Anticapitalist Covid Conscious Reading Club

first Saturday of each month

access our discord to see the details

https://linktr.ee/HealthSelfDefense_

april 5
Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability

may 3
The Role of Psychiatry in the Occupation of Palestine

june 7
Let Them Eat Plague!

july 5
Stop blaming people for not wearing masks and start having a political analysis of eugenics.

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

.

Dismissed and Disbelieved, Some Long COVID Patients Are Pushed Into Psychiatric Wards

https://time.com/7206080/long-covid-psychiatric-wards/

In late 2022, Erin, a 43-year-old from Pennsylvania, agreed to spend six weeks in a psychiatric ward, getting intensive treatment for an illness she knew she didn’t have.
That decision was a last resort for Erin, who asked to be identified only by her first name for privacy. Her health had deteriorated after she caught COVID-19 nearly a year earlier; the virus left her with pain, fatigue, rapid weight loss, digestive problems, and vertigo. After another bout with a virus months later, Erin only got sicker, developing heart palpitations, muscle spasms, hoarseness, and pain in her neck, throat, and chest.

Erin was no stranger to chronic illness, having coped with a connective-tissue disorder her whole life. This was different. She became unable to work and rarely left her home. Her usual doctors were stumped; others said her litany of symptoms could be manifestations of anxiety.
When it became too painful to eat and swallow, Erin grew severely malnourished and was hospitalized at a large academic medical center. “I felt at the time like this was my last hope,” says Erin, who has since been diagnosed with Long COVID. “If I didn’t get any answers there, I didn’t know where to go afterward.”

She was admitted for a six-week stay and given diagnoses she knew were wrong: an eating disorder and anxiety.

The vast majority of Long COVID patients will not land in psychiatric wards, but Erin is far from the only one who has. “Emergency rooms are dangerous places for people with Long COVID,” says David Putrino, who studies and treats the condition as director of rehabilitation innovation for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York.

• 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

.

Idea for maskblocs in europe

Please send an email so we can arrange a call and coordinate!

[email protected]

We must declare that life is more precious than capitalist economies.
“Solidarity is a group that stands together, and would do so for even its weakest member. It is that community which resists the intoxicating lie of individualism—we live for ourselves and by ourselves.”
-Cole Arthur Riley.

We must support our inherent right to health and dignity. COVID-19 is not mild, it is not endemic, and it is not "just a cold." COVID-19 is a serious illness that can damage every part of your body, reactivate dormant viruses, permanently damage your immune system, and disable you.

The ruling classes have a long history of witch hunts to scapegoat the sick in response to infectious disease epidemics, rather than meeting the needs of the population.

Under feudal rule in what is now Europe, the bubonic plague was blamed on the Jewish people, accused of poisoning water wells. During the early AIDS epidemic, gay and bisexual men were demonized for their sexuality outside of heterosexual, monogamous, and partnered marital relationships. The denial of the severity of the COVID and long COVID public health crisis is a denial of science based on materialism. Once they have strayed from the paved path of science, medical judgments about people who report illness, pain, and disability have nowhere to travel except in the furrows of already deep historical prejudices.

Without seeking a scientific explanation (which already exists and is still being researched), doctors too often resort to pathologizing those who are oppressed based on their race/nationality, sex, sexuality, and gender expression. This creates more obstacles for those who are oppressed to access medical care. Sick people suffer from denial of credibility, unemployment, poverty, lack of health insurance, institutionalized racism, the requirement for ID, the oppression of women, and other oppressions based on sexuality, sex, and gender. Those who are oppressed and most impoverished are also more likely to be among the countless sick and disabled people who have stopped seeking medical answers or treatment, just as so many millions have abandoned their long and fruitless search for work and dropped off the unemployment rolls.

The COVID and long-COVID pandemic leaves the most oppressed and impoverished without diagnosis, care, or treatment. Institutionalized racism results, for example, in medical photographs and descriptions of rashes and other physical signs related to COVID and long COVID being documented only in light-skinned people. The long COVID pandemic affects oppressed peoples, from Native Nations on reservations to oppressed people living in impoverished rural communities.

Furthermore, the information available on the topic is available once you begin to investigate, but in many cases, the doctors themselves who talk about long COVID give completely erroneous guidelines. Many have even said that people should exercise (not understanding the fatigue of long COVID) and that reinfections are not dangerous (when there is evidence that they are). In the end, it ends up happening like other illnesses: doctors don't center the voices of those affected and don't understand the situated knowledge of people who experience it firsthand.

