travelingwithoutthedoctor

[travelingwithoutthedoctor]

sending love to those fighting the job market

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Still can't believe they let me use the font Bembo in Everything Is Tuberculosis just because I fucking love this Pietro Bembo story so much.

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Will you be releasing an audio book version of everything is TB?

I'm ADHD and it would be much easier to listen to rather then read lol

There is an audiobook, and it's narrated by me! So if you want to hear my voice for five and a half hours talking to you about tuberculosis, you're in luck.

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I find it absolutely hilarious that the signed edition of everything is tuberculosis costs five dollars less than the unsigned version.

I should sign all the egg cartons. I'd end inflation by myself.

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everythingistb.com

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hi, I'm living in Kansas now and this TB outbreak has got me pretty worried. do you have any resources for where to get a vaccine? I want to make sure I'm as protected as I can be

The only existing vaccine for TB is called BCG, and it's 102 years old. It is not effective at preventing infection, severe illness, or death in adolescents or adults, so unless you're under the age of 10, there's not much reason to get it.

We could have new, good vaccines for TB, but we decided not to invest in them over the last 50 years, because almost everyone who gets TB is poor, and our social orders devalue the lives of impoverished people.

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I heard there's a TB outbreak in Kansas right now?? Do you know if there's anything we can do to help?

There is ongoing spread of TB in Kansas--so far, 67 cases of active disease.

I want to be clear this is a tiny, tiny fraction of the overall global burden of tuberculosis: 10,000,000 people get sick with TB every year, and 1,250,000 die (almost all of whom die unnecessarily--TB is curable).

It's also a small fraction of the U.S. burden of TB--we have about 10,000 cases of TB annually in the U.S. It's an airborne disease, so we shouldn't be surprised that people are getting sick. We should be horrified that we're allowing so many people to get sick even though TB is both curable and preventable. (We can stop chains of infection by offering preventative antibiotics to close contacts of the sick.)

We should absolutely be worried about TB in the United States. An airborne disease that's allowed to infect and sicken ten million people each year is an ongoing threat to all humans. But we should also remember that while we worry about a hypothetical TB pandemic, much of the world has never emerged from the TB pandemic that has lasted for thousands of years and killed many billions of people.

Should you be worried about contracting TB? Yes. But you should mostly be worried that the U.S. government has paused all TB funding, which will increase antibiotic resistance, needless death, and the risk that untreatable versions of the disease will emerge and spread.

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Me, refusing to leave tumblr: sir, this is my emotional support hellsite

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Studies show that babies are not afraid of snakes

Scientists launched reptiles into the nursery to assess the reaction of the kids. The result killed: the crumbs perceived the reptiles as toys, and some tried to eat them

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Disinfecting Pericles who died from the plague in 429 B.C.

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I wasn’t on tumblr when you were bullied off of tumblr (due to being in a bad place in my life) but I think you’re cool as shit. I read The Fault in Our Stars when I was a teenager, and all I remember is being shaken by it. Read Turtles All the Way Down, same feeling.

As an adult, I understand better what you were doing in your novels for kids like me. Teenagers struggling to process emotions in an environment where they are feeling these huge feelings every day—“my world is ending”—“I will never love again”—“I’m too happy to function”—the emotions are so intense at that age. Especially if you’re a teen with mental health issues. Even caring adults seem so distant when you’re trapped in that vortex.

Your novels recreated that feeling for me, allowing me to read about someone like me who was grappling with every emotion and sensation. I genuinely didn’t know how to cope with that stuff. You showed that teens like me could feel everything from devastation to euphoria to bewilderment…and still be here.

When I watched Turtles All the Way Down recently, I cried seeing thought spirals portrayed so accurately and seeing Aza find hope. Seeing her people finally connect with her through the mindfog. That shit is powerful. I wish teenage me could have seen that movie.

All this to say: you’ve done a lot of good. I hope you know that you’ve helped people who are going through deep shit. From one grownup person to another, thank you for what you did for teenage me. I hope you can be as kind to yourself as you have been to us. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to just be. 🫂

Thanks.

This Ken's job is allowing people to read someone grappling with every emotion and sensation, and it's nice to know he did an okay job with those books.

I hope you like the new one, even though instead of being a novel it is a history of tuberculosis.

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Prepare yourself.

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Voting for Democrats is the "leaving the house, getting some exercise, and drinking more water is good for your mental health" of societal change. Everyone keeps telling you to do it, worst of all your mom keeps telling you to do it, and it's not a magical cure-all, but it actually works and rotting in your room shitposting does not help in either scenario.

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