Essential reads for understand MAiD in Canada: 🧵 From @mssinenomine
policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/apri…

Just an FYI, pretty much whenever you go out in public, you’re visiting a space with immunocompromised individuals. That’s why it would be nice to have a culture of masking where people just wear them sometimes if they are sick or don’t want to get sick.

https://twitter.com/durhamhealth/status/1862515888588501332

It’s not really feasible or encouraged for many without sick leave or other societal safety nets to stay home for 24hrs, which is often why people just go everywhere sick all the time and get others sick, and then they go and get others sick. There’s where masks were nice

We don’t have to empathize with people who make decisions that we think are wrong, but we do have to get over the shock that they would make different decisions, because they did. They’ve done it many times. Accept it and look for the reasons why and how we can change things “I’ll never understand why people voted for <x person>. They are wrong!” That doesn’t matter. We need to accept that they did, and figure out why. What benefit did they see for themselves? What did the alternatives look like for them?

One of the most important defenses against institutional gaslighting is to have a friend who will say to you, “No, the person in charge here is being a ridiculous clown who is likely driven by their fear of liability or personal discomfort.” Consider me this friend. There is some heinous and bizarre behaviour coming from people in positions of authority happening every day that probably make a lot of you feel like you are losing your mind. Believe me when I say a lot of this is a “them” problem.

My regular reminder to public health officials that denying the harms of COVID infections and obvious increase in post-viral sequelae leaves a wide open space that is filled with misinfo about the vaccines. You are spawning more antivaxxers every day people aren’t told the truth. Facebook groups, parent meetups, WhatsApp chats are filled with people trying to understand why they’re experiencing nerve damage, autoimmune disease, cardiovascular issues, and DBH et al are still going on the news saying that Covid infection may even be good for you.

Further to this: I fully acknowledge that it’s probably really hard for a lot of people to think about Covid being worse than the general consensus because a lot of people were really, really scared of Covid. They think masks don’t work so in their minds, there is NO hope.

https://twitter.com/amandalhu/status/1844936178979746253

So what would you do if you have no hope? You give up. It’s a lot easier position in some ways to be in to understand how something scary works and have it demystified to just a problem to solve. And damage has been done for some people, and there isn’t yet a way to reverse it.

“People wear masks to hide their identity.” Firstly, this is their right. Secondly, wearing it just to hide your identity isn’t effective. I am now an automatic regular at any store I’ve been to more than twice because I’m “the mask lady”. It’s my identifiable characteristic I asked the manager a cat food question at a petvalu and the second time I was there weeks later, she was like, “How are your two kitties liking that chicken and pumpkin food?”

One of the things about being knowledgeable and informed about science is that it doesn’t mean a lot if our societies are run by people who aren’t or don’t believe in consulting those who do know. Or worse: actively work against scientific understanding Living in Alberta, I know how this goes. I know that fossil fuels are accelerating our path to unlivable world, protections against infectious disease based in understanding of physics and occupational hygiene are important and that abortions and gender affirming care save lives

It’s fascinating to see the ways in which our society enforces individualism by using social pressure and conformity, which seems paradoxical on its face. I’ve seen it in the pressure from teachers on kids and parents for them to “stop wearing a mask so you’ll fit in” 1/ Wearing a mask is an act of service to the people around us and a way to be accountable to our commitments by ensuring we can attend and learn. It shows that we think about how we impact others and they impact us. People with these traits often make good friends
2/

A teacher friend has informed me that a teacher FB group is lighting up on a post about a parent donating an air purifier because they remove *Bath and Body Works/AXE/other middle essence body sprays* and vape smells. It’s got thousands of likes and the teachers all want one 👀👀 This is the new angle, clean air advocates

Doctors, you agree that a stay in the ICU, with intubation, sedation, everything else that goes along with that severity of illness takes an immense toll on the body, right? So why are patients who start to recover allowed to get covid in the hospital and then have to go back? Why are patients receiving receiving chemotherapy, radiation, immunosuppressants exposed to covid during their treatments in hospital and in community when they're already enduring this level of suffering to survive?

