Where There's Money, There's Masks

"They only insist on unmasking you and your kids because you are not valued by the powers that be. Be smarter and mask up" (from Dr. Spela Salamon)

On film and series sets, the actors are not expendable. They must stay healthy for sake of everyone's paycheque. So everyone on sets still wears a mask around them.

And athletes are not expendable. They must be protected. So the Tour de France now has mandatory masking for everyone, including the audience. And some Olympic teams are masked. It's years and years of training to get there. It's foolish to give it up because a mask is a bit inconvenient or uncomfortable. This WILL be an advantage for the Belgium team. I wonder if others will join them, or if others will claim it's an unfair advantage. That wouldn't surprise me in the least these days!!

The U.S. President didn't mask because it might scare people from going shopping and to restaurants, which is bad for the economy, and now he's on infection number 3 or 4. But he has access to the best care possible. Try getting Paxlovid here next time you get sick - and remember you have to start taking it within five days of the start of your infection, so the race is on. 

From economist Joseph Stiglitz: 

There are no mitigations on school buses despite studies that found kids who ride the bus are four times more likely to get sick. And most public schools are doing nothing to stop the spread of infection despite being a major hub of transmission. 

Because YOU and your children are expendable. You're just a worker. Even if you're in upper managment at a fancy company, you can easily be replaced, so you don't matter to the powers that be. They're not going to tell you about the benefits of masking or give you easy access to meds that might help. And now they're taking away wastewater surveillance so you can't even tell when cases are high anymore (pssst, they're super high right this minute). Over two years ago I said it feels like a cull, and I haven't found any evidence to diminish that feeling.

So I'll keep screaming it into the void hoping it catches some traction at some point that Covid is harmful long term, staying in your body for as long as they've studied it (at least four years), and that masks work to reduce the risk of infection and transmission. Covid is like if HIV and ME/CFS and the common cold all had a baby. It fucks with your immune system, keeps you so fatigued you can't get to the bathroom on your own, and it spreads easily through the air. It can cross a room in minutes, and hangs in the air for hours after everyone's left, like cigarette smoke. And it's still deadly, killing more than car accidents here. If you still wear a seatbelt, consider also wearing a well-fitting mask whenever you're around people outside your household. Wearing it just sometimes is like wearing a seatbelt just sometimes. It only works if it's on, and you have no idea when you might get sideswiped! Check out a recent study: 

"Long Covid is a brutal illness without a known mechanism or cure. . . . The lingering toll the SARS-CoV-2 virus exacts on the immune system is widespread and hiding in plain sight. . . . When 24 patients who had recovered from Covid-19 had their whole bodies scanned by a PET (positron emission tomography) imaging test, their insides lit up like Christmas trees. A radioactive drug called a tracer revealed abnormal T cell activity in the brain stem, spinal cord, bone marrow, nose, throat, some lymph nodes, heart and lung tissues, and the wall of the gut. . . . Even those who recovered fully from Covid-19 still showed persistent changes to their T cell activity in numerous organs compared to pre-pandemic controls . . . associated with systemic changes in immune activation. . . . Even clinically mild infection could have long-term consequences."

Do you want that shit in your body?? Wear a mask to keep yourself safe because you matter, dammit!