covid19

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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@rustingbridges​ replied to your post:

“under normal conditions a substantial fraction of influenza cases are “asymptomatic”, whatever that means in that context, so I’d presume there’s also a contingent of very mildly symptomatic cases”

—

Meta-Boss is dragging me back into the restaurant tomorrow now that he is no longer legally forbidden from doing so. If I *am* carrying something, I hope I don’t fuck anybody over too hard. We *will* be taking the now-standard precautions, so that’s something.

(And as for hugging my mom, unlike me she’s finished her flu-vaccination ramp-up period, so that tilts her odds favourably.)

—

TBH, if this was influenza, chalk another one up on the board of “we should just wear masks all the time by default”. I’ll gladly dull my sense of smell while outside the house and be unable to read customers’ lips if it means turning the horrific suffering of a flu into *this*.

(and if you have to talk to someone who really needs to read your lips (and you can’t just write to each other like civilised people), wearing a mask except when around them would still beat not wearing one at all)

Tags:

#replies #rustingbridges #illness tw #in which Brin has a job #influenza #covid19

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

5b1095f327447996dd84692f27eced084dec1a34

yesterdaysprint:

St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Missouri, October 31, 1918

Tags:

#history #illness tw #Halloween #covid19 #(although in my own case Halloween went about the same as it would have otherwise) #(wore a demon-horn headband to work (which absolutely nobody remarked upon)) #(came home to Mom putting out our traditional Halloween buffet on the coffee table) #(yeah we got zero trick-or-treaters but zero is only slightly smaller than usual)

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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plasmapop:

plasmapop:

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20/04/20 • title is the subject line of an email about middle egyptian classes. italics are ‘quotes from my middle egyptian prof that i happened to write down’ 

#…apparently this post was *not* made in October #it was posted in June and that date implies it was written in April #which means that truck of emotional resonance that hits you at #“it is october‚ and i wait for the symptoms of spring/it is april‚ but only when i close my eyes” #is not *intended* to be there #or at least *that* particular truck isn’t #but fuck it they sing it back to you for 85000 reasons (via @brin-bellway)

yeah so possibly this unintentionally contains a timeloop thing. you’re right that it was written in april but it also grew out of various sentences from my diary-ish notebooks. the line about october/april was written in october 2019 and was vaguely about seasonal depression / winter Sucks and april is when you can See trees starting to grow leaves again. then when i was putting the poem together in april obviously that resonated in…… a very different way. so i was like yeah ok sure. and now it’s october again and it has a whole new but not unrelated meaning!! poetry timeloop

#so yeah intent doesn’t really…… matter and usually i don’y reblog things onto this blog

#but this time it’s kinda interesting bcs i Did actually intend it Kind Of this way but then also the intent got Out Of Control!!!

I wrote a post [link] about time standing still during the plague, so it makes sense that that was the first meaning that hit me. I can see *multiple* COVID-related interpretations, though: one could also interpret it, not as waiting for the spring of 2020 that never came, but as waiting for the metaphorical blooming of a post-plague world (which *could* potentially happen during a literal springtime too).

The second interpretation that occurred to me was a Northerner moving to the Southern Hemisphere, the experience of the local Octobers carrying what they still think of as a certain essential April-ness.

Also I just took the exam for my penultimate semester and late next month I start my final semester, so…obviously it depends on how much 2020 Bullshit I have to deal with in the next few months, there could well be delays, but the single most likely month for “what month am I going to officially receive my diploma” is April 2021. Next spring will likely be a metaphorical spring for me personally, the blooming of the next stage of my life, entering my career.

Plus there’s that seasonal-depression interpretation, which I did not think of on my own but yeah I can see that.

Layers!!

Tags:

#reply via reblog #poetry #time #death tw #covid19 #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #illness tw #adventures in University Land

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

plasmapop:

5b5aab97a80ba53a4e31e73d7225f855f3e6cb94

20/04/20 • title is the subject line of an email about middle egyptian classes. italics are ‘quotes from my middle egyptian prof that i happened to write down’ 

Tags:

#…apparently this post was *not* made in October #it was posted in June and that date implies it was written in April #which means that truck of emotional resonance that hits you at #”it is october‚ and i wait for the symptoms of spring/it is april‚ but only when i close my eyes” #is not *intended* to be there #or at least *that* particular truck isn’t #but fuck it they sing it back to you for 85000 reasons #poetry #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #Egypt #history #death tw #historical documentation in at least two senses #covid19

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

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bedupolker:

If an insect wore a mask would he wear it like this or like this? (get it? get it? bc  insects breath through holes in their sides called spiracles)

Anyway I just got hired as an EMT specializing in covid testing so this seemed relevant

Tags:

#today in horror-movie-set-dressing memes #bugs #covid19 #illness tw

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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maryellencarter:

brin-bellway:

maryellencarter:

4242de9f91bbf0be0c5fbaa72b849cfe5fb83913

behold the EXTREMELY GAY TREE

okay but why is there a Christmas section in early October

is this like Costco where they keep the Christmas-tree aisle up year-round?