Women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, people with other chronic illnesses, and people with psychiatric conditions who push for a diagnosis are labeled "hysterical." Those who refute these "diagnoses" that are not derived from a scientific process find themselves medically labeled as "problem patients," rather than patients with an as-yet-undetermined medical problem.
The downplaying of propaganda around COVID has been IMMENSE. None of us are immune to propaganda, especially on that scale.

It's extremely normal to feel defensive when presented with a situation where your behavior doesn't align with the values you hold dear. We often want to protect ourselves from discomfort by dismissing the messenger—it happens all the time around COVID safety where people feel shame, so they accuse the messenger of shaming them. But being shamed and feeling shame are not the same thing. We're not seeking to shame; we're seeking to expose the harm being caused in the community, the facts. If those facts make you uncomfortable, that's your cognitive dissonance to process; that can be the impetus for being able to commit to community care.

We're not seeking to move through guilt. We don't believe shame is an effective motivator; in fact, we know that conviction regarding community care can't be achieved simply in conversation; it's a practice of example where we must continually fight the individualism we've been taught. We don't believe in coddling people or sending indirect messages. We believe in the struggles against eugenics, which have brought together affected groups, such as the Black Panther Party, which recognized that sickle cell anemia was a neglected genetic disease because the majority of those affected were of African descent. There was a rapid detection test based on a simple finger prick, but it wasn't widely used. Or in the case of the fight against HIV, where groups spoke about the importance of not only condom use but also syringe sterilization for addicts, in the case of prostitutes, and the violence experienced with condom use. We believe in learning from our past, practicing it, and looking to the future.

You are at risk for long COVID. It's never too late to start wearing a mask again. We have the power to protect each other. Get involved with your local mask group or clean air club. Reject eugenics, reject ableism, reject mass infection. Wearing a mask is love. Wearing a mask is community care. Wearing a mask is solidarity.

While we understand that COVID and long COVID affect the most marginalized people the most, we understand that the vulnerable/non-vulnerable dichotomy is not only a lie, but propaganda for "us" and "them" in fragility. We are all within fragility; don't buy into the narrative of immunological neoliberalism.

We can't talk about COVID without talking about the politics of desirability. They exist as a hierarchy that determines who deserves care and love. They are based on white supremacist ideals about beauty, youth, and productivity. Anyone who exists outside of these standards—any fat person, any Black person, any "non-conforming" trans person, anyone with disabilities, especially visible disabilities like facial or limb differences, the elderly, etc.—is dehumanized. Desire actively shapes systems of power and oppression. People who are deemed less desirable in a world that is actively constructed and centered on whiteness are relegated to the margins of society—invisible, or worse. This needs to be part of the conversation when we talk about eugenic policies around COVID. When we (especially white people, with invisible disabilities) talk about the ways in which high-risk people have been and continue to be discarded.

We understand the current state of COVID as one part of the larger fight against ableism. It's a much larger conversation. COVID is only one part. Ableism is global and structural. This is why we understand COVID mutual aid not as distributing masks, giving air purifiers, and helping people avoid COVID, but as the study, strategies, and practices of anti-ableism as a whole.

We must declare that life is more precious than capitalist economies. Historically, colonizers and capitalists have used plagues and pandemics as weapons to maintain domination. Today, our government and healthcare systems have allowed many people to die and become ill without doing much about it, especially in already marginalized communities. We are told to ignore how diseases can affect us and to disregard the scientific evidence that shows COVID-19 can be very dangerous. We are refusing to be sacrificed in this situation.

• 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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First They Got Long Covid. Then, It Made Them Homeless

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/long-covid-homeless-chronic-illness-gig-economy-1312460/

Cold weather is brutal for Wendi Taylor. After living with long Covid for two years, she knows that when the temperature drops, the pain and discomfort increases. This is especially true because of the severe arthritis in her hands, which only developed following her initial Covid-19 infection.
Taylor, who lives in Houston and is among the estimated millions of Americans living with long Covid, says that doing dishes during cold weather is probably the hardest part about living in the makeshift cabin she built from tarps and an 8×8 metal pop-up awning frame she found in the garbage.

