No "End" In Sight: On Cultivating Conflict with a World of Pandemics

A silhouette crowd wearing blue masks

What Was, What Is

It is currently September of 2023. Depending on who you ask we are either rounding out our fourth calendar year of a global pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, a year or two removed from the ending of that global pandemic, or (for the most conspiratorially minded) over three years removed from a grand hoax that was so well orchestrated that it managed to kill 1.14 million (and counting) of our loved ones in the so-called United States alone. Much has changed over the last four years, but much more has stayed the same.

I am writing because, firmly inhabiting the position that (strict definitions aside) we are still existing within the relations that brought about this most recent pandemic, I have grown some combination of frustrated and despondent with the number of anarchists and fellow travelers who seem content to declare the pandemic “ended” as apparent justification for “moving on” from taking precautionary measures against the spread of the aforementioned virus. Specifically, I am frustrated by how this declaration works to normalize the continued violence of endemic illness enacted by institutions of power.

We can quibble over definitions of what exactly constitutes a pandemic and whether or not our current moment falls within those bounds, regardless, Covid-19 has become endemic. Case numbers surge and subside throughout the year with new variants emerging seemingly with the seasons. New studies demonstrate the mass disabling effects of repeat infections, even when the cases contracted are mild or asymptomatic. These effects include increased risk of heart/kidney/lung disease, increased risk of pulmonary embolisms and heart attacks, increased risk of diabetes, etc. Each reinfection increases the likelihood of developing the (in my opinion, poorly named) condition “long covid”, an amalgamation of chronic conditions ranging from consistent fatigue and generalized pain (often in joints) to difficulty sleeping, concentrating, and breathing with many other conditions not listed here.

While it is true that not everyone who contracts covid will develop these increased risks or chronic conditions, their consequences are borne most acutely by the poor and racialized (specifically the Black and targeted non-white). This discrepancy is due in large part to the types of jobs different people are forced to work (exposure associated with employment varies greatly along the axes of race and class), inherent racism and classism within the medical industry (from hospitals to pharmacies) that limits access to meaningful healthcare, and disproportionate rates of relevant pre-existing conditions. In a similar vein it should be apparent that the previously discussed consequences will be borne more acutely by the disabled, the immunocompromised, and those navigating otherwise relevant potential comorbidities.

I do not write to be alarmist about some novel existential threat. None of this is unique to this pandemic, or this moment, or even pandemics at all. I could have written a nearly identical opening to an essay about the police and prisons or work and production. I also do not write in an attempt to moralize about what actions one should take to be deemed good or avoid in order to not be deemed bad. I am writing because I desire the cultivation of a more explicit antagonism with the institutions of power that wield the violence, and maintain the relations, that gives rise to moments like these, to pandemics and their consequences. I write because I desire a reorientation away from frameworks of obligation and towards frameworks of conflictuality. I write because I refuse to accept the normalization of the daily violence of life under the regime of racial capital, with a focus today on the violence of endemic illness. There is no “acceptable” sacrifice in service of production.

This piece is by no means intended to be exhaustive. It is an opening, a foot in the door. It is an attempt to carve out space. If you disagree with either the premises or desires so be it, share your criticism or set this zine (or better yet your phone/computer) on fire. If you find commonality but wish it went further or in a different direction, use this piece as a jumping off point for your own critique or discussions. There will always be more waiting to be said and done.

Pandemics as Natural Disasters

Pandemics and natural disasters have a lot in common, most notably the fact that they are not natural at all, rather social constructions employed to normalize and justify the violence inherent to the existent regime of racial capitalism. While wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions have been occurring as long as the land and oceans have existed, they only become “disasters” once they are recognized as a threat to some prevailing order. Given that the prevailing order of our world is that of capital, it is being a threat to capital (occasionally including the lives of people) that becomes the defining characteristic of a “disaster”. The massive, constantly swirling clouds on the surface of Jupiter is a phenomenon on the scale of each and every one of the most harrowing hurricanes to hit the eastern seaboard in the last century combined. Yet it is not a disaster. Because it is not a threat to anything of value, to capital, we give it a cutesy name (big red spot) and approach it with general amusement.

