pip

pip, 6 months ago to random

All Your Breath Are Belong To Us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3LSXadmLk4

Mirror on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/882143353

Writeup with links and more context on Dreamwidth: https://pipzeroes.dreamwidth.org/517.html

#COVIDisAirborne #COVIDisNOTover #COVIDisOngoing #COVIDfloatsLikeSmoke #COVID #COVID19 #SARS2 #SARSCoV2 #pandemic #maskup #mask #masks #masking #<3

#AllYourBreathAreBelongToUs

Mask up, live long, and prosper. 🖖

pip, 7 months ago to random

#COVIDisAirborne #COVIDisNOTover #COVID #COVID19 #SARSCoV2

pip, 7 months ago to random

Excerpt from https://medium.com/@cdl.tuebingen/someone-infected-neil-gaiman-with-covid-19-24ddbbd9f91d

Neil Gaiman didn’t just get COVID-19.

Someone INFECTED Neil Gaiman with COVID-19.

And many someones in overlapping layers of responsibility ENABLED this infection.

This linguistic shift from the passive to active voice might seem irrelevant but, instead of just echoing the framing we see in the headlines — that Neil Gaiman got COVID-19— it’s time to own that somebody has infected Neil.

The passive voice has served a macabre purpose in this pandemic. The passive voice, by erasing the subject of the sentence, neatly obscures accountability, and with it our own role in unmitigated infections. Moreover, it has prevented us from identifying the layers of responsibility in enabling infections on a mass scale. This mental block is the first obstacle to advocating for effective mitigations and constructive solutions. It stops us from preventing infections. But that is changing now.

It is time to own the damage that we are causing by infecting others with COVID-19. I believe that we all know, deep inside, that we are causing harm. And many of us are suffering from the cognitive dissonance of pretending that we aren’t. Because, in a pandemic, this is serious and large-scale harm.

This harm that, according to estimates, has killed over 25 million people and disabled at least 65 million and counting. The sooner we face the harm we are causing by infecting other people, the less damage we will cause to ourselves, to our loved ones, to our community, to strangers on the other side of the world. And to people who entertain and inspire us, like speculative fiction author and TV creator Neil Gaiman. And inspiration is necessary when we are facing so many challenges. It’s that simple.

#COVID #COVIDisNOTover #COVIDisAirborne #COVIDisOngoing #MaskUp #masks #masking #mask #SARSCoV2 #pandemic #airquality #NeilGaiman #DavidTennant

pip, 8 months ago to britishcolumbia

"B.C. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix have announced that mandatory masking is returning to the province's health-care facilities as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise...

However, masks will not be required for all patients and long-term care residents. The leaked memo states that "patients, clients and residents will mask when directed by a health-care worker or based on personal choice..."

...physician Dr. Lyne Filiatrault, a member of Protect Our Province, a group advocating for evidence-based interventions around COVID-19, is calling on the province to mandate mask-wearing for everyone in health-care settings. She says leaving it open to "personal choice" could put vulnerable people at risk.

"So, if you're a patient and you're going to the emergency department and you make it a personal choice not to mask, who's going to tell you, 'hey there's a lot of vulnerable patients in the this waiting room, wear a mask?'" Filiatrault said.

"Everybody masking is ideal because it decreases the amount of virus in the air that we share."

#COVID #pandemic #COVIDisNOTover #COVIDisAirborne #bc #britishcolumbia #canada

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-enhanced-masking-health-care-settings-1.6980600

pip, 8 months ago to random

I've been thinking about Ignaz Semmelweis a lot lately!

Background on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

And also thinking about COVID and despair! See also: https://zeroes.ca/@pip/111083273411021431

To try and summarize what I've been thinking:

1.) It can feel really, overwhelmingly distressing to see what's happening now and it can be easy to feel like "things never change, it's always people wanting to maintain the status quo, and those trying to fix things are attacked for it"

and

2.) Semmelweis died tragically (and ironically; of an infected hand while he was institutionalized), but the efforts and innovations of Ignaz Semmelweis have doubtlessly improved many things for many people

So, I have found it frustrating, demoralizing, seeing fewer masks in public around me, sometimes being given condescending or perplexed looks for wearing a mask, having people I thought were friends decide pretending things are fine is better than taking care, but!

I try to not burn out. This is not a sprint. It is a marathon.

