outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

I think Simba had free health care iirc

I think Tracer Hand nailed the mindset, even if the connection to motorcycles was based in stereotyping. It is a bravado that rationalizes doing whatever your appetites, desires and fantasies suggest, no matter what the risk or danger and it lasts right up until the moment the person crashes into a wall of reality. There are thousands of paraplegics out there whose last moment of health was spent whooping with joyous abandon as they dove off a cliff into shallow water.

Trump Jr just off camera aiming a massive cannon at lion #2

everything about his quality of life is his own responsibility except for encroaching human habitats, poachers, hunter tourism, mass prey die-off due to drought from climate change, general poisoning of the ecosystem, basically the impact of asshole humans who don't acknowledge that their actions alter the lives of everyone around them....

Hmm yes precisely.

the brother of a friend, a guy in his 50s, is several weeks into a hospital stay because he had a no-helmet single-rider motorcycle wreck ... during multiple emergency surgeries they discovered he had COVID, which was helpful when he had to go on a ventilator for a while ... he seems to be doing better, just posted a photo of his cast-and-brace-covered leg with the caption "only 8 or 9 more surgeries to go"

he lives in Florida btw

More like identifying with lions because they are alpha predators with no natural enemies (other than humans), but the person who posted that is far more in the position of an aging gazelle the 'free' lion is gazing at hungrily.

NYC just mandated all employees to be vaccinated with no opt-outs.

Teacher's union responded with some vague language re: collective bargaining, but that's just going to be details (I hope).

Sorry, NYC schools.

Good, although I'm curious to see what kind of shitshow there is going to be if a significant number of teachers either leave or just don't comply.

I've seen a couple of threads w people having meltdowns talking about quitting and boohoo won't they be sorry when "all" the teachers quit, and, like...no one is going to miss your Long Island blue lives matter bumpersticker ass. Kids will be better off without ever knowing what you think of their selves and their families.

Fuh.

Based purely on anecdotes, I'd guess more teachers have left or are leaving because of all the other miseries of COVID education than will because of vaccine mandates. Literally every teacher I know got a vaccine as soon as they could. Some went to other states and counties to do it.

Where are they going to go? The state is expected to have a similar mandate very soon.

the majority of teachers want vaccine mandates as it is going to save lives

I am going to guess the ratio of teachers who don't want the vax and who are bad teachers approaches 1:1.

approaches 1:1

Maybe not so simple a ratio as that, especially in the kindergarten through 2nd grade. But I definitely understand the sentiment.

I wouldn't say "bad" in terms of pedagogy necessarily but I'm cynical from being stationed in schools in one of the reddest, most Republican leaning parts of NYC. Like, I searched a related hashtag on the bird media service and it was really only one guy, over and over, questioning the teacher's union's decision not to contest the vax mandate...and he's a white dude who has only ever posted about baseball and his background pic suggests a connection to Staten Island. Ooookay. Byeeeeee

wamp wamp

Just In: According to AZ Senate President Karen Fann, the head of Cyber Ninjas - Doug Logan - is "quite sick" from COVID-19, and the "audit" report expected today has been delayed.

— Duty To Warn 🔉 (@duty2warn) August 23, 2021

lots of people are saying China swapped in COVID contaminated ballots

true, twas at the hipster coffee bar and I heard this

holy mackerel pic.twitter.com/YDZZQnvuJQ

— bücketheâd (@BuucketHe4d) August 23, 2021

Bloody piss-taker!

A remarkable feat of microscopy:

Incredible video by Sophie-Marie Aicher & Dr. Delphine Planas showing SARS-CoV-2 causing syncytia (cell fusion that is part of its evasion of the immune system in humans) and cell death (red) in bat brain cells.

Honorable mention Nikon Small World competition. pic.twitter.com/K5aZ7D0RES

— Dr Alexandra Phelan (@alexandraphelan) August 23, 2021

How about I NOT mention that to my friend with long covid symptoms who says they have trouble thinking & writing now. :(((((((

One of the commonly recognized complaints of people experiencing long-covid is "brain fog".

Common long COVID symptoms include extreme tiredness, shortness of breath, chest pain or tightness and "brain fog" – problems with memory and concentration.

Symptoms like "brain fog" drive me nuts. I'm 46 and have two kids, I get up early and I'm often tired. Even if Covid didn't give me "brain fog" I probably have it anyway.

A glimmer of hope for eventual improvement is the known plasticity of the brain and its ability to 'rewire' around damage.

I know I've posted about this before, but I've lately seen an increase in the anti-vax argument that the vaccine does nothing to stop the spread of COVID. What's more troubling is that I keep seeing the pro-vax response that it isn't meant to stop the spread, just reduce severity and hospitalizations.

This is WRONG. The vaccine significantly curbs the spread of COVID. It is somewhat less effective at this against delta, but is still much better than being unvaccinated. People need to stop conceding this particular point as it is very misleading.

yes

covid is like the battle against the climate denialists in the early 2000s, only this time absolutely everyone is involved

Yes, it's very much "climate change is only a theory"

there is no hope, with them. how many times will i have to learn this. but believe me, forget about them. they're gone.

it really is a complete waste of effort. i still believe in loud rebukes - like really loud fuck yous that are unmistakable - but i think they make sense as a kind of 1% effort thing, of use against people who are just completely lost, beyond hope. despite the fact that it won't change anything, it helps refute their argument that "nobody told me!". because you can be like, "yeah, i told you. i said 'fuck you, don't do that you fucking asshole!', and then you did it anyway". all of that takes about 20 seconds. then nothing else after that. that's my goal right now, with people who roll coal

I'm less concerned about them than about the people who are pro-vax but accepting the idea that it doesn't curb the spread. I think that will definitely put off people who are on the fence.

forget about them. they're gone

the people you are thinking about are gone beyond retrieval, but this is a different, newer battle than climate change and there are still confused, hesitant and conflicted people out there who are trying to sort this out in the midst of living conditions that are not conducive to figuring out anything new and controversial. they are reclaimable and are worth some small effort spent knocking down the misinformation.

Incredible video by Sophie-Marie Aicher & Dr. Delphine Planas showing SARS-CoV-2 causing syncytia (cell fusion that is part of its evasion of the immune system in humans) and cell death (red) in bat brain cells.

I wonder why they cut off the video right before the ivermectin particles swoop in and kick COVID's ass, hmmm, I'm not sure, could it be..... #BigPharma

I'm less concerned about them than about the people who are pro-vax but accepting the idea that it doesn't curb the spread. I think that will definitely put off people who are on the fence.

― Mr. Cacciatore (Moodles), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 02:14 (two hours ago) link

FWIW, I think it pretty clearly curbs the spread less than previously thought, or at least the delta variant is so contagious that the vaccines are not curbing spread as much as they used to. But no question they still have some impact in slowing the spread.

But yeah I agree, it's grating when "smart" people loudly proclaim "the vaccine isn't meant to do that" or stuff like that. That's just not correct. At a minimum, the vaccine provides some reduction both in likelihood of infection and the time you are infectious if you get infected. The aggregate effect of that from millions of people can still be huge.

Symptoms like "brain fog" drive me nuts. I'm 46 and have two kids, I get up early and I'm often tired. Even if Covid didn't give me "brain fog" I probably have it anyway.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, August 23, 2021 10:34 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I hear what you're saying but as a person with a genetic celiac condition, I can only tell you that when I ate wheat if felt like trying to think through layers of gauze, or plastic sheeting, or something physically blocking you. Maybe extreme tiredness/sleep loss has a similar effect? But it was its own distinct thing. Anyway. Let's all try not to get covid just in case. :(

FWIW, I think it pretty clearly curbs the spread less than previously thought, or at least the delta variant is so contagious that the vaccines are not curbing spread as much as they used to. But no question they still have some impact in slowing the spread.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, August 24, 2021 1:01 AM bookmarkflaglink

recent study showed vaccinated Health Care Workers who get a breakthrough infection with Delta are spreading the virus less than unvaccinated who got a breakthrough infection with Alpha. Something like only 68% of breakthroughs had infectious virus that they could spread in the most recent Netherlands lab study. That and after 3 days, viral loads begin rapidly decreasing. So it still does have a big role in preventing spread - but you're right in that there is still plenty of ability for vaccinated people to spread, hence masks.

problem is Director Walensky publicly saying it doesn't stop transmission at all, which is complete nonsense.

My wife was telling me about friends of hers that have had "brain fog" during pregnancy and the like, and yeah, it does sound pretty disruptive. Like walking into a room and forgetting why you're there, but x10.

I still don't feel like I've seen good data on a comparison of people who recovered from COVID to people who didn't have it as far as long COVID symptoms, esp ones like brain fog and fatigue, which can have many causes. And I think it would need to be from the same time period, because stuff like isolation, being inside a lot, anxiety, and depression can also cause fatigue and brain fog.

My cognition has been clearly impaired since sometime this winter but it’s hard to pick out a root cause between psychological effects of isolation, my crohn’s getting worse (which it certainly is) and possibly having mild COVID somewhere along the line. In any case, it’s like nothing I’ve experienced before.

I have a friend who writes & teaches for a living who hated isolation and remote teaching but was cognitively fine all through the pandemic. They got covid late in the game and says they can't think or write clearly since then.

From my own experience, the brain fog of a celiac reaction is not like other kinds of distraction, tiredness, being hungover, or having the level of ADD I normally have. It's more than any of that. If long-covid is similar, I'm truly sorry for anyone going through it.

if you’ve never had covid then “long covid” is not a possibility for you i’d have thought…

there is a pretty substantial literature on long covid now, it’s not just “i feel tired/bad”

It's all sorts of stuff, from chronic fatigue to constant low-grade fever to impaired/altered taste.

there is tons of "good data" on it from NIH, etc.

i'm sorry this just makes me angry. why the impulse toward skepticism or minimizing it as just fatigue or anxiety like everyone has? because if it's real we might have to keep wearing masks longer?

I think there's some legitimate frustration that it's still not well understood or nailed down (though people like Dr Nisreen Alwan have started to really do a good job of publishing studies on it), combined with people who simply don't want to believe it's a thing because then it makes their recklessness even more assholish? idk

i definitely have a friend with it. we did a Fringe Festival play with swordfighting when the pandemic was in remission, and she had to pull the fight choreo aside and say that she was out of breath often due to her long COVID and just couldn't do it as-is, and the choreo was modified so she could more easily do it without being out of breath. and she said she'd never had this problem previously.