it's so annoying finding testing kits. we (partner and I) have to ration our testing capabilities. the free tests through the USPS is a boon that does not go far enough to be actually useful.
I just Googled, and in my area, it seems ALL of the public libraries also have kits. Don't know it that is common, but maybe worth looking. Especially if you can just walk in and ask, like they do for NALOXONE
It feels weird and a little upsetting that we need to explain this this way. Like no one ever uses Swiss cheese as a filter, and I would just hope that everyone would understand intuitively that layering partially effective barriers enhances total effectiveness
I know they say that it's just... I can't believe anyone could really be so stupid that they don't understand that being 20% safer is better than being 0% safer?
Like, there has to be some other cognitive bias at work preventing them from admitting they understand it?
An extreme intolerance toward considering one's own mortality, perhaps? After all the only reason we'd need precautions was if there was danger. Which, there is, but if you cannot fathom for a moment the mere possibility... It closes the imagination
It's very odd, isn't it, because what safety measures are 100%? Car seat belts? Speed limits? Food and water safety standards? None of it's 100% but it's all really helpful
should any of those slices be bigger than the others? it seems to me that one, for example, stands out as the most important and then the others are very important.
No but NPR, Nature and 60 minutes showed some interest in it recently, which is new, but it will take a while for that awareness to seep through and some will never face reality.
For a lot of people admitting that they are wrong now means admitting that they were wrong to infect their own children
It reminds me of when understanding of second hand smoke became a thing.
There were a lot of parents in denial because they didn't want to be complicit but, eventually, in spite of a mountain of money spent by the tobacco industry to fight it - the truth came out.
It will but it will take a while. The current generation of kids won't be duped by their parents generations nonsense. That's why teenagers must rebel for the species to survive
They are living this nightmare and have no responsibility for it so they don't have a stake in pretending it's not real
The complicity of medical professionals in all this also reminds me of Semmelweis. Nobody wanted to accept that they'd been essentially killing patients by not handwashing, so he was laughed out of medicine, institutionalized, and died there.
I offer this only as comradely criticism to improve the graphic but enhanced sick pay and workers protections need to be under the “shared responsibility” side of the slide here. People are absolutely being coerced into working sick, not testing and having their WFH rights removed from them
I’m sure it wasn’t omitted in bad faith of course! I just want to start screaming and never stop when I think about what hotdeskers and wait staff get out though
If there’s one thing that saddens me about all of this, is that the people harassing don’t seem to realize that China combined a biological weapon (covid) with Russia’s information weapon (Active Measures/disinformation) to create economic warfare against the Western world.
All the conspiracy nuts are mentally “contaminated” as the FSB/KGB would say and were fantastic hosts to support the spread of COVID and its disinfo specifically in the US in order to do more damage in the form of deaths and long COVID disabilities than any other developed country on Earth…
Shameless plug for vaccination: if and when you get vaxxed (or "boosted"), it is possible--if not probable--that you have saved someone's life. Maybe your own (directly), but likely, at least, someone else's (indirectly). You reading this know exactly why that is, and I only wish more folks did!
You aren’t saving anyone’s lives indirectly if you’re vaxxed but dropping all precautions that actually halt transmission (like masking etc). Vaxxed and relaxed ppl are contributing to enormous spread and directly responsible for the deaths of the ppl they infect. That’s the whole issue here.
I’m glad ppl are getting vaxxed, bc like u mention it can hopefully save their life, but I got covid just a month after my 5th shot from someone else w as many shots who thought bc they were vaxxed they couldn’t spread it. That’s why it’s so crucial to explain to ppl that vaxx *alone* is not enough
Exactly--and I should have been clear that vaxxing is NOT enough on its own. Not even close. It's dangerous to make that assumption, and (unfortunately) hundreds of millions of people have made that mistake and continue to make it. That said, vaxxing alone is much better than nothing. Check it out:
One more time: vax + the other things are all critical. The more layers, the better. Some layers are better than others (outdoors > indoors, respirator > cloth, etc.). Sounds like your warning is that the post-vax "relax" negates the social benefit of the vax. It does negate it-by a lot-but not 100%
exactly, and MOST people mistakenly believe that all they need to do is get vaxxed and they can spread as much covid as they want, and screw all the disabled/poor/elderly ppl who are still dying and becoming disabled from it. Why we need layered protection: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/04/29/covid-deaths-unvaccinated-boosters/
Say you get vaxxed, then "relax"--drop all precautions and cosplay 2019. You then, at some point, get infected (because of course you do). You're sick, but not hospitalized; you would have been hospitalized had you not been vaxxed (assuming you chose-and got-hospitalization instead of dying at home)
Yup, vaxx can help prevent severe outcomes once ppl are infected, which is why everyone who's able to get, should. Sadly millions of people can't get vaxxed or don't generate antibodies/response, long covid is common in breakthrough cases. That's why halting transmission/layered protection is key 💪🏻
Because you didn't have to go to the hospital, resources that would have been used on you are instead used to help someone who was hospitalized--for any reason--and would have died without them. That is the indirect life saving. You can't prove it, but you can be confident you lengthened its odds.
Of course. Spending time in any public indoor setting with no mask has been unthinkable to me since early 2020, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, barring an absolute miracle.
Dr Ian M Mackay sent this around Twitter at the beginning of the pandemic. It did a great deal in public awareness! Sadly, our political decision makers never caught on to its implications for public health and safety.
They’d rather attack disabled people who frankly have more shots and vaccines than any of them, than fave the truth which is that they’re complicit in the deaths and disability resulting from unmitigated spread 🤷🏻♀️
Comments
19th-century public health measures were same as we practice now .
Chaotic dynamism of pandemic is becoming devastating waves of variant driven cases.
Conventional wisdom of COVID-19 as not a major crisis is a triumph of desire over data.
Tagging @mackayim.bsky.social who developed it.
But for some reason they don't?
My own MAGA in-laws have often said "masks aren't 100%, so I don't get why we should even bother."
Not everyone "gets" the idea of multi-layered quantitative risk reduction.
Like, there has to be some other cognitive bias at work preventing them from admitting they understand it?
I wear my n95 mask or respirator every time i go out
I really miss the CDC that advocated for disease prevention and control, instead of the current approach of "*shrug* you do you, I guess".
I do feel like things are shifting finally under the sheer weight of the data. Even NPR admitted LC is a thing
For a lot of people admitting that they are wrong now means admitting that they were wrong to infect their own children
There were a lot of parents in denial because they didn't want to be complicit but, eventually, in spite of a mountain of money spent by the tobacco industry to fight it - the truth came out.
They are living this nightmare and have no responsibility for it so they don't have a stake in pretending it's not real
She's still all "Just wash your hands and it's fine. No need for masks or vaccines"
If you need a reminder, Aldi has a cheese calendar.
We more or less learned the value of washing hands and not smoking indoors, we can do other things as well
People love putting their heads in the sand. Something is eating my immune system and it's not HIV.