PSA that Covid presentation in MANY people (& this was true of some past variants also) is GI symptoms with no coughing, no difficulty breathing, no runny nose, no sore throat. Just GI yucks and in many cases feeling really exhausted and run down.

We’re missing cases this way.

https://twitter.com/k_bishof/status/1825161852248019312

Feeling weirdly run down and super exhausted both otherwise normal? TEST FOR COVID.

Having GI issues but no other real symptoms except maybe a headache or exhaustion? TEST FOR COVID.

Have minor cold symptoms? TEST FOR COVID.

I didn’t have security called on me last time I was in the ER (with an abnormal EKG, chest pain, and some respiratory distress,) but my nurse did call a psych consult on me to evaluate if I needed to be placed on an involuntary hold. All because I refused to remove my n95.

https://twitter.com/meighanstone/status/1825894662088847672

(I did briefly remove it for a nebulizer treatment because it was extremely necessary, but my nurse was insisting I remove it entirely while there - despite the person who had been next to me in the hall gurneys before a bed opened up being told their Covid test came back +.)

If you live with someone who is currently Covid positive, or have a known exposure to someone who is, please understand that having a (-) rapid test does NOT mean you’re safe to go maskless around everyone - even if no symptoms.

I know WAY too many ppl getting infected this way This is literally how I was infected last fall by a relative, despite my own strict n95 use at all times. 8 hrs a day for 2 days in a row was too much exposure, & who knows if I had the smallest leak at some point. (This is why one way masking is an unfair ask of high risk folks)

I need you to watch these three clips back to back, all from the last week, because when you hear them all together I don’t know how anyone wouldn’t be EXTREMELY clear about what they are saying.

Clip #1 of 3

https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1817007890496102490

Clip #2 of 3:

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1816482779581775943

Went to karaoke in an n95 mask with a sip valve last night (I’ve been in a really dark place again, so we took a risk.)

Man got up in my face *WHILE I WAS SINGING* and started yelling and threatening me so badly the bar ended up having to toss him out AND ban him for life. If it weren’t for the fact a table of regulars had befriended me earlier in the night and asked me to join them, I’m not sure what would have happened honestly. One of those guys really saved me when things got scary.

I was terrified he was going to pull my mask down.

Public health really didn’t do its job on educating here, b/c this is SUCH a common misconception out there about masks. People think masks work like a sieve, that the holes in the material need to smaller than the particles you need to trap.

Except n95s don’t work that way. 🧵

https://twitter.com/scarlett429/status/1815112985532064044

This video is quick, super simple, and easy to understand, and explains why the whole “viruses are too small for masks to trap” thing is NOT actually how n95s and other respirator masks work.

https://twitter.com/_catinthehat/status/1737116355642659199

Lots of folks missing his point. EITHER it means he has more severe symptoms, OR it means that the White House is *not* behaving like Covid is just a cold and that they are still proactively testing despite downplaying the need for Y’ALL to test, isolate, etc.

https://twitter.com/jeromeadamsmd/status/1813705109869941237

The point is that while YOU are being told it’s fine to send Covid positive kids to school now or go to work with Covid, the White House still has known cases isolate from others until they are fully recovered.

Because they value THEIR health and safety but not yours.

It’s a wildly effective form of propaganda to make the things you are doing SO wildly extreme that anyone talking about them would sound like a crackpot conspiracy theorist because it’s WAY too far outside what most folks can imagine possible. It’s makes them tune out. And dear God is it working - on so many different fronts.

The more extreme things get in regards to fascism, the climate crisis, hell even Covid/Covid policy, the more the majority of citizens end up believing that’s just WAY too out there to be serious…

…and they tune out.

The reason we’re freaking out about the Chevron decision in a nutshell:

The Right successfully instituted a long game plan to get control of the courts, and now this decision takes away the power of agencies like the FDA, EPA, etc and gives it purely to those same courts instead To put it bluntly, the same Republican dominated courts that overturned Roe now have the power to say states could ban the sale of certain drugs REGARDLESS of what the FDA decides about their safe use.

Drugs like abortion pills, for example.

Drugs like birth control.

Some of y'all arguing that dems dont "mean to" harm disabled/immunocompromised folks w/these mask bans REALLY need to read the OpEd the guy the Biden admin chose to direct Covid policy for the transition team back in 2020.

Eugenics is who they are.

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

https://twitter.com/StephTaitWrites/status/1325885440340058112

Guy wrote an entire OpEd parroting literal Nazi propaganda about "life unworthy of life," graphically spelling out why living w/ diminished capacity is life not worth living & a burden on families & care systems...

...& thats who they chose to advise them on how to deal w/ Covid

I wish people understood that this is only true of *certain* diseases, not all.

Measles actually can erase previous immunities to other diseases & essentially sets your immune system back to infancy.

Covid makes you more susceptible to future illnesses.

