Condenados a muerte por Covid | Katie Tastrom

El Estado utiliza las enfermedades contagiosas como parte informal del castigo del encarcelamiento.
Katie Tastrom es una activista anticapacitista que ha trabajado como abogada, trabajadora social y trabajadora sexual. Su trabajo ha sido publicado en las antologías Burn It Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution y Nourishing Resistance: Stories of Food, Protest, and Mutual Aid, así como en numerosos medios de comunicación, entre ellos Truthout, Rewire y Rooted in Rights. El siguiente es un extracto de su primer libro, A People's Guide to Abolition and Disability Justice, publicado en mayo de 2024 por PM Press.

https://autodefesasanitaria.substack.com/p/condenados-a-muerte-por-covid-katie

El 10 de abril de 2024 se cumplirá un año desde que el presidente Joe Biden firmó una resolución del Congreso que pone fin oficialmente a la "emergencia de salud pública" del COVID-19. La semana anterior a esta decisión, más de mil personas habían muerto a causa del virus en Estados Unidos.
Declaraciones como la de Joe Biden no solo son retóricamente falsas, sino que tienen efectos negativos concretos. El fin oficial de la "emergencia de salud pública" ha llevado al fin de muchas medidas sanitarias implementadas para proteger a la población del COVID. Por ejemplo, Medicare, un seguro de salud público que tienen muchas personas con discapacidades, ha dejado de cubrir las pruebas caseras gratuitas y las pruebas PCR. Si bien algunos planes de seguro de salud aún cubren las pruebas, muchas personas sin seguro ya no tendrán acceso a pruebas gratuitas.
Hay tantas medidas, grandes y pequeñas, que podrían haberse implementado antes y después del comienzo de COVID para que la pandemia sea menos mortal. El gobierno podría haber mejorado la comunicación y la educación en materia de salud, haber priorizado las medidas para proteger a los vulnerables, proporcionar ingresos para que pudieran quedarse en casa y haber evitado la aplicación de las patentes farmacéuticas.

No llegamos a donde estamos por casualidad. El COVID no estaba destinado a convertirse en endémico, y decisiones como esta, que tienen como objetivo poner fin a la emergencia sanitaria, tendrán el efecto de aumentar la enfermedad y la mortalidad de los más vulnerables. Una de las principales razones por las que el COVID se ha vuelto tan mortal se debe a las decisiones políticas que ven a las personas marginadas con discapacidad como sacrificios aceptables para el capitalismo. Esta perspectiva se refleja -y se amplifica- en el sistema penitenciario estadounidense.

El COVID y las prisiones
La discapacidad y el encarcelamiento están estrechamente vinculados, y a lo largo del libro, discuto cómo el sistema penitenciario utiliza la discapacidad como pretexto para tomar el control de las vidas no solo de las personas con discapacidades, sino también de las personas indígenas, negras, morenas, queer, transgénero y pobres, siendo siempre las multimarginadas las más atacadas. Una de las razones por las que la pandemia ha sido particularmente devastadora en las prisiones es que la mayoría de las personas encarceladas son discapacitadas, lo que las pone en mayor riesgo de morir o sufrir una enfermedad permanente por COVID si la contraen.
La respuesta del gobierno de Estados Unidos al COVID-19 fue predecible y demencial. La pandemia ha dejado al descubierto cómo las políticas sanitarias afectan a todo lo demás, y las muertes por COVID no se han sentido por igual en todas las comunidades. Después de ajustar por edad, las comunidades indígenas, latinas, de las islas del Pacífico y negras experimentaron tasas de mortalidad por COVID significativamente más altas que las comunidades blancas y asiáticas. Tampoco es coincidencia que las poblaciones con mayor riesgo de encarcelamiento sean las mismas que tienen más probabilidades de morir de COVID: las personas con discapacidades de color. Es el resultado de decisiones y políticas que simultáneamente abandonan y vigilan a las personas con discapacidad.

#CovidPersistente #LlevaMascarilla #RealistaCovid #AutoDefensaSanitaria #CovidSonAerosoles #birdflu #gripeaviar

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid

@beadsland the Boston public schools showed that even with the ventilation the schools that dropped masks had to arise in infections.

The Death Panel Pod talked about this extensively. There was tons of data that came out of Boston Public Schools because they had a fantastic ventilation system with monitoring that would allow you to look at individual classrooms and see the measurements hourly if not live (some of the schools had more sensors than others).

