#vaccinations work

[porterdavis]

Fun facts to know and tell

"nine of 10 unvaccinated people in a room will get the disease (measles) if one infected person sneezes"

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

[frogeyedape]

Masks not effective? That would be seriously troubling if true. Let's take a look at that, shall we?

The link goes to The Jimmy Dore Show, with reliability rated as: Unreliable, Problematic (Ad Fontes Media). The dude is a known conspiracy theorist. The article he holds up as evidence that masks are 0% effective comes from Cochrane--see below.

The Cochrane study does NOT prove ineffectiveness of masking.

"Lisa Bero, Cochrane Public Health and Health Systems Senior Editor and an author on an Editorial published to accompany this review said, 'The results of this review should be interpreted cautiously, and the uncertain findings should not be taken as evidence that these measures are not effective.' "

Not convinced? Check this:

" 'Many commentators have claimed that a recently-updated Cochrane Review shows that "masks don’t work", which is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation,' Dr. Karla Soares-Weiser, the editor-in-chief of the Cochrane Library, said in a March 10 statement.

'It would be accurate to say that the review examined whether interventions to promote mask wearing help to slow the spread of respiratory viruses, and that the results were inconclusive,' she continued. 'Given the limitations in the primary evidence, the review is not able to address the question of whether mask-wearing itself reduces people’s risk of contracting or spreading respiratory viruses.' "

https://www.factcheck.org/2023/03/scicheck-what-the-cochrane-review-says-about-masks-for-covid-19-and-what-it-doesnt/

Masks work--they're not 100% effective, true, but they are significantly >0% effective, and are MORE effective when a larger % of the population 1) actually wears them, 2) wears them correctly, and 3) wears better masks. See:

This study modeled COVID transmission, and found that cloth and medical procedure masks, worn by 80% of people >=65 years and by 60% of people <65 years, are associated with a 69-78% reduction in cumulative COVID infections, and a 82-87% reduction in COVID related deaths.

Yes, there was not and is not enough being done about the continuation of COVID. At the same time, the interventions we do have ARE effective! Masking works! Vaccinations work! Both work much better with wide community use--remember learning about herd immunity protecting the few individuals who medically can't vaccinate?

By all means criticize and pressure the governments of all nations--don't spread misinformation while you're at it.

When those in power constantly lied about the little things, it isn't hard to see why people have tuned out--and even questioned whether masks were even effective against the virus.

[wordsofasarcast]

headcanon

So you know how it's canon that Will listens to true crime podcasts?

What if that's how he finds out that Nico is from the 1940s?!

Like he's listening to the latest episode about 'the death of Maria di Angelo and the disappearance and supposed kidnapping of her missing children, Niccolò and Bianca di Angelo'.

And it's not all that strange for demigods to pop up in conspiracy blogs or podcasts - Percy had a four part series about him, and Will listened to the whole thing during a nightshift at the infirmary.

So yeah, Will starts listens to the di Angelo episode thinking nothing of it, maybe he's just hoping to have a laugh about what the mortals thought happened to Nico or maybe he's more than a little curious about Nico's mysterious past.

And the hosts, in crackling stereo voices because they desperately need a better mic, are talking about lightning striking the hotel, how "the storm popped up out of nowhere" and the "strange seismic activity reported in the area at the time"...and then the date drops...

The hosts say something along the lines of, "The di Angelo siblings were reported missing by their family back in Italy after no word had been received of their safe passage to America. The police report states they were last seen by an anonymous witness entering the Lotus Hotel & Casino with an unknown third party in December of 1942."

And Will's just sat there, gaping at the infirmary bed he'd been stripping of its sheets. Because everything is adding up now, and Will's not quite sure how he missed it...

[l3irdl3rain]

Woah. Didn’t know she was old enough to vote

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[halorvic]

[tanoraqui]

VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE!

Find your polling place | Register day-of | Ready your ID | Hassle your boss for legally required time off (varies by state) | Uber and Lyft are both offering discounted rides to your polling place (and some random restaurants are offering random deals, too, I guess?)

WHY VOTE?

The Bean will be disappointed in you if you don’t

Voting for the lesser of two evils DOES reduce the amount of evil. Voting for the lesser of two evils SAVES LIVES.

^ Bernie Sanders gave a really good breakdown of this, actually.

Voting is not a choice of your personal idol, it’s a choice of who you have the best chance of persuading around to your side. It’s public transit—you don’t get exactly where you want to go, but you get close enough to walk, or at least to somewhere you can catch the next bus.

Harris has a genuinely good track record of helping the people she serves, and genuinely good goals for doing it some more as President

Trump’s most repeatedly and explicitly stated goal is to order the armed forces to persecute protestors, immigrants, journalists and his political enemies. He’s even less grounded than last time, very likely suffering dementia, and anyone from his previous administration who once restrained him even slightly is warning people that he’s a fascist who explicitly admires Hitler. Their replacements will be vaccine deniers, climate change deniers and the authors of Project 2025.

Hope alone is an act of defiance. Defiance alone is an act of hope. You WILL feel better if you vote, no matter who wins, because you’ll know you did what you could.

Also for the love of god please vote for House and Senate races, too. The Biden-Harris administration only passed the Infrastructure Reduction Act, “the single largest investment in climate and energy in American history” because they held both House and Senate AND VP Harris to break a Senate tie. Not a single Republican voted for it; all Democrats did.

And more local races, of course! They ALL have real effects!

Once you’ve voted, the Bean will be able to rest easy once more—AND so will Candi!

GO VOTE!

