So let's not have a struggle session about whether we should be protecting ourselves from it
The capitalists decided that they were fine burning 20 or more years off workers' lives to keep things running "normally" for them. At least where I live, it's usually working class people of color who are forced to work in person jobs -- grocery store, barista -- who mask. They know. The leftist position should be spreading awareness of this, universal masking in public spaces everywhere, and organizing collective action against employers who force people to work in person.
Everyone is high risk. This disease has a weirdly high incidence of causing chronic health problems. People are higher risk after they get it, given that repeat infections have been shown to lead to worse outcomes.
It's not death by covid that frightens me, although death by covid is torturous. It's surviving a mild to moderate case of covid, and then struggling for the rest of my life with the chronic pain and debilitation I've seen so many friends come down with.
I've been reading all the comments on the posts on the past few days. IMO this is the correct perspective, well said.
I want to scream this at every middle class person I know. Study after study shows that long COVID disproportionately affects poorer and non-white people. People are like "oh COVID is just a cold", and I want to shake them screaming "not everyone has family income to fall back upon". Disability pay and health care access for the poor is so much harder, why would anyone want to subject someone else to the hell of hospital queues and terrible government support?
People who claim COVID is just a cold are fucking hilarious, because even superficially, COVID is way worse than any cold. When I caught a "mild" case of COVID, it literally hurt to breathe. I felt like I was going to die. I could only lie in bed for an entire week, and I couldn't physically exert myself for the next month.
No cold has ever made it literally hurt to breathe. And even ignoring that, colds fucking suck! Runny nose, constant sneezing, lose all your energy for 3 days - that fucking sucks!
I feel like some people (most people?) still have the idea that catching diseases is good for the immune system when that's just catastrophically false. Getting sick is not good for the body. The human condition is not improved by the presence of pathogens in the environment. I am for the eventual eradication of all diseases, including the common cold, because there is nothing to be gained from getting sick.
I think its because people make the mistake of thinking exposure to 'good' bacteria and other non-infectious pathogens are the same as getting sick when its totally different things at play, also building up tolerance to disease isn't the same as true health/resistance its like a developing callous on a well-worn hand or foot when one should be wearing gloves/shoes or ideally not be exposed to harm.
Even when covid is mild as a cold, it is terrifying. Colds don't shred the vascular system or require long ramps up back to intense physical activity to avoid getting ME/CFS. Mild cases of COVID can do both.
That is also false, though. And we don't really rely on people's immune systems to solve bacterial diseases -- strep is treated with antibiotics, cholera is filtered out of the water, sinus infections are treated with antibiotics before they can spread to the brain.
If you follow this logic, why wouldn't you give up on organizing for socialism in america because most workers oppose it?
Nothing said on this site will even move the needle on Covid, because we have zero power and zero influence. Every political faction and institution has given up on Covid and no one here can do anything about it. There's zero point in a struggle session because the struggle ended and we lost.
Okay? So then why not let people just vent on this site about their partner exposing them to covid in this hopeless situation instead of starting a big struggle session about it if it doesn't matter?
no point at alienating the average worker by scolding them over what is considered a dead issue.
But it's not a dead issue, and there is a correct and an incorrect position on it. How is it scolding to try and correct the incorrect position most people have regarding covid? It's only scolding if you believe in the first place that Covid is some tangential issue and we've now moved into the "personal risk assessment" phase where if you want to still be concerned about covid you can be, but it's no longer necessary. I'm wondering if you would consider it scolding to correct other incorrect positions the average worker might hold that run counter to the general socialist programme.
Most doctors and hospitals also didn't recommend taking ivermectin and plenty of people were convinced of that. I mean how do you convince anyone of anything? Are you asking me how to talk to people and form relationships?
If you don't want to make it a moral issue stress that it is a material issue.
I mean I do agree that it would have been nice if unions took up the mantle of pushing for anti-Covid policies (I think initially there was and there was a good bit of resistance to things like back-to-office policies, etc., but ultimately they conceded on those due to the pressure). But I don't think we should just be waiting for the anti-Covid push to be coming down from on high, we can talk to people in our day-to-day lives about this stuff, especially our partners (like in the other thread) and maybe we won't get them to completely change their behavior, but they might start taking some precautions, and for others we'll plant the seed of maybe covid is still a big deal. There are a lot of people out there who are not so pro-Covid as much as they are just ignorant due to confusion and the massive propaganda push to create an end to the pandemic.
yeah I realize we're all in different situations, and our approaches to different people in our lives will of course always be different, some people might be more receptive while others are more against it. But I don't think the solution is to just throw up our hands. We advocate where we can, and although it might be inadequate, it's more adequate than doing nothing.
There's zero point in a struggle session because the struggle ended and we lost
Nah, the COVID struggle is actually the biggest source of potential revolutionary movement we'll get this decade
- COVID makes at least 5% (maybe more) of the population's lives unlivable
- Therefore, this section of the population has a material interest in avoiding COVID at all costs
- The only way to avoid COVID is to form parallel communities
It's not popular because normies haven't figured it out. I figured it out in 2020 which means the mainstream might by 2027 or so, but I've been right about every single thing about this pandemic years before the scientists and the news media and idc if I'm bragging
You can't cure long-COVID if you're breathing in COVID! Stop breathing in COVID (at least in my case) and it goes away! I'm probably not a biological freak, so my experience is probably generalizable to huge swathes of the long-COVID population
Very simple!I know of people who clearly have long covid but they aren't at the point where life is unliveable
and yet there are tens of thousands of people who have long covid and can't live life normally
I am curious about what you're describing
There's nothing left to describe. We can't live with this virus, so we move away from it.