Masks work. I know people don’t like them, and yeah it would be great if we could clean the air everywhere for all kinds of reasons. I get terrible seasonal allergies, but I can’t imagine how much worse it would be if I was all allergic to things that people brought into rooms that I had to sit in all day. Ventilation would help with that.

My PCP‘s office set up a huge half a filter with ductwork that went throughout the building. When Biden told everyone to throw away their masks because vaccines would save us for some reason my doctors office decided to dismantle the ventilation system. It was ridiculous they took the time and spent the money to set it up, leaving it running cost nothing but the electricity to run it. But we couldn’t acknowledge Biden didn’t end Covid. That would make us Trump supporters I guess.

Someone I love very much just had her for Covid in May. Not only did she have to wear a heart monitor recently because she’s not ok, she went to the ER yesterday and had some blood work. Today when I said something about “airborne AIDS” she replied with this text below.

Vaxx and relax killed my dad and it has now maimed my friend. We’re not going to get ventilation and we’re not going to get vaccines that work.

We’re also not going to get people to stay home when they’re sick so let’s stop demonizing masks, the thing that actually prevents infections.

#WearAMask

When COVID Eugenics Killed My Grandmother
Honoring the martyrs of this eugenics means not allowing ourselves to forget.
https://camaradademian.substack.com/p/when-covid-eugenics-killed-my-grandmother

June is one of the months when I think most about my grandmother, along with March, when the state of emergency was declared. In general, any COVID-related anniversary brings her to mind.

My grandmother had psychiatric issues since at least her thirties. Poverty and raising five daughters in a patriarchal world pushed her into madness. Her daughters were afraid of her. She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She also had epileptic seizures that left her unresponsive. Around 2010, she had breast cancer. She was a mother whose work for her daughters was hardly ever appreciated (and this isn’t about her personally—domestic and care work, in general, is undervalued and taken for granted).

My mother always tells me an anecdote from when she was about 20. One of her sisters said their mother didn’t clean the cutlery properly. “Mom is exhausted,” was how my mother defended her.

Domestic work and the prison of motherhood also consumed my mother. Slowly, she’s managed to begin freeing herself from that, but not many women manage to.

At the end of June, it’s my grandmother’s birthday. For several years she had been living with my aunt in a rented apartment in southern Italy. They barely went outside because my grandmother didn’t want to, and my aunt didn’t want to pressure her. My aunt received no recognition or gratitude for all the care work she did for my grandmother; instead, the men in the family labeled her as crazy too. A madness that, like all madness, is social and tied to context. The criticisms of my aunt’s “madness” always came from men who weren’t even family—just the partners of family members.

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid

How to make an Aura mask MRI safe:
- carefully cut open top layer above aluminium strip and pry filter medium off
- insert 3d printed plastic replacement
- pull top layer filter medium back over it and sew close
- alternatively a strip of medic tape works similarly well
- remove staples and existing straps
- sew a couple of cloth bungee straps on instead
- enjoy more comfortable and better fit

I've also managed to pry the metal strip loose using long tweezers trough a smaller cut on both ends and remove it, which allows the plastic clip to be threaded in from the side and removes the need to sew close the long cut, but it's quite fiddly and easy to rip the thin top layer. #wearAMask #CovidIsNotOver #CleanAir #maskUp

"Just because I wear a mask doesn't mean I'm locked in my house" is an ableist argument
let's not fall into ableism

https://camaradademian.substack.com/p/just-because-i-wear-a-mask-doesnt

From time to time, there are trends on social media from people who call themselves COVID-conscious. A few months ago, one of the trends was showing everything you could do while wearing a mask. This, in principle, isn't a bad thing, but the problem is that the narrative and the phrases being used were that y"ou don't live in a cave when you wear a mask".

These kinds of phrases and trends erase those of us disabled who are forced to stay home, either because we are too disabled to go out, because we know we can't afford infections, or in general because of the inaccessibility of not wearing masks in public spaces.

In all communities and all movements, there are revolutionary and reactionary lines. There are people who call themselves COVID-conscious but have lack an anti-capitalist analysis of eugenics. And coincidentally, they are often the same people who don't focus on disability justice (they often simply name it but don't practice it). It could also be that a person simply made a mistake and fell into liberalism. Just as we know we're not immune to COVID, we're not immune to propaganda in general.

I have Crohn's disease, and since the beginning of the pandemic, I could do many things in my life. In 2023, I started to consider setting limits because I was seeing that so many people were not wearing masks anymore and I was trying to find the words to really figure out what I wanted to do. In May 2024, I had a symptomatic COVID infection that caused me to develop dysautonomia and that really disables me (even more).

