Tootfinder

masks at protests / demographics
Interestingly, at the May Day gathering I was the only one in a mask.
Thinking about the contrast with the trans protest the other week, where "good" (fitted not floppy) masks were dotted about throughout the crowd, and felt normalised.
Today's march was a less crowded event than the trans protest, so pretty low-risk for covid transmission anyway. But then when we got to the mini-fair after the march, indoors at the Friends' Meeting House, I didn't see anyone masking indoors either.
I wonder about the demographics of that difference. Seems like there's a traditional union/Labour left who share the mainstream denial of present-day covid, and a statistically more disabled & marginalised cohort where trans awareness and disability/illness awareness overlap.
#masks #CovidIsntOver

masks at protests / demographics 2/n
I wonder about the influence of employment, as well. If you're at risk every work day, I could well imagine it seeming pointless to start being careful the rest of the time, and maybe just too cognitively dissonant to consider.
I remember in 2020, someone I knew was working at Waterstones, and they were forbidden to mask up at work - even though 2020 was before the whole "covid is over" thing.
I also remember reading about someone - maybe a nurse? that _kind_ of job, anyway - who'd started wearing a fitted mask while the default in their workplace was baggy blues, and iirc was formally rebuked. It wasn't allowed.
If for whatever reason you're unable to hold down a typical job, you might not have much cash for _getting_ things like masks, but you're also not under that same kind of economic pressure to put yourself at risk.
#masks #work #CovidIsntOver

Thread from @… on new covid variant Nimbus:
#covid #Nimbus #CovidIsntOver

Biden's record on covid
Saw a comment along the lines of: "seems unfair to criticise Biden's record on covid, while the situation now under Trump is so much worse".
But I don't think of them as separate. Biden's government _contributed_ to how covid stands under Trump.
If Biden's lot had taken the opportunity to educate people (at least the ones open to considering science findings) that
- it's airborne like smoke
- an empty room can hold infectious virus
- air filters, UV and fresh air reduce the levels of it
- masks work better the better they fit
- you can be infectious without/before symptoms
- you're fairly likely still to be infectious for 10 days, a few people longer
- current vaccines don't stop you catching it or transmitting it
- it can mess with your immune system so you're more likely to catch other things
- vaccinated people can still get Long Covid
- it's not "mild", it's just that the damage is quiet
then even if they hadn't done anything more to address the problem, people would be in a far better position to deploy their own common sense.
And unlike funding or laws, that investment in _knowledge_ is something it would be difficult for Trump's lot to roll back.
But Biden & co chose instead to play down the risks, and explicitly or implicitly mislead people (e.g. the 5-day quarantine, which contradicts the real infectious period).
So, yes it's worse now, but they _contributed_ to how it is now. They chose to encourage misapprehensions and confusion, and the effects of that choice are still playing out now.
Not letting them off the hook on the grounds of being comparatively "less bad", when they themselves laid some of the foundations of the current state of play.
#covid #Biden #USPol #CovidIsntOver