[gregorgregor]

It's my first time getting COVID 🙃

[kazz-brekker]

i present: my extremely long and highly specific list of book recs for my fellow rings of power fans

[victusinveritas]

[perenlop]

“this story cant have [bigoted] themes, the author is [a part of that marginalized group]!” discourse is stupid as hell in general because it stubbornly refuses to engage with intracommunity issues and internalized hatred, or at least any more than treating it like a pokemon type chart, but one of the subtypes i get really annoyed with is when people go “how can this story POSSIBLY be misogynistic when a WOMAN wrote it?” yknow. when the whole “not like other girls” thing was a whole trend. and when transmisogyny exists. misogynoir. . homophobia against lesbian/bi/gnc women. hatred against women who dont want kids or are vaguely feminist. where there are several tropes that amount to “women DESPISES other type of woman who is inferior to her <3”. boymoms in general.

[porterdavis]

Vaccines work

[queerism1969]

[lazyscience]

So for my followers who come with a factory-installed uterus I know you're concerned about your health and autonomy. And you well should be

But here's something all of you should be thinking about and planning for no matter what your plumbing - if Trump goes through with putting RFK Jr. in a position of power as far as the Department of Health and Human Services, he could do a LOT of damage as far as vaccines. Vaccines are not super profitable for pharma companies, despite what cranks think; they take a LOT of development for only a few uses. Vaccines are driven by public health requirements and a lot of places would shrug and say "ok, bet" if there isn't a guaranteed market for them.

The professional medical community will still have recommendations about when and how to vaccinate, but they won't have the force of law, and insurance will probably smell blood in the water and start kicking up a fuss about covering vaccines when they're not required. So then when doctors recommend them there'll be suspicion and pushback that they're just doing it for "kickbacks" even though the only doctor who would have gotten paid for vaccine is ironically Andrew Wakefield, the lying fuckshit, because his whole "vaccines cause autism" lie was to push his OWN, SPECIAL proprietary vaccines that wouldn't cause his made-up syndrome, because NO vaccines were causing it. May he roast somewhere warm when the devil comes for him.

This will not happen immediately, but. Because there will no doubt be anticipatory compliance on the part of drug companies and healthcare systems. I HIGHLY advise you get the fuck out there and get your Tdap updated (tetanus, diptheria and pertussis). Whooping cough is out there, and it is horrible for babies. If you are eligible for shingles vaccine and haven't done it, get that. Get your COVID vax if you haven't, there might not BE another one, at least not that's available in the US.

If you have kids, especially make sure THEY'RE up to date because their classmates might very well not be mandated to get them any more - state regulations will undoubtedly vary, but with the current composition of the Court, it will rule in favor of every possible exemption for antivaxxers as possible because the conservatives are all "fuck the weakest of us, I got mine fuck you." And expect idiocy like "pox parties" to spread (not like the average suburban parent can tell measles from rubella from chicken pox from hand foot and mouth by fuckin' looking at it, who knows what the christ they're going to be passing around). Measles is NOT just a "bit of a rash." Rubella is the world's leading preventable cause of birth defects. Chickenpox can result in scarring, encephalitis causing blindness or even death, and the risk of shingles later in life. I have a cousin who would be 57 this year who died as a toddler from hemophilus influenzae strain B meningitis, one of those "too many" childhood vaccines that were invented in the 1990s. Tell my aunt that's too many vaccines -oh, wait, you can't, she fucking killed herself out of grief her baby died.

tweens? get them the HPV vaccine if they haven't gotten it (given its associations with sex it'll probably be one of the first to go, but it prevents CANCER. who wants their child to get cervical cancer, or penile cancer, or throat cancer, or rectal cancer? IT PREVENTS CANCER. JUST DO IT.)

Similarly, if you have a child with any kind of immune issue that precludes vaccination, I would very much look into homeschooling, because bye-bye herd immunity.

If you have teenage kids, encourage them to update their Tdap and get the meningiococcal meningitis vaccine if they haven't been mandated to already by campus policy. Tetanus and meningitis aren't common, but they are frequently permanently life-altering when they're not fatal. We're talking months in the hospital. I'm old enough that I remember people fucking dying in college, and the panic that went around campus every time one of those breakouts happened in the state wondering if it would make its way to our campus.

Stay safe out there. I have no idea what this will do to our already teetering healthcare system but I don't think it'll be pretty. Everybody pray Trump pulls his usual scam and hangs RFK Jr. out to dry, because while the plutocrats consider regulations an unnecessary burden, they don't have a stake in creating a public health state of emergency when we already have a workforce not keeping up with demand, unlike Captain Convenient Brain Worm.

[milkweedman]

It is interesting how much math comes into even the most basic of like. Making things. Making almost anything. And often not numbers necessarily but proportions and geometry. I think all the time about how castles were built with geometry at the heart of it. And I use the same kind of proportional math to make socks fit. And none of my pieces are ever knit with a prime number of stitches--because you use factors to make neat colorwork and ribbing and different stitches. Idk ! I remember constantly thinking 'how the hell is THIS gonna come in useful ?' But it always does. Math is at the heart of everything, and knowing how to apply it is a tool of critical importance to Thinking Up A Shape And Making It.

[ink-the-artist]

forgive me if you've been asked this before or if its annoying, but how did you learn to use colored pencils like that? your art is so special to me.

ty :) I took an art class for a few years where our teacher had us buy prismacolor pencils as one of the art supplies and had us use them kinda like paints, pressing down hard right away and blending the colors together. its not how youre supposed to use them she was just trying to teach us to use color and ig this was more to the point. I picked them up again years after i stopped going to that class just bc they were there and i wanted to play around w them a bit and ended up actually enjoying it when doing it on my own terms lol