I hate them all, Worst case pandemic scenarios, Criminalizing masks is wrong, and more

Bonus Alberta limiting free Covid vaccines is the canary in a coal mine

Jun 20, 2025

angry face illustration — Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash

Welcome to the latest issue of the Covid-Is-Not-Over newsletter! This will be the last issue of the spring season as we head into a bit of a summer break. There will still be “Summer Bonus” issues most weeks for the next six weeks or so until we resume a regular publishing schedule towards the second half of the summer. The Summer Bonus issues will be thematic collections of links that I wasn’t able to use during the last six months to a year.

My favourite WTF from the last few weeks is how Meta and Google think Cape Breton has its own time zone. LOLAI.

WTF summer razor blade throat wave as usual: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17.

Not to mention the WTF canary in the coal mine of the week. It seems that Danielle Smith’s Alberta will be severely restricting the availability of free Covid vaccines for Albertans. Ostensibly because of “cost” and “waste,” it’s really a symptom of how public health organizations really want Covid to fade in the background while at the same time undermining the foundations of public health programs in general, starting with vaccines. Trump’s USA is leading the way, but there’s a foothold in Canada too. At the end of the main list of excerpted articles, I’ve collected a representative selection of the reporting around what’s going on in Alberta.

On that cheery note, have a great summer everyone.

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I hate them all: A case study in denial / M (is) Living with Long Covid

What I specifically want to explore today is how this human - who happens to be a scientist with a doctorate - is just as susceptible to the minimization of COVID and disability as anyone in this country. Like most people in this country. Despite his credentials, despite the high-quality available evidence, despite his daughter who was disabled by Covid, despite her Covid consciousness and near universal masking.
He’s the kind of person that will not ever believe that he could become disabled. It took me a whole year to convince him that my Long Covid (and associated ME/CFS) was real and that I wasn’t “faking it.” He’s the kind of person that just wants to “live his life” and move on because “Covid is mild now” and last time, “he hardly got sick.”

The Worst Case Scenario: Engineering the Conditions for the Next Pandemic / Pandemic Accountability Index

Much of the reason behind conservatives, anti-vaxxers, and other useless contrarians insistence that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab is because the most likely origin for the pandemic was due to unsafe livestock handling practies in a Wuhan "wet market," in which animals urinate and defecate all over one another in close proximity, passing germs and viruses back and forth like a foosball table. This demands greater government regulation of the agricultural industry, something that "free market" libertarian thinking is very much against - even as it gets Americans killed with outbreaks such as listeria. While it may be years before H5N1 (bird flu) evolves into a human-to-human transmitted virus, obscene proposals such as a "Great Birdington Declaration," endorsing the consumption of unpasteurized milk, and importing infected ostriches would only advance this timeline.
Part of the core mission of public health is preventing disease outbreaks, and halting the engineering of conditions that could trigger the next pandemic or harm Americans' health in other ways. This is an inherently political project, as public health is forced to butt heads against wealthy interests who are happy to sacrifice the lives of working Americans in exchange for short-term revenue growth. This is precisely why you saw so much money being burned on astroturfing contrarian quacks like Jay Bhattacharya or Vinay Prasad - and now with the help of the Trump Administration, these same wealthy interests are being giving free reign to light the match on a new disaster.

Criminalizing Masks at Protests is Wrong by Matthew Guariglia and Adam Schwartz / Electronic Frontier Foundation

There has been a crescendo of states attempting to criminalize the wearing of face coverings while attending protests. Now the President has demanded, in the context of ongoing protests in Los Angeles: “ARREST THE PEOPLE IN FACE MASKS, NOW!”
But the truth is: whether you are afraid of catching an airborne illness from your fellow protestors, or you are concerned about reprisals from police or others for expressing your political opinions in public, you should have the right to wear a mask. Attempts to criminalize masks at protests fly in the face of a right to privacy.

New data show COVID-19 triggers spike in new diabetes cases by Tarun Sai Lomte / News Medical

A recent study posted to the medRxiv preprint* server reported that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) increases the rate of incident diabetes mellitus (DM). Most COVID-19 cases have not been fatal worldwide, albeit many involved symptomatic illness, hospitalization, and significant comorbidity.
The long-term effects of COVID-19 are poorly understood. Long COVID refers to a diverse range of conditions and symptoms lingering for over three months after acute COVID-19. Studies suggest an increase in the incidence of chronic conditions post-COVID-19, including neurological and cardiovascular conditions and DM.