“I heat water on the stove, but when it’s below freezing, it cools down quickly, and contact with the water causes extreme pain in my hands,” says Taylor. “It feels like being burned and smashed with a sledgehammer at the same time, and takes a long time for the pain to stop. Even just going outside can cause my hands to turn red and swell and have pain like that. It has made me curl up on my bed and cry more than once.”

After riding out last year’s historic ice storm — which left at least 246 Texas residents dead — in a previous camp, when Taylor found out about the major winter storm at the beginning of this month, she went in prepared. She reinforced the tarps that function as the walls of her cabin, and ensured that the poles of its frame were firmly anchored into the ground.

One of Taylor’s biggest concerns this time was having the propane she needed to operate her stove. “Power outages matter little to me, but ‘they’ will buy all the propane if their electric heat goes off,” Taylor, 41, tells Rolling Stone, referring to housed individuals. “This is one of the biggest issues we face: Supplies we depend on daily become unavailable when they’re hoarded for emergencies.”

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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Hope requires grief

"Hope is not a feeling generated by an individual from within. Hope is a flame that is intentionally co-created in community that then permeates & passes through us all.

Hope, happiness, joy, contentment, safety, meaning, purpose, motivation, creativity, etc are all things an individual cannot independently generate in isolation even if colonial logic convinces you otherwise.

Hope is not a feeling generated by an individual from within. Hope is a flame that is intentionally co-created in community that then permeates & passes through us all.

Hope is a fire that is tended to and kept alive by the collective efforts of many. Just like any life-giving, life-sustaining energy that circulates within an ecosystem, we depend on each other to have hope. Like survival, hope is a collective responsibility, not an individual burden. We have to play our role in seeking out community where such hope can be co-created. The struggle to forge community in itself is a journey with a million hopeful moments that can only exist alongside painful teaching moments. As long as we run from the struggle, hope will remain just as inaccessible.

We don’t fight for us, we fight for those who came before & those who will come after us.

Intergenerational collectivism is intuitive to some but many are not used to thinking deeply beyond the self let alone acting to preserve future generations. Capitalism convinces people to look out for themselves, effectively cutting them off from community not just in present day but communities of the past & the future. Palestinian resistance factions are sacrificing everything including their lives knowing they may not necessarily see a free Palestine within their lifetime but future generations might.

We don’t fight for us, we fight for those who came before & those who will come after us.

We have to fight as though the freedom we envision can be actualized right now but also commit to fighting regardless. This basic logic drives collectivism. Land-based communities don’t just sow seeds to have food next year, we sow seeds for trees that will bear fruit or nuts in the future, sometimes decades or centuries from now. Ultimately, such foresight & care makes our ecosystems resilient, more sustainable & our soil infinitely more fertile even in the present. So it is not a fully selfless act, it is reciprocity. The act of thinking beyond yourself as an individual generates hope. We don’t need the perfect hypothetical utopia of tomorrow to arrive to experience real hope. We need to put in the work to co-create it today & it is all around us if we’re open to it."

How do we keep hope alive in our movements?, Ayesha Khan, Ph.D.

https://wokescientist.substack.com/p/how-do-we-keep-hope-alive-in-our

"We need to grieve.

We have lived in a dire health crisis for far too long. Mourning has become a perfunctory ritual expected to take place in the margins of our days. Genocide reduces lives to statistics for us to inhale without complication; yet, so many of us have seen our communities shrink, grow tired and get sicker. For marginalized people across the world, each day has been doused in distress by the capitalist elites who are waiting for us to eagerly march into our own coffins.

We need to grieve.

Sometimes, there are no words left to say. But, we implore all of us to replace silence with screaming, sobbing, the sounds of grief. We deserve to feel devastated. We deserve to stop pedaling on through labyrinths of productivity and distraction. We deserve time to feel the pain we’ve been conditioned to fear feeling.

Hope requires grief. If we can’t mourn what has been taken from us, how can we begin to imagine what we can give to each other? How can we appreciate mourning when this grief is needless? How do we learn from this mourning when our sorrow is relentless? Mourning in grief requires gentle or sharp release, yet there is no release when our mourning persists.

When we can allow ourselves to embrace slowness and take the time to look at the vast landscape of suffering that has been inflicted upon us, we must also acknowledge that our current lifestyles are antithetical to the future we’re working towards. As Mao Tse-tung wrote in Combat Liberalism, “To see someone harming the interests of the masses and yet not feel indignant, or dissuade or stop him or reason with him, but to allow him to continue” is a type of liberalism.

