pretending it’s not there puts us all in danger

(10/10)

Why do you require a mandate to care about other people?

[selfindulgentcompetition]

TRYING AGAIN WITH CLEARER WORDING. PLS READ BEFORE VOTING

*Meaning: When did you stop wearing a mask to a majority of your public activities? Wearing a mask when you feel sick or very rarely for specific events/reasons counts as “stopping”

[More Questions Here]

[charlesherbertlightoller]

In light of the summer surge of COVID-19 rolling round, masking protocols getting scrapped left and right, other respiratory diseases on the rise and seasonal air pollution ramping up, here's some more things that high-performance respirator masks (N95 and the like) protect against:

Influenza (including bird flu!)

Common cold

Bacterial pneumonia

Tuberculosis

Measles

Fungal spores (including valley fever!)

Dust

Airborne allergens (pollen, pet dander, dust mites, etc)

Man-made air pollution (exhaust from cars and jets, industrial emissions, etc.)

Wildfire smoke

…and much more!

While COVID-19 is undoubtably serious and masking is the best way to prevent yourself from catching it, there's many more reasons why the air might be bad to breathe, and breathing bad air is a public health risk for everyone! Additionally, certain demographics experience higher levels of exposure to airborne contaminants than others, yet they often have the least access to accurate information, personal protective gear and medical resources.

It is imperative, for stemming the spread of COVID, mitigating the effects of other airborne hazards and showing solidarity with vulnerable individuals, that we normalize masking for a variety of reasons. Do you have a cold? Wear a mask. Do you have allergies? Wear a mask. Do you live or work in an area with heavy air pollution? Wear a mask. Is there a wildfire nearby? Wear a mask. Just want to avoid getting sick when you go to the doctor's office? Wear a mask. Whenever and wherever there might be bad air, masking protects you!

It may seem like nobody cares now, but I promise you; change is possible, change is inevitable, and YOU have the agency and ability to make change for yourself, your community and the world by setting an example and spreading the word. So take charge and clear the air!

(I do not use Blaze. Please reblog this post so it gets more notes!)

[opzsfan]

[FANART Zosan Modern Life AU]

"eat carefully, marimo~!"

Backstory: they're in a group project meeting with friends at a cafe.

[gumjrop]

You might be forgiven for thinking it’s been a very quiet few months for the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides the rollout of new boosters, the coronavirus has largely slipped out of the headlines. But the virus is on the move. Viral levels in wastewater are similar to what they were during the first two waves of the pandemic. Recent coverage of the so-called Pirola variant, which is acknowledged to have “an alarming number of mutations,” led with the headline “Yes, There’s a New Covid Variant. No, You Shouldn’t Panic.”

Even if you haven’t heard much about the new strain of the coronavirus, being told not to panic might induce déjà vu. In late 2021, as the Omicron variant was making its way to the United States, Anthony Fauci told the public that it was “nothing to panic about” and that “we should not be freaking out.” Ashish Jha, the Biden administration’s former Covid czar, also cautioned against undue alarm over Omicron BA.1, claiming that there was “absolutely no reason to panic.” This is a telling claim, given what was to follow—the six weeks of the Omicron BA.1 wave led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in a matter of weeks, a mortality event unprecedented in the history of the republic.

Indeed, experts have been offering the public advice about how to feel about Covid-19 since January 2020, when New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo opined, “Panic will hurt us far more than it’ll help.” That same week, Zeke Emanuel—a former health adviser to the Obama administration, latterly an adviser to the Biden administration—said Americans should “stop panicking and being hysterical.… We are having a little too much [sic] histrionics about this.”

This concern about public panic has been a leitmotif of the Covid-19 pandemic, even earning itself a name (“elite panic”) among some scholars. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned, three and a half years into the current crisis, it’s that—contrary to what the movies taught us—pandemics don’t automatically spawn terror-stricken stampedes in the streets. Media and public health coverage have a strong hand in shaping public response and can—under the wrong circumstances—promote indifference, incaution, and even apathy. A very visible example of this was the sharp drop in the number of people masking after the CDC revised its guidelines in 2021, recommending that masking was not necessary for the vaccinated (from 90 percent in May to 53 percent in September).

