https://twitter.com/CDCDirector/status/1681042954213904384
As twitter user @wsbgnl notes, the guidance on the CDC's own website literally recommends to mask when traveling.
Why should I wear a mask when traveling if I don’t usually wear one in my community?
- Traveling can bring you in contact with people from many different places where viruses are spreading, including different COVID-19 variants and other viruses.
- Using public transportation and being in transportation hubs such as airports, can involve spending long periods of time in areas that may be crowded or poorly ventilated. This increases your chance of exposure to respiratory diseases.
- Wearing a mask during travel can also help protect others who cannot avoid being in crowded places when they are traveling. Some of these people might be more vulnerable, like babies under 6 months of age, persons over 65 years of age, or those with a weakened immune system.
I like how the implication from that last bullet point is that vulnerable people only exist in a vacuum at crowded places like airports. Wait until the CDC finds out that vulnerable people are everywhere!
And apparently the other two people are also high-ranking employees in the CDC. 
Anyways, none of this surprises me, of course, I'm just venting.
Also, new Death Panel podcast episode on the new CDC director: https://soundcloud.com/deathpanel/who-is-mandy-cohen-072723
Wastewater data: https://biobot.io/data/
Notice that it's been going up for the last month. Gee, I sure can't wait for the winter.
Anyone who was serious about dealing with COVID would get nowhere even remotely near this position.
Anyway I nominate myself to be COVID Stalin. I would be willing to put up to 9/10ths of the US population into the gulag (the other 10% would be guards).
Changing the head of the CDC is a way to make it seem like the Biden administration is making a significant change and thus giving the illusion that something is being done to appease the naysayers who has valid critiques of the way the CDC has handled the pandemic. But of course, it doesn't actually do anything to improve public health, especially when the problems are ideological/systemic. The change is just about optics more than anything, IMO.
Doesn't make sense to me. People taking COVID seriously are a vanishingly small portion of the population, so largely irrelevant when it comes to voting etc, and I'd say by and large if they didn't fall for the gaslighting for the past 2 years, they're not likely to be won over now. And it's not like immuno-compromised people are going to be able to live their lives any more than they already were with the old head.
Tbh it just sounds like the old head wanted to do something else.
Sorry, I don't think I articulated enough what I meant by "naysayers". At the height of the pandemic, it wasn't just COVID cautious people who lost trust in the CDC--it was kind of just the entire country more broadly. And much of that came under Walensky's watch. And you're right that she was apparently stepping down anyways, but Cohen also immediately took the opportunity in her first interview as director to talk about restoring trust in the institution. So I still think, even if it wasn't the plan, that won't stop the Biden admin from using this as an opportunity to make it seem like some substantive changes are happening, when in actuality, the change in leadership basically just amounts to shuffling papers around.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-cdc-director-combat-vaccine-misinformation-broken-trust-rcna95348
Ah, I see what you mean now. In that case, I think this is actually the libs sincerely trying to do the best they can, it's just that the best they can is pathetic. The article points out that they've at least realized they need to ramp up the propaganda to get people to trust the CDC again, but unfortunately everyone involved seems to be missing that the anti-vaxx fascists are much better funded and have a three decade head start. This kind of stuff might work if RFK Jr and DeSantis were shot in the head and thrown in a ditch, along with any of the funders of the anti-vax movement, but frankly even then we're talking about a timescale in the decades.
NGL, I sometimes feel like letting my guard down and just going back to normal, but you people keep me safe and N95'ing.
I think many of us who are still being cautious have thought about letting our guard down at some point. Hell, I kind of did that briefly during the summer of 2021, after I got "fully vaccinated" and bought into the fantasy that the vaccine rollout would end the pandemic. And then I stumbled onto COVID cautious twitter and got exposed more and more to disability justice, and got very cautious again shortly after that, a few months before the first wave of Omicron hit.
In general, though, I do understand why some well-meaning people do give up their precautions and go "back to normal". There is definitely a social pressure to conform and get "back to normal" from family, friends, acquaintances, etc. I'd argue that there is an economic pressure to do so, too. I've heard increasingly more stories of people getting fired for still taking precautions or being threatened with termination for doing so. So it does feel like there is increasingly more coercion to get "back to normal".
I'm not sure if I can keep this level of caution up in perpetuity. I'm still holding out for a nasal or sterilizing vaccine, if such a thing is even possible. But idk how well that would work, since I'm assuming not everyone would take it and some immunocompromised people would probably be unable to take it. I'm waiting for that and/or an actual treatment/cure for long COVID, but again, not sure how practical that is, and even if it comes to fruition, I'm guessing it would cost an arm and a leg and fuck over a bunch of vulnerable people because of the expense.
Then again, there's a part of me that honestly thinks that we're going to get more and more pandemics, since climate change and animal agriculture, among other things, are increasingly upping the risk of that happening. And that I should just get used to living like this because, whether from COVID or forest fires or some other pandemic, I think society will face a reckoning that makes them finally acknowledge that masks are effective. And maybe leftists should adopt them anyways for privacy/surveillance reasons.
And I also just think it's extremely fucked and depraved that most people are now okay or indifferent with living with a disease that disproportionately kills disabled and immunocompromised people. And shit like the CDC director passing it off as good news that most people dying had multiple comorbidities. Just straight up eugenics shit getting normalized in the mainstream. It is extremely depressing to me that most people are seemingly okay with accepting yet another cause of mass death and suffering (one that is actually much worse than usual, COVID is still like the #4 killer in the US), as if nothing can possibly be done at all, and that we have no choice but to accept it.
And I'm sorry to tell anyone who thinks they're immune to bad outcomes from COVID, but no, you're not. Many people who were previously "healthy" are now suffering from long COVID. And basically no one is permanently able-bodied--almost all of us are going to experience some disability in our lives at some point. And it's up to you if you're willing to roll the dice on a novel virus that has already killed and disabled millions, is still killing about 1,000 people per week in the US during a pandemic "lull" (and even that is certainly an undercount because we stopped giving a shit about tracking data), has only short-lasting immunity at best, and lots of evidence that each reinfection increases the likelihood of adverse health effects.
The head of the WHO has literally been on record saying that 1 in 10 infections leads to long COVID, and that hundreds of millions of people in the world, at this rate, will need long-term care in the coming years from that alone. Just extremely grim stuff.
Great post, thank you for writing it!
I appreciate you for calling out the gravity of the situation, I wish more people did that.
I love the world we live in its cool and good and nothing is wrong at all
Her twitter account is just littered with more shit like that
https://twitter.com/wsbgnl/status/1684670166205108224
she saw Fauci's highscore from COVID and AIDS and realized she had to get to work real early to break those numbers