The mass unmasking wave has caused irreparable harm, and we cannot allow that to continue. How can we say we prioritize community care if that care doesn’t include the health and safety of vulnerable communities? How do we intend to wage war on capitalist elites if we all grow weak and fatigued from never-ending re-infections?"

People’s Health Education Program

https://healthselfdefense.substack.com/p/hope-requires-grief

• 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

.

The ruling classes have a long history of witch-hunting to scapegoat the sick in response to infectious disease epidemics, rather than meeting the needs of the population.

We must declare that life is more precious than capitalist economies.
“Solidarity is a group that stands together, and would do so for even its weakest member. It is that community which resists the intoxicating lie of individualism—we live for ourselves and by ourselves.”
-Cole Arthur Riley.
We must support our inherent right to health and dignity. COVID-19 is not mild, it is not endemic, and it is not "just a cold." COVID-19 is a serious illness that can damage every part of your body, reactivate dormant viruses, permanently damage your immune system, and disable you.

The ruling classes have a long history of witch hunts to scapegoat the sick in response to infectious disease epidemics, rather than meeting the needs of the population.

Under feudal rule in what is now Europe, the bubonic plague was blamed on the Jewish people, accused of poisoning water wells. During the early AIDS epidemic, gay and bisexual men were demonized for their sexuality outside of heterosexual, monogamous, and partnered marital relationships. The denial of the severity of the COVID and long COVID public health crisis is a denial of science based on materialism. Once they have strayed from the paved path of science, medical judgments about people who report illness, pain, and disability have nowhere to travel except in the furrows of already deep historical prejudices.

Without seeking a scientific explanation (which already exists and is still being researched), doctors too often resort to pathologizing those who are oppressed based on their race/nationality, sex, sexuality, and gender expression. This creates more obstacles for those who are oppressed to access medical care. Sick people suffer from denial of credibility, unemployment, poverty, lack of health insurance, institutionalized racism, the requirement for ID, the oppression of women, and other oppressions based on sexuality, sex, and gender.

Those who are oppressed and most impoverished are also more likely to be among the countless sick and disabled people who have stopped seeking medical answers or treatment, just as so many millions have abandoned their long and fruitless search for work and dropped off the unemployment rolls.

The COVID and long-COVID pandemic leaves the most oppressed and impoverished without diagnosis, care, or treatment. Institutionalized racism results, for example, in medical photographs and descriptions of rashes and other physical signs related to COVID and long COVID being documented only in light-skinned people. The long COVID pandemic affects oppressed peoples, from Native Nations on reservations to oppressed people living in impoverished rural communities.

Women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, people with other chronic illnesses, and people with psychiatric conditions who push for a diagnosis are labeled "hysterical." Those who refute these "diagnoses" that are not derived from a scientific process find themselves medically labeled as "problem patients," rather than patients with an as-yet-undetermined medical problem.
The downplaying of propaganda around COVID has been IMMENSE. None of us are immune to propaganda, especially on that scale.

It's extremely normal to feel defensive when presented with a situation where your behavior doesn't align with the values ​​you hold dear. We often want to protect ourselves from discomfort by dismissing the messenger—it happens all the time around COVID safety where people feel shame, so they accuse the messenger of shaming them. But being shamed and feeling shame are not the same thing. We're not seeking to shame; we're seeking to expose the harm being caused in the community, the facts. If those facts make you uncomfortable, that's your cognitive dissonance to process; that can be the impetus for being able to commit to community care.

You are at risk for long COVID. It's never too late to start wearing a mask again. We have the power to protect each other. Get involved with your local mask group or clean air club. Reject eugenics, reject ableism, reject mass infection. Wearing a mask is love. Wearing a mask is community care. Wearing a mask is solidarity.

While we understand that COVID and long COVID affect the most marginalized people the most, we understand that the vulnerable/non-vulnerable dichotomy is not only a lie, but propaganda for "us" and "them" in fragility. We are all within fragility; don't buy into the narrative of immunological neoliberalism.

We can't talk about COVID without talking about the politics of desirability. They exist as a hierarchy that determines who deserves care and love. They are based on white supremacist ideals about beauty, youth, and productivity. Anyone who exists outside of these standards—any fat person, any Black person, any "non-conforming" trans person, anyone with disabilities, especially visible disabilities like facial or limb differences, the elderly, etc.—is dehumanized.

