Breaker of binaries. Sweary but friendly. See also @TheMatrixDotGIF and @boredzo-kitchen-diary.
The USPS is putting the program back into the Disney Vault tomorrow, so if you need covid tests and you're not already caught up on the freebies, now's the time to order.
They released a batch back in September and a second drop back in November. If you don't remember whether you ordered both, place an order anyway—it'll immediately reject it if you're caught up, and if it doesn't do that, then you had at least one waiting for you and you just claimed it.
The thing about viruses is they are not visible to the naked eye. The thing about public health is that a lot of it just telling people how germ theory works and helping them see what’s invisible by providing information. In the US our government has just given up on public health as a general concept. It wouldn’t even be that hard to get a lot of people taking precautions again if information was actually available to people who aren’t actively seeking it out.
Last weekend someone I went out an outdoors date with asked me why I still mask and when I told them that long COVID affects 30% of people and cases are higher than they ever were in 2020, they were super shocked and immediately got out their phone and bulk bought KN95s off Amazon to wear to work.
Last night I was in a discord VC and someone mentioned being anxious because they have to go to a Christmas gathering with conservative family and mentioned how with 20 people present, at current levels there’s a 50% chance someone is infectious with COVID, and just read out the current case levels and compared them to 2020. Two people on the call immediately started scheduling appointments to get the new vaccine because they hadn’t done it yet. They were asking if getting it Friday was too late or if they should find an earlier appointment.
People don’t want to get COVID, they’re just under the false impression that it’s “over” and “not a big deal anymore” because our government has systemically dismantled our public health infrastructure in the name of keeping the economy going and being able to campaign on “ending the pandemic” despite things being about as bad as they’ve ever been, possibly even worse as the original COVID-19 has gone extinct and so the original vaccines aren’t particularly effective against the current variants circulating.
I feel like a paranoid conspiracy theorist whenever I share the most basic information about current COVID levels with people and only when they explicitly ask me why I still take precautions. But it’s literally not that they don’t care. It’s that they don’t even know. All of the testing infrastructure and easy public information trackers like the NYTimes charts and Johns Hopkins have been dismantled. They just don’t have access to wastewater data because it’s not where they know to see it.
Information is a powerful thing.
i've been sharing information around covid with friends, family, and other local folks, primarily through data, but sometimes through other ways that might get their attention (for example, a news story about a large hospital network in my area requiring masks again due to rising covid/flu/rsv cases, or using anecdotal stories like "don't you just feel like more people around you are getting sick?")
the data source i primarily pull from for United States cases is the pandemic mitigation collaborative's covid-19 data tracker, which updates mondays: https://www.pmc19.com/data/index.php
this uses wastewater data from biobot to estimate the number of new daily infections (a relation that is highly correlated) and extrapolates trends to forecast cases out by 4 weeks. this also includes some helpful "eye-opening" numbers, like that as of december 18th, there is more covid transmission than over 90% of the pandemic!
access to this information has gotten worse over the past couple of years, which makes it hard for people to even be reactive, let alone proactive. but, we can use the information that we have to encourage people to wear a mask again or get their booster if they haven't. most people are not hostile to covid precautions, it's just not clear how bad it is.
some common responses that have come up:
use https://www.vaccines.gov/ and check the "Bridge Access Program Participant" box on the results screen. that program provides the booster shot to people without insurance!
n95 or better. cloth/surgical masks were sufficient when supplies of n95s were in short supply and mask mandates were in place. now with one-way masking being the de facto, the additional protection from a higher quality, seal-checked mask is very important to keeping you healthy! for specific recommendations, 3M Auras are good, or Flo Mask for a filter-based/reusable option. you can also look up if there are mask blocs in your area for free masks or tests
(this post was originally a comment, but someone asked that i make it a chost so i expanded on it)
For free covid tests in the US:
if you're in seattle, you want to hit up https://doh.wa.gov/emergencies/covid-19/data-dashboard#WasteWater and set the code of the water treatment plant to BWT (the Brightwater treatment plant, up in Bothell)
the equivalent link for the South Bay is https://covid19.sccgov.org/dashboard-wastewater
it's already High in San Jose and accelerating ramping up in Palo Alto and Sunnyvale so be careful out there, bay area folks
The equivalent link for much of California (find your sewershed on the map) is https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/COVID-19/CalSuWers-Dashboard.aspx .
Also, FYI, insured people in California can still get PCR testing free from in-network providers, as well as the 8 home tests per month (for what those are worth). https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/COVID-19/Simple-COVID-19-Coverage-Change.pdf