This is terrible and horrifying. And this post is indicative of what I’m noticing lately: as a person who follows a lot of people for different reasons, the folks I follow for reasons other than covid are now talking about their covid experiences.

https://twitter.com/heidi__matthews/status/1827442389419749428

Also a reminder that all of our struggles are linked. When we see the oppression and violence in other places, driven by colonialism and funded by our govts, and then see the ways in which we’ve been failed here, it starts to make a lot of sense why we must connect our resistance

I find the horseshoeing of antivaxxers and covid aware people fascinating. One side is like, “Here is where to find apple-flavoured horse paste. Viruses were never real” and the other side is, “This @StatCan_eng report shows prevalence of long-term symptoms is 34% after 3 infxns” “The vaccines have mind control microchips in them! Don’t comply!”
Vs
“The scientific consensus is that COVID-19 is a neurodegenerative and vascular disease due to its affinity to bind to ACE2 receptors, which are found throughout the body”

I need someone to explain this to me: the concern was that mandating masks would reduce the confidence that things higher on the hierarchy of controls were not effective. Well, let’s see:

They did not eliminate SARS-CoV-2 from workplaces, so that level is infective 1/

https://twitter.com/notatmypicnic/status/1823337111640043654

They couldn’t replace SARS-CoV-2 with a less harmful virus, so Substitution is ineffective 2/

I don’t know why, but today I’ve been thinking about the bad faith politicians who claim, falsely, that healthcare is failing because of the HCWs who couldn’t work due to vaccine mandates while nobody in power stands up for the HCWs who can’t work and are disabled by long COVID Colleges, associations and medical leaders are mostly silent on this, while I know so many excellent doctors, nurses and allied healthcare professionals who are devastated to not be able to help patients because they are too sick themselves

It’s so wild to me that the Tokyo Olympics were postponed and held without audiences because everyone was concerned about the impact of COVID-19 on athletes and visitors and then this time they just weren’t worried about it. So a bunch of athletes and visitors just got COVID-19. In 2021, vaccines were widely available, people wore masks, but new variants continued to circulate. Now in 2024, vaccines are less available, people don’t wear masks, so many more new variants are circulating and we know more much more about the bad long-term impacts.

I think it's time to write an explainer about air quality ratings and what they actually mean!

This will detail:
1. Particulate counts
2. US Air Quality Index (AQI)
3. Canada's Air Quality Health Index (AQHI)
4. What this actually means for our health
🧵

https://twitter.com/amandalhu/status/1816289817422098562

1. Particulate counts
PM2.5 refers to tiny particles equal to or less than 2 microns (μm) in diameter. These are very tiny particles that are so small that they can get stuck deep in your lungs. Measuring the amount in a space can be shown in µg/m³ or ppm.

Reminders:
- Kids don’t need to get sick to be healthy
- Viruses are bad. They can cause damage to our bodies+long-term issues
- The need you think kids have, to get exposed to germs to teach their immune system, is what vaccines are for
- COVID is worse than many other viruses This was prompted by a convo I had with a friend’s family member today when she asked me about my mask and why my friend’s family wears them. We had spent chatted a bit before about music and her being a band teacher and I showed her how to cool her townhouse with multiple fans.

Something I learned by getting to know people over the past year and them getting to know me is that people who don’t pay attention to Covid or the climate crisis or any of the other existential concerns we face are extremely concerned about stuff that I never worry about 1/ People are worried their kids getting abducted inside indoor recreation facilities, homeless people being dangerous, sunscreen toxins, not being able to to find camp for their kids over the summer, whether their kitchen renovation will still be on trend 2/

Reminder that McKinsey also came up with “economic endemicity” aka the “move to endemic” and other such rhetorical tools for the manufactured end of COVID. That’s why there’s now always more COVID than “during COVID”

https://x.com/safetyinnumbrz/status/1613417326065352704?s=46

https://twitter.com/moreperfectus/status/1792681438082654715

McKinsey helping governments “solve” their pandemic spending problems with justifications for the end of COVID protections was just another part of their role in marginalizing the working class for the benefit of their corporate clients

I feel like the escalation of H5N1 is going exactly how you’d expect after capitalism won over common sense with COVID and our public health social contracts were destroyed: Farmers hiding their animals’ sickness, no willingness to use PPE, ID experts saying, “It’s inevitable” No clear communication on infection control as the WHO and others are tied in knots to try and avoid saying “airborne” and people know govts won’t provide a sufficient cushion if they have to take a huge loss due to culling. Because they hung people out to dry last time