We understand the current state of COVID as one part of the larger fight against ableism. It's a much larger conversation. COVID is only one part. Ableism is global and structural. This is why we understand COVID mutual aid not as distributing masks, giving air purifiers, and helping people avoid COVID, but as the study, strategies, and practices of anti-ableism as a whole.

• 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

.

Mamdani is a zionist and an oppressor who defends de police, he is not going to be “honoring” the Long COVID victims.

https://maskupactup.substack.com/p/mamdani-is-a-zionist-and-an-oppressor

Some days ago, I saw a campaign of some Covid Conscious group asking the Mayor of NY, Mamdani, do “honor the Long COVID victims”. This is an example of the political contradictions in the Covid Conscious Community. Mamdani is a representative of imperialism, asking him to honor the victims is not understanding his roll. Some Covid Conscious people trust the same system who is killing us. This is my critique on that.

Mamdani is a zionist who condemns the resistance in Palestine. He prefers dead Palestinian and perfect victims than Palestinian defending the land and the people. On November 19, 2025, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced her decision to accept Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s offer to remain in her post within his administration, as the WOL movement explains:

“For nearly two decades, Jessica Tisch has been central to building the NYPD’s surveillance state. Beginning in 2008 in the Counterterrorism Bureau, she rose through the department’s intelligence division during the height of the city’s illegal surveillance of mosques, Muslim student groups, and Arab and Muslim neighborhoods. She later helped construct the NYPD’s Domain Awareness System, a multibillion-dollar network that aggregates surveillance footage, license plate readers, social media data, and biometric information.

Tisch’s record is inseparable from the NYPD’s direct collaboration with the Israeli occupation. In 2015 she traveled to occupied Palestine as Deputy Commissioner for Information Technology to train with Israeli Occupation Forces. She later hosted the top brass of Israel’s National Police at NYPD headquarters in November 2024, and marched in the “Israel Day Parade” this past May. In January 2025 Tisch oversaw an NYPD training that labeled keffiyehs and watermelons as antisemitic symbols, turning Palestinian cultural expression into a policing target. And in October 2025 she spoke at the Anti-Defamation League’s annual conference, where she defended the Gaza genocide, condemned pro-Palestine protestors, and equated anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

The Tisch family is also a pillar of the NYC Police Foundation, which created and funds the NYPD’s international liaison program and its satellite office in Kafr Saba, occupied Palestine. Her family members have donated, chaired, and currently serve on the foundation’s board. These connections place Tisch at the intersection of the billionaire class, the NYPD’s global footprint, and zionism, revealing how local repression and settler-colonial occupation are structurally linked. (…)

Every generation has seen politicians win campaigns by speaking of liberation only to side with the state when power calls. This moment is a reminder that political victories are hollow when they become absorbed by the same institutions that perpetuate violence against our people. We will not forget, and we will not be silenced.” From New York to Palestine: Stand against Zohran Mamdani’s Reappointment of NYPD Commissioner Tisch

You are against ICE? Now elevate your political knowledge of imperialism. ICE is the surface, politicians like Mamdani are the ways capitalism tries to sell you a new re-branding.

We could put all this energy to serve the people. When we say “COVID is a labor issue” we are not saying random words:

“The cold truth of the matter is that the motive behind COVID minimization is greed and social control. Actually solving the pandemic was never in the cards of the capitalist world. the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception. (…)

For capitalism to function, it requires two things: a steady supply of workers producing value and an unending flow of consumption to realize that value as profit for the capitalist. The onset of a pandemic presented a challenge on both of those fronts. Workers getting sick en masse and being forced to stay home for a couple of weeks — or even dying or becoming disabled and exiting the workforce altogether — was only one potential headache for the capitalist class. Far worse was the prospect of workers staying home out of precaution, thereby grinding production to a halt. Consumers staying home and buying only the essentials would prevent the realization of profits across huge swathes of the economy, cutting off the flow of capital necessary to keep the whole system running.

The moment it became obvious to market analysts that COVID was more than just a local Chinese outbreak, it triggered utter panic in the financial sector. Fears about the slowdown of profits led to several mass stock sell-offs from investors, lowering stock value, triggering even more panic-selling, across multiple different days. This wasn’t just speculation: decreased demand for oil rapidly triggered a massive price war that caused prices to spiral for months until becoming negative, with the holders of oil futures paying to offload their contracts. Without ramping demand back up, production of this and other key commodities would be financially toxic.

Capitalism also relies on a reserve army of labor to keep labor costs artificially deflated. A contracted economy, in which any worker willing to work is a rare commodity, tips the balance of power in favor of workers. Workers could more easily bargain for higher wages and safer working conditions (including liberal COVID leave). Most worryingly of all, in the context of long-term precautionary measures, the population would get used to a dangerous notion — that we have value beyond our labor and our consumption. When faced with the prospect of death or disability, the contradictions become sharpened in our eyes. Hundreds of millions of workers would suddenly ask “Why am I risking my life for this?” The frustration at a choice between abject poverty and potentially contracting a debilitating condition would galvanize workers to stand up for our rights. Waves of labor mobilization, rent strikes, workplace lockouts, boycotts, and more would sweep the country — and the world. It would be the greatest challenge to the political power of the capitalist class in a century.

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.” Let Them Eat Plague! – The Red Clarion

“Liberals do not represent working-class interests or fight like it. We can’t keep letting them handle our business.

Waging class struggle means fighting as a single, indivisible class. That requires a strategy synthesized from a deep understanding of how capitalism manifests throughout the country & a platform that encompasses the common political interests of all workers in this territory.

Our current fights are too narrow. We have been waging fights in specific workplaces/industries, issues, or localities. At best, that can only protect the interests of a specific constituency within the scope of the project.

We cannot continue putting all of our talents & energy into single-issue fights and letting the Democratic Party — an electoral party O-B-V-I-O-U-S-L-Y in the service of capital — pretend to represent working-class interests in the political arena.

Ultimately, we must put our collective labor to build the political infrastructure that can bring capitalism to its knees.

We must create something new, which will require committed political workers throughout every corner of the country to work together. (…)

An organization with political clarity might look like this:
• Members understand the root causes of the problems affecting their community & the purpose of their org and show that through high levels of commitment
• It can concretely lay out a path to improve the conditions and build the leadership/capacity of working-class communities
• Funds campaigns that build toward their vision & develop their constituents’ tactical & strategic leadership
• It can efficiently instill working-class consciousness among its constituents and supporters, connecting theory to the real-life experiences of the community
However, a single org operates at a level that is far too narrow to challenge capitalism. In addition, most nonprofits are workplaces funded at the speed of grant cycles, which is a massive contradiction in itself. In real political homes, even when some political workers receive pay (the most valuable to the class struggle), serving the cause isn’t a job; that shit’s life.” Liberation Takes Work (Beyond Unions and Nonprofits) | by Prolematic | Medium

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

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“It starts as a “simple infection” until YEARS later it becomes:
Long HIV...AIDS
Long HPV...Cervical Cancer
Long EBV... Multiple Sclerosis
Long HSV...Alzheimer’s
Long HCV...Liver Cancer
CURRENTLY 1 in 13 Americans already have #LongCOVID.
We don’t know how this story ends Wear a mask”

“COVID-19 is “Airborne AIDS”: provocative oversimplification, emerging science, or something in between?”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2773065425001464

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.

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). The phrase emphasizes key similarities and is grounded in evidence of shared outcomes, including immune dysfunction through T cell depletion and exhaustion, persistent systemic damage, and neurocognitive decline.

These outcomes are further highlighted by the increased vulnerability to infectious diseases, including those that are signature indicators of immune deficiency typically associated with HIV/AIDS, as well as likely several types of cancer. Combined with its airborne spread and high transmissibility, SARS-CoV-2 is an ongoing threat to immunity and contributes to the population-level spread of many infections, amplifying its impact on public health.

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. Medical professionals pushing for mitigation measures face governmental and media backlash. Meanwhile, Long COVID patients experience persistent gaslighting and ignorance from healthcare professionals, exacerbating their struggles to access appropriate care.

Herd immunity is unattainable for a virus that mutates rapidly and evolves to evade and suppress the immune system. Similarly, the rapidly waning hybrid or post-infection immunity offers little long-term utility when achieving it requires infection with an immune-dysregulating, organ-damaging virus. Instead, 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.

