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Hey, I just want to point out something that I have noticed on some of your posts. I’ve been following for quite some time and I’ve seen you share studies that, while extremely informative and interesting, may serve to spread inaccurate or outdated information because certain contexts are not provided clearly. For example, you recently re-shared a post of yours from Dec 2024 and you did mention it’s an older article, but it’s important to point out that the article itself is from 2022, and the study data they are using is from 2020 and 2021 - meaning everyone in the study was infected with the first wave of the virus AND none of them had been vaccinated because the vaccine did not exist. That isn’t to say first-wavers don’t matter, but vaccines have made a HUGE difference in how our bodies are able to fight off COVID, and newer variants behave differently than the first ones. I think being aware of the risks is extremely important (I still live a very Covid cautious lifestyle), but I think it’s also important to avoid accidentally catastrophizing and fear mongering. I know not everyone is vaccinated, I know that not everyone is getting boosters, but we’re still in a far better position than we were when the study was conducted.

Please browse some of the more than 5,000 open access scientific articles I've collected about Covid and come back

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I’d just like to point out that yes obviously COVID is causing immune system issues with some people but this idea that “suddenly everyone is sick all the time” is in huge part confirmation bias. Adults get 4-6 colds per year, each of which can leave you with a lingering cough for up to 8 weeks. Children can get up to 8 colds per year. The flu isn’t nearly as common, but people do get it every once in a while too. Now we just happen to have another virus to add to the mix. Yea, COVID is way more serious than a cold. But people have always been getting sick all the time. Here’s a source from 2011 about cold frequency: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3215607/

If you bothered to look at the sources of that article, you'd know it's based on data from the 50s-70s in England and is nowhere close to accurate for the current time nor other places in the world.

And that article isn't about "cold frequency", it's kind of diagnostic advice for mothers that's 3 paragraphs long. Holy shit, you minimizers are identical to anti-vax nutjobs all the way down to not knowing how to read or apply a scientific paper (which this actually isn't).

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The researchers found that many long Covid patients were seriously ill and on average had fatigue scores worse or similar to people with cancer-related anaemia or severe kidney disease. Their health-related quality of life scores were also lower than those of people with advanced metastatic cancers, like stage IV lung cancer. Overall, the team found that the impact of long Covid on the daily activities of patients was worse than that of stroke patients and was comparable to that of patients with Parkinson’s disease. Dr Henry Goodfellow, who co-led the study alongside the late Professor Elizabeth Murray (both UCL Institute of Epidemiology & Health), said: “Up to around 17% of people who get Covid go on to develop long Covid*. However, the impact of the condition on patients’ day-to-day lives isn’t fully understood. “Our results have found that long Covid can have a devastating effect on the lives of patients – with fatigue having the biggest impact on everything from social activities to work, chores and maintaining close relationships.”

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And I really don't get why.

It turns out that actually standing by "men and women are not inherently very different" is a reliable way to bother absolutely everyone. Left or right, cis or trans, feminist or misogynist, all cling to the binary for dear life.

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love going on callout posts for "thinks cnc is okay" and seeing people talk about how us freaks need the electric chair. fantasizing about violence is okay as long as its not sexual, funny that

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wow people think it's out there to say covid causes brain damage? uh...y'all check out the research. it can literally shrink your brain.

covid is not mild. covid absolutely causes long term damage to the body and the brain. children exposed to covid in utero are experiencing developmental delays.

you might wanna wear a mask. i like these.

