People Straight Up Do Not Realize That Part Of The Reason Manufacturing Is Not Returning To The United

he's a landlord. he's a childhood cancer survivor. he's an accused terrorist. he's my special princess.

Hey, here’s a concept. What if we stopped saying “but autistic people CAN do all those things” (erasing high support needs) and instead started saying “not being able to do those things doesn’t impact someone’s value as a person nor does it make it okay to commit eugenics”.

Nonbinary Moodboard

Requested by: @ryndusk

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There should be an equivalent to asking "how's the wife and kids?" that's like "so how's that fictional man of yours doing?"

know someone who enjoys horror stories? share this one! it's true!

hahahahahahahahahaha aarrggghhhhhhhhhh 3,000,000 deaths due to COVID-19 last year. Globally. Three million. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. The reason people are still worried about COVID is because it has a way of quietly fucking up your body. And the risk is cumulative.

I'm going to say that again: the risk is cumulative.

It's not just that a lot of people get bad long-term effects from it. One in seven or so? Enough that it's kind of the Russian Roulette of diseases. It's also that the more times you get it, the higher that risk becomes. Like if each time you survived Russian Roulette, the empty chamber was removed from the gun entirely. The worst part is that, psychologically, we have the absolute opposite reaction. If we survive something with no ill effects, we assume it's pretty safe. It is really, really hard to override that sense of, "Ok, well, I got it and now I probably have a lot of immunity and also it wasn't that bad." It is not a respiratory disease. Airborne, yes. Respiratory disease, no: not a cold, not a flu, not RSV.

Like measles (or maybe chickenpox?), it starts with respiratory symptoms. And then it moves to other parts of your body. It seems to target the lungs, the digestive system, the heart, and the brain the most.

It also hits the immune system really hard - a lot of people are suddenly more susceptible to completely unrelated viruses. People get brain fog, migraines, forget things they used to know.

(I really, really hate that it can cross the blood-brain barrier. NOTHING SHOULD EVER CROSS THE BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER IT IS THERE FOR A REASON.) Anecdotal examples of this shit are horrifying. I've seen people talk about coworkers who've had COVID five or more times, and now their work... just often doesn't make sense? They send emails that say things like, "Sorry, I didn't mean Los Angeles, I meant Los Angeles."

Or they insist they've never heard of some project that they were actually in charge of a year or two before.

Or their work is just kind of falling apart, and they don't seem to be aware of it.

People talk about how they don't want to get the person in trouble, so their team just works around it. Or they describe neighbors and relatives who had COVID repeatedly, were nearly hospitalized, talked about how incredibly sick they felt at the time... and now swear they've only had it once and it wasn't bad, they barely even noticed it.

(As someone who lived with severe dissociation for most of my life, this is a genuinely terrifying idea to me. I've already spent my whole life being like, "but what if I told them that already? but what if I did do that? what if that did happen to me and I just don't remember?") One of its known effects in the brain is to increase impulsivity and risk-taking, which is real fucking convenient honestly. What a fantastic fucking mutation. So happy for it on that one. Yes, please make it seem less important to wear a mask and get vaccinated. I'm not screaming internally at all now.

I saw a tweet from someone last year whose family hadn't had COVID yet, who were still masking in public, including school.

She said that her son was no kind of an athlete. Solidly bottom middle of the pack in gym.

And suddenly, this year, he was absolutely blowing past all the other kids who had to run the mile. He wasn't running any faster. His times weren't fantastic or anything. It's just that the rest of the kids were worse than him now. For some reason. I think about that a lot. (Like my incredibly active six-year-old getting a cold, and suddenly developing post-viral asthma that looked like pneumonia.

He went back to school the day before yesterday, after being home for a month and using preventative inhalers for almost week.

He told me that it was GREAT - except that he couldn't run as much at recess, because he immediately got really tired. Like how I went outside with him to do some yard work and felt like my body couldn't figure out how to increase breathing and heart rate.

I wasn't physically out of breath, but I felt like I was out of breath. That COVID feeling people describe, of "I'm not getting enough air." Except that I didn't have that problem when I had COVID.) Some people don't observe any long (or medium) term side effects after they have it.

But researchers have found viral reservoirs of COVID-19 in everyone they've studied who had it.

It just seems to hang out, dormant, for... well, longer than we've had an opportunity to observe it, so far.

(I definitely watched that literal horror movie. I think that's an entire genre. The alien dormant under ice in the Arctic.)

phys.org

Ancient pathogens released from melting ice could wreak havoc on the world, new analysis reveals

Science fiction is rife with fanciful tales of deadly organisms emerging from the ice and wreaking havoc on unsuspecting human victims.

(oh hey I don't like that either!!!!!!!!!) All of which is to explain why we should still care about avoiding it, and how it manages to still cause excess deaths. Measuring excess deaths has been a standard tool in public health for a long time.

We know how many people usually die from all different causes, every year. So we can tell if, for example, deaths from heart disease have gone way up in the past three years, and look for reasons. Those are excess deaths: deaths that, four years ago, would not have happened. During the pandemic, excess death rates have been a really important tool. For all sorts of reasons. Like, sometimes people die from COVID without ever getting tested, and the official cause is listed as something else because nobody knows they had COVID. But also, people are dying from cardiovascular illness much younger now.