Long COVID is Now the Number One Chronic Illness in Children by Julia Doubleday / The Gauntlet

So many children are getting Long COVID because COVID causes Long COVID, and children are not “immune” to COVID, they are not becoming healthier with each infection, and the adults around them are doing nothing to mitigate the virus.
Newsweek’s piece relates the shocking findings of a new RECOVER study: that up to 5.8 million American children now have Long COVID, making it the most common chronic illness affecting children. However, this fact is not treated with any urgency by Newsweek, nor is the current approach to COVID- do literally nothing- questioned as the proper one. …
But, as always, Newsweek ignores prevention as a lost cause, never even touching on the reality that airborne viruses spread more easily in poorly ventilated classrooms, or that high-quality HEPA filtration could help bring down transmission, or that socially normalizing measures like masking and testing would mitigate the onslaught of infections in children. We’ve known for years that new Far-UVC lamps can reduce the level of indoor microbes by 98% in under 5 minutes- yet the public hasn’t even heard of the technology, much less have we discussed introducing it into classrooms.

20 Signs You’re "Still Coviding" in the Friction Economy by Rebekah Elentiya / Hearts on the Horizon

Welcome to the Friction Economy — a term Kyla Scanlon uses to describe the invisible cost of navigating broken systems. It’s what happens when the world around you becomes increasingly seamless and virtual, while your real life — the life of caregiving, boundary-holding, and risk-managing — is full of invisible labor and resistance, especially when you’re Still Coviding. …
-If you carry social friction like a second immune system — because anticipating discomfort, pushback, or rejection is now part of staying safe — you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
-If you get ghosted by institutions — because most schools, clinics, workplaces, and faith spaces vanish the moment you ask for clean air — you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.

Study suggests kids with severe COVID-19 have lasting metabolic changes by Stephanie Soucheray / CIDRAP

In a press release from Murdoch University, researchers said the findings add to a growing body of literature on long-term health outcomes for children with COVID-19.
“This research challenges the widespread assumption that children are largely unaffected by COVID-19 based on the relatively mild respiratory effects. However, a minority of children experience a more severe immunologically driven form of the disease (MIS-C) that is associated with longer term GI effects and cardiovascular disease," said lead researcher Jeremy Nicholson, PhD, the director of the Australian National Phenome Centre at Murdoch University.

Poor sleep and long COVID linked in UK study by Stephanie Soucheray / CIDRAP

Having a history of poor sleep quality prior to COVID-19 infection may increase the likelihood of developing post-COVID condition, or long COVID, according to data from the COVIDENCE UK study recently published in BLJ Open Respiratory Research.

How Wildfires Might Increase Risk Of Flu, COVID-19 by Dennis Thompson / US News

Sky-choking wildfire smoke tends to drive people indoors, and infectious diseases are more likely to spread among those packed into enclosed spaces, researchers reported today in the journal PLOS Climate.
“Our findings show that wildfires led to a dramatic increase in indoor activities, creating the ideal conditions for respiratory diseases such as influenza to spread,” wrote the research team led by senior researcher Giulia Pullano, a postdoctoral fellow in epidemiology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
“But by incorporating simple measures like indoor mask-wearing, we can reduce this risk,” the team added.

Disability Activists Bring Wisdom From the Pandemic to New Struggles Under Trump by Mara Mills , Harris Kornstein / Truthout

Disabled people hold immense expertise in navigating both chronic illnesses and moments of crisis. And yet, despite all the public reflections on “lessons learned” at the five-year anniversary of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic — from which hundreds of people in the U.S. are still dying each week — disabled people find themselves under increasing attack by the Trump administration.
Government rhetoric about disability, from White House policy memoranda to social media posts, dehumanizes disabled communities, characterizing people as “burdens” and “threats” to the nation, and prompting new fears about institutionalization. Perhaps most urgently, Medicaid, Social Security and Section 504 accommodations — and possibly even the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act — are at serious risk of defunding and dismantling, among other fragile elements of the social safety net.

Alberta Charging for Covid Vaccines -- A Very Bad Idea & Canary in the Coal Mine

Youn Sun Nah. Hallelujah.

Broadwaybabyto

That angry yellow square face man is exactly how I feel about criminalizing masks.

I’m enraged seeing ICE cover their entire face with gators while people have to fight for the right to wear literal PPE

I hate that they’ve eliminated NIOSH and are restricting vaccines.

More and more it just feels like a policy of forced infection, and that will never be ok.

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