1. It doesn't exist anymore
2. It does exist, but it's just another flu-like virus
3. It's much worse than the flu, but it only affected other people so far, so it won't affect me

ample evidence exists to prove all 3 wrong

I want to say that this warning is just a liability thing and it's really probably fine, I probably am getting the right amount of oxygen even if it is a little uncomfortable — but my workplace just gave me some new tasks that involve cutting and lifting decently heavy objects, so I want to make sure that it isn't like genuinely dangerous to wear a mask while I'm doing these things.

All the resources I've found on COVID consciousness through this comm are in English and aimed at people living in Seppoland (USA). Especially now that the Norwegian Institute of Public Health reported about a month ago that "fatality has returned to pre-pandemic levels for all age groups", I'm worried that people in Norway will just brush off COVID consciousness as a "Yankee thing" with no place in this country. What to do?

Alle resursene jeg har funnet gjennom denne gruppen er på engelsk og egentlig for folk som bor i Seppeland (USA). Spesielt nå at FHI sa for én måned siden at "dødeligheten er tilbake til nivået før pandemien for alle aldersgrupper", frykter jeg at folk i Norge vil rett og slett si at koronabevissthet er bare en "USA-greie" som har ingen plass her til lands. Hva skal jeg gjøre?

since getting covid and w a history of head injuries

that's it that's the post my head just fuckin hurts always now and I want to gripe about it online

Anyone who says covid doesn't effect the immune system is a liar. All viruses take a toll on the immune system to some degree, and we can measure it after covid and it can be quite severe. Similar things happen after a flu. For a while after you will be more prone to opportunistic infections, like from bacteria and fungus and other viruses. Except most people only get the flu every several years, while covid can infect you several times a year due to being a coronavirus, being airborne and incredibly contagious, and mutating so quickly due to infecting so many hosts. Of course it's making us sicker.

What they mean is "it's not HIV", but it's also been shown, like other viruses, to persist in parts of people's bodies, and while it's not the same, long covid is effecting a lot of people in a similar way across the world. The pro-infection people are betting that covid was only dangerous because it was new to humanity, when signs are there that's it's still plenty dangerous even after previous exposure and vaccines.

“Dawn Bowdish, Canada Research Chair in Aging & Immunity at McMaster University, says they see immune changes following COVID infections in her lab. But she cautions against singling COVID out as uniquely disruptive.

“In our own work do we see that ‘COVID changes your immune system?’ Yes. But so does absolutely every other thing you’ve ever been exposed to,” she said. “Infections are never good for you.”

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“Virtually every viral respiratory infection has this period where the immune responses needed to deal with the virus leave you compromised to bacterial infections,” she added.

Samira Jeimy, program director of Clinical Immunology and Allergy at Western University, says COVID’s disruptive effects on the immune system are probably driving recent illness surges.

“Other viruses cause immune dysregulation,” Jeimy said. “I don’t know why we’re in such denial that COVID can do it as well.”

“There’s still a pervasive belief that all of this is because of an ‘immunity [debt],’ which is hard to believe,” she said..

Raywat Deonandan, a University of Ottawa epidemiologist, said he is also “quite open” to the immunity theft hypothesis.

“We’re seeing rises in respiratory infections of all kinds,” he said. “And there’s probably something behind that.”

Despite the terror, the early weeks of the pandemic contained perhaps more hope than I've felt in the subsequent five years. It became more apparent than ever where the weak links in capital's chain were located. Millions of people realized that their jobs were bullshit. The massive decrease in commuter vehicles proved that there were actually ways we could alter society to combat climate change. Powerful people started talking about universal basic income and universal healthcare.

Then it seems like the 1% got together on Zoom or whatever and put an end to all of that. There was a drumbeat of "it's patriotic to let grandma die." (Was Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick the first to say it out loud?) Teachers' unions became villains for wanting to prevent children and workers from spreading the plague. The people whose jobs couldn't go remote were given the title "essential workers" but never got sick days. In the months and years that followed, the Democrats nominated their most anti-healthcare candidate, who went on to crush a strike that threatened to give supply chain workers sick days. The CDC took its isolation recommendations from Delta Airlines, and masks became rarer and rarer. And worse, and worse, and worse, and millions of people are dead or disabled and we're further into fascism and farther from universal healthcare than we were five years ago.

I'm looking for books or longform essays about this switch, because the change happened very quickly - before the George Floyd uprising, even. Today too much of this is lost in the memory hole, but I wonder if studying the days in which the discourse changed can give us clues about where we should direct our organizing efforts.