training:

COVID 101: Care, Political Analysis of Normalization, and the need of a popular response

April 7

access our discord to see the details!

Would you like to receive this training but you cannot do it this day? Email [email protected] and we'll work out the details!

https://linktr.ee/HealthSelfDefense_

Improve your knowledge + COVID protocols

Covid moves like invisible smoke
COVID spreads and moves like cigarette smoke. Think of the people around you and yourself as people who are smoking all day; it makes it easier to understand how COVID moves.
COVID aerosols can quickly fill any crowded, poorly ventilated space, moving invisibly to infect anyone in the room. These aerosols travel with air currents and remain airborne for hours after the infected person has left. COVID also spreads outdoors. You can become infected within seconds or minutes of exposure.

You don't need to have symptoms to spread COVID
At least 50% of all transmissions are asymptomatic (you have it and you don’t even feel ill). In those symptomatic infections, it takes a couple of days for symptoms to appear, which means that you are infecting others for at least a couple of days without knowing it. Since we cannot know for sure if we have COVID at any given time, universal masking is essential.

There is no mild COVID infection.
At least 10% of infections result in long COVID.
Reinfections are devastating. There's no way to "train" the immune system because it's not a muscle; the damage from infections is cumulative. Any propaganda that talks about "training" the immune system is just lying to make you feel safer when exposed to harmful infections.

To say that infections are good because they help our immune system is like saying that having car accidents are good because they strengthen our bones; it makes absolutely no sense. That’s not how our bodies work.

Masks matter, find one that fits your face!
Masks are incredibly effective. They work best when everyone wears them. FFP2, KN95, KF94, and N95 masks offer aerosol filtration and should be used whenever possible. Surgical and cloth masks are less effective and do not filter aerosols. Get free masks and testing at your local mask block (maskbloc.org for searching maskbloc worldwide and you can also email us at [email protected]; we ship masks worldwide).

Make sure the mask fits snugly against your face so that the air you breathe is filtered through it. Aerosols can leak through gaps. If you can't get a good seal, try a different brand or size.

Test frequently + understand the limitations
Rapid antigen tests produce many false negatives. A rapid antigen test only successfully detects 60% of early symptomatic infections and 22% of asymptomatic infections (OntarioHealth has a guide on how to get the most out of them, as they are the most affordable tests for the general population).

Rapid tests are much more reliable when performed repeatedly over several 48-hour periods. It can take between one week and 14 days to get a positive result, so a single negative result should not be relied upon. Molecular tests such as PCR or NAAT are much more reliable and are best performed between 3 and 5 days after exposure, although they are expensive and less accessible than rapid tests. As COVID-19 spreads, the virus mutates, and our tests become less reliable.

Vaccines cannot be an excuse for not preventing the virus.

Vaccines do not prevent infections, reinfections, or long COVID. SARS-CoV-2 infection weakens immune-cell response to vaccination, meaning that the more we are infected, the less effective the vaccines we receive will be.

They have been crucial in significantly reducing mortality and hospitalization rates from severe infections. However, antibody levels decrease significantly in the months following vaccination. Each infection leads to new mutations that make the virus more complex.

To honor the effectiveness of vaccines, we must prevent the creation of more variants. Vaccines are not an excuse not to wear a mask.

HIV and COVID: united by ignored pandemics
“The statement that SARS-CoV-2 is “airborne AIDS” may be an oversimplification, but it draws attention to emerging evidence showing that the virus induces a distinct form of acquired immunodeficiency (AID).

SARS-CoV-2 and HIV-1, though distinct, share parallels in their biochemical traits and mechanisms, long-term impacts and societal responses. Both can establish persistent infections in tissue reservoirs, immune dysfunction, vulnerability to other infections including opportunistic, systemic damage including hallmarks of accelerated biological aging, and premature neurocognitive disorders. HIV integrates into DNA, whereas SARS-CoV-2 and its parts persist in organs like the blood vessels, brain, heart, tonsils, and lungs.

