Seems like a deliberate attempt to manufacture consent for the purported end of the pandemic in front of millions of viewers on national TV. I know I'm just stating the obvious, but wouldn't want to remind people about how thousands of people are still dying from COVID in the US in the most recent weeks or how 800,000 people have officially died from COVID under the Biden administration (which the Biden admin continually tries to attribute to the Trump admin when they're both complicit).

I mean the overwhelming majority of people (including most leftists) already treat it as over, but ya know.

If you live in the US, the rapid tests are absurdly expensive--like sometimes $10 per test. Which also isn't great because rapid tests have a not-insignificant false negative rate, and, well, sometimes you just get a shitty test that straight up doesn't even work (i.e. the control line doesn't even show up).

I recently used this site in the UK to purchase some FlowFlex tests: https://www.visionpharmacy.com/products/flowflex-antigen-rapid-covid-test-1-test-kit

I believe there's a flat rate for worldwide shipping is £19.99, which is currently just under $26 USD. So larger purchases make more sense if you can swing it or split the cost of an order with someone else. So if you purchased like 50 tests, that would be like a little under $2.50 per test. Free shipping on orders over £50. I also used the discount code WELCOME10 to get an extra 10% off.

My recent order had an expiration date on the tests of October 2025, so, pretty good! But your mileage may vary.

As for why I suggest FlowFlex specifically, well, when the other two people in my household got COVID at the beginning of the year, on the very first day of both of them having symptoms, FlowFlex immediately showed a positive test for both of them. I'm pretty sure the quick detection was a big reason why I avoided getting infected myself (obviously the bigger reason was because of quarantining, but I digress).

My understanding is that FlowFlex is also one of the better rapid tests out there. An excerpt from their site:

The performance of the Flowflex COVID-19 Antigen Home Test was established in an all-comers clinical study conducted between March 2021 and May 2021 with 172 nasal swabs self-collected or pair-collected by another study participant from 108 individual symptomatic patients (within 7 days of onset) suspected of COVID-19 and 64 asymptomatic patients. All subjects were screened for the presence or absence of COVID-19 symptoms within two weeks of study enrollment. The Flowflex COVID-19 Antigen Home Test was compared to an FDA authorized molecular SARS-CoV-2 test. The Flowflex COVID-19 Antigen Home Test correctly identified 93% of positive specimens and 100% of negative specimens.

Obviously a few years old, so idk how well this holds up against the current dominant variants out there. I am unfortunately having trouble finding the original study, and I know anecdotes only count for so much, but yeah, these are the best rapid tests I've used so far.

Very cool that this is happening in big cities, too. Remember to for the Democrats to keep the fascist Republicans out of office! Pay no attention to the fascism already happening under the Democrats!

Also, I'm sure the recent overturning of the Chevron deference couldn't possibly stifle efforts to fight any potential pandemics (say, H5N1) even further. :yea:

Jeez, that's grotesque. Seems like the decision to hold an event extremely repugnant like that at a synagogue was also deliberate so then the Zionists could cry antisemitism at the inevitable protests, too.

Even though Ashish Jha doesn't officially work for Biden anymore, you can tell his morally bankrupt ass is still angling for a position in a future admin cuz he's still trying to be the admin's mouthpiece for COVID minimization. Fucking hate that piece of shit and wish for horrible things to happen to him.

Please, just give me this one laugh.

On social media, I cannot believe the number of times I've seen self-proclaimed leftists bully/pathologize disabled people who are still taking caution and still talking about the harm of letting it rip. Like they think that disability is something that only happens to other people and chronic illness is made up. And they genuinely cannot understand why trying to make spaces safer for immunocompromised/disabled people makes it safer for all of us.

Real "fuck around and find out" hours.

If you check out the linktree for this Twitter account, they have a Google doc which contains various sites and groups for people who are still COVID-cautious and are a nice respite from all the ableist/COVID-minimizing bullshit.

https://twitter.com/covidisntover

I started being active in some of those communities at the end of last year and have made several online friends and now also know some people in my area.

I find it hard to believe that they couldn't be aware at this point. It's not like they need to be convinced that COVID is bad and that will get them to reverse course. They don't care, they will always protect their own ass and don't give a shit if poor people become disabled or die. They have access to all the testing, vaccines, upgraded ventilation, and therapeutics, while many working class people do not. There are a lot of examples scattered out there of people in the ruling class still taking precautions while having the nerve to tell us that COVID is over.

Yeah, I agree. I'm glad I made this thread because I feel like I have these many different/conflicting feelings on a regular basis, i.e. thinking the problem is primarily systemic while also often getting upset at seeing individuals not masking. So it's nice to talk to others about it and to try to make sense of all these different feelings.

I suppose that COVID activism doesn't even necessarily need to focus on getting individual people to change. Like it could be trying to pressure medical facilities to bring back mask mandates and keep them permanently and being successful with that effort, for example. Because masking is literally the most obvious thing to do if you are trying to do infection control, and doctors/nurses and patients alike suffer if people in medical facilities are just getting infected repeatedly. So targeting things like that, like incremental things which, in and of themselves, won't exactly stop COVID transmission entirely, but will prevent some chains of transmission, and every chain of transmission prevented is valuable, and we shouldn't lose sight of that. And if we keep getting these incremental victories, all those victories collectively could make a big difference. And, in this example, if we normalized mask-wearing and mandates in medical facilities, maybe it could have a cultural effect too, in which it could make more people see the utility and virtuousness of masking in medical facilities and potentially make them amenable to masking in other contexts. And then we just keep going from there. Like I suppose some people are trying to already do that with the whole "Keep Masks in Healthcare" thing. And obviously that is just one in many potential examples in which activism could take shape.

Honestly, this resonated with me a lot (and several other comments in this thread), thank you so much.

I've been very depressed the last two years (I'm depressed for other reasons and trying to get help for that, but COVID stuff is a big part of the depression, but I digress), as I've watched all the communal protections get hollowed out over time, and simultaneously, many people around me went back to normal, including friends and family. It is very disappointing and also very atomizing, but sometimes it's also not hard to feel like it's a betrayal. And maybe framing it as a betrayal is wrong to begin with, because I think I'm giving credence to this notion I so often see in COVID-cautious communities that every single person who is not masking or decides to drop masking is a huge piece of shit who is completely irredeemable and who will not, under any circumstance, ever change their behavior for the better. And I don't know, accepting that framing, i.e. people can't change and that our family and friends are deliberately trying to hurt us by no longer masking, is very depressing to me. Because if that is some incontrovertible fact with all things in the world, then what the fuck is the point of advocating for anything?

But the truth is, we live in a world--and not just my own country --that is profoundly ableist. Capitalism is ableist, our institutions are ableist, our politicians are ableist, and white-majority countries and their individualistic cultures are especially ableist. Like even people with visible disabilities are treated like shit and not respected. And many ignorant people think that disabilities are only visible. I don't think a lot of people even realize that chronic illness is a thing, and that it's not a pathological thing that people make up to leech off the government and not work. Most people aren't even aware that able-bodiedness is only temporary and that can be stripped from a person at any time, without warning. And our world consistently barrages us with all this harmful shit that perpetuates ableism from the day we are born. The more I look at it, trying to get the world to change on COVID and ableism was always going to be a massive uphill battle. But just because things look very dismal right now doesn't mean that it always has to be like this. But if we want the world to become more equitable (and take COVID more seriously and not be ableist more broadly), I don't see what choice we have but to fight for it.

Edit: I believe you're also right about reasons for not masking can be very complex and vary person to person. Some people might be shitheads and nothing will convince them ever, fuck those people, they don't matter. But I think many people don't know any better, or they trust our institutions that tell them that COVID is over and no big deal (propaganda works and anyone can be susceptible to it, even us). Or they're coerced at work by their shithead bosses to not mask. Or they don't want to mask because no one else is around them and they're worried about drawing attention to themselves, maybe worried about getting harassed or assaulted by ardent anti-maskers. Like I think we'd be remiss to deny that there is a social/psychological element in all of this, too. I personally still feel weird sometimes being the only one in a setting who is masking, even though I know I'm in the right.

If the pathologizing and gaslighting over people still concerned about COVID was any indication, along with the individualization and "personal responsibility" of a crisis that is inherently a collective affair, then it's only natural to treat climate change in the exact same way.

I have bad news for the people who think that toxic positivity and ignoring a major crisis hard enough will make it go away...

Yeah, look no further than how all these leftist orgs have completely ignored and are doing nothing to make their spaces more inclusive for disabled/immunocompromised folks.

new norm of summer surges

"Sorry sport, COVID is here forever, and there's nothing we can do to stop it or even mitigate its spread, nor was there anything we ever could have done. COVID is as inevitable as the rising of the sun, the waves crashing on a beach, or the lingering cough everyone now has that definitely wasn't caused by COVID." :covid-cool:

Thanks.

Maybe screaming into the void wasn't the right phrase, I just meant that it usually feels like that whenever I try to talk about COVID with anyone else who isn't in these COVID-cautious communities.

Wow, I'm so sorry you had to go through that scare with your daughter and didn't walk away unscathed yourself either.

I'm trying to think of a good mask resource. I haven't really looked into him myself, but there's this guy that talks a shit ton about different masks and respirators and tests them to see how protective they are: https://twitter.com/masknerd?lang=en

He has a whole ass spreadsheet about it too lol: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M0mdNLpTWEGcluK6hh5LjjcFixwmOG853Ff45d3O-L0/htmlview?usp=drive_web&ouid=108355114845682180386&pru=AAABfniWips*ZW4K5ipiMBIUEgzyHDB1eA

I think I saw it posted on this site once before.

It is also very disappointing that many self-identifying leftists have also either fallen victim to the propaganda machine around COVID minimization or no longer care to keep themselves and their vulnerable comrades safe, at least in some contexts. I can sort of understand those feelings of weariness from individuals about nothing being done to mitigate all the death and suffering that COVID continues to wreak. I personally don't agree with that choice though, obviously.

But idk, at a minimum, it is extremely disappointing to me that leftist orgs and unions in general are very anti-mask/pro-COVID at this point. I don't understand what the fuck the point of being a leftist is if you are literally creating an environment that is especially dangerous to disabled/immunocompromised folks, like organizers should be all over requiring masks at events and giving virtual options. Especially because COVID is a workplace safety issue. What the fuck happened to "an injury to one is an injury to all?"

Once "personal responsibility" became the conventional wisdom for dealing with COVID (which doesn't make any fucking sense, public health isn't an individual construct), it never became more clear to me that this kind of rhetoric and response (or lack thereof) is going to be used for every major crisis going forward, no matter how severe it is.

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