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice

"llevar mascarilla no significa que no salga de mi casa" no es el buen argumento que se cree que es
no caigamos en capacitismo

https://camaradademian.substack.com/p/llevar-mascarilla-no-significa-que

de vez en cuando hay tendencias en redes sociales de personas que se autodenominan conscientes del COVID (Covid conscious en inglés), hace unos meses una de las tendencias era enseñar todo lo que se podía hacer mientras se llevaba mascarilla. esto en principio no tiene nada de malo pero la problemática es que la narrativa y las frases que se ponían era que no vives en una cueva cuando usas mascarilla.

esta clase de frases y de tendencias lo que hacen es borrar a los discapacitados que nos vemos obligados a no salir de nuestras casas ya sea porque somos demasiado discapacitados para poder salir, porque sabemos que no nos podemos permitir infecciones o en general por la inaccesibilidad de que no se utilicen mascarillas en espacios públicos.

en todas las comunidades y en todos los movimientos hay líneas revolucionarias y reaccionarias, hay personas que se autodenominan consciente del covid pero que tienen una falta de análisis anticapitalista sobre la normalización, y casualmente suelen ser las mismas personas que no centran en la justicia discapacitada (porque muchas veces simplemente la nombran pero no la practican). también puede pasar que simplemente una persona cometió un error y cae en el liberalismo, igual que sabemos que no somos inmunes al covid tampoco lo somos a la propaganda en general.

tengo Crohn y desde el comienzo de la pandemia he podido hacer vida dentro de lo posible. en 2023 empecé a plantearme poner límites porque estaba viendo que hay muchísimas personas dejaban utilizar mascarilla y estaba intentando encontrar las palabras y los análisis para poder ver realmente qué quería hacer.

#CovidPersistente #LlevaMascarilla #RealistaCovid #AutoDefensaSanitaria #CovidSonAerosoles #birdflu #gripeaviar

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid

@BenjaminHCCarr One more reason (as if #COVID wasn't enough) to wear an #N95 or similar. I never venture into an airport without one. #WearAMask

Caveats that ICE face coverings are not 'masks' in the sense of respirators/ respiratory protection, and that respirators actually do not prevent facial ID, still kudos to the folks in Nassau County wearing respirators to their protest and to MJ for reporting.

#WearAMask #MaskUp #NoKIngs

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/06/defying-a-ban-long-islanders-masked-up-for-no-kings/

Normalize empathy and solidarity!

#WearAMask #AltText #NoAI #NoSUVs #AntiDiscriminatoryLanguage #DataPrivacy #antifa #QueerPride #BLM

just found out blox n95s have been discontinued :((((
going to need to find an alternative, what are everyone's favorite duckbill n95s (that aren't 3m aura) ?
#CovidIsNotOver #WearAMask #n95

This is why disabled people have been begging you to mask up for years.

This is why we’ve said that mask bans pose a threat to our survival.

This is why we don’t want folks to say ICE agents are “wearing masks”.

Society is being conditioned to see masking as “bad”.

It will kill us.

For more on mask bans, my article from last year when North Carolina passed a state wide ban:

https://www.disabledginger.com/p/north-carolina-passes-hb-237-and

#uspol #fascism #nokings #wearamask #ableism #eugenics #maskbans #abolishice

Dear activists, who are you willing to lose?

The protester

The protester developed Long CVD after an infection at her favorite restaurant. Now she has ME/CFS which comes with debilitating fatigue. Her symptoms worsen significantly after physical, mental, and emotional activity. She can no longer attend protests.

The community organizer

The community organizer developed Long CVD after an infection from a dance party.

They have dealt with mental health struggles their entire life. But LC has worsened their depression symptoms and they no longer organize events or actions. They were one of the few people in town doing this.

The zine maker

The zine maker developed Long CVD after an infection at a medical appointment. Their LC triggered inflammatory arthritis in their hands and now they cannot hold their art supplies without causing pain. They've had to stop making zines.

Possible lasting effects from a COVID infection

Extreme tiredness

Problems with memory

Being lightheaded or dizzy

Problems with taste or smell

Sleep problems

Shortness of breath

Cough

Headache

Fast or irregular heartbeat

Digestion problems

Migraines

Lung disease

Autoimmune disease

Chronic kidney disease

Heart disease

Mood disorders

Anxiety

Stroke or blood clots

Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS)

Myalgic

encephalomyelitis-

chronic fatigue syndrome (ME-CFS)

Mast cell activation

syndrome

Fibromyalgia

Diabetes

Hyperlipidemia

From "Long COVID: Lasting effects of COVID-19" via the Mayo Clinic Aug 2024

Wear a mask, clean the air, follow disabled creators, advocate for LC research, and support your local mask bloc!