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quick little vent sketch we will persist, not the first time weve been targeted. you are loved, you are valid. You are not the monster they say you are. I know blahaj is kind of the trans icon now, but would anybody be interested in an emotional support trans coloured fish? i love his big blank silly stair and wavering emotional support so much i really would love to see a big plush version made to squeeze. actually... are there any trans plushie creators /businesses willing to partner? we face pretty rough times, keeping this in the family would make me so happy to support a community with it

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Pile of Twigs

This is some fan art for @welldrawnfish , love what you’ve done with the Twig story, trans gobbo is best gobbo🧌🏳️‍⚧️

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Friendly Reminder theres only one way to deal with fascists. They do not respond to civility, they do not change thier minds, they delight in the suffering of others. But they are nothing but weak men cosplaying strength. When confronted with real aggression and real action, they shrink away, scared to show themselves in public. I get that its terrifying right now, and being pride month I will bet more than anything that the Trump Administration will try some petty morale breaking bullshit as a show of strength. You need to be strong. And here's the hardest truth I can drop this pride. They will try to take everything from you. You cannot hide, you will never be quite enough for them, never be hidden enough. Even now the Company Palantir is posed to collect all your information into a master list. You will be hunted. I wish I could tell us that we get to live a happy peaceful life, that your trans, you were brave and overcame that hurdle, and found your slice of happiness. But we don't get that. We have to be ready to bleed, because they will make us bleed. Violence isn't the only answer. It is the answer only when all avenues of peace have been exhausted. Right now you need to start forming local communities and support networks, find an lgbt alliance, if there isn't one, form one. Help those in poverty, work to make community gardens, teams for home repairs. Recruit, build up.

Happy Pride. The resistance starts with you.

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Since coming out and getting on tumblr and all that I've come across so much art, stories, and pics that have been crazy heartwarming. All of the stuff you amazing folks put out there has made one thing extremely clear to me:

I am not alone.

The sense of strength and community here fills me with so much more hope than I could have ever dreamed of having, and every new post I see adds another brick to the growing monument of compassion that we are sharing with the world.

The more visible we are, the stronger we will be.

One of those projects that never fails to immediately make me melt is Twig by @welldrawnfish. Please please please take a stroll to her page if you somehow haven't already as she's an absolute rock star and amazing artist and is yet another one of the folks here who make me want to work harder.

I have a fantastically large amount of flaws in my drawing, and I reinforced all of those flaws for twelve years while I was making my old comic. Once Corpse Run ended, I kind of fell off the wagon and other than doodling from time to time, I didn't really draw for two years.

As it turns out, that might have been the best thing for me. I feel like I've been able to reset and unlearn bad habits.

I still have bad habits though!

BUT I'M WORKING ON THEM.

I'm not going to be able to do it every day due to work, but I've really enjoyed drawing just for the fun of it, no schedule, no deadline, no "need"... just fun.

Twig... Twig is fun. So today I wanted to sketch some Twig fan art.

So thank you to @welldrawnfish for creating this amazing character that resonates with so many, and thank you to this community for inspiring me to become a better artist. I want to keep working and growing with all of you, and I want to make our monument of compassion so grand that we remind the world that we are just as beautiful and worthy of living our lives as everyone else.

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Please help! Sharing this would mean a lot. I’m sorry for posting about it so much- I wouldn’t if it weren’t serious. If you want to donate, here’s my Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/zombieparty Even a share helps more than you know. Thank you!!

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dont play defense

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"A cure for HIV could be a step closer after researchers found a new way to force the virus out of hiding inside human cells.

The virus’s ability to conceal itself inside certain white blood cells has been one of the main challenges for scientists looking for a cure. It means there is a reservoir of the HIV in the body, capable of reactivation, that neither the immune system nor drugs can tackle.

Now researchers from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, have demonstrated a way to make the virus visible, paving the way to fully clear it from the body.

It is based on mRNA technology, which came to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic when it was used in vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech.

In a paper published in Nature Communications, the researchers have shown for the first time that mRNA can be delivered into the cells where HIV is hiding, by encasing it in a tiny, specially formulated fat bubble. The mRNA then instructs the cells to reveal the virus.

Globally, there are almost 40 million people living with HIV, who must take medication for the rest of their lives in order to suppress the virus and ensure they do not develop symptoms or transmit it. For many it remains deadly, with UNAids figures suggesting one person died of HIV every minute in 2023.