Immune system damage from COVID-19 is different from HIV/AIDS- but the advocacy has parallels

https://thesicktimes.org/2025/01/14/immune-system-damage-from-covid-19-is-different-from-hiv-aids-but-the-advocacy-has-parallels/

The history of HIV/AIDS offers lessons for current organizing to curb the spread of COVID-19 and Long COVID. During the emergence of AIDS in the 1980's, public health authorities minimized the disease. News outlets reassured the public that having a "strong immune system" would prevent and stop HIV infection. We now know that is not the case. The vast majority of individuals who were infected would eventually go on to succumb to complications from lymphopenia, since they did not have antiretroviral treatments at that time. Since 1981, more than 42 million people have died of HIV, according to the World Health Organization.

Not only did many authorities misrepresent the threat of infection to these patients in the 1980s, but they minimized their deaths as well. AIDS became known as a disease of marginalized communities, including gay men, drug users, and Haitians. News outlets sensationalized deaths among these vulnerable groups. Similarly, in the past few years. the mainstream media has often minimized deaths from COVID-19 as the "elderly" and "disabled." The reality of Long COVID is also often erased.

• 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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We need to talk about anxiety related to wearing a mask.

https://camaradademian.substack.com/p/we-need-to-talk-about-anxiety-related

Masks are something much more than a protection measure; They have to do with a matter of social justice, and this has been evident from the beginning. The social criminalization of the mask does not have so much to do with the protection itself, but with the thrust for capitalism towards the narrative of normality. We have seen it with the floods in the Spanish State or with the Coronavirus globally. The objective of the ruling class has never been care, but to prioritize salaried work and all the machines that turn around.

We face a society that constantly reminds us that the existence of disabled people must be eliminated and that our lives are worth less if we do not meet productivity standards. Therefore, not only what we understand as a working class is created, but also a threat within that class: disabled people. This is used not only to isolate disabled people even more, who are oppressed because they are not exploited by salaried work, but also as a way of strengthening the power of the working class. Thus, many people, both disabled and non -disabled, try to separate from disability as an attempt to be assimilated by capitalism.

The use of the mask is presented as a weakness, as something forgotten, as something that goes against “normality.” But the question is: What really does normality and what political class do it serves? In some cases, the mask, under this eugenic logic, becomes a signal to look at you distrustful, so that your doctor becomes more violent with you, to ask you invasive questions, and to be tangible white of tangible violence, such as harassment. The use of the mask has never been a purely objective issue, as literally nothing under capitalism. It is a political issue, like the use of condom. The activists have been pointing out how science is not at the service of the working class, and how are we who must demand the necessary protection measures, while at the same time we identify who the culprits are.

Science under capitalism will never be free, because it is kidnapped by a ruling class that is not only completely anti -scientific, but also uses science solely and exclusively for oppression.

For people categorized as vulnerable, each exit to the world is a challenge not only physical, but also emotional, because we face all the time to harassment related to the use of the mask. In fact, there are a lot of people who need to use the mask to protect themselves and do not do it as shame.

Here it is important to understand that there are no “vulnerable” in absolute terms, but vulnerable people and more vulnerable people. And vulnerability not only has to do with a purely medical issue, but, above all, with an absolutely political issue. The most vulnerable people are not only disabled people, but also migrants, racialized people, people who cannot miss work because they need money, and, in the end, any type of oppressed group is subject to vulnerability.

For disabled people, that we are aware of what the Coronavirus does to our bodies, our communities and what it is doing for our future, fear of harassment is aggravated. We not only fear for our health, but also because of the way in which we are perceived and is isolated even more. To name something that has literally gone: to be seen as a hindrance if we ask for adaptations or support. They will treat us with condescension, as if we were “special” people for the simple fact of existing with a chronic disease. And, although it seems contradictory, we are also afraid that, when asking for help, we are making life more difficult. This is the paradox that we live: we do not fit into the model of this false normality that is imposed through society. Many of us have spent a lot of time being ashamed to ask that others use mask for our security. Some have managed to put our limits on the table, but others cannot afford it.

Society may tell us that our anxiety is exaggerated, but the truth is that ableist structures and social barriers are those that are leading us to live with this fear. And while the world continues to ignore these realities, our anxiety does not dissipate. He is here, alive and constant, because we know that every day, when we go out to the world, we must face not only our health, but also an environment that tells us that we have no right to occupy space, to ask for help, to be vulnerable.

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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