As governments rolled back public health protections, leaving the public to navigate the uncontrolled spread on their own, stigma shifted to Long COVID patients and those advocating for continued precautions. These individuals are frequently dismissed as “fearmongers”, “anxious” or “overly cautious” despite the objective ongoing and significant harms caused by the pandemic. Meanwhile, Long COVID patients experience persistent gaslighting and ignorance from healthcare professionals, exacerbating their struggles to access appropriate care.

addressing SARS-CoV-2 as a systemic vascular infection with significant cumulative health impacts necessitates sustained public health measures and innovative strategies to mitigate its ongoing threat to individual and population health. It is essential to prioritize airborne infection prevention, especially while no causal therapies are available for the sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

Right now, the disabled community is being targeted. Like HIV, COVID can affect anyone, but this time the state has chosen to use the word "vulnerable" to seek complicity in ignoring the ongoing pandemic. Just as HIV is linked to queer activism, COVID is linked to disability activism, because the state uses our identity to justify the social murder we experience due to ITS mismanagement.

Only the rich can afford to be sick: viruses are weapons of the oppressors.
Do you know any working-class person who can afford to be sick? Neither can we.

Who can afford to miss work?

Long COVID is a new disease that the system wants to portray as a disaster when it's actually the result of a lack of prevention. In capitalism, science is used to get us back to work tomorrow, but for more complex issues, doctors tend to deny you care and tell you it's all anxiety.

People with long COVID face enormous violence and medical neglect. Furthermore, COVID can literally cause strokes, heart attacks, and autoimmune diseases. And all of this is preventable with masks.

We, the workers, are the ones who create medicines, masks, houses, and all the basic necessities a person needs. Yet we don't have the right to access them. We have to spend our lives being exploited for something that couldn't be created without our labor.

Workers' power means workers' care. We want union strength, we want workers' power, we want workplace safety, we want prevention of death and disability.

Getting infected with COVID at work is another form of employer terrorism. Everywhere you go, there's a worker who has no choice but to be there. Let's wear masks for our collective health.

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice

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Covid-19 still presents us with a profound opportunity to build the world we want.

Structural Violence and the Pandemic: An Update on Our Collective Reality

https://blindarchive.substack.com/p/structural-violence-and-the-pandemic

“Covid-19 still presents us with a profound opportunity to build the world we want.
While devastating, and with many committed to forgetting, this pandemic still acts as a catalyst—a longue durée of reckoning that reveals the deep injustices woven into our society and the points at which the system of the state becomes vulnerable. The old world of exploitation, inequality, and relentless profit pursuit is crumbling, and in its place, a new vision of liberation and collective care is struggling to be born.

Yet, this transformative potential is under siege. Pandemic denial is a shroud, trying to suffocate the horizon of deliverance that is within our grasp no matter how far away it seems. The forces of the status quo are desperate to maintain control, urging us to return to normalcy while reinforcing the systems that perpetuate harm.

As we navigate the complexities, collective suffering, and pain of this moment, we cannot shy away from the struggle. The challenges we face are immense, but so too is our capacity for resistance and transformation. We must deliver each other from Covid. Together, we can rise from the ashes of the old world, forging a path toward a new reality where everyone really has the means to thrive.

To seek deliverance for each other is to yearn for more than mere liberation; it’s to aim for a profound transformation that shakes the very foundations of our existence. Liberation might free us from oppression’s chains, but deliverance reclaims our souls, histories, and futures. It acknowledges that we seek more than freedom from tyranny—we seek a radical reimagining of what it means to live fully and authentically.

In this pursuit, we must confront the reality that liberation, without deliverance, risks becoming just a shift in power—an exchange of one form of control for another. We may be freed from the oppressor’s shackles, but still bound by the structures that perpetuate harm. Deliverance demands that we dismantle these systems and transform not only our circumstances but our relationships with one another and the world.

Deliverance is an embrace of our collective humanity, a defiance against the systems that seek to divide us. It compels us to remember that true freedom is not found in isolation but in the intricate web of connections we weave. In this quest, we must nurture one another, knowing that our liberation is meaningless if it doesn’t encompass the needs of the most marginalized among us.

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice

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An invitation to the COVID Conscious community to stop trusting the same class (bourgeois) who are responsible of eugenics.