Hoping that in the decades to come, people will be looking back at the early 2020s like, "Haha, no, really, people weren't… WASHING HANDS… as a way to prevent an airborne illness? Like, it was know COVID was floating through the air, but people were doing something that helps prevent disease spread by physical contact? And like, there were attacks on people for wearing PPE? Sounds fake."

And in the meantime I try to

• Avoid the disease

• Avoid being pathologized for AVOIDING A VIRUS THAT CAN NOT ONLY KILL BUT CAUSE LONG TERM IMPAIRMENT AND FLOATS THROUGH THE AIR IN TINY BITS OF MOISTURE SIMILAR TO THE WAY CIGARETTE SMOKE SPREADS

• Avoid despair about the ridiculousness of everything

Because it's one thing to be in denial about the reality of the nature of COVID's airborne spread and its actual severity (HELLO, THE S IN SARS-CoV-2 STANDS FOR SEVERE), but acknowledging this reality won't fix things if we just despair or become resigned.

And it can be so hard! Just doing what you can to deal with the immediate situation may be all we can do with our emotional/financial/energy resources! This is not to try to guilt you if you haven't been "active enough".

But I've seen people have this kind of attitude that's like "well, humans are idiots, obviously COVID is airborne and bad, and humanity is getting what it deserves because people are bad and stupid, and since we all may die of plague anytime let's do what we want!"

I've also seen, "I can't do anything about it, there's no point in trying, it's too big."

Despair can eat away at us, but we can work on resisting it. Even if we give in some days, this does not mean another day won't come when we can push back against it.

Even if we can't make health authorities publicly acknowledge reality, even if our family and friends and others around us seem to disregard the reality of COVID's danger and how it spreads, even if we can do no more than get by day to day, we can try to push back against our own despair!

RESIST DESPAIR!

To do so is not nothing!

#COVIDisNOTover #COVIDisAirborne #COVID #SARSCoV2

pip, 8 months ago to random

I have been thinking: COVID consciousness is like climate crisis consciousness.

People can pretend it isn't real (e.g. "climate change isn't happening," or, "COVID is over," fallacies such as this).

Others can acknowledge it is real, but be despairing, choosing to focus on "the futility of things" (e.g. "maybe we could have changed CO2 emissions in the seventies, but we're past the point of no return, and the Earth is going to burn and there is nothing we can do; DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL etc." or, "humanity brought it upon itself, there's no point in trying to prevent the spread of COVID; now everyone is going to get sick," defeatist attitudes such as this...)

But one can come to appreciate the interconnectedness of everything, and, that while one might not have the ability to control one's destiny, let alone the destiny of future generations, one does have the ability to keep trying to make things as... good as possible? As beneficial to as many as possible? Most heartening? Most loving? Even when it is difficult!

Because:

We are all interconnected!

Caring about you makes sense because you caring about me makes sense because we inhabit a common reality! Caring about one another makes our mutual reality better for ALL of us, instead of being caught up in whatever this ridiculous pretense is that everything is fine, this weird attitude that the "immune compromised don't matter, because they'd be dying anyway,"

And even though I think you should care about others, regardless of the risk to oneself,

I also keep thinking

like

do some people

not

realise

that

COVID infection has been documented to reduce immune function

for like

like

PRETTY MUCH ANYONE

and

you do not have a better immune system because of moral superiority! A virus does not care about that kind of thing when it's floating through the air in tiny bits of airborne moisture!!!

And even those with previously of the most robust health do not have the assurance that their immune system will prevent long term impairment because of COVID infection; those who were previously athletes have found themselves sidelined by COVID infection.

Like...

#COVIDisBAD

AND

#COVIDisNOTover

And

Some people could be brought around to taking more careful measures if they knew the actual reality of things:

• COVID floats like smoke, meaning that to prevent infection whenever one is indoors with strangers (e.g. public places!) one should be wearing an effective, well-fitting mask,

• COVID hampers one's immune system

It's bad to spread it to others!

Why is this a controversial opinion?!

Like, let's stop the spread of disease!

This seems like a good idea!

And some people would agree with this, but for whatever reason they're isolated/cut off from the truth, and the trick is finding ways to inform these folks...

But then...

For whatever reason...

It seems like some other people somehow cannot acknowledge reality...

And I find it the weirdest thing!

And I mean, I've been around the internet ("I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...")

So I've seen how people can get into echo chambers, affirming realities they want to be true...

