Jul 26, 2024
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A new scientific finding has uncovered why we get more viral colds, flu and Covid in winter and during cold snaps.
The sardonic, reductionist headline here could be "Scientists finally figured out why you get more colds in winter: bEcAuSe iT's CoLd!"—but the actual science involved here is both interesting, and potentially very relevant to everyday life and especially the immunocompromised:
It turns out the cold air itself damages the immune response occurring in the nose. [...] In fact, reducing the temperature inside the nose by as little as 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) kills nearly 50% of the billions of virus and bacteria-fighting cells in the nostrils, according to the study published Tuesday in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. “Cold air is associated with increased viral infection because you’ve essentially lost half of your immunity just by that small drop in temperature,” said rhinologist Dr. Benjamin Bleier, director of otolaryngology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Want to avoid catching or spreading respiratory viruses like CoVid-19, RSV, influenza, or a common cold? Mask up, please, but also bundle up! Wrap up in a scarf, wear a balaclava, and just generally keep your face warm. There's no single magic solution, but that's not a reason to do nothing. Rather, it's a reason to take several simple precautions that help avoid the spread of disease and protect those around you. (I can't tell you how much "this isn't 100% effective so I shouldn't do it at all" frustrates me.)
Oh, and #knitblr? This is your time to shine.
It’s that time of year! 🌈
Updated COVID vaccines are mostly for preventing severe acute illness, but it modestly reduces your chances of getting COVID at all! (54% less symptomatic illness in the following 4 months, in this recent MMWR report.) Best paired with a respirator! People who always wore N95 masks in indoor public settings had *83%* reduced risk of testing positive for COVID, in this 2022 MMWR report.
More info in this zine I made: What's Up With COVID and How to Protect Yourself: 2024 Edition.
SARS-CoV-2, CO2, and You
A good video about how CO2 monitors work and how you can analyze the information they give you to protect against airborne diseases.
And the companion video about masking:
I just arrived at my pain clinic appointment (7:15am check in) that I had to leave home at 6:30am for to find out that my provider is out sick and they called me at 7:05a when they found out. I was 7 minutes away.
I’m not feeling compassionate right now. There have been multiple times in the last year when I’ve had appointments rescheduled because of provider illness. THEY SHOULD BE WEARING APPROPRIATE RESPIRATORS OH MY GOD ITS 2026 WE KNOW THIS WORKS.
I’m SO FUCKING TIRED. I’m so tired of friends cancelling because they’re sick or “not feeling 100%” after recovering. I’m tired of medical providers canceling. I’m tired of places being short-staffed because too many people are sick. (One place I went to yesterday had BOTH SUPERVISORS out sick and the employees didn’t even know where they were until right before lunch break.)
Guys. GUYS. (Gender neutral)
I’VE BEEN SICK TWICE SINCE JANUARY 2020 AND ONE OF THOSE WAS FLU POSITIVE FOR ONE SINGLE DAY. AND MY IMMUNE SYSTEM HAD BEEN NUKED BY CHEMO.
Only Covid-conscious people have any idea how much I bite my tongue and perform sympathy when I get yet another cancellation.
01/03/2026 Doctor Beverly Crusher @SpaceDocMom Incoming Transmission…
Fiction is for feeling good in your heart and soul, but science is for actually treating your medical needs and protecting you from dangerous pathogens. emojis: black heart, blue heart, masked x5, spoon
work, sleep, barely survive, days exhausting by design. oligarchs and politicians have replicated tenement worker sweatshops, and the trapping of sharecroppers. work or die, no exit.
absolutely, it's easier to give up than it is to hold onto hope, to expect failure, save your energy. to just try and save your own skin, don't get your hopes up, don't be vulnerable, don't get disappointed. especially when trying has failed before, i know it may seem like the path of less pain. but that's not true. it hurts all the same. is a life without hope worth living? things can always get worse, but they can also get better.
history says, working together can succeed in overturning oppression. reagan decimated public education to prevent people from believing it, to make it harder to tell fact from fiction. facts prove that if enough people guard their hope, trust each other, and choose to rebel, we can win. if enough people think, if this is living, i'd rather die for the possibility of change than endure one more day, one more minute of hunger, dread, and conformity, we can win. we can overpower enforcers like the federalist society, the national policy institute, the heritage foundation, the police, the patriot boys, the kkk. the administration gutted the black panther party because they knew that with enough people, we can win. we're not fighting alone.
tyrants can fall. refuse the circus's distraction, supplement and then replace it with knowing the people around you, moments of connection, joy, and creation that no one can take. with enough sustained and decentralized action, tyrants fall.
the american administration doesn't care if we all die, as long as their skulls are on top. they approve burning up the planet, poisoning the water, air, and food with contaminants and diseases. do you want to make the specter of charlie kirk happy? imagine him with a shit-eating grin, saying kids deserve to die, and everyone unlike him deserves to suffer through the terror of school shootings, forced births, lives derailed, parents' texts to their kids unreturned. slowly running out of breath. public lynching. a sickness that doesn't end. obey, or die.
it can be hard to hope. but when the alternative is giving people like him, and stephen miller, and oligarchs, politicians, and patriarchs who only think of their selfish greed, the satisfaction of our apathy? that thought fills me with rage. they don't deserve our silence while they kill. i'll fight.
nihilism and fatalism? right now? it's selfish to spread acceptance of our world's demise. an orca pushes her dead child through the currents, her baby unable to survive microplastic-loaded milk. materials available via politicians paid off by oil and petrochemical oligarchs, used once and discarded by people who couldn't be bothered to care. the takeaway i got from reading camus one mil years ago: if nothing matters, each of us decides what matters, and live for that purpose.
butterfly law says, every choice makes a difference. people can change if they want to change. my grad school advisor didn't help me much, but he told me this: "i don't mean to sound pollyanna-ish, but never underestimate the ability of a small group of people to change the world." he was right. people once thought it was impossible to walk on the moon, to live with AIDS, to overthrow the french and english monarchies, to avoid tuberculosis. if we resist, future generations will say the same thing about covid and western imperialism. chicago was rebuilt to provide people with clean water. structural change is possible, needed, and plausible.
we might not control the system working against 99% of us, but we have power over some of our decisions. if enough of us choose action over apathy, join mask blocs and mutual aid networks, and decide to protect ourselves and each other from SARS2's brain damage and heart failure, diabetes and cancer, broken mitochondria, unexplained pain, and weakened immune systems - all made more likely by infection, even despite the somewhat blunting effect of current vaccines - we can unseat the parasites in power.
determined people escape abuse every day, despite living trapped under someone else's thumb. it takes immense courage and a support system, people willing to stick their neck out and help, sacrifice a little to help a lot. masking similarly requires courage and compassion, and similarly saves lives, preserves our future, protects a vulnerable baby's potential. we will find each other, and motherfuckers won't survive the bite of mules.
New video!