The UP-PGH COVID-19 Information Education Communication Committee announced that in the past couple of weeks, there's been an increase in #flu-like and #Covid19 infections among their healthcare workers, coinciding with the local influenza season.

We all know the drill: best to #MaskUp in confined spaces, or when you're feeling under the weather, and follow good hygiene practices.

@pinoy

Ignoring Covid is ableist, crips: let's mask up!

https://maskupactup.substack.com/p/class-struggle-intersectionality

The use of viruses as a weapon
The first thing would be to understand the handling of eugenics that has been used against people marginalized and oppressed by the system. An example of organizing against this eugenics is the case of the Black Panther Party, which saw sickle cell anemia as a neglected genetic disease, because most of those affected were of African descent. A rapid detection test based on a simple finger prick existed, but it was not widely used. The Black Panther Party rectified this government failure by establishing a national screening program.

These eugenics have not happened only with HIV and it is happening now with COVID, but also for example with Lyme disease, there are writings made from the US of cases of migrants, especially poorer people. The science of the ruling class was used to disable and kill people, while they were told that they were depressed and lazy for not wanting to work, Leslie Feinberg, a militant who was also affected by this pandemic, writes: “Ruling classes have a long history of witch hunts to scapegoat the ill in response to epidemics of infectious disease, rather than to meet the needs of the population. Under feudal rule in what is now Europe, the bubonic plague was blamed on Jewish people charged with poisoning the water wells. During the early AIDS epidemic, gay and bisexual men were demonized for sexuality outside of coupled, monogamous, heterosexual marital relations.

Denial of the seriousness of the Lyme/+ public health crisis is a denial of materialist- based science. Once having run off the paved path of science, medical judgments about people who report illness, pain and disability have nowhere to travel except in the ruts of already deep historical prejudices. By denying the mass impact of Lyme plus its co-infections, the U.S. scientific establishment issues an open appeal to already existing bigotries to “explain” why so many are so ill. Without a scientific explanation, doctors too often fall back on pathologizing those who are oppressed based on race/nationality, sex, sexuality and gender expression. This creates more obstacles for those who are oppressed to access health care. People who are ill suffer denial of credibility, unemployment, poverty, lack of health insurance, institutionalized racism, the demand for identification papers, women’s oppression and other oppressions based on sexuality, sex and gender.” Casualty of an Undeclared War Series.

Vulnerable and non-vulnerable, the lie to feel safe
There is a widely accepted idea that there is a group of vulnerable people who need to take COVID seriously, but that the rest of the people, if they don’t fall into the immunocompromised category or have long COVID or are elderly, can simply ignore it. “It’s just a cold or flu.” Now, aside from being cruel and abandoning a bunch of people, a big part of society, it’s also wrong, and I think it just stems from the fact that most people know very little about COVID and don’t really understand what it’s doing in their body, how it works. They don’t know anything about it, to be honest. And one way I can demonstrate that is if I were to say, what cells does COVID infect? What is it doing in your body? Most people have no idea. It’s really not their fault. Public health is supposed to tell them that. But most people would tell you, I don’t know, or it infects your respiratory system, and that’s not true.

The reason comparing COVID to the flu is so infuriating is that the flu is a respiratory illness. It enters your respiratory system and infects respiratory cells practically, exclusively. Now, COVID infects things called ace receptors, and they’re all over our bodies. They’re in the lining of our blood vessels, they’re in our kidneys, they’re in our heart, they’re in our brain. They are practically everywhere. And so when someone says COVID feels like the cold or flu, I don’t really care how it feels. Your blood vessels have no nerves. There are several parts of your body that COVID can get into that don’t have nerves. When a disease feels a certain way, it’s usually your immune response. So, something that also feels like the flu is HIV. HIV presents with flu-like symptoms for two weeks, and then lodges in your immune system and works on it for years. So does the fact that HIV feels like the flu tell you a lot? No. Like HIV, COVID has several ways of dampening our immune system. So, another thing that people say is, I hardly felt anything. Well, great. Either your system fought it off very quickly and effectively, or if you don’t feel much, it’s because your immune system isn’t kicking in and it’s not fighting it off.

So, a lot of people are coming to this conclusion of, I keep getting this disease repeatedly and it doesn’t feel too bad. I must be fine. And what’s really happening is that it’s becoming like Russian roulette. It may be causing organ damage, it may be affecting your blood vessels, it may be affecting your brain. And each time it’s like rolling the dice. And this is not something that you can just do continuously. And people are getting COVID 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, times, there’s a point where long COVID is almost certain. If you get COVID twelve times or 15 or 20, there’s just no way it’s going to be good for you. Think about going backwards, before the pandemic. If someone said, I’ve had the flu 20 times in the last 20 years, you’d be alarmed. And that’s pretty much the story that many people will have. They’ll say, yes, I had COVID eight times in the last ten years.

