chamerionwrites: I know everyone is just trying to keep themselves safe and sane right now. And I...

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chamerionwrites:

I know everyone is just trying to keep themselves safe and sane right now. And I know that when you bring up grim subjects in this sort of scenario, people often respond with anger - like, I barely have enough spoons to look after myself right now, don’t ask me to spread my emotional energy any thinner. Often I think that response is misguided but I also think it’s very human and understandable, and I promise my intent here is not to make anyone more anxious than they already are. But as a professional anxiety-haver, I find it’s inertia and uncertainty and helplessness that hit me worst. And it’s being able to take some kind of action - even a small one - that quiets down that part of my brain that gets caught in a frantic loop of wanting to fight or flee and being unable to do either because the problem is too big or too abstract.

That’s a long intro to say that while you’re trying to hunker down as best as you can, spare a thought for the immigrants and asylum seekers crammed into detention centers that are far from healthy or safe at the best of times. Spare a thought for their mental health, for the fact that all the little self-soothing distractions we’re all engaging in - walking, baking, gardening, reading - are not available to them. Donate to Never Again Action or Movimiento Cosecha or the NIJC or another organization working to free people from detention. If you can’t donate but have wanted to get involved in activism, now is as good a time as any to get in touch. Look after your neighbors. Look after your friends and family. And don’t let this moment pass without pointing out what’s blindingly obvious right now: we are all in this together. Borders are nothing but lines on a map. You are only as healthy as the most vulnerable person in your community, only as safe and free as the most vulnerable people in the world. Society comes to a screeching halt without the people who grow and tend and pick and stock your food. And a lot of things that we’re constantly being told are impossible aren’t.

I know the world is a lot right now. I also think we can change it.

romyjones: Inspired by a post by @okayhotshot on

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romyjones:

Inspired by a post by okayhotshot on Twitter

You can also follow me: on Twitter and Instagram

(If you’re going to repost this comic please just make sure to credit me, thank you)

yeoldenews: A sincere request from someone who has spent her entire adult life wishing people had...

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yeoldenews:

A sincere request from someone who has spent her entire adult life wishing people had kept better records…

In the coming weeks and months… RECORD WHAT IS HAPPENING.

Start a journal, take photos, keep a video diary, make a daily blog post, jot a few notes down in a day planner, whatever!

It is not very often that you can be certain that you’re living in a time that historians will study in detail.

The nightly news can tell us the facts, twitter can tell us the larger cultural trends, but no one can keep an accurate record of your daily life and honest thoughts during this crisis but you.

Are you scared to death? Write it down.

Are you still thinking this is being blown out of proportion? Write it down.

Are you still being forced to work and are pissed as hell about it? Write it down.

Did you see someone do something kind that made you smile? Write it down.

Is your grocery store completely out of toilet paper? Take a picture.

Is your normally bustling neighborhood eerily empty? Take a video.

Did you see a really funny plague joke on twitter? Write it down so you/your grandkids and/or future historians can have a laugh.

I have never successfully kept a journal in my entire life, but I’ve been keeping one since the 10th. Nothing fancy. Just a summary of my day in quarantine, what my family’s up to, today’s news and my current thoughts.

Even if it’s only for you to look back on this time honestly, without the bias of hindsight, you won’t regret doing it.

Future historians will thank you.

_________
I’m going to do this today– I’m going to dig out my failed bullet journal and go back and piece together what we’ve been up to and what my family’s doing and reference the county health department’s Twitter and such, and put together a coherent record if I can. Most of what I’m directly doing is boring, but I think my timeline will be interesting to reference later.

I’m envisioning in about thirty, forty years or so one of my sisters’ grandkids having a project and Great-Aunt B being able to swoop in with my Plague Journal primary source, LOL. 

fuck

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I’m just gonna put this entirely useless medical freakout under a cut because it is about an irrelevant skin infection and is also gross. no pictures though, we’re fine there. (it is basically a zit, but, I have Trauma here.)

sighhhh i had a lil MRSA infection on one finger like TEN Years ago and today I have a little weird blister RIGHT NEXT TO THE SCAR and i can’t stop freaking out because like am i going to go to urgent care for what is essentially a zit?? but if it’s mrsa it will eat me. AUGH.

fun note: the previous experience with MRSA is what made me develop/discover my sulfa allergy. why yes, i had full-body hives, it was so great! 

well at this point it is just a very slightly swollen red area that’s sensitive, so I guess I will just monitor it. It began the exact same way, too– too much time with wet hands from doing dishes and washing hands gave me a tiny eczema flare and blistered the skin and then one of those tiny blisters between my fingers got infected! Maybe if I cover it in neosporin and put a band-aid on it’ll go away??? 

HILARIOUS that an extended era of over-strenuous handwashing in a time of paranoia about microbes should have set me up for this, but it just goes to show you that bacteria have no time for your shit. TAKE CARE OF THE SKIN OF YOUR HANDS, my friends. Take CARE of it. Your skin is a really really really important barrier. 

I suppose I am glad that the finger I tore a hunk out of with a serrated bread knife two weeks ago is on the same hand but apparently impervious to bacteria, because if that enormous gouge had gotten infected I’d probably be dead by now. It’s nicely closed-up, and will be a permanent scar– it healed with a divot because I really tore actual flesh out of there that’s gone now– but it’s closed, and that’s what I care about. 

fic update: little fishie

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This is still not the end, but. I was inspired– someone messaged me on Tumblr, and asked to remain anonymous, but told me that in gratitude for the solace they’d taken in reading fic on AO3 during the last few weeks they’ve been stuck in isolation, they’d made a donation to their local food bank. And I thought, heck, I need to acknowledge that! So, it got me to really focus on working on this chapter, and when I realized it was getting too long to wrap up, to figure out how to split it.

