Public goods

Should be owned publicly

A standard retort against government-run industries is that they will be less efficient than privately owned industries, provide worse service, produce a miserable experience for you, the consumer. Bullshit. For one thing, private companies do an excellent job of providing a miserable experience for the highest possible price already. 

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common assumption that public systems are naturally shittier than private ones. That is an observation of current reality masquerading as a principle. Yeah, the public systems in America are often shittier, because we allow all the rich people to opt out of them and use private systems and then the public systems are left exclusively for the poor. Make everyone use the public system, and the public system will get better. Duh.

Related, Cory Doctorow on “enshittification”

pluralistic

What the fuck happened to the old, good internet?

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Google Search used to work. Facebook used to show you posts from people you followed. Uber used to be cheaper than a taxi and pay the driver more than a cabbie made. Amazon used to sell products, not Shein-grade self-destructing dropshipped garbage from all-consonant brands. Apple used to defend your privacy, rather than spying on you with your no-modifications-allowed Iphone.

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Here’s what enshittification looks like from the outside: First, you see a company that’s being good to its end users. Google puts the best search results at the top; Facebook shows you a feed of posts from people and groups you followl; Uber charges small dollars for a cab; Amazon subsidizes goods and returns and shipping and puts the best match for your product search at the top of the page.

That’s stage one, being good to end users. But there’s another part of this stage, call it stage 1a). That’s figuring out how to lock in those users.

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you’re stuck, because even though FB use comes at a high cost – your privacy, your dignity and your sanity – that’s still less than the switching cost you’d have to bear if you left: namely, all those friends who have taken you hostage, and whom you are holding hostage

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sometimes companies lock you in with money, like Amazon getting you to prepay for a year’s shipping with Prime

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Getting you locked in completes phase one of the enshittification cycle and signals the start of phase two: making things worse for you to make things better for business customers.

Cory Doctorow on “enshittification”Cory Doctorow on “enshittification”

COVID preparedness

Some current recommendations

DIY encrypted communication

LoRa and Reticulum

State capture to fascism

Some examples

“State capture is usually discussed in the context of international politics and countries with threatened democracies. Scholar Elizabeth Dávid-Barrett defines it as “a type of systematic corruption whereby narrow interest groups take control of the institutions and processes through which public policy is made, directing public policy away from the public interest and instead shaping it to serve their own interests.”

Right-wing state capture is increasingly a threat within U.S. states, which are systematically being taken over by Christian right leaders and their corporate and wealthy supporters through a combination of gerrymandering, voter suppression, organized and coordinated propaganda, and privatization. Public institutions that often serve as venues for free debate and social change — such as libraries and universities — are under aggressive attack.“

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In other words, we’re talking about controlling the behavior of the state at the root level, in order to create a specific type of society (in this case, a fascist society) and desired policy outcomes, regardless of what the people in that society or their elected leaders support. Which is of course totally consistent with how fascism, a top-down primarily*legalist* system of anti-democratic control functions; if you’re an American in particular, you’ve already seen this concept in action across a broad number of purportedly “non-political” instruments in your society – the courts, school boards, election officials, and so forth.

COVID information

How to find out what we need to know

The pandemic isn’t over. Why is it so hard to find accurate information about it?
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The basic facts about COVID have not evolved that much: It is a highly contagious airborne disease, tight-fitting masks are effective, regular vaccinations are helpful in avoiding more serious illness, and isolation (some experts insist longer than five days) is warranted to avoid getting other people sick. It can cause death and long-term or permanent disability.
What has changed in the last four years is that it has become harder and harder for people to remain clear on this information and to put these basic guidelines into practice. The information about the risks of COVID and how to avoid them has gone from being mainstream advice to countercultural information that people have to search out. In this information-poor environment, the risks to disabled people, to those who work directly with the public (disproportionately BIPOC people) and anyone else with an increased COVID risk level are dramatically increased.
It is also now much harder to put this information into practice as government and institutional support for COVID safety practices has all but evaporated. Tools that were used earlier in the pandemic like free testing, masks and vaccines, have almost all been phased out, often shifting the financial burden for these to individual patients.
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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.

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COVID meta studies

On mask bans

8 reasons arguing against mask bans

“Health mask” vs face covering / ID concealing masks

eight theses to sort the various claims swirling around the debates for each legislative effort

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Masks exist on a spectrum from (a) cloth masks, to (b) surgical masks (“Baggy Blues”), (c) respirators (KN94s, N95s), (d) elastomerics, (e) full-on Darth Vader masks, and (f) various head-dresses like gaiters, keffiyeh, hijabs, ski masks, Venetian carnival masks (and even KKK hoods). It would surely be possible for regulators to distinguish the range (b) – (e), which are both clearly recognizable and manufactured for health purposes, from the others, which are not; but this seems never to be done.

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Health Masks Work to Protect Against Respiratory Particles like Viruses. See the literature: “Effectiveness of face masks for reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2: a rapid systematic review” (2023), and Greenhalgh et alia’s magisterial “Masks and respirators for prevention of respiratory infections: a state of the science review.”

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health masks are less effective [at concealing identity] than sunglasses, which are not banned 

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What can we do?

Here is a letter writing campaign, and a toolkit. 

Public health

Not “ you do you “

COVID minimization is moving the mindset away from public good

This propagandist narrative aimed to achieve, not just a practical outcome, but a philosophical, political victory. It aimed to individualize a collective good that has been entrenched as a basic human right in rich societies for at least a century. It aimed to reframe disease control as something that should be a choice for each person, rather than a publicly funded collective effort.

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There are layers to how incorrect this talking point, known as “immunity debt”, is. Firstly, your immune system doesn’t need to encounter viruses to get stronger. Pathogenic microbes do not strengthen your immune system. That’s why, instead of giving kids cholera on purpose, we clean the water. Secondly, wearing a mask or doing other forms of disease mitigation does not damage your immune system. Prominent outlets, critical of Trump at the beginning of COVID, we quick to debunk this lie back in 2020. Now they promote it. 

Worth mentioning that “immunity debt” is a spinoff of the “hygiene hypothesis,” which states that the body needs to encounter beneficial bacteria. It was never intended to encompass pathogenic microbes or viruses. Anti-vaxxers were the first to push the idea that getting sick is healthy for children. Now liberals incorrectly believe it.

What does damage your immune system is COVID infection.