#actionable

[scribblyspaceskeleton]

You should absolutely still call your Senators! Even one call can make a major difference!

THE ENTIRE WEST IS BEING PUT UP FOR SALE AND I AM BEGGING YOU TO CALL YOUR SENATORS

Trump’s budget bill has many, many things in it, but buried amongst it is the MILLIONS OF ACRES OF PUBLIC LAND FOR SALE.

This is the entirety of the Arizona state forests, the entire Cascades mountain range. Swathes of pristine desert around the national parks in Utah. On the doorstep of Jackson Hole.

THIS BILL IS BIG, BUT IT CAN BE AMENDED AND ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT PASS AS IS please.

If you have ever enjoyed the wilderness, we stand to lose it all forever.

CALLING your senators - NOT JUST IN THE WEST. ALL SENATORS, is CRUCIAL.

Outdoor alliance has a great resource for reaching out.

I don’t have a huge following but please, everywhere I have ever loved, the forests I grew up playing in, the land I got married on, is all at risk and I am begging.

[liminalweirdo]

Telehealth is necessary healthcare for many immunocompromised and disabled people, especially those with long Covid or ME/CFS. Please sign this petition to save telehealth!

[in4newz]

[mothric]

I'm also concerned that the "they're all protesting FOR us 🥺" narrative is giving a lot of ppl an excuse to not actually organize or protest themselves. it feels like it's coming from a place of escapism and, to risk using a therapy term, learned helplessness. what I mean is that I'm getting a sense that people have just gone belly-up and accepted there's nothing we can do in these fearsome terrible times, but golly it sure is nice to imagine that someone somewhere else in a far off location is doing the work for us.

guys, Germany and the UK and Mexico City aren't heroes in shining armour come to rescue us. there is a LOT we can do. you can call your representatives. you can print out flyers with information about ICE and hand them out. you can research grassroots projects in your own community. you can start teaching yourself how to distinguish reliable sources from unreliable ones so you can better discern what's in the news and keep yourself from conspiracy thinking. you can keep your mouth shut if someone asks you if you know any immigrants. you can check on your queer friends. you can look up official boycotts. assuming you are able bodied, you can even protest! yes, you, US American reading this! the right to peaceful assembly didn't just disappear overnight!

believing we cannot possibly do anything ourselves to make anything better doesn't help us or our neighbours, it just makes it way easier for people who don't like us to keep doing shit that makes our lives harder.

[bnyrbt]

United States FDA wants to limit future COVID-19 vaccine access

They want to hold COVID vaccines to stricter regulations than we currently hold flu vaccines. They are claiming that this is to improve public trust in vaccines, and that public trust in vaccines has been eroded, not by the anti-vaccine movement, but by COVID vaccine mandates. I hope I don’t have to explain why that’s utter bullshit. My blood sugar is low right now, and I don't want to panic unnecessarily, but this shit is serious. We have three days to submit our comments:

More information:

[gumjrop]

Here are the latest national COVID-19 trends, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and major wastewater surveillance providers:

About 1.0 in every 100,000 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 during the week ending May 3.

COVID-19 test positivity stayed the same, with 2.9% of COVID-19 tests returning positive results during both the weeks ending May 3 and May 10.

SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has decreased 8% between the week ending May 3 and the week ending May 10, and the national wastewater viral activity level is “low,” per the CDC.

SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has decreased 7% between April 30 and May 7, and the national wastewater trend is “medium,” per WastewaterSCAN.

The U.S. remains in a moderate lull between COVID-19 surges, with national metrics reporting slow declines through mid-May. There are increases in disease spread in a few West Coast states, however, and new variants now arriving in the country are likely to spur outbreaks this summer. Also, Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine is finally approved — but not universally. Federal health officials are introducing new challenges for further shots.

Wastewater data from the CDC, WastewaterSCAN, and Biobot Analytics all report slight declines in average SARS-CoV-2 levels for early- to mid-May. These levels have declined slowly since February, and are close to reports from early November 2024 or late April 2024 — the last “baseline” points in between surges. Of course, SARS-CoV-2 levels at these points are still several times the true lows that we experienced in 2021 and 2022, when collective health measures were still in place.