Intersectionality
Sins Invalid, 10 Principles of Disability Justice

1. INTERSECTIONALITY Simply put, this principle says that we are many things, and they all impact us. We are not only disabled, we are also each coming from a specific experience of race, class, sexuality, age, religious background, geographical location, immigration status, and more. Depending on context, we all have areas where we experience privilege, as well as areas of oppression. The term “intersectionality “was first introduced by feminist theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to describe the experiences of Black women, who experience both racism and sexism in specific ways. We gratefully embrace the nuance that this principle brings to our lived experiences, and the ways it shapes the perspectives we offer.

3. ANTI-CAPITALIST POLITICS Capitalism depends on wealth accumulation for some (the white ruling class), at the expense of others, and encourages competition as a means of survival. The nature of our disabled body minds means that we resist conforming to “normative” levels of productivity in a capitalist culture, and our labor is often invisible to a system that defines labor by able-bodied, white supremacist, gender normative standards. Outworth is not dependent on what and how much we can produce.

7. COMMITMENT TO CROSS-DISABILITY SOLIDARITY We value and honor the insights and participation of all of our community members, even and especially those who are most often left out of political conversations. Weare building a movement that breaks down isolation between people with physical impairments, people who are sick or chronically ill, psych survivors and people with mental health disabilities, neurodiverse people, people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, Deaf people, Blind people, people with environmental injuries and chemical sensitivities, and all others who experience ableism and isolation that undermines our collective liberation.

8. INTERDEPENDENCE Before the massive colonial project of Western European expansion, we understood the nature of interdependence within our communities. We see the liberation of all living systems and the land as integral to the liberation of our own communities, as we all share one planet. We work to meet each other’s needs as we build toward liberation, without always reaching for state solutions which inevitably extend state control further into our lives.

“Perhaps one of the most heartbreaking aspects of Long COVID and disability is that people generally assume that their loved ones will show up for them if they suddenly fall ill or need support, but for most disabled people, this just isn’t true. A remarkable amount of newly disabled people are shocked to find out that no matter how much you think people love you, your abilities and what you can offer people sometimes dictates their willingness to be around you. Under capitalism, a lot of our love is conditional, whether we recognize it or not.

When your abilities suddenly change, the context of your relationship to others changes, and in their eyes it might not be worth sticking around. When the terms of your relationship changes, that person you thought would never leave, might surprise you. Additionally, people sometimes don’t like to be around disabled people, including formerly able-bodied people because it serves as a reminder that no matter how healthy they are, they are not invincible, and this can, in fact, happen to them. For Long COVID patients it’s even further complicated by the fact that even mentioning COVID awakens an instinct to jump immediately into denial and deflection. It is not very socially acceptable anymore.

All of this information can be really overwhelming, especially when you’re surrounded by crowds of unmasked people. Ignoring COVID is more socially acceptable, but why, as an anarchist, communist, or just empathetic person do you feel the need to fit in? Is it because it’s convenient? Is it because it’s fun to go out to eat, or to concerts, and the world is so bad right now that having those social interactions feel necessary to you?

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

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My wife and I went to Ocean State Job Lot. We met a cultist there. We were wearing our masks (and we weren't the only ones in the store!) and that puzzled her. She wanted to know if there was a plague. We told her there was - COVID. She said there were vaccines, and that people who took them shed the virus, and that she believed in Jesus.

She said that because she believed in Jesus, she had somewhere to go "after". I told her not to let us keep her. Then we continued shopping.

#maskup

RE: https://disabled.social/@maskblocde/116825080040122994

WAHOO!! This is my local mask bloc!
#MaskUp #Delaware #CovidIsNotOver

Anyone with a #mask and access to an electron microscope can do clandestine active monitoring for biological pathogens by wearing said mask to a large night gathering and analyzing the filter in a lab.

It's not #BioWatch , but if active monitoring is suspended, citizen science might be the last defense and the only shot at an early warning.

#Atlanta #NewYork #NewJersey #NYC #Boston #Seattle #KansasCity #maskup #covid #covidisnotover #ebola #hantavirus #dhs #hhs #vaccines

Un masque chirurgical, c'est pas mal...

Un masque FFP2, c'est mieux !

#AutoDéfenseSanitaire
#MaskUp
#CovidIsAirborne
#CovidIsNotOver

Mask Bloc DE at Pride Fest at the Queen in Wilmington today...
OMG where to I start with #AltText?

#MaskBloc #Wilmington #Delaware #CovidIsNotOver #PrideFest #PrideMonth #PrideAllYearLong #CovidIsAirborne #MaskUP for goodness sake

European covid concious community, I need you. My older brother has recently seen a photo of me masking in public and has asked me why I'm masking everywhere still. He's French and a bit older than me and I want to answer with facts that he can't just rebut. I don't want to tell him why, I want to show him why. However, most of the information I find is in English which is his third language. If I could find anything in French it'd be great, Spanish is still ok. I've been searching but I keep getting misinformation and it's hard to find an article that covers mask wearing as a legitimate tool of protection. Could anyone help?

#COVIDFRANCE #covideurope #covidconcious #covideuropa #maskup #longcovid