#covid resources

[noirhimbo]

Home Depot sells KN95 masks in a 10 pack for 2 bucks. I bought a hundred for 20 dollars. They've got them in white, black, and a pretty pastel pink. I've linked them so that they are easy to find. KN95's aren't the best but they are better than nothing, and definitely better than the floppy blue things people always wear.

[feminist-space]

I highly, highly recommend this website (thank you https://chrisisgre.at/!) which has an extensive set of resources and sources for covid knowledge.

The image above (also alt text-included) is of the youhavetoliveyour.life website, which is an incredible set of resources with articles that debunk common covid denial sayings, such as "covid is mild now" or "I got it and I'm fine" or "Healthy people don't have to worry about it." The image shows a drop-down menu with common covid denial excuses.

The website also uses photos of prominent public health leaders such as Leana Wen or Ashish Jha or Mandy Cohen, who have been touting, falsely and dangerously, that covid is "over," that it's "not a big deal," that "we have the tools now" (even though we don't, actually, and long covid is absolutely devastating).

Select a statement from the drop-down menu to find informative, helpful, and scientific articles that explain why those statements are misleading and incorrect.

Here is the link:

[flango87]

I’m looking to compile current resources (studies and such) on Covid and long covid, so they’re all in one place and I can have the information on hand when ppl argue that covid isn’t a thing anymore, or that it’s just a flu. If you have any good resources pls send them my way!!! Ill create a master doc or something with everything so other ppl can have it too

[rikaklassen]

PDX Respirator Repository

Amanda Abbott created a spreadsheet with a lot of data on 60+ different elastomerics. There is no standardization as each manufacturer has their own sizing charts. So if you are looking for a new mask or looking to upgrade your PPE, there's now information on measurements.

There are even information on whether or you can create 3D-printed covers for the filters and paint the mask(s) to remain stylish during the creeping apocalypse.

If you live in or near Portland, Oregon, you can also contact Amanda for test-fits since she has most of the models. The only way to know if something is COVID-safe is to try the masks on, but they are non-returnable.

PDX Respirator Repository

Website

Google Docs

The website is not a store; just has store-like template.

Amanda Abbot's social media:

Website

Twitter/X

Fediverse

Itch.io

Yat

Tumblr

Cults

[irishabdullah]

A long list of resources regarding COVID and long COVID that a local activist in my area put together! list will be updated occasionally, but there are topics such as: prevention, recovery, treatment, and research. please pass along to anyone in your life curious or skeptical about covid in 2024 and beyond!

[action]

Stay informed on when and where to mask this season ⬇️

"Over the past few weeks, a surge in cases of COVID, the flu and respiratory syncytial virus — known as RSV — has been sickening millions of Americans, overwhelming emergency rooms and even causing a cold medicine shortage. The triple threat has been called a "tripledemic" by some health experts."

[theculturedmarxist]

Abstract:

First infection with SARS-CoV-2 is associated with increased risk of acute and post-acute death and sequelae in the pulmonary and extrapulmonary organ systems. However, whether reinfection adds to the risk incurred after the first infection is not clear. Here we use the national health care databases of the US Department of Veterans Affairs to build a cohort of people with first infection (n = 257,427), reinfection (2 or more infections, n = 38,926), and a non-infected control group (n = 5,396,855) to estimate risks and 6-month burdens of all-cause mortality, hospitalization, and a set of pre-specified incident outcomes. We show that compared to people with first infection, reinfection contributes additional risks of all-cause mortality, hospitalization, and adverse health outcomes in the pulmonary and several extrapulmonary organ systems (cardiovascular disorders, coagulation and hematologic disorders, diabetes, fatigue, gastrointestinal disorders, kidney disorders, mental health disorders, musculoskeletal disorders, and neurologic disorders); the risks were evident in those who were unvaccinated, had 1 shot, or 2 or more shots prior to the second infection; the risks were most pronounced in the acute phase, but persisted in the post-acute phase of reinfection, and most were still evident at 6 months after reinfection. Compared to non-infected controls, assessment of the cumulative risks of repeated infection showed that the risk and burden increased in a graded fashion according to the number of infections. The constellation of findings show that reinfection adds non-trivial risks of all-cause mortality, hospitalization, and adverse health outcomes in the acute and post-acute phase of the reinfection. Reducing overall burden of death and disease due to SARS-CoV-2 will require strategies for reinfection prevention.