But what about the “natural” portion of “natural disaster”? “Natural”, here, builds the illusion that the destruction of people’s homes, the massive loss of life, the subsequent wake of vulture-like insurers picking at the corpses of what remains in the burned-out path of a wildfire (or hurricane or earthquake), is all a natural part of being alive and thriving in this great beautiful social paradigm we exist within. “Natural” offers rationalization for continuing to build cheaply made (yet premium charging) apartment buildings on active fault lines. “Natural” helps rationalize the destruction of floodplains for commercial development. It grants cover for the continuous, ecocidal, encroachment of capital into every inch of earth from which value might be extracted. “Natural” is a smokescreen that keeps us from questioning if the present state of things is really the only way things could be.

And so we come to pandemics. In the same way that the “natural” in “natural disaster” works to normalize the violence of the intersection of capitalist society and weather, the social construction of pandemics works to normalize the violence of the intersection of capitalist society, settler colonialism, and viral infection. While the starkest initial consequences of pandemics (namely mass death) will often manage to grab headlines and the opening story on news stations, discussion of their causes (and how their violences are wielded) rarely extends beyond the conspiratorial opining of far-right media personalities.

We don’t see critical discussions of how the industrial farming necessary to supply fast-food companies with a cheap source of meat lowers the barrier for disease to jump from non-human to human host. We don’t see discussion of how deforestation (often for the sake of industrial farming) forces animals to migrate more frequently, increasing the likelihood of diseases jumping hosts. We don’t see broad discussion of how climate change, specifically the warming of the earth and increased frequency of more destructive hurricanes/wildfires, aggravates infectious disease by increasing the dispersal of disease vectors (mosquitoes, rodents, ticks, etc.) and increases the contamination of groundwater. We don’t see these discussions because to engage honestly in them would be to question the very assumptions foundational to the existent order, the economy needs to keep growing and to grow means to extract as much and as fast as you can. Wildfires be damned.

So instead, we are presented with a construction of endemic illness that we call pandemics and understand them to be a natural condition of our existence in this world. To be natural is to have no mutable cause, and therefore is to require no justification for its violence. If one is serious about staking out positions of antagonism against this existent world, and its enforced endemic illnesses, then one must reject this normalization and naturalization of pandemics. That rejection must begin with a reorientation within our daily lives.

How Individuals Reify Power

As much as we would prefer to believe otherwise, most of us spend the majority of our lives reproducing the very systems that are killing us or that claim to be against. Each time you show up for your shift waiting tables you help to keep the exploitation inherent to restaurants. Every time you pay your credit card bill you help reify the stranglehold of debt on our lives. Every time you see a cop pull someone over and you don’t disassemble his car while his back is turned you help reify the authority of police. Every time you walk or drive past a prison and you don’t do everything in your power to open the cages so that those trapped inside might walk free you help to reify the state’s ability to imprison. These are not moral judgements but relational evaluations. I’m not claiming you’re a “bad person” for going to work, but by going to work you are, in fact, participating in the reinforcement of the capitalist mode of production.

Each day we make hundreds of decisions (often instinctually and without even recognizing them as such) that reinforce or undermine certain systems and ways of relating to the world, to one another, and to ourselves. Given this understanding, it should come as no surprise when I say that the daily actions of individuals also play a role in the normalization of endemic illness and the reification of the systems of power that wield the violence of pandemics. In the context of the most current (and broadly visible in the US) endemic illness, Covid-19, I would like to give an overview example of how individual actions normalize and reify what is effectively state violence by other means. My reason for this focus is that if we are to have any chance at meaningfully altering the ways we are forced to relate to the world, we must first be able to identify the decisions we make and actions we take that reify those relations.

*Note: I operate from the framework that ableism is a deeply embedded (and dominant) axis of oppression within our world and desire to undermine its foundations, consequences, and reification in both our world writ large and within more intimate communities that I exist within. If you do not hold a compatible framework then I suspect the following example may not be meaningful for you, however I encourage you to consider it nonetheless.