So, this is the first half, ish, of the resolution, and it’s got none of the fun excerpts I’ve been teasing with, but it contains some great character moments and the presence of an entire beloved character I have not yet let on about in this whole story, so– I promise it’s good and worth it.

And I’d like to encourage you– if you’re secure, try to help someone who isn’t, with money or goods donations or whatever, and if you’re not, try to write to your reps or something. And if you’re in danger, working an ‘essential’ job or imprisoned by capitalism, I love you and I’m sorry and tell the rest of us how we can help. We can make a better world, or can hope for one at least, or even just pay attention to what’s happening so we know what to get mad about when there’s time for it. Anyway, that was incoherent, but heartfelt, cut me some slack LOL. 

(Heck, one way you could help is by researching one of the many issues currently besetting us and making a more coherent post with links to ways to help and such. I am… currently not up to it.) (if you are not up to it either I understand. this is hard. this is hard for everybody.)

So here’s chapter 6: Swallow, thanks to an anonymous benefactor.

Jaskier set the cup down and slouched as he sat. “So,” he said, “you’re an asshole.”

“Mm,” Geralt agreed. “Why, now, though?”

“They dropped you off when I was mostly delirious,” Jaskier said, “so I’m not sure, but there was all this to-do where you’d apparently told the cavalry captain some answer to some riddle for me, but he wasn’t allowed to tell me until I survived this plague? So there’s been all kinds of shenanigans with him writing it down and giving it to the healer, and she’s all smug about this, and it’s a whole thing. What possible riddle could you be answering, and why of all things is that what you told them before collapsing, nigh unto death?”

“Oh,” Geralt said. It was all rather hazy, but he did remember the conversation that must have preceded that. “Oh, yes, I was. I was dying. And they wanted to know. If there was anything. I needed to tell. Anybody.” Breathing was still really hard. “Mm, talking is hard.”

“No,” Jaskier said, “you’re not weaseling out of this!”

“Have you ever,” Geralt said slowly, a bit vaguely, “tasted the inside, of your own lung?” He tipped his head back to get a better angle for his airway so he could breathe with a little less resistance. “‘Sgross.”

truebluemeandyou: How to Make a Face Mask for Hospitals and...

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truebluemeandyou:

How to Make a Face Mask for Hospitals and Medical Centers

Hospitals and medical centers across the country are asking sewers to make face masks to protect out health workers. You can google “how to sew face masks for hospitals” to find out where fabric masks are being requested.

Stillwater Medical Center is asking sewers to follow the face mask pattern from buttoncounter.com here.

From Deaconess Health System:

EVANSVILLE, Ind. — Citing shortages, Deaconess Health System, including Henderson’s Methodist Health, has asked the public to sew face masks for staff fighting coronavirus.

“This does follow CDC protocols that you can find on their website that if all other supplies are not available, that handmade masks that meet certain criteria are acceptable,” Deaconess spokeswoman Becca Scott said.

The release with the video, pattern and instructions was posted to the Deaconess Facebook page Thursday morning and is available at www.deaconess.com/masks. A PDF of the pattern is available here and embedded at the bottom of this article.  

Deaconess has “a sample video” about how to make the masks, which Scott said will be sterilized when they come in.

From Forbes here:

Additional Resources for Open Source or Volunteer COVID-19 Projects:

One of my favorite how-to sites is Instructables. The DIY Cloth Face Mask has almost 100,000 views. It is a step-by-step instruction for those who need it. Kudos to ashevillejm.

In 2006, CDC released a Simple Respiratory Mask design using heavyweight t-shirts in its Emerging Infectious Diseases journal. More of an academic post, but some ideas in it.

A Facebook group was formed last week: Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies. It is worth a visit — in just a few short days there are 20,000-plus members and volunteers.

If you are looking for some research and street-level testing of various materials for DIY mask-making, this post from Smart Air Filters is exceptional: What Are The Best Materials for Making DIY Masks? It also includes a few great links at the end of it.

Listen. I’m going to do this, but with the absolute caveat that: these are NOT REPLACEMENTS FOR N95s. These are NOT. They are replacements for the lower grade of masks, surgical masks, which are used in conjunction with other protection during less-infectious procedures. We still need N95s and these are NOT them.

But. I am going to make them for civilian use. In an out-and-about setting, they are useful at reducing your risk of being contagious, and lowering your risk of contracting disease. They are not foolproof, you should look up how to safely use them, you should have at least three of them per person in your family, and their main feature is that they are better than nothing.

I’m seeing popular posts as if our home sewists are going to somehow step in and solve the problems our government is refusing to by making these in somehow-huge numbers for hospitals. They are not. There are going to be thousands of these that just get thrown out. But they are BETTER THAN NOTHING, a frantic stopgap measure.

And they’re far, far better for your home use than trying to source or steal or whatever the precious N95s that medical professionals actually need. I’m going to make a set of three for everyone I know, for home use, so that they are better protected than they would be with nothing– but I know, they’re only better than nothing. They’re not really suited for medical use.

And sure, if the local hospitals ask for them, I’ll make more, for them. But know: this doesn’t solve the systemic horrifying issues facing our medical system.