(In the spring of 2020, I would not have imagined that things would be like this, in 2023...)

I don't know what else to say?!

Care about other people?!

Take care of yourself?!

Take care of the biosphere and consider how the output of human activity impacts climactic cycles and the way the living situation will be for coming generations!?!?!?!

Avoid spreading disease because it can impair and kill yourself and/or others?!?!?!

Getting beyond the

"Yes"-

Because the "Yes" can mean

Despair

"Yes it is irreparably bad so there is no point in caring,"

And

Maybe everything will fry! Maybe the next meteorite will come and wipe us out as one did the dinosaurs, and the next species to evolve will have no idea we ever existed! And caring about climate change was pointless? OK?! So I should be the-right-amount-of-despairing?! It was better to be hopeless instead of hopeful?! No hope is the appropriate response? What if I hope, anyway?

What if somehow I make things better for someone three generations from now, even if you never meet them, even if humanity dies it in five generations? Even if the world is hit by a meteorite tomorrow, why is it cringe if I try to make things better on what turns out to be the last day on the Earth?!

What if you cared about others, even if these others are coming generations and you will never meet them?

Why give into despair?

Even if things are REDONK.

Because... there is PLAGUE; should we not be avoiding it?!

We could get beyond Yes-

"Yes- there is a terrible situation!"

But this does not have to lead to despair...!

"...BUT what we do now makes a difference, and cooperation is integral!"
Danged if I've got all the answers, but I'm pretty sure that caring about one another is a good place to start.

I may never meet you, but I can care about you.

<3

pip, 8 months ago to random

Actor, producer, director, and writer Will Keenan was attacked last week for wearing an N95 mask and may never regain vision in his left eye.

"For the entirety of the pandemic, I became known as the lone masker. I wore a mask all the time because through my research I believe doing so protects my infant, now toddler, daughter..." Keenan told Newsweek.

https://www.newsweek.com/former-actor-attacked-wearing-covid-mask-left-permanently-blind-1826193

#COVID #COVID19 #SARSCoV2 #COVIDisAirborne #COVIDisNOTover #mask #masks #masking #MaskUp

pip, 8 months ago to random

The following text is an excerpt from the linked article, posted 2023-09-10:

We don’t really talk about coronavirus at all... This has only been encouraged by the government, which has honed the message “Covid is over”, as if saying this somehow makes it so... the result is a kind of mass denial – an agreed forgetting. The subject crops up from time to time. A breaking news banner announces a new variant. A friend texts that she’s stuck in bed “with the worst summer cough”. Then we carry on – until we are forced to remember once again...

...the daily number of positive coronavirus tests in England has been increasing since the end of June – a trend that is likely to grow in the coming weeks, as we socialise more indoors and children mix at school... at last count, 1.5 million people [in the UK alone] were experiencing long Covid symptoms that adversely affected their daily activities, and the virus still poses a significant risk of death to many people...

While some healthcare workers are taking precautions at their own discretion, NHS staff in England don’t have to wear a mask, and the majority who have respiratory symptoms are no longer asked to test for Covid. That means a patient with lung disease could be forced to get treatment from a nurse with a Covid cough...

The trouble is, denial is not a long-term plan. Coronavirus is effectively a fire. Ignoring it doesn’t stop the virus – it just lets the damage spread. The paradox of the pandemic has always been that the only way to “move on” is to actually engage with it...

But it also means confronting our impulse to believe that all of this is unnecessary and arduous. Even the phrase “Covid restrictions” – a term used by almost every media outlet – is loaded, suggesting low-key mitigations are heavy burdens rather than simple ways to free clinically vulnerable people. That the virus primarily “only” affects those with underlying health conditions has always been the unspoken excuse for indifference.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/10/covid-coronavirus-disabled-vulnerable-people

#COVID #COVIDisAirborne #COVIDisNOTover #COVIDisOngoing

pip, 9 months ago to random

"HEPA filtration is beneficial in reducing bioaerosols, including SARS-CoV-2, as well as other respiratory pathogens in the hospital environment. It should be used in combination with other prevention strategies, including improved ventilation; appropriate isolation; and, during periods of high community transmission, widespread testing and N95 masking...