While we can go back and forth about differing analyses of the data on deaths related to Covid-19 (an analysis that grows ever more difficult as many hospitals have stopped reporting relevant data), the fact remains that there always has, and always will, exist a group of people for whom contraction of Covid-19 carries a significantly higher risk of developing long term complications and/or dying from acute illness. This group is not a monolithic identity but many will share some commonality of disability, being immunocompromised, and/or navigating some other relevant potential comorbidity. As wearing masks in public has become less common, a refrain has begun to echo throughout all space, anarchist and broader alike, “it is up to each individual to assess their risk and take the precautions they feel are necessary”.

This is a statement of abandonment, it is a statement legitimizing the harm directed at a vulnerable population. If it were spoken of lead leeching from city pipes into drinking water, we’d call it obfuscation of the state’s role in poisoning us. If it were spoken of cutting funding for food benefits, we’d call it an austerity measure (and if we took inspiration from the Greeks we’d riot). It is rare to hear the above refrain echoed within anarchist spaces in either of these contexts. But in the here and now, in the context of Covid-19, many anarchists seem to be walking lock-step in line with the state in their willingness to support the abandonment of a particularly vulnerable group, many of whom they would call comrades in the same breath.

But how does that abandonment manifest in daily (in)action? The obvious is in how masking has been forced into the realm of “individual risk assessment” as though the decisions we make have no affect on another’s assumed risk. When you walk into a grocery store, or other public place in which people have reasonable need to frequent (especially including for work), you have no knowledge of every person in that space. You don’t know if the cashier had a recent kidney transplant and is taking immunosuppressants. You don’t know if the person in front of you in line has serious asthma that flares up with even a mild cold. Your assessment of risk, and whether or not you feel it necessary to wear a mask, inherently impacts everyone else you will share space with. For those who recognize themselves to be at higher risk for complications (which is only a subset of all those who actually are higher risk), they know this as well. And in knowing this they are left with two options, accept a higher risk of being in public spaces due to the inaction of others around them or be excluded from those places.

In the case of a grocery store, pharmacy, hospital, and other public spaces this isn’t really a meaningful choice. We all need groceries, many of us need to fill regular prescriptions, and many of us suffer emergencies or need treatment that can only be navigated through an urgent care or hospital. So, already a small, banal, choice of not wearing a mask in these environments has reinforced a systemic lack of care for a particular, vulnerable group. But the reification of abandonment and harm only grows more obvious when we turn our sights to social, and organizational, spaces, the “non-essential” locations, events, assemblies, etc.

It is in regards to these spaces that many would argue that those who feel the risk is too high simply don’t need to engage in those spaces. I ask you to take a moment to consider the logical conclusions of that statement. Do you think that these people are less deserving of access to social engagement? Is their increased risk simply too much of a drag that it’s preferable to exclude them entirely than to wear a mask inside? If your answer is “yes” to either of these questions I’m not going to say you’re a “bad” person (again I don’t believe in good/bad or find moral frameworks useful) but I will say you and I likely have conflicting positionalities.

I feel this point is even more poignant when considering the social/organizational space overlap. I’m thinking specifically of bookfairs, workshops, assemblies, letter writing nights, debriefs from actions, etc. If the responsibility of risk mitigation constantly falls solely on those who are already at higher risk, what do you think that does for their participation within those spaces? Might this systematically exclude specific people from those spaces and scenes? How might this potential exclusion reproduce the broader invisiblization of vulnerable (in this case disabled/immunocompromised) people and legitimize their systemic exclusion? You might not care about the answers to these questions, and I can’t make you, but I do and so I am encouraging you to think about them.

It feels important to note here that there are meaningful concerns regarding how masking affects some people’s ability to navigate public spaces, most notably those who rely more heavily on non-verbal (specifically facial) communication, those who are hard of hearing, and those with sensory processing disorders. I name these specifically as I feel that too often those who argue for broader masking (especially those doing so within the framework of moral positions) eschew the possibility that there exist circumstances which make masking difficult or harmful for some/many people.

