I must confess that I've been sitting on this story for over a week because I struggle to discuss the ongoing, Pig Empire-wide embrace of Covid denialism at the state level without repeating myself. The key points in this discussion have not changed much over the past few months; Covid is not over, capitalist state policies pretending it is amount to a form of (accidental at best) eugenics, our own governments are no longer publishing the data that would prove Covid is still a danger to everyone, and they're doing it for rich monsters who are taking the very same precautions to protect *themselves* from Covid, that they are denying to you while insisting capitalist life must go on no matter how many people it disables or kills. The fact that the rich bastards profiting from all this have managed to transform wearing masks into a culture war issue taken up by the same fascist right they're funding, is just the crap-cherry on the shit cake.

The plain and simple truth here is that our leaders and the capitalists that own them have abandoned us to a never-ending pandemic, for profit, while refusing to acknowledge that the situation even exists. They're not going to keep us safe, which unfortunately means that we, everyday people, are forced to do that ourselves.

https://truthout.org/articles/the-us-government-has-abandoned-us-to-endless-covid-we-can-do-better/

The US Government Has Abandoned Us to Endless COVID. We Can Do Better.

"Trump’s outrageous argument that if the U.S. collected less data, the picture would be rosier has been made into official policy under the Biden administration: As of May 1, 2024, hospitals are no longer required to report admissions, and most of the other data collection infrastructure on COVID test rates, like local dashboards and easily readable trackers on cases and deaths, has already disappeared.

By mid-July 2024, it was possible for Biden to have an active case of COVID and to claim that he is going home to isolate while simultaneously appearing on video in a group of people unmasked, without major media outlets blinking an eye about this contradiction. At this point in the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website is no longer a go-to place for clear COVID information, but instead muddies the difference between COVID and the common cold in its prevention recommendations. As Caroline Hugh, an epidemiologist who volunteers for the Public Health Collective, told Truthout, it is hard to know what’s going on because the “picture has gotten a lot fuzzier and a lot more complicated.”

As I said at the top of this post, I honestly don't have a whole lot to add here. The current state of bipartisan Covid denialism in the Pig Empire is that "trust the science" liberal governments are simply refusing to collect data or provide support, while the reactionary fascist wing of the Covid denial complex continues to push garbage pseudoscientific arguments about "herd immunity," "immunity debt," and the behavior of seasonal viruses that are not Covid, and don't behave like Covid does. Through it all, both sides are trying to pretend that Covid is somehow "like a cold," while the virus continues to mutate in dangerous ways because of our society-wide eugenicist plan to "let er rip" for capitalism. Even now, our governments are releasing guidelines that encourage parents to send Covid-positive children to school in the fall; the situation is quite grim.

Is there any hope? Yes, but only the hope that we ourselves can create by staying informed and taking precautions; which isn't easy when our governments are refusing to publish data and working to make it harder to take those precautions. Fortunately this article does offer some sources that can help, which I guess is why I decided I had to share it in the first place.

"Recommended resources include Noha Aboelata and Roots Community Health’s “people’s health updates” on YouTube; Ground Truths, the newsletter of Eric Topol; The Sick Times, a weekly newsletter focusing on Long COVID; and Adler-Bolton’s podcast, “Death Panel,” which provides regular deep dives and analysis of COVID policy.

Local mask blocs are another good source of information. These local mutual aid groups provide low-cost or free masks to community members (via bulk purchasing), and they share a lot of locally relevant information about COVID (often on Instagram).

Nationally, groups like the People’s CDC, the Public Health Collective and the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative are synthesizing technical information and sharing it to a wider community with a disability justice lens. Hugh highlighted the importance of reading and combining a variety of information, rather than relying on a single source."

Overall however, I have to concede that the situation is terrible; our leaders have indeed sold us out to capital and our only hope is to keep ourselves safe from Covid as the unacknowledged pandemic continues to rage.