As that example suggests, emphasizing the message “don’t panic” puts the cart before the horse unless tangible measures are being taken to prevent panic-worthy outcomes. And indeed, these repeated assurances against panic have arguably also preempted a more vigorous and urgent public health response—as well as perversely increasing public acceptance of the risks posed by coronavirus infection and the unchecked transmission of the virus. This “moral calm”—a sort of manufactured consent—impedes risk mitigation by promoting the underestimation of a threat. Soothing public messaging during disasters can often lead to an increased death toll: Tragically, false reassurance contributed to mortality in both the attacks on the World Trade Center and the sinking of the Titanic.

But at a deeper level, this emphasis on public sentiment has contributed to confusion about the meaning of the term “pandemic.” A pandemic is an epidemiological term, and the meaning is quite specific—pandemics are global and unpredictable in their trajectory; endemic diseases are local and predictable. Despite the end of the Public Health Emergency in May, Covid-19 remains a pandemic, by definition. Yet some experts and public figures have uncritically advanced the idea that if the public appears to be tired, bored, or noncompliant with public health measures, then the pandemic must be over.

But pandemics are impervious to ratings; they cannot be canceled or publicly shamed. History is replete with examples of pandemics that blazed for decades, sometimes smoldering for years before flaring up again into catastrophe. The Black Death (1346–1353 AD), the Antonine Plague (165–180 AD), and the Plague of Justinian (541–549 AD), pandemics all, lacked the quick resolution of the 1918 influenza pandemic. A pandemic cannot tell when the news cycle has moved on.

Yet this misperception—that pandemics can be ended by human fiat—has had remarkable staying power during the current crisis. In November 2021, the former Obama administration official Juliette Kayyem claimed that the pandemic response needed to be ended politically, with Americans getting “nudged into the recovery phase” by officials. It is fortunate that Kayyem’s words were not heeded—the Omicron wave arrived in the US just weeks after her article ran—but her basic premise has informed Biden’s pandemic policy ever since.

Perhaps even less responsibly, the physician Steven Phillips has called for “new courageous ‘accept exposure’ policies”—asserting that incautious behavior by Americans would be the true signal of the end of the pandemic. In an essay for Time this January, Phillips wrote: “Here’s my proposed definition: the country will not fully emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic until most people in our diverse nation accept the risk and consequences of exposure to a ubiquitous SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.”

This claim—that more disease risk and contagion means the end of a disease event—runs contrary to the science. Many have claimed that widespread SARS-CoV-2 infections will lead to increasingly mild disease that poses fewer concerns for an increasingly vaccinated (or previously infected) population. In fact, more disease spread means faster evolution for SARS-CoV-2, and greater risks for public health. As we (A.C. and collaborators) and others have pointed out, rapid evolution creates the risk of novel variants with unpredictable severity. It also threatens the means that we have to prevent and treat Covid-19: monoclonal antibody treatments no longer work, Paxlovid is showing signs of viral resistance, and booster strategy is complicated by viral evolution of resistance to vaccines.

But these efforts to manage and direct public feelings are not just more magical thinking; they are specifically intended to promote a return to pre-pandemic patterns of work and consumption. This motive was articulated explicitly in a McKinsey white paper from March 2022, which put forward the invented concept of “economic endemicity”—defined as occurring when “epidemiology substantially decouples from economic activity.” The “Urgency of Normal” movement similarly used an emotional message (that an “urgent return to fully normal life and schooling” is needed to “protect” children) to advocate for the near-total abandonment of disease containment measures. But in the absence of disease control measures, a rebound of economic activity can only lead to a rebound of disease. (This outcome was predicted by a team that was led by one of the authors [A.C.] in the spring of 2021.)

A pandemic is a public health crisis, not a public relations crisis. Conflating the spread of a disease with the way people feel about responding to that spread is deeply illogical—yet a great deal of the Biden administration’s management of Covid-19 has rested on this confusion. Joe Biden amplified this mistaken perspective last September when he noted that the pandemic was “over”—and then backed that claim by stating, “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.” The presence or absence of health behaviors reveals little about a threat to health itself, of course—and a decline in mask use has been shaped, in part, by the Biden administration’s waning support for masking.