While I won’t discuss them in great detail here (again this is only an opening to a broader, collaborative, conversation), I do believe that there exist ways to mitigate the harm that broader masking does for how such people navigate public spaces as part of fighting systematic exclusion. For example, there exist quality masks with see-through portions that (while occasionally looking pretty goofy) offer clear line of site to the majority of a person’s face, making it possible to more clearly read lips and non-verbal expressions. These could potentially be distributed at events or while tabling depending on the context of their desired utility. For those with sensory processing disorders, masking may simply not be practical. I’m not interested in defining the boundaries of that practicality and (intentionally, as principle) trust people to act in good faith regarding navigating the tension of their own needs with those of others. In the case of our own events/projects, when possible, we can prioritize utilizing outdoor spaces (including covered spaces) and/or indoor spaces with good air flow/ventilation that makes one-way masking more of a meaningful option.

The above discussed reification and reproduction of systemic violences is in the context of considering only one decision we make, if/how/when we where a mask. We could follow a similar line of thought for other decisions about precautionary measures and we still won’t have touched on the mass disablement of millions for the sake of reifying the capitalist mode of production and the idolization of the commodity. We won’t have touched on how our willingness to “move on from the pandemic” legitimizes and invisibilizes unmitigated spread of covid in schools and prisons, reinforcing the systematic violence against children and the incarcerated respectively (and in the case of youth detention centers a horrible intersection of those systems of violence). We won’t have touched on the racial disparities in access to vaccines and treatment leading to disproportionate severe illness and deaths (especially among Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous populations). Covid has highlighted and further exposed so many meaningful targets for those who ostensibly desire conflict with the existent world and its wealth of oppressive relations. Yet many such people find themselves reproducing these relations rather than undermining them in this context. So, we are left to consider why this might be.

Trauma, Obligation, and Resentment

As mentioned at the onset, in the so-called United States alone, over 1.14 million people have been killed by covid in the last three years. If we look instead at estimated excess deaths that number becomes 1.36 million. That is a number of people larger than the population of 9 states. With a number that large it is likely that the majority of us have lost someone in the last three years we otherwise wouldn’t have, many others cared for loved ones through serious illness, and many still suffered serious illness themselves (and obviously none of these are mutually exclusive). Whether we want to admit it or not, many of us are carrying around deep trauma from these experiences. On top of this comes the trauma of heightened interpersonal conflict during periods of intense stress and the trauma inherent to massive social uprising, catching charges, loved ones being sent to prison, and the subsequent heartache when the world does not change as we might have briefly allowed ourselves to believe it could have in that moment.

All of this trauma is tied to our memory and understanding of covid. There is no way to talk about covid without this trauma sitting just outside the door, seeping in through the gaps near the hinges and floor. But if we can put some distance between ourselves and the pandemic, convince ourselves that it is “over” (often relying on a linguistic distinction to help us in this effort), then we can avoid the project of navigating and reckoning with these traumas. But there is a problem. It is much harder to put distance between yourself and the trauma you are trying to make disappear in the rearview mirror when there are others asking you to consider if the pandemic is really “over” for everyone, forcing a recognition that for many the trauma is still ongoing, never ended. This brings right back to the fore that which one may be trying to get away from. This lays a fertile soil for resentment to take root. But this isn’t the only way resentment grows.

For many, if not most, able-bodied people their primary interaction with disability is as an outside witness of another’s experience. Some able-bodied people have experience with being a care-taker for someone who is either acutely or chronically disabled, but this is still an outside experience with disability. When inhabiting this care-taker role, it is common that one is acting on some sense of obligation. At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, much of the verbiage used to motivate people to care about (or for) one another, relied on this language of obligation, used both by broader media as well as within radical milieus. This language of obligation reinforces disability-as-social-construction where both the able-bodied and the disabled are understood as immutable categorizations where the latter exists at the whims of the former and the former is obliged (typically in a moral sense) to care for the latter. But the thing about obligation is that it’s a close cousin to guilt. And the thing about guilt is that, while it may be useful motivation for action in the short-term, in the long-run it dead-ends at resentment, even though the guilt at the core of this resentment is nearly always imposed by the able-bodied upon themselves.

