When we say “everyone should mask” we don’t actually expect people will. We know how selfish people are. But we say it because:

1) it’s factually true

2) if even a few people listen to us that’s a few more lives saved and, as the Talmud says, every life is a universe.

Today I went (masked within an inch of my life) to an aquarium for 45 min as it was emptying out for the day, as covid is low and the crowds were minimal. I feel like I inhabit the inverse of the world, like I’m haunting it like a ghost, going wherever people have just left, affecting nothing.

I have to make very sure that I don’t exhaust myself so that I can keep having that hour, and so I can go back to work when I get home. So most of my vacation isn’t vacation, it’s exactly like the rest of my life - sitting very still - because you never get a vacation from Long Covid.

And here’s another thing: even if your brain fog is not from long covid, there’s not a single pre-existing issue I had that didn’t get worse when I got long covid. So even if you’re absolutely positive you are unique and perfect and couldn’t possibly have LC, wanna know what’ll make it worse? Yeah.

The vaccines do not last very long and infection-acquired immunity doesn’t last very long and nothing has made the virus less deadly without protection, and everything we know about repeat infections suggest your risks of major problems continues to increase.

Plenty of people with autism do both of those things, neither of which are sole determining factors for whether someone can live a fulfilling life, and some autistic self-advocates have said for quite a long time that they find Kennedy's language demeaning. autisticadvocacy.org/2025/04/trum...

As I wrote in the piece, Kennedy continues to use stigmatizing and frankly pretty shocking language to refer to people with autism, implicitly framing them as a burden on society and their families who will, as he said, "never pay taxes" or "write a poem."

By the way, *this* is eugenicism. RFK, Jr. sitting there and thinking that he can determine what makes someone's life worthwhile.

I think there’s always room for disagreement on policy or principles in a resistance. But what you can’t do is endanger other members lives. That’s not an alliance.