Voting is not harm reduction. direct action is.

https://maskupactup.substack.com/p/an-invitation-to-the-covid-conscious-e53

“Actually solving the pandemic was never in the cards for the U.S. and the rest of the capitalist world.
It would have necessitated deep international cooperation, massive investment in clean air infrastructure, a persistent information campaign (and censoring of hazardous misinformation), efforts to build public trust in government, guaranteed paid leave, nationalization of key industries, and more. Basically, it would involve massively undercutting the philosophy of free market capitalism.

Instead, the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception. Any reminder of the existence of a highly-transmissible, highly-dangerous, mass-disabling disease could trigger panic, or worse: organized, militant labor action. Averting this crisis required a careful campaign of culture-crafting; the people themselves needed to become convinced that there was no reason to fight. Consent for protracted mass infection needed to be manufactured.

The tone struck by what we think of as official sources sets the stage for the broader social response.

This rhetoric comes from a variety of places — heads of state, government agencies, individual experts, think tanks, and other entities imbued with a sense of authority. These are voices that we are socialized to pay attention to. When they speak, they easily garner media attention. A news outlet that ignores or disputes these sources loses access to them and invites flak, thereby harming their ability to sell more news. These voices are generally in the room when policies are crafted — or crafting the policies themselves. What “the experts” say matters, and the particular experts being promoted by governments and corporations have steadily coalesced around rhetoric that minimizes the public health threat of the virus.

Pandemic public policy has been both shaped by and indicative of the official rhetoric of whoever happens to be in charge. It has reflected the recommendations of experts — those experts which had been chosen by the ruling government. In places governed by more liberal tendencies, curfews and cloth mask mandates lasted longer, instilling an implicit message that, unlike those science-denying conservatives, the liberals were “following the science.” This meant that, when these half-measures were rescinded, it seemed obvious that now people could feel safe putting themselves at risk.

Throughout the pandemic, media attention has been focused on reproducing official rhetoric through op-eds and interviews. The experts promoted above all have always been selected based on their proximity to power, both in terms of their official appointment and their rhetorical line. As governments and agencies solidified their pandemic-minimization rhetoric and policies, individuals who championed that line became even more appealing. The lure of manufactured conflict allowed media companies to profit by highlighting astroturfed, unpopular movements protesting all forms of public health policy. Depending on their particular cultural bent, news corporations could position themselves either as “freedom-fighters,” standing up to the government tyranny of half-baked precautionary measures, or as “champions of reason,” pushing back against misinformation and science denial.” Let Them Eat Plague! – The Red Clarion

“The bourgeois government is incentivized to allow mass deaths and disablement
because the medical industrial complex—pharmaceutical industry, healthcare conglomerates, insurance companies, etc—is just as capable of extracting profit from our disabled bodies as industry is from our labor.

This is the money model of disablement—a concept first articulated by Marta Russell—in action. Russel explains that “…persons who do not offer a body which will enhance profitmaking as laborers are used to shore up US capitalism by other means.” This is organized abandonment, a term coined by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, which is “the deliberate manipulation and disproportionate dispossession of resources from Black, Brown, Indigenous, disabled, and poor communities, rendering them more vulnerable to adverse health.”

Disabled people, i.e. people “who are deemed to be surplus[,] are rendered excess by the systems of capitalist production and have been consequently framed as a drain or burden on society. But the surplus population has become an essential component of capitalist society, with many industries built on the maintenance, supervision, surveillance, policing, data extraction, confinement, study, cure, measurement, treatment, extermination, housing, transportation, and care of the surplus. In this way, those discarded as non-valuable life are maintained as a source of extraction and profit for capital.

This rather hypocritical stance–the surplus are at once nothing and everything to capitalism–is an essential contradiction. Liat Ben-Moshe identifies this characteristic through the intersection of disability and incarceration: ‘Surplus populations are spun into gold. Disability is commodified through [a] matrix of incarceration (prisons, hospitals, nursing homes).’ Jasbir Puar, in The Right to Maim: ‘Debilitation and the production of disability are in fact biopolitical ends unto themselves… Maiming is a source of value extraction from populations that would otherwise be disposable.’”

We must expose the government’s inactions to protect the people from COVID-19 as extractive abandonment—purposefully leaving us scrambling for basic resources necessary for survival, so that when we inevitably become sicker and sicker the healthcare industry can profit off our disabled bodies.