It was “previously thought impossible” to deliver mRNA to the type of white blood cell that is home to HIV, said Dr Paula Cevaal, research fellow at the Doherty Institute and co-first author of the study, because those cells did not take up the fat bubbles, or lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), used to carry it.

The team have developed a new type of LNP that those cells will accept, known as LNP X. She said: “Our hope is that this new nanoparticle design could be a new pathway to an HIV cure.”

When a colleague first presented test results at the lab’s weekly meeting, Cevaal said, they seemed too good to be true.

“We sent her back into the lab to repeat it, and she came back the next week with results that were equally good. So we had to believe it. And of course, since then, we’ve repeated it many, many, many more times.

“We were overwhelmed by how [much of a] night and day difference it was – from not working before, and then all of a sudden it was working. And all of us were just sitting gasping like, ‘wow’.”

Further research will be needed to determine whether revealing the virus is enough to allow the body’s immune system to deal with it, or whether the technology will need to be combined with other therapies to eliminate HIV from the body.

The study is laboratory based and was carried out in cells donated by HIV patients. The path to using the technology as part of a cure for patients is long, and would require successful tests in animals followed by safety trials in humans, likely to take years, before efficacy trials could even begin.

“In the field of biomedicine, many things eventually don’t make it into the clinic – that is the unfortunate truth; I don’t want to paint a prettier picture than what is the reality,” stressed Cevaal. “But in terms of specifically the field of HIV cure, we have never seen anything close to as good as what we are seeing, in terms of how well we are able to reveal this virus.

“So from that point of view, we’re very hopeful that we are also able to see this type of response in an animal, and that we could eventually do this in humans.”

Dr Michael Roche of the University of Melbourne and co-senior author of the research, said the discovery could have broader implications beyond HIV, with the relevant white blood cells also involved in other diseases including cancers.

Dr Jonathan Stoye, a retrovirologist and emeritus scientist at the Francis Crick Institute, who was not involved in the study, said the approach taken by the Melbourne team appeared be a major advance on existing strategies to force the virus out of hiding, but further studies would be needed to determine how best to kill it after that.

He added: “Ultimately, one big unknown remains. Do you need to eliminate the entire reservoir for success or just the major part? If just 10% of the latent reservoir survives will that be sufficient to seed new infection? Only time will tell.

“However, that does not detract from the significance of the current study, which represents a major potential advance in delivery of mRNA for therapeutic purposes to blood cells.”"

-via The Guardian, June 5, 2025

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I genuinely believe that this is the beginning of the end for the colonial empire of the United States. My heart is with our American relatives fighting ICE and police in LA.

Freedom is possible! Ahkamêyimok

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Two years after being tasked with commissioning a review of medical evidence surrounding gender-affirming care for trans youth, Utah’s own state health department has concluded that trans healthcare bans “cannot be justified.” The Republicans who commissioned the study aren’t too happy about it.

Back in 2023, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed a bill that placed an indefinite “moratorium” on doctors prescribing gender-affirming care like hormone therapy and puberty blockers to trans youth. That bill ordered the Utah Department of Health and Human Services to compile their report in order to produce recommendations for the state government on whether or not to lift the moratorium.

This week, the department delivered their long-awaited, over 1,000-page report — which is dated August 6, 2024 — to Utah lawmakers. The report’s authors found that “the consensus of the evidence supports that the treatments are effective in terms of mental health, psychosocial outcomes, and the induction of body changes consistent with the affirmed gender in pediatric GD [gender dysphoria] patients.”

The authors added that “the evidence also supports that the treatments are safe in terms of changes to bone density, cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic changes, and cancer.” Trans youth who had received gender-affirming care were within the bounds of normal, non-pathological ranges for these conditions.

y’all this is huge. please don’t “water is wet” all over it! I understand that we all already know this… The point is that the world doesn’t know or care or believe and so these studies really fucking matter!

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bike(r) girl