Having Comorbidities That Contradict/contraindicate Each Other Is So Stupid Man.

theyre so cute :(

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

Oh no. No, can people not say the kitchen scene was 'abusive' please? It's so distasteful and honestly disrespectful to survivors of actual DV to twist a moment of human frailty into fuel for your dislike of a character/ship.

That scene was raw and desperate and driven by grief. Eddie let his frustrations boil over, and Buck immediately made it about himself and twisted it into a personal attack ("You think I didn't do everything I could to save him?").

Neither of them was dealing with their grief in a healthy way and they ended up taking it out on each other. Unfortunately that's what often happens when your emotions are in a bad place. It's why people keep a professional smile on their face all day at work and then rant at their partner the minute they get home. It's why children are perfect angels at school and then throw tantrums when they're back with their parents. Because they know that person is a safe space and will always forgive them. And guess what? They did forgive each other. Easily and without judgement or grudges. Because they are a family.

People are messy, life is hard and love is imperfect.

This is like so cute 😍

go ahead and let a criminal babysit your toddler. why the hell not

post buddie canon episode called “partners” where buck and eddie aren’t allowed to be partners at work anymore so the whole episode we see bobby teaming up different duos on different calls. we get fun character moments between characters we don’t see interacting as much and of course it ends with some big climax where buck and eddie prove they work best as a team and should get to stay partners <3.

tim minear you can steal this one

Learned today that the Plagiarism Machine (AKA Ch*tGPT) often incorporates em dashes into the drivel "writing" it produces, to the point people now flag em dash usage as an indicator a given bit of writing was produced by the Plagiarism Machine.

(It uses em dashes, one should note, because it was trained on material written by people who use them, AKA creative writers. See again: Plagiarism Machine.)

This is deeply distressing to me as a writer who has never-not-once used the Plagiarism Machine, because I LOVE EM DASHES SO FUCKING MUCH. I use them constantly. But since I would be MORTIFIED if someone thought I was using plagiarism software to produce my work, I caught myself momentarily contemplating striking them from my writing toolbox (or at least using them less frequently).

But here's the thing: I refuse to let a soulless, capitalist hellscape device chase me away from something I enjoy, let alone dictate the writing style I've developed over the course of two decades.

To make myself feel better about continuing on as normal—no matter what the fuck the Plagiarism Machine may say about it—I decided to do some research. The Plagiarism Machine was released in 2022. My most notable online work is Lucky Child, which began serialization in 2017. Even earlier samples of my work feature frequent em dash usage. Thus, my em dash usage predates the Plagiarism Machine by a not inconsiderable margin. For proof (and to comfort myself that no one could ever try and claim my em dash usage is indicative of the Plagiarism Machine's influence) I decided to look at the first chapter of Lucky Child, and—

I literally use one in the opening line.

I use a total of 9 in the first chapter alone.

The Plagiarism Machine owes every creative writer on the internet both a thank-you for the lesson in em dash usage AND an apology for absorbing that lesson without our consent.

Dr. Eggman is literally richer than elon musk

lando blushing and giggling the moment oscar even slightly compliments him.

pony being like "darry treats me like a little kid even though i am grown🙄" brother soda has to sleep in your bed because you have nightmares otherwise. they tickle you out of bed every morning. darry carried you to bed like a baby. you draw pictures of horses instead of doing your homework.

People straight up do not realize that part of the reason manufacturing is not returning to the United States in massive waves is because we have things like “OSHA” and “environmental laws” and “minimum wages.”

It’s not even just about fair wages. It’s literally about the fact that you can’t dump industrial waste in a river here anymore.

Our cheap goods are so cheap because South American and Asians environments are being destroyed so you can buy a $40 pair of shoes every 3 months.

Cutting granite countertops has lead to a rapid increase in silicosis in the lungs out in California. All the working men and women in my family have died from pulmonary fibrosis. They were carpet layers, Post office workers, floor tilers. Staying safe in manufacturing jobs is annoying but also very, very expensive. Real manufacturing factories belch smoke and dust and grime that causes asthma and birth defects in surrounding communities. Everyone wants their manufacturing jobs back until they realize their kids are living directly under the Asthma Plant.

There will come a time when the workers in these countries rise up and demand better and things will start to even out, but if you want to honestly “do your part,” you gotta stop buying cheap shit for no reason.

Not every event needs to be celebrate with a baseball cap or a coozie or a t shirt or a keychain. Not every wall in the house has to have a picture or a cute phrase on it. The knickknacks are killing people.