Healthcare system data from the CDC’s surveillance networks similarly report slow declines through mid-May. COVID-19 test positivity, from the labs reporting to the agency, was about 2.9% in the weeks ending May 3 and May 10. Last year, the lowest point for this metric was 3.1%, during the weeks ending April 20, April 27, and May 11, 2024.

Most states and regions report COVID-19 declines, but there are continued signs of increased disease spread on the West Coast, following a trend from last week. Test positivity data for federal health regions 8, 9, and 10 (which include West Coast states) report increases in early May, as do wastewater data from the CDC and WWSCAN.

The CDC’s disease forecasting center also estimates that COVID-19 cases are “likely growing” in Nevada and Hawaii as of May 13. Cases are “declining or likely declining” in 30 states and “not changing” in 14, per the center. As I noted last week, it’s hard to say yet whether these are isolated hotspots or first signs of a summer surge, but it would make sense for the West to see a wave first given the last few months’ patterns.

In addition to travel and gatherings without collective precautions, new variants may aid a surge this summer. Variant trackers are now watching recombinant lineages called XFG and XFC, which have been detected in the U.S. but are not spreading widely yet. The CDC estimated that XFC caused 9% of cases in the two weeks ending May 10. Another variant, called NB.1.8.1, is contributing to high cases in Asia.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) finally approved Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine last weekend. But the vaccine was approved only for people over age 65 and those with health conditions that “put them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19,” even though it’s previously been available more widely. Trump officials have also indicated further COVID-19 vaccine updates may be more restricted, threatening to take away another protective option for millions of people.

Update, May 20, 12 p.m. ET: FDA leaders have just announced that future COVID-19 vaccines will also be limited to those over age 65 and with health conditions that put them at “high risk for severe COVID-19,” until further clinical trials can be conducted. An article by Trump-appointed FDA officials in the New England Journal of Medicine explaining this new policy has no mention of Long COVID or of other measures Americans can use to protect themselves from COVID-19, such as high-quality masks.

Ladyzhets, Betsy. “National Covid-19 Trends, May 20.” The Sick Times - Chronicling the Long Covid Crisis, 20 May 2025, thesicktimes.org/2025/05/20/national-covid-19-trends-may-20/.

The proposal to limit vaccine access is open to comment for three more days:

[warmhappycat]

Sign up to help cure ballots in Pennsylvania

You do not need to live in Pennsylvania.

Even if the presidency is lost by now, down ballot elections REALLY matter. This effort will help determine US House of Representatives, as well as state and local races in Pennsylvania. Whatever safety we will have in the years to come, will come from state and local officials.

I’m a neurodivergent, mentally ill person who needs a lot of rest time, but I signed up for like 5 shifts. It’s only for a few days, and it’s a tangible thing to DO.

[jestermaxxed]

love you adam cole but if you take that belt from my sunshine precious angel kitten i’m going to Do Something

[liminalweirdo]

If you don't know what to say you can read other people's comments. Writing a comment here takes less than thee minutes of your time.

We have 30 days until the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) laws are rescinded. This is the 50-year bedrock of American conservation. Normally, these actions take years but the administration has provided 30 days for public comment gutting clean water and clean air. Drop what you’re doing, before you make any more calls or read any more social media posts, please populate the Federal Register with dissent.

A. Go to https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/02/25/2025-03014/removal-of-national-environmental-policy-act-implementing-regulations

B. Click on the green rectangle in the upper right corner ("SUBMIT A PUBLIC COMMENT") .

C. Fill in your comment, and info at the bottom, and SUBMIT COMMENT.

[liminalweirdo]

Full text reads:

"People who don't include disability liberation in their understanding of justice will never make sense to me. Like what do you MEAN you oppose sexism, racism, and classism, but the minute the lived reality of that oppression starts showing up physically, all your energy just evaporates?

Genuinely, try to name for me a form of oppression that doesn't result in, or amplify the impacts of disability. Spoiler: you can't. If you care about healthcare, abolition, housing, workers rights, bodily autonomy — if you care about liberation you need to include disability justice.

There is a very real push of eugenicist ideas occuring and over the coming years it's likely to only get worse — I am begging you to resist it. Already I've seen leftist organisers complaining that disabled people cannot offer anything to a movement because they dared to ask for masks at a meeting.

It's not surprising if we look to history—pandemics and a rise in fascist/eugenicist rhetoric go hand in hand. But if we look to history we should also know that disabled activists have been vital in antifascist + workers movements since forever. Erasing their contributions helps no one.

"We will never win if we continue to abandon the people most impacted by the very systems we are claiming to fight. If when it gets inconvenient we're just replicating the same attitudes as the fash and the same abandonment as the state, what exactly is the point in what we're doing?

Anyway reminded that solidarity is not transactional, and giving into eugenics is, among other things — deeply embarrassing. With enough time and luck, disability is coming for all of us. Do yourself a favour and start dealing with the hole in your politics now. *double heart emoji*"

- themme_fatale

[in4newz]

Ah yes, the local news outlet, a frauds administration, one of the best animes of all time, one of the modern day heros and a fucking circus as top 5 trending. Beautiful.

[gumjrop]

The US Food and Drug Administration is changing the way it approves Covid-19 vaccines for Americans — a move that will limit future vaccines to older Americans and people at higher risk of serious Covid-19 infection.

The agency is changing the standard of evidence required for Covid-19 vaccine approval in the US, Dr. Vinay Prasad, the new director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, said in an editorial published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine

The change means that Covid-19 shots will likely be available in the fall for adults ages 65 and older and those with underlying conditions that may put them at higher risk of a Covid-19 infection, but not for everyone who was previously eligible for an updated shot. Nearly three-quarters of Americans age 6 months and older have an underlying medical condition that puts them at higher risk, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The change, which was already being studied by experts that advise the CDC on its vaccine recommendations, will more closely align the United States with Covid-19 vaccine recommendations in the UK, Canada and Australia.

Millions of healthy adults and kids will likely lose access to updated vaccines under the new criteria. Prasad and Makary say there’s not enough evidence that healthy kids and adults get clinically meaningful benefit from regular Covid-19 shots. They want to see placebo-controlled trials, particularly in adults ages 50 to 64, before recommending the shots for other groups.

Dr. Noel Brewer, a professor of public health and health behavior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he supports the change.

“The proposed policy moves the US in line with other countries. This global view of public health is a welcome development,” said Brewer, who sits on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and was part of the working group mulling the change to Covid vaccine recommendations

But he and other experts say they’re still worried about the youngest children, those under age 2, who have high rates of hospitalization from Covid-19.

Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of FDA’s independent advisory group on vaccines, says he disagrees with the underlying premise of the new framework, which is that our Covid-19 vaccine recommendations haven’t been based on good evidence.

“We have been using an evidence-based approach to Covid-19 vaccination, but they kind of swoop in and believe that for the first time, we’re going to get, as they say, ‘gold standard’ data, robust data, for the first time, because according to them, we don’t have that, but we do have that,” Offit said.

“That’s why we’ve made good decisions about the vaccine. That’s why that vaccine is remarkably safe. I mean, the mRNA vaccines are remarkably safe.”

The editorial says that going forward, Covid-19 vaccines for people ages 65 and older and those 6 months of age and older with underlying health conditions that put them at higher risk from Covid-19 infections will be approved after pharmaceutical companies can demonstrate that they create protective antibody concentrations in people.

These types of studies are called immunobridging studies. They’re typically done in a smaller number of people, and importantly, they can be done quickly so vaccine manufacturing can ramp up in time to have large numbers of shots ready for an expected wave of illness, usually over the fall and winter.

This is largely how seasonal flu vaccinations are approved each year in the US, and it’s the way FDA has been approving Covid-19 vaccines for the past few years.

For everyone else, the FDA will only approve vaccines after studies that prove the shots can prevent symptomatic Covid-19 better than a placebo. The FDA will also consider several secondary outcomes, including severe illness, hospitalization and death.

The new plan doesn’t consider other impacts of Covid-19 infections, such as long Covid. Studies have shown that vaccination may cut the risk of developing long Covid by somewhere between 25 %to 60%.

Prasad and Makary say the new policy balances the need to swiftly approve vaccines to have them ready by the fall for the most vulnerable adults and children, with the need for more evidence before offering them to others.

What’s more, they say millions of Americans under the age of 65 will still qualify to get a Covid-19 vaccine if they want one if they have any of a broad range of health conditions identified by the CDC as putting a person at high risk of severe disease from Covid-19.

“Estimates suggest that 100 million to 200 million Americans will have access to vaccines in this manner,” the FDA officials wrote.

Prasad and Makary say their goal in requiring more evidence for other groups is to restore public trust in vaccines.

They point out that for the past two seasons, less than 25% of Americans have received a Covid-19 shot, including less than 10% of kids and less than 50% of adults over the age of 75.

They say broad Covid-19 vaccine recommendations and mandates during the pandemic eroded public trust and caused falling rates for other types of vaccines, too, such as the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Goodman, Brenda. “FDA to Limit Future Covid-19 Shots to Older People and Those at Risk of Serious Infection.” CNN, Cable News Network, 20 May 2025, www.cnn.com/2025/05/20/health/covid-vaccine-fda-changes.

The proposal is open for comment for three more days:

[biotopia]

Petition to stop aerial spraying of glyphosate over BC forests.

[hug-your-face]

via @swatercolour here on Tumblr and also on [insta]

EDIT: I do not interpret "just managing" as "just suffering, just enduring, curling into a fetal position and waiting for it to be over." Managing is an active process.

So I'm using this post as a platform to make the reminder that "the power of the people is greater than the people in power," and we all are cordially invited to:

Take good care of ourselves. Mental, physical, emotional health. Hydrate. Move if we can, get outside if we can.

Keep up a routine. Remember quarantine and we all had to find a routine? This is the same.

Be intentional in our news consumption. Let's not stick our heads in the sand but let's not doomscroll either. Get an RSS aggregator. Subscribe to WTF Just Happened Today, Yoour Local Epidemiologist, Fix The News (for some inspiring hopeful news!). We'll check our feeds a few times a week, but no more than once a day.

Connect with friends and loved ones. Remind ourselves that while SOME people are horrible, for the most part people are awesome... if complicated. Share our fears but also our hopes. Eat together.

Now that we're keeping healthy, safe, sane, and hopeful... now we also fight. Quietly if we prefer, loudly if we prefer. But sustainably. I hate that I had to live through three rounds of this nonsense where a few people use half of us as tools to fuck over ALL of us, but here we are again. So let us take just one moment every week or so to...

Use 5calls to keep blowing up our reps phones. Tell them to either break ranks with the Orange Administration, or to stand up louder than just matching outfits and signs. Or to THANK them for standing up.

Use Vote411 to find elections before the midterms. A lot of villages, cities, townships etc have local elections that will affect where we live... and more importantly, the people in office there will affect things upwards too.

Use Ballotpedia to know exactly what's on our ballots ahead of time.

Protest, because it actually works.

Use Vote.org to make a plan to vote in the midterms. Make a plan that is immune to voter suppression tactics. Get our documents in order. Reach out to our friends to go to the polls as a group. Plan to livestream our visit, up until the point we have to turn our cameras off.

Make and share memes that promote hope, organizing, solidarity, and/or resistance.

Get involved with an action network like Indivisible, MoveOn, or Working Families Party.

Go to a local town hall meeting. Speak up.

Heck, start our own local activism networks, letter campaigns, call campaigns, or fundraisers with Action Network.

And we will remember our self-care. We will remind ourselves and each other that they want us scattered, focus is how we resist.

It IS coming back. Things ARE going to get worse. The world has become a place where a very few people are pulling levers and pushing buttons that are actively destroying much of what is good about living in a society where people care for each other.

Many others are in shock, sputtering "but can they do that?" MANY many others are waiting for someone to come save us.

But there are those who are actively, loudly, opposing.

And there are more people speaking up, acting up, every day. More people saying it's time to get scrappy. It's time to get into some good trouble. The shock is wearing off.

Yes, it's gonna get worse before it gets better (the long-term damage of the acts of the past momentum of all the damage that has been done will take that long to be felt -- but it WILL get better.

If WE will it.