Separately, long Covid poses an ongoing threat both at an individual and a public health level. If our increasingly relaxed attitude toward public health measures and the relatively unchecked spread of the virus continue, most people will get Covid at least once a year; one in five infections leads to long Covid. Although it’s not talked about a lot, anyone can get long Covid; vaccines reduce this risk, but only modestly. This math gets really ugly.

The situation we are in today was predictable. It was predictable that the virus would rapidly evolve to evade the immune system, that natural immunity would wane quickly and unevenly in the population, that a vaccine-only strategy would not be sufficient to control widespread Covid-19 transmission through herd immunity, and that reopening too quickly would lead to a variant-driven rebound. All of these unfortunate outcomes were predicted in peer-reviewed literature in 2020–21 by a team led by one of the authors (A.C.), even though the soothing public messaging at the time called it very differently.

As should now be very clear, we cannot manifest our way to a good outcome. Concrete interventions are required—including improvements in air quality and other measures aimed at limiting spread in public buildings, more research into vaccine boosting strategy, and investments in next-generation prophylactics and treatments. Rather than damping down panic, public health messaging needs to discuss risks honestly and focus on reducing spread. Despite messages to the contrary, our situation remains unstable, because the virus continues to evolve rapidly, and vaccines alone cannot slow this evolution.

In the early months of the pandemic, many in the media drew parallels between the public’s response to Covid-19 and the well-known “stages of grief”: denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance. The current situation with Covid-19 calls for solutions, not a grieving process that should be hustled along to the final stage of acceptance.

[forsaire]

Always

FINAL CHAPTER posted of Please Say You Love Me 💗

“I’ll always find you, Johnny… Always.”

---

Full chapter <3

Art by Zestylemoncake

[reineydraws]

wanted: marine hunter takanome mihawk

[the-lark-ascending69]

Ronance AU in which Robin loses her memory (most likely due to some mind flayer shenanigans) and she's kinda back at age 15, still heavily in denial about her sexuality, and Nancy's heart breaks because she wants nothing more than to comfort and take care of her sweet girlfriend, but Robin not only does not remember, but Nancy's insistance that they were in love scares her. She avoids her.

Bonus points if they were highly secretive about their relationship and no one knew, not even Steve, so Nancy is completely alone in her struggle. No one knew the truth. Only she remembers. Feels an awful lot like being the only survivor. She just wants her love back

[kiebs-creative-corner]

Continuation of divinity au sketches!

Luffy showing off Sanji to Zoro, much to Sanji's horror and chagrin.

A little background idea: Luffy is the avatar of the Sun Deity, but the more...vengeful half, whereas Usopp (not shown) is the more benevolent half. Likewise, Robin and Zoro are the two avatars for the Moon, with Robin as the more benevolent side and Zoro as the meaner side.

And Sanji...well, he's a different kind of divine. :3c

[kacievvbbbb]

It’s so funny to think about but because Shanks is who he is. He probably threw a party for Mihawk the first time they met up after Mihawk was finally tall enough to wear Yoru straight down his back.

Bonus if Shanks had already had his growth spurt and Mihawk was getting genuinely worried he had hit his final height and would never complete his aesthetic. (Also Shanks already lords over the one inch he could not have handled a several inches height difference it would have actually killed him if he didn’t kill himself first)

Also of course he pulls up with the Long coat and the hat already in checks who do you think this is?

[moongothic]

Something something Dragodile giving a whole new meaning to

[wordcubed]

Watching Chopped, and one of the competing chefs, a personal chef in Hollywood who specializes in raw vegan food, just dropped the line "I believe in healing through food", and I just knew that the next line was going to be completely insane.

"I was sick with everything from Lyme Disease to carbon monoxide poisoning, and I healed myself be eating a lot of avocados."

You know what? I don't believe you. I do not think you healed yourself of carbon fucking monoxide poisoning by eating avocados.

[gumjrop]

On February 13, 2024, the Washington Post reported that the CDC is considering ending the five-day isolation period for those with a COVID infection according to anonymous CDC staff. It is imperative that the CDC minimally maintains current isolation guidelines to prevent the unnecessary spread of COVID.

