Why I am still masking

I can’t believe I haven’t written about this before. But I guess I just thought it was obvious. It’s not.

If you see me in the streets, I will be masked. Are you still masking too?

As my t-shirt says, “The Pandemic Isn’t Over Just Because You’re Over It.”

Why mask?

“Covid is airborne: it is in the exhaled breath of infected people. Vaccines and treatments are your last lines of defense. Post-infection immunity shortened to 28 days. 1 in 3 infected people are pre-symptomatic or show no symptoms. Long Covid usually comes from reinfections, most often “mild” infections. There is no limit to how many times you can catch Covid-19. The AMA wants people to know that getting reinfected is “akin to playing Russian Roulette.” Rapid tests can miss asymptomatic infections.

Covid-19 is not just a respiratory infection. It is a multi-organ, systemic disease; a serious vascular, neurological, immune-system-damaging, eye-damaging, brain-damaging, randomly disabling (and disability-worsening) disease (CDC: 1 in 5; PHAC: 50%). Any infection creates risk for serious heart problems; the risk of deadly blood clots is elevated for one year. Covid can leave pets with brain damage and long-term harms.

Each reinfection does cumulative, worsening damage and leads to Long Covid; typical onset is 4 weeks after infection. Long Covid can last up to three years or longer. Here is what Long Covid looks like. There is no treatment, cure, or prevention for Long Covid. Anyone of any age or health status can get Long Covid.

From Threat Model

COVID killed my brother

In 2023 my brother died of a COVID related heart attack. He was 33 and healthy. He texted me right before he died. I am still grieving him.

Ever since then I’ve renewed my commitment to masking everywhere.

Not just because I have immunocompromised friends, family and babies that I see.

Not just because I don’t want to get COVID myself (and as far as I know I never have)

Not just because you are most contagious with COVID for days before you feel ill (so even if people say, “it’s ok I’m not sick” you could have COVID and never know!)

Not just because studies have shown that COVID can increase your risk of heart attack, stroke, dementia and cancer

Not just because there is no cure for Long COVID and one in ten people get Long COVID

But because it is ableist to deny or ignore an ongoing mass death and disabling pandemic.

If I don’t mask, then I make it less safe for EVERYONE to be around me.

It’s painful to admit, but if my brother had masked, he might still be here.

I wish so hard that he was still here. I did what I could to encourage him to do it. But he didn’t want to take care of himself that way.

I miss him so much.

I don’t want to let another day go by without telling you how important it is that you mask.

I have definitely lost friendships because of masking. And still have friends who give my masking the side-eye. It’s painful to see how many times these friends have gotten needlessly sick because they didn’t mask. And no, you don’t need exposure to diseases for immunity.

But now that I know how to keep myself and loved ones safe, I do everything I can to encourage people to mask.

Get Free Masks

There are mask blocs if you need a mask but cannot afford one. You can even find free air filters and masks on Buy Nothing.

If you’re stopped masking, it’s not too late to start again.

“You’ve got to live your life”

I am absolutely living my life. I’m traveling, I’m going to shows. I’m going to the gym. I’m presenting, going to networking events. I’m seeing friends. Masked. It’s not hard.

On Anti-masking and Lateral Violence in Our Nonprofits

Become a patron of Abolish Time.

Estelle Ellison of Abolish Time writes, “The reality of our conditions and capacity exposes organizing cultures that insist on ignoring and erasing matters of accessibility.

Like health fascism, formal and informal hierarchical organizing structures both highly value the ability to organize intensely without giving critical feedback, burning out, becoming traumatized, developing a disability, or even having a disability in the first place.

Getting COVID, as you now know, will make you much more likely to burn out, develop a disability, or increase the negative impacts on disabilities that you already have.

It goes so far beyond the flu, or an inconvenience, or losing your sense of smell or taste. We now know that one infection (which could be asyptomatic, and you’d never know you had it!) can give you Long COVID. Imagine walking into work one day, getting COVID, and not being able to get out of bed for two years. It really happened to Physics Girl.

She continues, “By making this unrealistic vision of productivity the pinnacle aspiration for those struggling to get free, being disabled, burned out, traumatized, or simply having concerns about the way things are being done are all made out to be personal failures. This dynamic directly mimics the values of global fascism.

In this way, covid denialism is not a separate phenomenon from reactionary organizing practices that preceded this ongoing pandemic. It is simply the newest improvised cultural tool in a larger toolbox of lateral violence.”

By refusing to acknowledge the ongoing threat of COVID-19, your organization, your movement, your nonprofit is directly putting you in harm’s way. And that directly mimics the values of global fascism.

Abolish Time says, “We continue to mask to protect ourselves and our respective networks instead of turning away from reality.

We are accused of being irrationally fearful, yet we live with the very consequences of our accusers’ troubling fear of reality.

They pressure us to protect them from mere acknowledgement of our actual conditions so they can continue stubbornly insisting they already possess the definitive praxis that will get us all free (or at least get us a little closer to the american dream).”