Recognizing this dead-ended nature of obligation, I am far more interested in cultivating positions of conflictuality, including the reorientation of actions such as masking within the framework of explicit conflict with the broader systems of suffering that I seek to destroy. This is my interpretation of what solidarity actually is, a recognition of connected suffering and compatible desires leading to action that works towards the destruction of the institutions of that connected suffering. Through their ability to visibly demonstrate a rejection of the normalization of endemic illness I genuinely believe masking in public spaces is a small, but tangible, way to begin carving out spaces conflictual with the existent. But obviously we need to go much further if we really want to destroy the world.

Seriously, Let’s Destroy the Economy

It’s always been about capital. The driving force behind “moving on” from covid (or from any other “natural” disaster), from the perspective of those in power, has always been a prioritization of the bottom line, of production and supply chains. The disproportionate rates of covid deaths among the racialized and poor is as good evidence as we’ll ever get that work is literally killing us. For many, even at the height of the first and second waves (seeing the most deaths in the Northeast then rest of the country respectively) there was no option to work from home, no prioritization of health. Outbreaks were daily occurrences in slaughterhouses and meat packing plants, in Tesla facilities and Amazon warehouses. Hundreds of thousands died preventable deaths in order to further enrich the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Many more have been left with long term complications and troubling implications for their health in the future. The number of people who fit within this latter category is only growing by the day. Recent state supreme court hearings have let the mask slip even further, shielding employers from lawsuits by aggrieved employees (or in some cases widow(er)s of now deceased employees) for trading their health (or lives) to keep production humming.

For those of use interested in unmaking this world, it is as imperative as ever that anarchists keep an anti-work (anti)politic at the tip of our tongues and at the inflection point of our crowbars. We need to be on picket lines pushing strikes as an attack against capital itself, not merely a threat in order to achieve a slightly higher starvation wage. We need to articulate (either from within or without) alternatives to the unions when it comes to fighting bosses and organizing with the people you work with. We need to fight against the normalization of the violence inflicted upon us at work, including the violences of endemic illness. Continuing to take precautions against the spread of covid in visible ways and discussing those actions in conflictual terms is one way to do that.

We can agitate workplaces with which we have proximity to update air filtration systems and consider the creative uses of sabotage that may be relevant in that agitation. Those of us who have distro projects can add masks and covid tests to our inventory of zines, stickers, and whatever cool rocks we found on the ground that day. Steal them if/whenever you can and recruit others to help you in that endeavor. Direct distribution whenever possible reduces the barrier of use and gives us an opportunity to talk to people in a more intimate and less stressful environment about why we may move the way we do. Prioritizing outdoor events and being explicit about why we are doing that works to reject the exclusion of those who cannot, or choose not to, risk greater exposure.

Medical debt continues to be a growing concern for tens of millions of people in this country and is a burden disproportionately borne by the poor and chronically ill. There are forgiveness programs but these are primarily focused on preserving the overall structure of a debt economy since if too many people default on their debt at once the whole thing falls. A similar phenomenon can be seen with credit card debt and student loans. These systems can, and often do, destroy people’s lives and are an incredibly effective cudgel at keeping us working jobs we would otherwise be more willing to leave. I will not venture to state what specific actions would be worthwhile, but it feels imperative that we find ways meaningfully intervene in these systems or at least help to break the façade of the necessity of their existence. I will never be able to articulate the sense of anger felt when watching someone you love writhe in pain while a member of the hospital billing staff waits patiently for a pause to appear long enough for your loved one to sign that they acknowledge the cost of their treatment. It is a cruelty matched only by parking kiosk keeping your car in the garage until you pay your 13.50 for having the audacity to spend the night in the emergency room.