Why is the five day isolation period necessary? The five-day isolation period has allowed people infected by COVID to rest and recover from illness and prevent the exposure and spread of COVID to uninfected people. Ideally, a ten-day isolation period is better to ensure an adequate amount of time for rest and recovery.

Allowing your immune system sufficient time to fight the infection is important. Rest and recovery from an active COVID infection is important, as physical overexertion can have adverse effects on one’s health. Even if vaccinated, boosted, and healthy, a COVID infection can greatly harm one's health, and may lead to Long COVID, a condition that has harmed and disabled millions of Americans.

Prevention of exposure to and spread of COVID requires a minimum five-day isolation period. Clear evidence demonstrates that in the course of an active COVID infection, the highest viral load occurs approximately by day 4 of an infection. Some people may have their symptoms end earlier than others, however, early symptom resolution does not necessarily mean the end of infectiousness, as asymptomatic COVID transmission can occur. Ultimately, by preventing COVID infections, the likelihood of people becoming severely ill from COVID, as well as those who will develop long COVID, will be greatly reduced.

The CDC will be considering and making a decision by April. During this time, we urgently ask Congress and the White House to intervene and ensure that the CDC maintains the current COVID five-day isolation policy. 

Instructions:

We must ask Congress and the White House to ensure the CDC maintains the current 5 day isolation policy for COVID infection. It is important that the CDC maintains its current policy to ensure that the American people have enough time to rest and recover from an active COVID infection, as well as to prevent the spread of COVID to other people. Rest and recovery is important, as an infection can have adverse effects on health. Even those vaccinated, boosted, or healthy could face irreversible harm from COVID. Having multiple infections has the potential to increase the risk of developing Long COVID, a condition that has already injured and disabled millions of Americans. Submit a letter to your government officials via Action Network!

Letter to White House and Congress

Example Letter Below:

Dear Representative,

I am writing to ask you to ensure that the CDC maintains the current isolation policy for those with an active COVID infection, as this protects the health and well being of all Americans at work, school, and all other places of gatherings.

COVID infections injure, harm, and cause death among millions of Americans. Everyone must be protected from COVID infections. COVID is spread through the inhalation of aerosol particles, and the risk of becoming infected is higher in indoor settings compared to outdoor settings. Due to its mechanism of spread, the current 5-day isolation policy is a primary key layer of protection for prevention, as opposed to other approaches against infections in public settings. 

Shortening the isolation window is a failure to recognize the clear scientific evidence that people may have the highest viral loads by day 4 of an infection.(1) For some people, their symptoms may abate below the 5-day time window, but they may remain infectious.(2)

The public relies on guidelines that establish sufficient standards in workplaces and other places of gathering. It ensures protection in vulnerable settings, such as healthcare, long-term care facilities, schools, and workplace settings. COVID remains an ongoing pandemic and threat to the health of the American people. Ongoing reinfections result in more people developing Long COVID.(3)  Any consideration to reduce or eliminate the COVID isolation guideline inexplicably fails to acknowledge core control measures for infectious disease. Any changes prevent the public’s ability to have a standard threshold for rest and recovery from a COVID infection. 

We ask for your support to ensure that the CDC prioritizes the health of people first. We urge you to act on the behalf of all people, especially for those who are most vulnerable. This includes those with advanced age, the immunocompromised, those living with other health conditions, disabled people. Let’s decrease infections in our communities by keeping scientific and evidence-based isolation guidelines.

References:

1. Jennifer K Frediani, Richard Parsons, Kaleb B McLendon, Adrianna L Westbrook, Wilbur Lam, Greg Martin, Nira R Pollock, The New Normal: Delayed Peak SARS-CoV-2 Viral Loads Relative to Symptom Onset and Implications for COVID-19 Testing Programs, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 78, Issue 2, 15 February 2024, Pages 301–307, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciad582

2. Rinki Deo, Manish C. Choudhary, Carlee Moser, et al. Symptom and Viral Rebound in Untreated SARS-CoV-2 Infection. Ann Intern Med.2023;176:348-354. [Epub 21 February 2023]. doi:10.7326/M22-2381

3. Bowe, B., Xie, Y. & Al-Aly, Z. Postacute sequelae of COVID-19 at 2 years. Nat Med 29, 2347–2357 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02521-2.

Submit Letter to Government Leaders