This is how you cover up a pandemic
As Omicron spreads, some experts are calling for a switch to saliva-based tests, which may detect infections days earlier than nasal swabs d
Saliva PCR tests may detect disease earlier in the course of an infection
Walgreens is now selling FDA-authorized COVID-19 saliva tests online, joining Amazon, Costco, and Walmart. Results take up to 48 hours.
So weirdly when I do a web search for "covid saliva test cost" I get a lot of articles saying "the new saliva test will cost only $5" but if I actually try to shop for it, all the results are in the price range stated in this video.
@milf-adjacent nailed it: this is how you cover up a pandemic. The Powers That Be don't want to find COVID any more. They want the narrative to be that COVID is gone. That's why they're shutting down various kinds of monitoring, reporting, etc. as fast as they can. And it's why reliable tests are so unavailable.
Not so fun fact: my mother died with COVID last month. We'll probably never know for sure if she died from COVID (its presence was discovered post mortem) but also no other explanation presents itself. No sign of infection, or any other issue except for the ones she has been successfully living with for years. If not COVID, then what?
Contrary to what all the deniers say, it is not true that every death with COVID is counted as a death from COVID to inflate the seriousness of the pandemic. It was never true. The exact opposite happened for my mother. There's no mention of COVID on her death certificate, even though it's medically the most likely cause by far, because hospitals and nursing homes and rehab centers get politically motivated pushback from the agencies that are supposed to collect such statistics. "When in doubt, throw it out" has become their mantra. The funeral director, bless her heart, did mention it on her part of the paperwork because she felt it was important, but then they're not subject to the same pressure.
And don't even get me started on this "comorbidity" bullshit. So what if COVID was merely "the last straw" for someone whose health was already poor? It would still be the proximate cause. It still caused a death that would not have occurred, as surely as if a stray bullet killed somebody who already had heart problems. People who didn't even know the word before 2020 - and still don't really know what it means - just use that as a dogwhistle for "if they're not like me their lives don't matter".
So yeah, they are twisting the narrative. I really feel for this young woman, whose anguish is so apparent in her voice as she tells her story. There is no reason for her or anyone else to be living with this kind of uncertainty, except that continuing to acknowledge COVID might hurt "the economy" - by which rich folks and politicians mean the world's largest casinostock market and not the actual economy that most people live in.
so many disabled/crip pals and I have been talking about this for years now bc it's fucking manufactured consent so the gov is off the hook for implementing any infrastructural changes or covid protections (while also eliding their culpability in allowing transmission to continue unchecked/abdicating any liability in forced infection) and capitalism can continue rolling. how to disappear a pandemic? you tell everyone they have the tools to manage it individually. then you slowly take away the tools. then you take away the ability for folks to test (no more free PCRs, no updated RATs, shorten the contagion window, tell people they can get back to work w/in 5 days, don't educate people on when they're infectious or how to even test, ignore asymptomatic cases accounting for 40% of all covid cases, etc.,). then, using the *lack* of data from an absence of testing bc it's not available and no one can afford it, you give artificial numbers to the public that are "low" because, again, NO ONE CAN FUCKING TEST. then you use those low numbers to FURTHER get rid of protections--if covid is "low" then we don't need masks in hospitals or transit or any other place, so you take them away. you CHANGE the metrics you use to report cases but don't tell people what those changed metrics mean. you stop counting cases at all. you sow distrust around the need for masking, you conflate surgical masks with N95s etc, you make up terms like immunity debt to explain away illness/debility/disability from covid, you publish articles with studies about covid being mild and masking not working etc that are not peer reviewed and later retracted bc they are full of misinformation and *literal* lies but by that point the public has bought into the forced propaganda. you tell people they don't need updated filtration or ventilation. you normalize the exclusion of disabled/sick people from public life. you tell people covid is mild (it's not). you tell people only those already sick/immunocompromised/disabled are at risk for severe cases (a lie and also eugenics). then you keep repeating the cycle.
do you know that as *soon* as the pandemic emergency and public health declaration ended in the US, the CDC updated their website with pages and pages of information on how to protect yourself from covid?? information including the need to wear a high quality respirator like Kn95/N95, the need for updated air changes and filtration in *all* buildings, how covid is airborne, etc.,--all things that organizers (and especially sick/disabled ppl) have been organizing for and sharing resources around since the START of the pandemic. but the CDC only admitted it, only gave you the info once they were off the hook for having to do anything about it. they literally WITHHELD lifesaving information so they wouldn't have to pay for any of the changes or make any of the sweeping policy adjustments necessary. then told you not to worry, that it was mild, that it was over, that you weren't at risk. while also implementing the very tools they denied you access to quietly for themselves.
you know who said at the start of the pandemic that if we stop counting cases we end the pandemic? fucking trump. and everyone was rightfully OUTRAGED about it...until it literally became the democratic policy. they've lied to you and they're still lying to you and you should be fucking angry.