It’s not a muscle.

https://twitter.com/jeffprattthoma1/status/1804877421251797098

When medicine talks of building your immune system, it’s talking about microbes and certain prevalent bacteria.

Exposing yourself to VIRUSES offers no benefits to you, and can often cause greater HARM to your immune system long term.

But we’ve learned something even worse:

It was a *huge* aha moment for me when I figured out that my love of vocabulary & almost pathological need to find not just a GOOD word but the PERFECT word was both an autistic special interest as well as a trauma response/safety mechanism as well. (Very connected to my C-PTSD.)

https://twitter.com/therapatical/status/1802131126665769083

Trauma related to the criminal neglect in early childhood (compounded then by adoption) led to an inescapable core fear of being abandoned/rejected. Because that abandonment was tied to very real physical harm, my brain automatically connects fear of rejection to physical danger

I’m gonna be the Debbie downer here, but I don’t think an H5N1 pandemic would have the results you’re expecting.

Here’s what I think I would actually go down:

https://twitter.com/thememeticist/status/1785192929511755890

First off, folks would take the very successful “ “lockdowns’ & school closures turned out to be an unnecessary overreaction that caused deep & lasting harm” rhetoric & use it as the basis to REFUSE any similar measures for H5N1 - and the CDC would go along with that.

I’m not proud of it, but I just dont feel empathy (normally I struggle with too MUCH empathy to be healthy) when I see repeated posts from folks that blew off all Covid precautions about how their baby/kids are sick yet again & how exhausted they are with the repeated illnesses😔 I mean it when I say I’m not proud of it, but also, you chose to have your cake & now you want ppl like me - who’ve been made to sacrifice for over 4yrs now - to do the emotional labor of offering you consolation for the find out phase of your own choices? That’s not really fair.

I'm sorry, but the current government would throw every single bit of red tape they can at this to keep it from hitting the market. They've invested too much effort in altering & even hiding the data specifically to keep ppl from choosing to avoid restaurants, stores, etc.

https://twitter.com/spindezine/status/1762525382593356168

While they said "ppl have the tools to make their own risk assessments now, that's why we can drop mandates", they deliberately altered & hid the data b/c it was still causing too many people to continue precautions. They literally deceived you into making the choice they wanted.

Man randomly attacks an elderly woman on the subway platform and then tries to drag her onto the tracks because of her mask.

We told y’all “you do you” wasn’t actually gonna be enough and THIS is where it would inevitably end, but y’all wouldn’t listen.
cbsnews.com/boston/news/bo… Having to see a visual reminder that there is still a pandemic destroys the fragile illusion of “normal” so many of your psyche’s literally depend on to survive right now.

Which makes those of us who still mask targets for all sorts of anger and abuse.

I really wish the CDC and state health departments were doing their job, b/c you shouldn’t have to hear this from me, but if you have cold like symptoms and keep testing negative for Covid it’s important to know that the first symptoms of Measles are exactly the same as a cold. “But you’d know it’s measles because of the rash.”

The rash doesn’t develop until later - it can take up to a week after the initial symptoms.

And some people never show the tell tale rash at all.

This has been my own experience of autism. Part of the reason certain ppl in my life guffawed at my diagnosis is because they believed the stereotypes that autistic ppl are detached, unemotional, & lacking empathy. In fact many of us feel SO much empathy it causes overload.

https://twitter.com/jasmine17724507/status/1759826323831398765

I cannot turn that part of my brain off and “compartmentalize” the way so many of neurotypical peers can. Like I cannot just enjoy things without considering the connections to the bigger realities of our world, which often taints what others find fun.

That’s DEEP empathy.

There are times since getting on Lamictal where I experience something “normal” for the first time and realize I had no clue just how abnormal what was happening in my brain really was.

One major example: I remember the 1st morning I woke up & realized that for the 1st time in as far back as I could remember, my 1st waking thought was NOT an expression of passive suicidality. It wasn’t some version of disappointment I was still here or exhaustion at the idea of living another day.

Adult adoptees & foster care survivors have been begging y’all to listen to us about this for so long. But folks are so attached to their “adoption is beautiful” & “foster parents are saints” narratives they REFUSE to acknowledge this system is inherently broken and irredeemable.

https://twitter.com/phil_lewis_/status/1748093869814583689

Y’all want so desperately to believe most of kids who are adopted or in foster care are “orphans,” “unwanted,” or “saved” from irredeemable forms of abuse.

Statistically those cases are the outliers, not the norm.

MOST kids come from families that want them but need support.

A room full of people who were all vaccinated AND all tested beforehand, and yet 17 out of 18 got Covid.

This is why masks are essential at ALL times around folks who are vulnerable (which includes in all public places, b/c vulnerable people need to grocery shop too.) “I tested first so I’m sure I’m healthy/don’t need to mask” is exactly how I was infected by someone despite my own masking.

It’s also how folks end up infecting grandma in a nursing home - and cause an outbreak among the most vulnerable population, resulting in fatalities.