In BC, public health policies such as universal masking and universal admission testing are no longer in effect. We know from other jurisdictions that discontinuation of universal admission testing was associated with a significant increase in hospital SARS-CoV-2 transmission and that nosocomial transmission remains common in the Omicron era, with infections that carry a 3% to 13% mortality risk. Updated, evidence-based, and precautionary provincial guidance is urgently needed to improve indoor air quality..."

https://bcmj.org/premise/hepa-filtration-reduces-transmission-sars-cov-2-and-prevents-nosocomial-infection-call

#COVIDisOngoing #COVIDisNOTover #COVIDisAirborne #Mask #Masks #Masking #WearAMask #MaskUp #COVID #COVID19 #SARSCoV2

pip, 9 months ago to random

Article published August 15, 2023:

"New COVID-19 hospitalizations have accelerated for a fourth straight week, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data now shows...

Emergency room visits for children ages 0 to 11 years old have also climbed steeply. Measured as a percentage of all visits in the age group, nationwide COVID-19 rates in these kids are now tied with seniors for the first time in a year. Other CDC data suggests visits from the youngest kids, ages 0 to 1 year old, are seeing the steepest increase.

In some parts of the country — like the region spanning Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas — the share of COVID-19 ER visits involving children ages 0 to 11 have already far surpassed older adults."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-hospitalizations-rise-fourth-week-eg-5-variant/

#COVIDisOngoing #COVIDisNOTover #COVIDisAirborne #COVID #COVID19 #SARSCoV2

pip, 11 months ago to random

"Protect our Province is calling to improve classroom ventilation and require that students and teachers mask up. The group also wants to see the government better inform people about the risks associated with reinfection and long COVID.

The group wants to see teachers lead by example by wearing masks in the classroom and helping create strategies to reduce transmission during lunch hours, such as eating outside or opening windows."

https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/07/05/Masks-As-Back-To-School-Wear/

#COVIDisNOTover #COVIDisAirborne #LongCOVID #LongCOVIDkids #masks #MaskUp

pip, 11 months ago to random

"Hollywood has largely shied away from acknowledging the pandemic, which signifies a kind of creative cowardice, a refusal to reckon with the world as it exists now... film-makers ought to acknowledge the pandemic’s ongoing toll as a backdrop for fictional storytelling. Not to do so is a form of denialism, running parallel to the corporate interest in declaring the pandemic over and ignoring its continued threat."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/27/hollywood-disaster-covid-films-trauma

#COVIDisAirborne #COVIDisNOTover #COVID #pandemic

eniko, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago) to random

EDIT3: i'm going to close this to new submissions since they've slowed to a trickle now

new to mastodon? do you make cool shit? if you've got under 100 followers, reply to this with 1-4 images of stuff you've made and i will boost you to my 5.8k followers, because i want people who do creative work to find a place on mastodon

please note i will be spacing out boosts to not spam my followers too much

EDIT2: if you're a composer (or do similar non-visual work) you should probably drop a link to where people can listen to your work. maybe add cover art if you have any

EDIT: if i miss your post it's likely you're on an instance mine has muted, I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do about that

pip, 11 months ago to random

https://protectbc.ca/unsafe-september-again/

Join Jaclyn Ferreira, Dr. Susan Kuo, Chantal Moore, and Dr. Karina Zeidler, for a live panel discussion about how we, as a community, can pull together to create a safer learning environment for kids when school starts again in September.

(Begins at 12:30pm PT, about four hours from the time of this post)

#COVID #COVIDisAirborne #COVIDisNOTover #LongCOVID #LongCOVIDkids #COVIDinKids #COVIDinSchools

eniko, 1 year ago to random

"it's clean air day!"

oh so we'll reflect on the importance of clean indoor air to stop the spread of viruses like covid, flu and rsv? especially in schools, offices, and other public places?

"uhh no"

oh so we'll reflect on the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels in order to prevent further climate change because of the devastating effects of wildfires?

"ah, uh, again, no"

okay cool good talk

eniko, 1 year ago to random

I gotta chuckle about the concept of self care as the world ends. Sorry. I can't help it

pip, 1 year ago to memes

#COVIDisAirborne #COVIDIsNOTover #COVIDisONGOING #SARS2

Making a short video on #COVID using #memes

Audio: All Your Base Are Belong To Us (with alternate lyrics)

It will include some of the memes already posted (examples in comment to follow)

Would appreciate suggestions if you have an idea for a #meme

Lyrics:

All your breath are belong to us

For great justice, put on fitting mask

Wear mask, you know what you doing, put on fitting mask

For a chance to survive, clean your air