Links: The Covid pandemic is not over

[sonia]

A collection of Covid links for those of us who know the pandemic isn't over amidst the ever-increasing pressure to pretend it is. How to be more inclusive. Some possible good news about a more long-lasting vaccine.

Biobot Analytics, Alameda County. You can check if your county is on the list, or look at the nationwide Covid levels in wastewater.

Broken Sociality: Isolation in the Pseudo-Return to “Pre-Pandemic Normal.”" by Nate Holdren.

Pandemic life remains terribly lonely. It’s recently become differently so. Elements of pre-pandemic normal social life have returned, but not for us those of us who aren’t going along with the so-called “back to normal.” I want a name for this painful situation. Lacking a better one, I’ve started calling it broken sociality.

Practicing Inclusion in the Time of COVID. A set of colorful slides with clear how-tos on how to be more inclusive.

Practicing inclusion during COVID-19 means acknowledging the health and safety needs of all people, then taking steps to communicate and provide safe(r) and more accessible options for gathering. This includes not only working to understand the reasons spaces may be inaccessible to individuals with varying needs, but also committing to following community-centered practices to improve safety for all. Creating inclusive gatherings rooted in disability solidarity makes our movements and communities more powerful.

The above two links via cosmolinguist on heard_community.

Listening to Long Covid’s Lessons and Teachers—Today and Tomorrow by s.e. smith. "We will adapt. We will find new nesting places. But there will be no return to “before.” Not for the flock."

FWD/Forward: Feminists with Disabilities for a way forward. Blog archive from 2009-2011. I went looking for it for a friend, so I'm posting it here so I can find it again.

Why long COVID could be a ticking time bomb for public health by Philip Finkelstein.

Dr. Smeyne elaborated on the seriousness of these findings, telling Salon, "Our studies in mice predict a 30-50% increase in Parkinson's risk for those moderately to severely infected with the Alpha variant. While on an individual basis this only changes a person's risk from 2% to 3% for developing Parkinson's, over the whole of the population we would expect to see millions more develop Parkinon's disease than would have if not for their COVID infection."

Novel Rutgers vaccine may provide more durable protection against SARS-CoV-2 by Emily Henderson, B.Sc. "Animal studies indicate that a new COVID-19 vaccine developed at Rutgers may provide more durable protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its emerging variants than existing vaccines."

https://www.covidresilience.org/community-voices via adrian_turtle in comments.

Comments

[silveradept]

Of course, we are hoping that the Rutgers candidate turns out to be as advertised, or that it can be used as a base to develop a vaccine that will stop the virus from infecting and provide long-lasting protection against current and novel variants. We are also hoping, however, that the people who have been affected and gotten the additional bad roll of long COVID get taken care of properly, given how much of that long COVID and infection-reinfection was the fault of plenty of entities determining it was more profitable to risk a mass disabling event than to implement proper or any precautions.

And that we do a lot better about being inclusive in general, rather than going back to "Nope! We can meet in person, therefore we don't have to care about anyone else!"

[sonia]

It would be such a relief to have a long-lasting vaccine and not have to do this risk calculus all the time.

I think seeds of possibility have been planted around inclusivity, but given the history with the ADA in the US, I'm not holding my breath for most people being more inclusive than they have to be. There are pockets though. There aren't as many folk dance events on zoom as there were during lockdown, but some are continuing even though a lot of groups have returned to in person dancing. I'm running one and helping to run another.