Where do you go when you don’t have anyone to talk to (for whatever reason) but want to get something off your chest? OH! This fucking blog o’ mine! Ha!
As I calm down a bit while eating this lusciously rich piece of chocolate cake…Ahem!
A big gathering at work in celebration of a number of marriages and baby announcements, about half the office is in the kitchen. Myself and a teammate, who also always wears a mask in the office, are sitting down together at a table chatting quietly, as introverts do. Then half our HR team sits across from us at the same table, none wearing masks.The topic of Covid is brought up, not by me but you’re right to make that assumption, and mention of it being all over the news again, cases are up. I say, “if it’s in the news then it is far worse than we know, they don’t like to talk about covid in the news these days.” Someone mentioned wastewater reports and I think for juuuust a moment they might care about mitigations and such. Nope! Just a talking point! Because the next moment the conversation moves onto hooray for a new booster coming and then they all mostly admit they aren’t up to date, have been traveling all over the dang world, and never mask in the office, and all have kids. I mention school starting during an already huge surge and before I could finish my sentence they’re talking about the upcoming booster again.
Look, I actually love my job and most of the people I work with. I love my office and my team are some of the nicest and hardest working people I have ever met in my life. But one of our teammates is out right now because they went to Disneyland last week and now have covid. The entire team was testing for covid yesterday! Only 3 people out of 100 in my office consistently wear a mask. Me? I don’t fuck around, so I don’t have to find out. I caught covid one year ago at work, I took my mask off for 2-5 minutes to drink water and caught it from a teammate. I was fully vaccinated and very careful about my exposure and consistently masked. It only takes a few seconds of exposure though. I was fortunate to get Paxlovid pretty quickly and was well supported by my team, too. But I cannot shake the surreal feeling that everyone actually knows how terrible things are and are simply unable to process it all because it really is that bad. So I throw in a joke about, “Don’t worry about it though, the world is on fire right now, too! Ha-ha!” I swear I’m great at parties! Ha!
We are reliving the 1900’s from the start and we’re doing fuck all about doing better for ourselves or the planet. We have a pandemic, nazis, insane billionaires controlling the media, heading into a likely global economic collapse, but we get a little change up with also being in the find out phase of our climate crisis. It is all fucking connected and it is all fucking repeating and I hate it. Individualism will be the death of our species. White supremacy has guaranteed this. Senators face cameras unblinkingly while spewing lies because they would rather us all suffer and die than admit they fucked up ever. Each bought and paid for by their fave corporation or billionaire bestie. Hundreds of millions are suffering around the globe from Long Covid while the entirety (it seems) of the medical world gaslights those suffering from its debilitating effects. The let it rip strategy will disable hundreds of millions more and we don’t have any systems in place currently to care for them/us. Healthcare globally is falling apart, more so now that most don’t bother to mask in hospitals at all, regardless of the situation. My grandmother would be swearing up a storm at the notion!
They really tried to fool us with the vax and relax bullshit. They really laid it on thick about the effectiveness and purpose of the vaccines. It was all lies. And I’m not anti vax at all, I have all of my boosters, even though those have all lost their effectiveness completely by now. If you have had covid even once, even mild, even asymptomatic, YOU ARE NOW HIGH RISK FOR EVERYTHING! I wish people would get that message because the next five years are going to be horrifying! No one is testing and those that do are not testing at the right time or not using a method that will garner a more accurate result. The shear force of misinformation campaigns just wash out any remnants left of common sense in our society. Check for your county’s wastewater reports on covid, if they are still reporting (so many stopped recently). Maybe you believe you’ve never had covid so you’re fine and you must be doing something right if you haven’t gotten it this far, right? Well, 60% of cases are still asymptomatic, so unless you have been testing yourself weekly and consistently, you can’t truly know you haven’t had it. That is a tough data point for many to understand, but this virus is a tricky fucker! Also, if you are fat, you’re also high risk not simply because of your size but because of medical weight stigma and biases. We, as fat bodied people, will receive less care and less quality care if we have access to health care at all. I have no doubt in my mind that had my gallbladder crisis happened before the shutdown, I would not have received the care and testing that eventually found my issue. Telehealth/virtual medical appointments should be the norm!
If you have any questions about covid or long covid or precautions/mitigations you can take, PLEASE ASK ME!!! I am happy to provide info, links, etc. I actually care a lot about people staying alive, though sometimes I question myself on what the point of caring for others is when it feels incredibly fucking one-sided. I suppose I am lucky in the sense that I was always different from “the crowd” and so it is absolutely no biggie for me at all to wear a mask even when I’m the only one wearing one. Standing out is what I do best! I’m a large bodied woman with red hair and often brightly colored outfits, I’m pretty tough to miss! Ha-ha! I do struggle to understand why folks are risking life and limb for comformity’s sake or to not upset others. Fuck that! I am an adult, so I get to decide what I do with and to my own face/body/etc. As things get even more bleak, and I’ve seen some horrific lies passed off as truths by so-called experts who are obviously cashing in on this bullshit campaign (things are about to get reeeeeeal bad. Like, everywhere!), I want to hope that folks will snap back to their previous “We’re in this together” mentality because we need that to survive! I am not interested in prettily painted Hallmark versions of anything. The world is literally on fire. Shut up! Just shut the fuck up and wear a mask, do the right thing! It is not hard! I hate it too but this is reality. 1 way masking is not effective in crowded areas, you can still get infected through your eyes or if your mask doesn’t have the best seal. It is very effective when everyone wears a mask.
New information and developments in science are coming out everyday, so I do have hope. I am one of hundreds of millions still dealing with Long Covid symptoms over a year after my only so-called mild infection. Right now only 7% with LC ever fully recover at all. Some have been living with it since 2020 with no treatment available. With more people talking about it and pushing back on the gaslighting by the medical world, I know eventually there will be treatments. Who can access those treatments is another discussion entirely. With all the talk of the new boosters, most have forgotten that Biden ended the emergency status for the Fed, so many will be paying out of pocket if insurance won’t cover it or they don’t have insurance. I’ve so far seen prices starting at $110 for one booster. And as a result of the emergency status ending, the booster won’t be here until late September at the earliest, but until today I have consistently heard that it is November. Schools in my area started today! It is pure madness and greed driving everything now. Please reach out to those you haven’t heard from and offer support, the real kind, not just platitudes. No one knows how long any of us have left here. No one ever asks how I’m doing or feeling, not since the acute phase of my infection last year. Most people don’t even know what the symptoms are! There’s about 200 symptoms currently under the LC umbrella, but there’s like a core 8 that are consistently LC. Fatigue and brain fog are not what the average person thinks they are. The fatigue will suck your entire life away from you before you know it! This virus is SARS2, it is a level 3 airborne pathogen, but it is a vascular disease. The acute phase is not the end, it will be in us forever and causes damage in every organ.
There is no such thing as a summer flu. Avoid getting covid at all costs! No concert or large gathering is worth it, I promise you. Stay safe, stay smart! We are all we got!
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I’m here for realness and sincerity, honesty and vulnerability, I’m here for the good and juicy bits of life that shine for me when I know I’m heading in the right direction.
Rad Fatty Love to ALL,
<3
S
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