People are having strokes and heart attacks younger, and more often, than they did before the pandemic started. COVID causes a lot of problems. And some of those problems kill people. And some of them make it easier for other things to kill us. Lung damage from COVID leading to lungs collapsing, or to pneumonia, or to a pulmonary embolism, for example. The Economist built a machine-learning model with a 95% confidence interval that gauges excess death statistics around the world, to tell them what the true toll of the ongoing COVID pandemic has been so far.

Total excess deaths globally in 2023: Three million.

3,000,000.

Official COVID-19 deaths globally so far: Seven million. 7,000,000. Total excess deaths during COVID so far: Thirty-five point two million. 35,200,000.

Five times as many.

That's bad. I don't like that at all. I'm glad last year was less than a tenth of that. I'm not particularly confident about that continuing, though, because last year we started a period of really high COVID transmission. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. Here's their data, and charts you can play with, and links to detailed information on how they did all of this:

The Economist

The pandemic’s true death toll

Our daily estimate of excess deaths around the world

Here's a non-paywalled link to it:

https://archive.vn/2024.01.26-012536/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates

Oh: here's a link to where you can buy comfy, effective N95 masks in all sizes:

Family Masks

Family Masks | Buy Savewo Masks in USA

Family Masks is your authentic SAVEWO mask online retailer in the US. We are a family owned and operated small business based in Southern Ca

Those ones are about a buck each after shipping - about $30 for a box of 30. They also have sample packs for a dollar, so you can try a couple of different sizes and styles.

You can wear an N95 mask for about 40 total hours before the effectiveness really drops, so that's like a dollar for a week of wear.

They're also family-owned and have cat-shaped masks and I really love them. These ones are cuter and in a much wider range of colors, prints, and styles, but they're also more expensive; they range from $1.80 to $3 for a mask. ($18-$30 for a box of ten.)

masklab US

protective fashion face masks (mask lab USA)

One-of-a-kind protective ASTM F2100 Level 3 fashion masks and EN 149 FFP2 respirators, featuring designers from all over the world. Redefine

Here's an updated version of my pinned post 😊

An introduction by yours truly, Ash

Attempt 3000 of having a Tumblr I like.

I'm Ash, I am a 20 year old with the time zone UTC+1. Triple A battery twice (Aroace agender, AuDHD and anxiety). Some other shits might be going on with me, but I'm not sure nor am I diagnosed with other stuff. Auto-diag is valid by the way, i don't like the medical highstance most people seem to have, there's enough information to auto-diagonise yourself with some stuff, you are the only expert on your own life.

Some people need to chill

I have two side blogs : @lonebabyone (agere), @onesburyinghole (vent)

DMs open and asks too, for anything.

This blog is primarily to have a space to express myself on subjects i like. More details under the cut.

I will tell you one time if i see you don't respect my boundaries, you will be blocked.

I enjoy most humanitarians subjects, like psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, politics (because for anarchy i need to know about it urgh). I'm anticapitalist, i do enjoy some stuff produced by it tho (i mean look in which platform i am), antigovernment (authorities and stuff). I am for communities and for helping thy neighnoor, at least i'm trying. I'm just a human trying to make life in this world and help others when i can. I'm also chronically online and ill so take that as you will.

Anyways, I also love some stuff and here some of them if you want to know:

Witch Hat Atelier

Epic the musical

I don't want to be a magical girl

Formula 1

Gravity falls

Amphibia

The owl House

Hazbin hotel

Helluva boss

Marvel (Spiderman and adjacents)

DC (Batfam and Flash)

Teen Wolf

Call of Duty

Five Nights at Freddy's

Ao3

Arcane

Fandoms in general

Percy Jackson

Hunger Games

Arcane

How to train your dragon

9-1-1

Police shows (because of the investigation bit, not the police, hate that)

Winx

Monster High

Miraculous

Winnie the Pooh

The Music Freaks

Barbie (the movies)

...

This list is inconclusive and doesn't really have an order.

can i add something. in my personal opinion the way people speak about eddie, the way people seem almost gleeful to accuse him of 'abusive behavior' or 'manipulation' or whatever else, is directly connected to the way they talk about ryan. and the way they don't talk about lfj. i've said it before but it's that casualness people exhibit while loudly and proudly accusing ryan of certain political and societal views, acting like their assumptions are an excuse for racism, WHILE twisting themselves into pretzels to excuse the behavior of their white fave who objectively has a whole portfolio of highly questionable behavior, both in his career, personal life and social media habits. it's just. a casual thing to do. it's like there's nothing wrong with it, it's normal. it's accepted. it's normal to find millions of excuses and explanations for the wildest shit when the man you're defending is white. but when he's not, god help him. the same goes for fictional characters. white guy does racial workplace harassment for fun? he's closeted, misunderstood, he's protecting himself even though he was quite literally meant to represent casual workplace bigotry. but when eddie diaz as much as waves a finger at buck? somebody call the cops, he's a danger to society, he needs to be medicated, he needs to be locked up, he's a piece of shit. it's not new, this attitude has existed in our fandom long before little racist tommy ever came back BUT tim bringing him back and trying to completely erase the context that he (and gerrard) were first introduced in has enabled a ton of fucked up behavior, too. and tim and whoever else keeping that pos hired made it worse. anyway.