Nope, Walmart and Lowe’s have both just put up their Christmas sections already this year. I guess Time broke enough that Halloween has stopped holding the line. :-(

Hang on to your hats, folks, we’re going straight from March to December with *maybe* a short pit stop in August.

(A while back I called this year “strangled in its cradle” [link], and it occurred to me later that it was a particularly evocative/fitting metaphor under the circumstances. 2020: the year deprived of its breath.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #time #covid19 #illness tw #asphyxiation cw #Christmas

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

4543fb6ed715fae68fafa4e5e408c08767cb5db9

colchrishadfield:

Mars over Toronto. It won’t be this close to Earth again until 2035. (great photo by friend Andrew Yee!) (at Sunnyside, Toronto)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CGAAewvHyYt/?igshid=amvrecjly6f9

Tags:

#Mars #juxtaposition #our home and cherished land #this picture is a lot more emotional in its temporal context huh #Toronto looks so beautiful and so ordinary from this distance #you can’t see the pain or fear #the impotent anger at reckless neighbours #”two point two percent” whispers an all-too-fresh memory #(a memory of reading a news release from Public Health Ontario) #(they’re taking blood draws that were done for other reasons and additionally testing them for COVID-19 antibodies) #(that’s the figure for Toronto) #((it’s about one percent averaged over the province)) #I was just talking about Mars being a safe distance #tag rambles #covid19 #illness tw

The Virus

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birdblogwhichisforbirds:

Like Pilate before Christ, I wash my hands.
When soap rips them to shreds, do viruses
Feel pain? And can a virus feel regret
When it has killed its host and doomed itself?
No doves or rainbows follow the great flood
Of pus and blood that laid waste to the lungs
It called its home. I thought I’d killed my host
When I was small – the pale and perfect host
that I believed was not bread but the flesh
of God. My sin infested hands with nails,
Contaminated love itself with death.
But my infecting soul could only live
in Him. Survival meant I must mutate
into a strain of self less virulent,
that doesn’t eat or fuck or rage or sleep
or hope for anything other than Him,
or feel things besides shame, or love
herself.

I’d hide like herpes simplex in my God,
and scarcely bother him. It didn’t work.
“Can you not wait and watch an hour with me?”
I tried. I can’t. I’m human. I need sleep.
My fast fails, so I vomit, so my flesh
Insists on more. I slash my arms
to drive away my rage at you, the pain
only brings further rage. I’m hollowed out,
an animated corpse. Saints you run dry
Have tired and lifeless eyes but sparkling souls.
My soul is still a fetid mass of slime,
but my dark-circled eyes stare out
from a sick-looking face. I start to ask,
who is infecting whom? Why do the hands
that flung stars into space require a girl
an unimportant girl, to tear herself
to pieces pleasing him? I realized
I’m not the virus. You are. I’m the host.
I cast the angels out and heal myself.

But now the world’s more broken than before
(And it was always broken, always cruel,
Always riddled with plagues, always unjust,
Always oppressive, always full of pain,
Always on fire, but it burns brighter now.)
Temptation whispers “Re-infect yourself
with Me. There is no joy or peace on earth,
Only on the other side of the grave.
Give up on earthly good: nothing is good
but God alone. Abandon all your hope.
See all the kingdoms of the aching world!
Watch how they writhe around in agony
All this pain I will take away from you
If you simply bow down and worship me!”
Into your hands, Lord, I refuse to give
My spirit. I don’t trust omnipotence
To save me or my neighbor. Though I have
Almost no power, still the power I have,
I use for love, including for myself.
I worship life in spite of everything.
I say the world to come can fuck itself.
This one, imperfect, finite though it is
I will protect in any way I can.
Like Pilate before Christ, I wash my hands.

Tags:

#poetry #Christianity #covid19 #illness tw #unsanitary cw #self harm cw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #(I might be reading too much into it but #–knowing that the author moved from Britain to America– #I feel like there might be some layers of meaning in the fact that ”neighbor” is spelled without a ”u” here) #(something about chosen homes)