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!
#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
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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Telegram and Signal Channel: Antiimperialist Solidarity — Sending Masks to LATAM
How this channel works:
1. We send requests saying:
- If it’s urgent or not, and an estimated date if possible
- Country where the masks/tests are needed
- Number of masks needed, and if there’s a preferred model
- Number of COVID tests, if applicable
- How we can cover the costs, details if fundraising etc
2. If you can help with a request, feel free to message the person who posted it directly.
We created this space to connect people who need protective materials with those who can send them.
Join the channel in Telegram or Signal
https://linktr.ee/healthselfdefense_
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.
#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice
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Studies across 14 nations show 25% to 30% rate of long COVID
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/studies-across-14-nations-show-25-30-rate-long-covid
A new study in BMJ Global Health across 13 middle- and high-income countries reveals that 25% of patients reported symptoms of long COVID after symptomatic COVID-19, and long COVID is significantly more prevalent in participants from less wealthy nations and in patients of Arab or North African ethnicity.
A second study published in BMC Public Health showed that, among 3,693 COVID-19 patients in China, 30.2% reported at least one persistent long-COVID symptom, and 10.7% noted symptoms affecting daily life.
Among the 25.1% of participants who said they experienced long-COVID symptoms, 12.8% reported sleeping disorders, 9.8% reported joint pain, 8.7% had fatigue, and 8.1% noted headaches. Almost a third of participants (29.8%) from lower middle-income countries said they had long COVID, compared with 14.4% in high-income countries (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 1.53; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.10 to 2.14).
The highest long-COVID prevalence was seen in patients with Arab/North African ethnicity (36.1%), and hospitalized patient were also at increased risk of long COVID (aOR, 2.04; 95% CI, 1.63 to 2.54).
• 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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ETA: nmjk, it's @Texan_Reverend, here's an example
https://kind.social/@Texan_Reverend/116229860336827709
hey, there used to be somebody on here hosting virtual mask fit/decorating sessions, but naturally I can't find them in search
anyone? Bueller?
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
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Health Self Defense ❤️🔥😷
cj 😷
Process "Tedious" Parsnip
fritzoids