Commentary on the above study:

tl;dr: 1. Every reinfection increases the likelihood of further reinfections, and subsequently worse outcomes from those reinfections. 2. Mutations are creating variants with increased ability to escape immunity and cause re/infections. 3. Vaccine boosters can help but mutations are making them less effective as time goes on and not enough is being done to pursue new vaccines or sterilizing vaccines.

More commentary:

The very idea that there is some benefit from getting infected, i.e. gaining immunity from future infections, has now been shown to be incorrect. The opposite: an infection makes the next infection worse, not better. 15/

It's looking like the idea that Covid is something you "get" and then "get over" is a false one, and instead persists long after the acute phase, (possibly explaining Long Covid?).

I don't think so & neither should we with SARS-CoV-2. The more we learn about long COVID, the more it seems that SARS-CoV-2 isn't just an acute infection, but a persisting virus in a significant proportion of people. And not one that one should take lightly. It's not the flu.

Femboys soon, fellow Stalker.

[major-comet]

asked this over on twitter as well but i find i often have a wider reach on tumblr.

if i’m looking to upgrade to a reusable respirator with replaceable filters that is pretty easy to breathe in, good for long conversation in terms of understandability and fit, and doesn’t look too intense (don’t exactly want to bring Breaking Bad Chic to grad school, though more power to you if you do) what should i be looking at?

i currently have a vogmask that i do still love because it’s so good for most of my sensory issues, and I will likely hold onto it for bad pain days or quick errands! but the thought of taking it back onto campus has me a bit wary in the wake of covid + potentially h5n1. so i’m looking for something a bit better to hopefully keep myself a bit safer. thanks in advance

[aberration13]

Some good but little known resources for tracking the pandemic since nobody talks about it any more:

This one tracks covid specifically and provides a more technical/academic overview:

https://www.pmc19.com/data/index.php

This one tracks multiple diseases covid included by their markers in waste water:

This one gives updates on the pandemic and each report has a ton of links to further detailed information, news about efforts to fight covid, and resources that are available.

[counterintuitivecomics]

MASK UP FOR GLOBAL LIBERATION

Protect your community by wearing N95s and KN95s when meeting indoors or in crowds! The more of us mask up, the less we get sick, the harder it is for police to surveil us, and the safer we make our shared spaces for our disabled and immuno-compromised comrades and loved ones.

Get started by finding local mask resources on the global COVID Action Map (you can also submit groups to be added). If you have the means, donate masks and tests to your local orgs and encourage accessibility so we can ALL join the fight (bringing in interpreters/translators and medics, ensuring accessibility for wheelchairs/mobility devices, offering child care, filtering the air indoors, setting up virtual options etc).

UPDATE: Download this 8.5"x11" poster for free on itch.io to print and distribute! Includes files suitable for color, black and white, and risograph printing. Any donations will go to printing costs, or buying masks for my local mutual aid groups.

Pandemics have no borders, and all our struggles are united!

[apollodrome]

hi hi!! I saw your tags on my post and wanted to offer a few resources I knew!! The CDC has a tool on their site that helps you locate pharmacies in your area that will donate n95s for free: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/free-masks.html And also, I link a website within the post that offers a mask brace. It will improve the fit of any regular mask so you have better protection with what you have, and they have a free option on their website that you print and make yourself. Hope that helps!

Thank you! I'm not in the USA, but I hope my followers that are from there find the CDC link useful!

Wear your (free) masks everyone!

[rikaklassen]

CW: COVID-19

via @augieray@mastodon.social

Yes, I wish the general public takes COVID more seriously.

Coronavirus is not like the flu nor RSV and we've known about that since MERS and the first SARS. Also, massively disappointed with queer assimilationists since COVID is quite similar to HIV/AIDS and given how the government's eugenicist policies and their anti-LGBT campaigns wiped out many of the people who would have been elders in our communities today. Let's alone the deaf communities with the older generations of sign language folks becoming deaf and multi-disabled because of rubella, which is much more infectious than COVID.

I encourage you to read what Augie has to say since the screenshot is a snapshot of a five-parts thread.

Here is the spreadsheet where Augie took the time to read over 1 500 studies and summarized the findings of about 500 of them: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12VbMkvqUF9eSggJsdsFEjKs5x0ABxQJi5tvfzJIDd3U/

[covidsafehotties]

A fantastic resource for responding to the covid-denying assholes you can't just avoid!

[whileyoureinschoolidothisallday]

lrt the key thing to remember about covid is that it isn't magic. It has to get in you first before it can infect you, and you have to have a certain amount of viral load before it can take over (it doesn't take much anymore, but it still has to reach that threshold).

The key to being able to do fun, indoor things is to find an n95 or higher respirator, test to make sure it fits you without leakage, and then do not take off your mask. ever.

This is where it gets people. I hear tons of stories from people who caught Covid even though they masked, and it almost always turns out they took it off for one reason or another.

"Hungry or thirsty?" Eat and hydrate beforehand or plan to stay until you get hungry. If you have a medical condition where you have to eat or take meds while you're out, find a place outside and bring multiple masks so you can put on a fresh one when you're done. For thirst, they actually make something for this. Do not take off the mask.

"What if we wanna take a selfie?" Take them beforehand or keep the masks on. Do not take off the mask.

"What about air breaks?" No air breaks. If you can't tolerate being in a mask for long periods, you cannot safely go to long events. Do not take off the mask.

Respirators have a seal. When you break the seal by taking it off, they do not work as effectively. The seal can also break after a certain amount of use, which changes depending on how many other people are masking around you. I used to have a diagram showing how long each masks last in different situations, but I sadly cannot find it so I won't say a specific time since I can't confirm it, but this is essentially why if I'm going to attempt something riskier, I wear a p100 because those are good for 8hrs before you have to change the filter, and anything that I go to indoors won't be more than 3hrs (simply because I'm old and I ain't staying out longer than that lol)

I really appreciate that op made a psa, because the point of that post I think a lot of people are missing is that we need to be in full pandemic mode specifically because of the wave. But the problem with writing Covid things in a sensational kind of way is that it makes mitigation seem like an impossible task that requires monk like sacrifice, and that makes people immediately shut down. It's not, even in a huge wave like this. Will you have to change your routine and behaviors, and some of those changes might be inconvenient? Absolutely. But they will never be impossible. It's important to remember that adaptation isn't sacrifice. You're not "giving up" anything. You're still gonna be able to have your social needs met, you'll just be doing it in a different way for awhile.

If you want to hang out with a small group of friends at their/your house, and it's too cold to be outside or you just don't want to, the safest way to do it is universal masking, full vaccinations, testing multiple times beforehand, and using at least one air purifier that filters up to 0.1-0.5 µm in the room you'll be gathering in. This can be done diy with a Corsi-Rosenthal box if you need something cheaper! Air filters suck in viruses faster than people can breathe them in, so the risk of getting covid would be incredibly low in this situation (but never zero). If you want to share a meal, know that taking off the masks will increase the risk, but at least let the purifer run at the highest setting tolerable for an hour before doing so

If you can't afford to stop reusing your N95s, I recommend either locating a mask bloc near you and ask for some mask donations, or buy an elastomeric n95 like this one. There are many to choose from and while they are more expensive, they're reusable, with the filter only needing to be changed after 8 hours (or sooner if in a big crowd)

Some people are currently inventing portable air-purifiers you can pair with masks, and you can 3-D print them!

You're at work/the dentist/some other situation where you absolutely can't go outside in a non-crowded space, and you need to take down your mask? Nasal sprays like this one can be a good extra layer of protection for these situations. You can always, like with most viruses, rinse out your nose after being in public and rinse your mouth with CPC mouthwash for even more extra layers of protection.

One of the frustrations I have with the current Covid advocacy is that it's still largely focused on near-total abstinence, which has never been and never will be an effective education tool. I prefer taking a cue from AIDS advocacy and focus on education and providing resources. Of course, staying home is the only way to stay 100% safe, and you should choose contactless options whenever you can as long as the pandemic is still going. But isolation is becoming less and less realistic for most people and I want to still show them that you can stay safe even if you can't stay home.

Covid is not an impossible task. It's not magic. You do not need to catch that wave. These are imperative facts we as a collective have to internalize if we want out of this pandemic. You are not helpless. We've had airborne viruses for years and years, and we've known how to protect ourselves from them as well. We've known how to protect from Covid, specifically, for years. The only reason it's gotten this bad and is still a pandemic is because our governments benefit more from the masses being sick and needing resources, full stop. Like climate change, we have the tools to beat this virus back at any point. Because of this, even in this huge wave, there is no reason you have to only exist online. There are ways you can see your friends safely.

All people like OP are saying is that, at least until this wave improves, you should do that without going to the bars, clubs, restaurants, concert venues, etc. Because it's not only extremely unsafe for you, but it's putting other people in danger too.