We must recognize our humanity, recognize that a better world is possible, and that in order for us to get what we deserve—a life free from the shackles of fascist capitalist imperialism—we must “do what must be done” and do so “by any means necessary.” People’s Health Education Program

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice

Antiimperialist Solidarity — Sending Masks to LATAM
Request:
- Non urgent
- Colombia and Mexico (2 separate packages)
- 300 test covid if possible (each)
- We can cover the costs through paypal and if that doesn’t work and you are a maskbloc we can fundraise together with the form of payment you use. We know there are some states in the USA that have available free bulks test, we would like this because it means the test are mostly going to be free or really cheap.

[email protected]

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice

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Without clear clinical guidelines in México, people with Long COVID face gaslighting and erasure

https://thesicktimes.org/2025/02/18/without-clear-clinical-guidelines-in-mexico-people-with-long-covid-face-gaslighting-and-erasure/

Key points you should know:

-Long COVID may affect millions of Mexicans, but a lack of information prohibits adequate medical care and innovative research.

-Some Mexican doctors are calling on the government to establish a national clinical guideline, which could direct local clinics and medical experts on how best to diagnose and treat the disease.

-Similar to other countries, the government places higher-priority on surveilling and addressing other easier-to-diagnose diseases, like dengue.

-Despite attempts to approve a clinical guideline, the government agency in charge of approvals has yet to review the proposal.

“In Mexico, if there’s no statistics, there’s no patients. If there’s no patients, there’s nothing to treat,” said Cesar Lepe Medina, the 34-year-old founder of the Long Covid Mexico Comunidad Solidaria Facebook group, which is a support and advocacy group with some 6,500 members. “If there’s nothing to treat, there’s no need for public policy or programs to draw attention to it.”

Compare Long COVID to dengue, a disease that is easier to diagnose due to tests and which México tracks publicly. When cases explode as they did in 2023 and 2024 — last year México confirmed more than 124,000 cases and 478 deaths — government officials and the press rushed to respond. For example, the government pushed national campaigns and prevention strategies against dengue, and state health departments implemented strategies to eliminate mosquitos.

In addition to Long COVID, Lepe Medina has contracted dengue twice. He notices the difference in how his country addresses them. While dengue is discussed, Lepe Medina said Long COVID is “taboo.”

“Here in México, they talk more about the flu and dengue than COVID-19,” Lepe Medina said. “We are collateral damage that no one wants to take on because we require a lot more money and resources.” Lepe Medina said his private medical insurance hasn’t paid “a peso” because Long COVID isn’t recognized in Mexico.

Rodríguez Álvarez suspects the government doesn’t want to take on the cost if too many Mexicans have Long COVID; with recognition, the government would be on the hook for consultations, tests, and treatments. If the narrative is up to the government doctors, “they will probably tell you that you don’t have anything,” he said.

Limited resources means México also lags behind other countries when it comes to research. In one 2024 study of global Long COVID prevalence, Mexican researchers noted that “nearly all evidence has been obtained in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.” Per another 2024 study that analyzed international Long COVID clinical studies, the authors suggested the highest number of studies occurred in the U.S., India, and Spain. Meanwhile, México has conducted only four Long COVID studies, according to a search on World Health Organization’s International Clinical Trials Platform.

“In the U.S., Germany, Great Britain, and Spain there’s more advancements overall among scientists who are doing investigations,” said Aristóteles Ramírez, a political science professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro who developed Long COVID following an infection in fall 2020. When he researched his symptom of dysautonomia, he didn’t find any Mexican studies. Only Spanish ones.

Findings from México’s scientists also aren’t making it into clinics, Ramírez added. But research is needed for new strategies to help manage symptoms. He wants more research focusing on Long COVID care strategies in México. “Don’t tell me there’s no answer,” he said.

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice

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april 5

Anticapitalist Covid Conscious Reading Club

Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability

access our discord to see the details

https://linktr.ee/healthselfdefense_

"Ableism must be included in our analysis of oppression and in our conversations about violence, responses to violence and ending violence. Ableism cuts across all of our movements because ableism dictates how bodies should function against a mythical norm—an able-bodied standard of white supremacy, heterosexism, sexism, economic exploitation, moral/religious beliefs, age and ability.

Ableism set the stage for queer and trans people to be institutionalized as mentally disabled; for communities of color to be understood as less capable, smart and intelligent, therefore “naturally” fit for slave labor; for women’s bodies to be used to produce children, when, where and how men needed them; for people with disabilities to be seen as “disposable” in a capitalist and exploitative culture because we are not seen as “productive;” for immigrants to be thought of as a “disease” that we must “cure” because it is “weakening” our country; for violence, cycles of poverty, lack of resources and war to be used as systematic tools to construct disability in communities and entire countries."

https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/moving-toward-the-ugly-a-politic-beyond-desirability/

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice

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Are you in latinoamerica and need masks? Please contact us.

¿Estás en LATAM y quieres mascarillas? Contacta con nosotres! Hablamos español!

Do you know someone in latinoamerica that need masks? We can coordinate to send them! Contact us!

[email protected]

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice

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Skin problems when wearing a mask, explanations and solutions

Thai Brows made a short and a long video talking about acne problems when wearing a mask explaining possible explanations and solutions

https://healthselfdefense.substack.com/p/skin-problems-when-wearing-a-mask

Summary:

· Hydrate + moisturize skin before hand

· AHA/BHAs/retinoids at night

· Hypochlorous acid to soothe irritation

Transcription of Thai Brows’s long video:

“If wearing a mask is making you break out, this video is for you.

There are several reasons why this might be happening. Wearing a mask for long periods of time can lead to acne mechanica, which is caused by friction and pressure on the skin. To help prevent this, make sure your skin is properly moisturized before putting on your mask.

Also consider internal and external factors that may be contributing to breakouts, such as stress, hormones, medications, pollution, and weather changes.

If you’re starting to mask regularly again, try to avoid introducing new active ingredients into your routine. Avoid using exfoliants like AHAs, BHAs, or retinol under your mask. Save those chemical exfoliants and retinoids for nighttime use.

For your morning routine, focus on:

· A gentle, non-stripping cleanser

· A hydrating toner and/or hydrating serum

· A moisturizer that isn’t too heavy but also not so light that your skin dries out under your mask

Look for moisturizers that are hydrating without being greasy and that leave a smooth finish so your skin doesn’t feel sticky.

A lot of people have strong opinions about hypochlorous acid right now, but I think it’s actually a great addition to both your skincare routine and your COVID precautions. Hypochlorous acid is naturally found in your white blood cells. It’s antimicrobial and antibacterial, helps calm the skin, and can reduce redness. It can also help kill bacteria, viruses, and fungi. I like to keep a spray with me when I go to work or out in public. If I take my mask off during a lunch break, I’ll spray it on before putting my mask back on.

Another reason you may be breaking out is that your mask doesn’t properly fit your face.

· If it’s too big, it moves around too much and causes friction.

· If it’s too small, it’s tight and uncomfortable, adding pressure to your skin.

Some mask materials may also not be compatible with your skin. Cloth masks can harbor bacteria, especially if they’re reused, and they’re not as protective against viruses. In general, upgrading to a FFP2, KN95 or N95 is recommended.

Please don’t get discouraged from finding a mask that works for you. Even though dealing with irritation and breakouts can be frustrating, getting sick can have a much bigger impact on your life. In addition to COVID, other illnesses like RSV, colds, and the flu continue to circulate. Protecting yourself still matters.

I know trying different masks can be expensive and overwhelming if you don’t know where to start, but it’s worth finding the right fit for both your skin and your health.”

Products mentioned in the video:
Skincare barrier renew gel-to-foam cleanser

Example: RoC Barrier Renew Gel-to-Foam Cleanser

Hypochlorous Acid Spray

Example: tower 28 SOS Rescue Spray

Barrier cream with Hyaluronic Acid

Example: tower 28 SOS Recovery Cream

Moisturizing bomb toner

Example: Aqua Bomb Hydrating Toner for All Skin Types 200mL

Control pore serum

Example: Peach Slices Oil Control Pore Serum

Cream that moisture and helps lock in hydration

Example: Mixsoon Bean Cream 65ml

Skincare cool biotic moisturizer

Example: Dr. Brandt Cool Biotic Prebiotic Redness Relief Cream

Masks for people with sensitive skin and/or neurodivergent:

https://healthselfdefense.substack.com/p/masks-for-people-with-sensitive-skin

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice

An invitation to the COVID Conscious community to anti-imperialism

https://maskupactup.substack.com/p/an-invitation-to-the-covid-conscious

Imperialism is unreformable. Many so-called leftists would remain silent if imperialist money were used for public schools or healthcare. This is a mistake. We cannot sacrifice our comrades in the Global South, believing it’s either them or us. It’s them and us. The entire global working class. We owe unconditional respect and solidarity not only to the national working class but also to our comrades in the Global South who suffer because of our imperialist state. We cannot fight against eugenics without fighting the empire.

Bad news: we live in an imperialist state. Good news: it means we can kill the beast from within. Let’s do the fucking work, comrades. Let’s honor the fight, let’s bring the fucking war home.

“Anti-imperialism is the struggle that now defines the efforts of the progressive People of the world, led by the working class, toward liberation- i.e., toward the end of capitalism and its hallmarks of fascism, imperialism, colonialism and semicolonialism, semifeudalism, and many more.

Imperialism is alive and well! Today the one hegemonic world imperialist superpower is the United States. Its stock exchanges and their biggest capitalists and conglomerations of capital set the pace of the world economy; it strongarms world law and politics through its domination of “international organizations” like the UN, and most importantly its financial auxiliaries (the IMF, the World Bank, and every other global cabal of capital-exporters); it holds the whole world in military terror through the ever-expanding octopus of armaments that is NATO. In every country in the world it parks its restaurants and its banks and its oil companies- above all, its capital, and sucks masses of surplus value to add to the capital of its own economy from the lifeblood of these countries. And it parks its military bases alongside them, to keep the locals and their “independent governments” in line! The characteristics of imperialism Lenin described should be obviously visible here.” On Material(ist) Dialectics and Imperialism

“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make the apple fall.
It is possible to win and it is possible to win in our lifetime. This is a necessary starting point for any socialist revolution, anywhere, including in North America. Only when we begin with this proposition can we map a path to the seizure of state power. Any other starting point is defeatist. We are not here to equivocate, revise, or delay. We are here to bring about a total revolution in social relations.

It is shocking, then, to see professed revolutionaries in North America repudiate this principle. For example, when arguing for the support of international struggles, advocates will deftly expose the evils of imperialism and rightly insist upon solidarity in response, but what further direction do they give to those they win over? They direct us into elections, lobbying politicians, academic debate, and symbolic protest. In effect, the people with the closest proximity to the enemy are told they must act only as cheerleaders for resistance movements catching U.S. bombs abroad. Overthrowing our ruling class isn’t on the agenda, despite the benefit to international struggles that would come if we could tie down even a fraction of the U.S.’s ability to project violence across the world. The failure to consider this possibility cuts off all thought of accumulating the forces needed to make a rupture within the United States. And because accumulating forces through developing deep ties to the masses is the most stable base from which to escalate confrontation, dismissing this path also dismisses effective and sustained tactical escalations, such as coordinated direct action or sabotage.

if we take the recurring advice of the most advanced decolonial movements and their leaders, it is that we should learn to fight alongside them and push to be as combative and militant as they are; that the further we are able to push in that direction as a movement, the greater our contribution to their struggles against U.S. imperialism. In the words of Adolfo Gilly from his Introduction to Fanon’s A Dying Colonialism, “Instead of pitying us and being horrified by the atrocities of imperialism, better fight against it in your own country as we do in ours… That is the best way to help us and put an end to the atrocities.”” Revolution in Our Lifetime

“We shall see that the same process went on more slowly, in more varied forms, in a much wider field: on the one hand, the development of “parliamentary power” both in the republican countries (France, America, Switzerland), and in the monarchies (Britain, Germany to a certain extent, Italy, the Scandinavia countries, etc.); on the other hand, a struggle for power among the various bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties which distributed and redistributed the “spoils” of office, with the foundations of bourgeois society unchanged; and, lastly, the perfection and consolidation of the “executive power”, of its bureaucratic and military apparatus.” The State and Revolution, Lenin.

Lenin already showed us that even in a state with a democratic system of government, it remains a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Capitalist states, first through bourgeois revolutions and, second, through imperialism, are machines that have tended toward their own refinement, bureaucratization, and militarization. The dominance of the financial oligarchy brought about this evolution of states, culminating in state monopoly capitalism, where they actively participate in economic management, repression, and the guarantee of stability, along with the ever-increasing control of all aspects of the lives of the masses, all in accordance with the financial oligarchy’s agenda.

Today, we see that the situation is not only different from what Lenin described, but has worsened: we have professional politicians on the payroll, a highly militarized police force, and the state has become so pervasive that it regulates every aspect of social life. Historically, we have seen that in both imperialist countries and semi-colonies, when parties capable of being even minimally disruptive or proposing significant social policies come to power, they either tend to follow the same formulas as the other parties, watering down their discourse and proposals and becoming ineffective (Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, etc.), or the financial oligarchy exerts its influence and has the power to bring down the government, as happened with Allende in Chile or how inflation itself buried French social democracy during Mitterrand’s government.

Despite all of the above, we currently observe that there has been no qualitative change regarding the role and form of parliamentary democracy in most imperialist countries, including our own. There is no qualitative change in the form of parliament and its “political obsolescence” in imperialist countries compared to the previous century, such as a shift to a more opaque or indirect electoral system, excessive extensions of government terms, blatant manipulation of election results, a more pyramidal electoral system, etc.

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice

Long-COVID, viruses and ‘zombie’ cells: new research looks for links to chronic fatigue and brain fog

https://theconversation.com/long-covid-viruses-and-zombie-cells-new-research-looks-for-links-to-chronic-fatigue-and-brain-fog-261108

Millions of people who recover from infections like COVID-19, influenza and glandular fever are affected by long-lasting symptoms. These include chronic fatigue, brain fog, exercise intolerance, dizziness, muscle or joint pain and gut problems. And many of these symptoms worsen after exercise, a phenomenon known as post-exertional malaise.

Experiencing illness long after contracting an infection is not new, as patients have reported these symptoms for decades. But COVID-19 has amplified the problem worldwide. Nearly half of people with ongoing post-COVID symptoms – a condition known as long-COVID – now meet the criteria for ME/CFS. Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, it is estimated that more than 400 million people have developed long-COVID.

From acute viral infection to ‘zombie’ vessels
Viruses like SARS-CoV-2, Epstein–Barr virus, HHV-6, influenza A, and enteroviruses (a group of viruses that cause a number of infectious illnesses which are usually mild) can all infect endothelial cells. They enable a direct attack on the cells that line the inside of blood vessels. Some of these viruses have been shown to trigger endothelial senescence.

Masks are community care❤️‍🔥😷 free masks: maskbloc.org

• Remember: covid is not over, 50% of infections are asymptomatic, minimum 10% of infections end up in long COVID, re-infections wreck us, COVID spreads and moves like cigarette smoke, think of the people around you and you as people who are all day smoking, it becomes more visual to understand how COVID moves.
• There is no way to “train” the immune system because it is not a muscle. there is a common misconception that exposure to harmful germs strengthens the immune system. viral diseases like COVID, flu, measles weaken the immune system, leaving the possibility of lasting damage. The reality is that you don't build your immunity with repeated infections, vaccines strengthen the immune system by teaching it to recognize pathogens without all the risks. Focusing on infection prevention is key.
• Rapid antigen tests give many false negatives.
• Solving the pandemic was never in the cards for the capitalist world.
• Instead, the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception. Any reminder of the existence of a highly-transmissible, highly-dangerous, mass-disabling disease could trigger panic, or worse: organized, militant labor action. Averting this crisis required a careful campaign of culture-crafting; the people themselves needed to become convinced that there was no reason to fight. Consent for protracted mass infection needed to be manufactured.

“The cold truth of the matter is that the motive behind COVID minimization is greed and social control. (…) Solving the pandemic was never in the cards for the capitalist world. Instead, the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception.” Let Them Eat Plague! http://clarion.unity-struggle-unity.org/

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice

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