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.

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.

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.

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?”

I think many of us who are still being cautious have thought about letting our guard down at some point. Hell, I kind of did that briefly during the summer of 2021, after I got “fully vaccinated” and bought into the fantasy that the vaccine rollout would end the pandemic. And then I stumbled onto COVID cautious twitter and got exposed more and more to disability justice, and got very cautious again shortly after that, a few months before the first wave of Omicron hit.

In general, though, I do understand why some well-meaning people do give up their precautions and go “back to normal”. There is definitely a social pressure to conform and get “back to normal” from family, friends, acquaintances, etc. I’d argue that there is an economic pressure to do so, too. I’ve heard increasingly more stories of people getting fired for still taking precautions or being threatened with termination for doing so. So it does feel like there is increasingly more coercion to get “back to normal”.

I’m not sure if I can keep this level of caution up in perpetuity. I’m still holding out for a nasal or sterilizing vaccine, if such a thing is even possible. But idk how well that would work, since I’m assuming not everyone would take it and some immunocompromised people would probably be unable to take it. I’m waiting for that and/or an actual treatment/cure for long COVID, but again, not sure how practical that is, and even if it comes to fruition, I’m guessing it would cost an arm and a leg and fuck over a bunch of vulnerable people because of the expense.

Then again, there’s a part of me that honestly thinks that we’re going to get more and more pandemics, since climate change and animal agriculture, among other things, are increasingly upping the risk of that happening. And that I should just get used to living like this because, whether from COVID or forest fires or some other pandemic, I think society will face a reckoning that makes them finally acknowledge that masks are effective. And maybe leftists should adopt them anyways for privacy/surveillance reasons.

And I also just think it’s extremely fucked and depraved that most people are now okay or indifferent with living with a disease that disproportionately kills disabled and immunocompromised people. And shit like the CDC director passing it off as good news that most people dying had multiple comorbidities. Just straight up eugenics shit getting normalized in the mainstream. It is extremely depressing to me that most people are seemingly okay with accepting yet another cause of mass death and suffering (one that is actually much worse than usual, COVID is still like the #4 killer in the US), as if nothing can possibly be done at all, and that we have no choice but to accept it.

And I’m sorry to tell anyone who thinks they’re immune to bad outcomes from COVID, but no, you’re not. Many people who were previously “healthy” are now suffering from long COVID. And basically no one is permanently able-bodied–almost all of us are going to experience some disability in our lives at some point. And it’s up to you if you’re willing to roll the dice on a novel virus that has already killed and disabled millions, is still killing about 1,000 people per week in the US during a pandemic “lull” (and even that is certainly an undercount because we stopped giving a shit about tracking data), has only short-lasting immunity at best, and lots of evidence that each reinfection increases the likelihood of adverse health effects.

The head of the WHO has literally been on record saying that 1 in 10 infections leads to long COVID, and that hundreds of millions of people in the world, at this rate, will need long-term care in the coming years from that alone. Just extremely grim stuff.

Oh god, that sounds awful, you have my sympathies. And I’ve always hated all of that “team building” shit, even before the pandemic. And especially now because it usually entails eating out at a restaurant or going to a bar, and I just turn all that shit down now for obvious reasons.

Years ago, I used to get all bazinga about the Steam winter sales, until I realized I was never playing most of those games and wasn’t “saving” money at all.

Oh damn, I didn’t realize you were saying you had the same exact scenario happen to you lol, I thought you were just saying you didn’t buy anything on Black Friday. Did you have your social credit score deducted for this transgression against consumerism?

There was actually another person who also didn’t buy anything, so I think it was received better than it otherwise would have been, lol

I work in a bullshit office job and I had a meeting where someone did an icebreaker by asking what we all bought for Black Friday :agony-limitless:

I proudly said I bought nothing :gigachad:

It’s real fun how Bill Gates is routinely referred to as an expert outside of his lane (intellectual property/stealing from workers), including pandemics, and he’s probably the single person who should have the most blame in the catastrophic pandemic response. He’s the one who convinced Oxford to sell their vaccine for big pharma, after they had the original intent to make it open source for the world.

The fact that this business tyrant who was reviled by many in the public has now rebranded himself as a “good” billionaire really shows he has the best PR that money can buy.

Bill Gates most certainly does, he routinely expresses concern about shit like Africa and their “rapid population growth” and the like, there’s no way he isn’t an ecofascist