• Remember: covid is not over, 50% of infections are asymptomatic, minimum 10% of infections end up in long COVID, re-infections wreck us, COVID spreads and moves like cigarette smoke.
• There is no way to “train” the immune system
#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice

what you really want is to have the same privileges as rich non-disabled people (that is, you do not intend to truly free disabled people from oppression).

It reminds me of Kollontai's famous quote about privileged feminists (that can be applied to any oppressed group):

“What is the aim of the feminists? Their aim is to achieve the same advantages, the same power, the same rights within capitalist society as those possessed now by their husbands, fathers and brothers. What is the aim of the women workers? Their aim is to abolish all privileges deriving from birth or wealth. For the woman worker it is a matter of indifference who is the 'master' a man or a woman. Together with the whole of her class, she can ease her position as a worker.”

With this reflection, I don't intend to create a hierarchy of people on the internet. For me, it's extremely clear who is an influencer and who is an activist about Long Covid. With this reflection, I intend for us to ask ourselves if anyone with Long Covid is truly a representative of the community. Privilege means that, both in algorithms and in general, more importance is given to privileged people. Eliana could have used her privilege to amplify the voices of the oppressed, but her class position, and above all, her ideological position, has placed her in a different place. That's the key, not just the privileged position you have, but the political decision you make regarding how you act.

#CovidPersistente #LlevaMascarilla #RealistaCovid #AutoDefensaSanitaria #CovidSonAerosoles #birdflu #gripeaviar

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid

A friend texted me this photo.

#CovidSafety #MaskUpSaveLives #CovidIsNotOver #CovidCautious #WearAMask #Covid #ProtectKids

Until a year ago, I was quite mentally agile, but since last year, I've had extreme fatigue and fogginess. I have nausea every morning, and I have new pain that is difficult to manage. Sometimes my mom calls me and I'm speechless because my brain isn't working, and we have to hang up.
#LongCovid #WearAMask

Ableism repeatedly pushes suicidal thoughts into disabled people.

Not wearing a mask also pushes us closer to that direction. Not wearing a mask means not defending disabled lives and not stopping mass infection.

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking

el capacitismo empuja una y otra vez los pensamientos suicidas en las personas discapacitadas, empujándonos como si no hubiese otra salida

no usar mascarilla también nos hace estar más cerca de esa dirección. no usar mascarilla significa no defender las vidas discapacitadas y no parar la infección en masa.

#CovidPersistente #LlevaMascarilla #RealistaCovid #AutoDefensaSanitaria #CovidSonAerosoles #birdflu #gripeaviar

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid

People who develop after-effects from COVID infections are being thrown into social murder, but masks can't be mandatory in public spaces because they can't be forced on people...

Some of you are truly out of touch with the reality of disabled people, and it's obvious.

#WearAMask

hace un tiempo mi tía me dijo que somos las personas frágiles las que tenemos que seguir utilizando mascarilla. las personas utilizan varios términos que para mí son completamente eugenésicos cuanto menos e insultos disfrazados de eufemismos. el término que más repite la gente es vulnerable, pero cuando mi tía ha utilizado la palabra frágil lo primero que me ha venido a la cabeza ha sido literalmente un bebé. un niño. y realmente me pregunto en qué momento existe una anti solidaridad enorme con las personas que somos la prueba evidente de que necesitamos la interdependencia y el cuidado.

me pregunto si mi tía también se atrevería a decir que un bebé es frágil y que lo utilizaría como una excusa para no cuidarlo.

#CovidPersistente #LlevaMascarilla #RealistaCovid #AutoDefensaSanitaria #CovidSonAerosoles #birdflu #gripeaviar

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid

A while ago, my aunt told me that "we fragile people" are the ones who have to keep wearing masks. People use various terms that, to me, are completely eugenic, to say the least, and insults disguised as euphemisms. The term people repeat most is vulnerable, but when my aunt used the word fragile, the first thing that came to mind was literally a baby. A child. And I really wonder at what point there is such a huge lack of solidarity with people who are living proof that we need interdependence and care.

I wonder if my aunt would also dare to say that a baby is fragile and use it as an excuse not to take care of it.
#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking