Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, who identified a chemical tweak to messenger RNA that laid the foundation for vaccines against #Covid19, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/ Medicine.
As this photo shows, both scientists are wearing masks and NOT relying on the "vax and relax".
Back when I was still in university, sometimes my professors appeared in news articles. More often than not, they didn't appear, but the same 2-5 others experts of the country appeared (again and again and again).
As students we asked some professors how this all came to be. Who appeared where and how? We got the following explanation:
A news outlet decides they want to create an article or video. The tone and conclusion of the piece have already been decided. Then they contact many experts in that field. For example, a query they would send out is: "Hello, we're looking for experts to talk to about X."
Not many experts respond, but some do. The query they will get in response will be something like: "Thanks for your interest, we are looking for someone to confirm that X leads to Y and Z."
My professors told me that in their naive days, they would still keep interacting and correcting and suggesting other takes. "Actually, Y and Z aren't like that, it's too simplistic, but I could talk about A and B and how it leads to maybe Y in your article."
What would happen? They were ghosted of course. 😂
Among many experts, news outlets would eventually always find one or two people willing to confirm their shitty clickbait shit. And once these experts work along, they get contacted more frequently than others. Experts who keep correcting and being difficult, aren't contacted again.
I studied in a very niche field and I know all experts in that field in my country. I started to recognize who would work along and what they would gain from it. I now know who's blacklisted and who is being kept out of the news and why.
This has been in the back of my mind during the #pandemic. I assume things work the same way among virologists, epidemiologists, and other related experts. It's frustrating because they carry the title of expert, they come across as knowledgeable and the media spreads their words everywhere. It's made to appear as if these experts represent their whole field and all others in it.
But how many experts have these news outlets had to contact before finding someone who was willing to collaborate with their minimizing?
Careful out there, there's a lot of nasty stuff besides covid going around. Such as "covid but I did my rapid test too early to detect it", and "covid but I didn't re-test my negative rapid test 48hr later", and "covid but I got a false negative for some other reason".
These diseases have a lot of the same symptoms as covid, but unlike covid, it's "perfectly safe" to continue your normal activities and infect a bunch of people.
• Mask wearers are immunocompromised.
• Mask wearers are sick.
• Mask wearers are caregivers of high risk people.
• Mask wearers know that #CovidVax is not enough to stop transmission.
• Mask wearers are healthy and want to STAY that way.
The sheer amount of people who stopped wearing masks as soon as they were optional demonstrates how many people never understood why they were wearing them in the first place, which is a tremendous and ongoing failure of institutional public health
There is so much unprocessed grief about the loss of the before-times in our society right now. My coworker, who is now masking again, has been relaying her emotions to me since we started talking about COVID and I remember so much of what she's going through.
People are so broken right now. Denying we've lost something isn't going to bring it back, though. It just ensures we'll lose more.
TL;DR: #COVID fucks up the immune system and AGES your cells. Recovery of vital immune cells can take months, even years. Adults have a LIMITED ABILITY to create new immune cells bc our thymus is atrophied.
Your body does NOT develop immunity to new COVID strains, and “immunity debt” is a MADE-UP TERM that has absolutely NO BASIS in reality or how our immune systems actually work.
When a UK hospital upgraded staff masks from fluid resistant [baggy blue] surgical masks to airtight respirators on #COVID19 wards, staff infections fell a dramatic 100%. That's not a typo.
Why are patients still catching Covid in hospitals? Great article. Also, watching this happen yesterday was disgusting:
"I had the dubious honor of attending a HICPAC meeting yesterday, where after two hours of discussion that somehow evaded the elephant in the room, public commenters were finally given an opportunity to point it out. While none of the infection control experts had mentioned either COVID or aerosol transmission, every single commenter brought up both. Armed with studies, personal experiences, and common sense, commenters pointed out the obvious as the panel squirmed. COVID is airborne. So where is the airborne infection control? Mere hours after the meeting concluded, the CDC removed access to a publicly-available recording of the session."
Thinking about the fact that the hardest part of the ongoing pandemic for MOST people is that they had to wear masks for a little while and the prospect of having to do it again stokes animalistic rage in them.
It wasn't the ongoing mass death and disablement and organized abandonment by the government and forced infections by our employers.
No.
It was masks. Being told to wear a mask to protect others was the greatest injustice of their lives.
I had the weirdest interaction today. I went into a store and an older guy says to me, "I guess we're back to wearing masks again, hey?" to which I responded, "I guess. I never stopped. I haven't been sick in almost 4 years."
We then had a really candid conversation about COVID with absolutely no animosity while the cashier and another customer listened to our conversation. He asked where I got my information and I said peer-reviewed studies and we talked about N95s and airborne transmission. I don't think I converted anyone but, for the first time, I felt 100% confident and like I had control of the situation.
What I found really weird, though, was the reactions of the two others present. They were both SO uncomfortable. The other customer briefly mentioned that COVID was the worst illness they ever had before scurrying out of the store like they were terrified of the conversation and the cashier pushed their chair back as far away as they could. This was AFTER I made it clear I haven't been sick since February, 2020, so it's not like it was getting sick they were freaked out by. This was, like, cornered animal levels of fear.
If you're in BC you can request free N95 masks from maskblocBC. A snug respirator prevents inhalation of wildfire smoke & COVID-19. This link will take you to their request form: https://tinyurl.com/vxz2rwfz#covidisairborne#WildfireSmoke
"To this day, the cumulative per capita death rates from COVID-19 in countries that embraced the face coverings, such as Japan, South Korea and Singapore, are a sixth of Anglo-Saxon countries like the US and UK that baulked at community masking." https://tinyurl.com/3d75pkjf#CovidIsAirborne
COVID-19 damages the brain. Students have trouble learning. Connect the dots.
“They’re actually starting to see students backslide, losing the knowledge and skills they had. Across all age groups, students are falling behind.”
“Study after study has shown that Covid causes severe brain damage and disruption.”
“Covid brain fog remains a common and persistent problem for millions. Patients describe ‘the feeling that their brain is lost in a maze, and they can’t find their way back.’”
“Some people get back to normal after a few months. Others might never recover.”
Those are quotes from Jessica Wildfire’s latest “OK Doomer” substack piece, “It’s Not Learning Loss. It’s Brain Damage, and Schools Are Letting It Happen.” Read it, and get back to wearing a mask when among others.
»Masking is not ‘living in fear’, it's being smart to avoid damage to your health from a deadly disease. It also protects others, which we should all be doing.«
This has been a challenging start to the year. I have finally fully left the little remote/home based work I did because of my Long-Covid and ill health after wrongly 'pushing through' in a state of constant PEM - just varying in intensity - relying on adrenaline surges, my partner caring for me, being pretty much housebound and making myself worse and worse. I regret not stopping sooner. I regret how much extra damage I have done. Though, I understand there was a interplay of structural and agency shaping my choices. I also know I am lucky to have had the choice to 'push through' and how many would not have been able to choose that even if they had wanted to. I have now got a lot of social security applications and appointments which, coming as no surprise, is fucking tough and challenging. The questions you have to answer, the awareness of all the ways the state tries to screw you. I am lucky to have a super supportive partner helping me with this, someone from a local charity helping and can't talk highly enough about the Benefits and Work guides!!!
Solidarity with everyone who still wears a mask. Solidarity with everyone who has had friends and family turn their backs on them for being covid cautious. Solidarity with everyone who has Long-Covid and does all they can to make sure no-one else has to live through the daily difficulties we do. Solidarity to everyone fighting against ableism, eugenics, Social Darwinism and health supremacy. Solidarity to everyone who gets shouted at and abused for wearing a mask. Solidarity to everyone who keeps going despite the overwhelming hegemonic narrative that what we are living through is 'normal'. Solidarity to everyone sharing science and facts about how covid spreads and the dangers of covid. Solidarity with you.