I am under no illusions that there is some prescriptive path that one can walk down to bring about the end of work and capitalism and all its horrifying tendrils. But I want the end of this world of racial capitalism and the endemic illnesses it demands. I want an end to the normalization of this cruel an unnecessary suffering we have come to accept as the cost of living. Given that desire I will keep looking for weaknesses in which to plunge a dagger and I will keep looking for others to help me.

It’s Always Been About Care

I had a conversation with a friend a while back about the conflict between individual autonomy and care for others, about if anarchy prioritized the former over the latter, and if it did, what that meant. The more I’ve thought about that conversation the more I feel that there is no autonomy without care, and the less I’ve cared about whether or not I fit someone else’s definition of an anarchist. None of us can live alone. Some of us may be able to survive on our own for a time, maybe even for a very long time, but not live. To really live means to care for, and be cared for by, others. It is through our connection to others that we are able to move past our own limitations. I would have never been brave enough to throw a tear gas canister back at a line of riot police had I not made a friend in the crowd a few hours before. I would never have learned how to bind (albeit very cheaply) books if I didn’t have a crush on someone. I would never have found solid ground after the sudden death of a friend if I didn’t have others who helped to keep me tethered. All of this is part of my autonomy and all of it required the care of others.

All of our actions have consequences, each decision we make reinforces or undermines some way (or ways) of relating even if we don’t always acknowledge that fact. To bring this all back to the topic of covid and endemic illness, simply put I want more from anarchists. I want more imagination of how we can resist the normalization of mass death and disablement. I want more conflict with the existent institutions of power that cultivate this normalization. I want more critical analysis of how our actions reproduce the world around us. And most of all I want more honesty. As I’ve said before, I have no interest in moralizing. I have no desire to dictate who is good and who is bad. But I do want honesty about who you are willing to exclude and who you are willing to sacrifice for the sake of your own desired way of relating to the world, and for your own comfort. How do you think the excluded and sacrificed should relate to you? How would you relate to you if you were in their shoes?

I want a world in which we value our lives, and the lives of others more than we desire a return to a normalcy that was already killing us. I want more than to be fuel for the incessant ecocidal death march of racial capitalism. I want everything and I want it for everyone. What do you want?

There are 86 Comments

love this! i appreciate the care with which this was crafted but fear that its nuance will be lost on / ignored by those of us who most need to hear it. i have been looking for ways to combat the knee-jerk anti authoritarian stance of a lot of anarchists in regards to masking or other health measures. while it is great to be skeptical of official institutions, what if their recommendations are actually efficacious?

tbh, i very much struggle with masking for reasons stated in this, sensory issues, i wear glasses, etc. so mostly i just don't attend indoor events. i, too, want to again be able to not have to think about airborne death, but i also think that ship has sailed.

Yeah I think it's just something u kinda have to accept and make individuals precautions. But like I've said elsewhere it's kinda a big example to me of how awful mass gatherings are. For such cooperation ones views need to be watered down to be publicly acceptable. And I stead of having conversations with ppl and meeting their needs accomodations are broad and non specific.

So to me, my interest is in friend group and small amounts of ppl where there isn't the pressure to water down my anarchy and I can have conversations with ppl to meet their needs and not have the need to compromise.

Bc COVID really made me realize how the mass gathering culture encourages one to water down ur views to get along. While I think anarchy is interesting to me when it's potent. And the potency is limited to the weakest link of who u are around.

So I actually don't see COVID as that big of a loss. It's pretty easy to deal with if u don't really value the mas gatherings. And honestly when I've gone to them they aren't that exciting. I mostly just meet extremely normal anarchists who bore and annoy me

Not gonna wear a mask and isolate myself for what is just becoming another common flu.

Give it up. Nobody wants to deal with the stress anymore including the vast majority of immunocompromised people which includes myself. It is not worth the (mental which leads to physical) health risk. Not slightly sorry.

And this idea that long COVID will somehow impact everyone with enough rounds is just panic style silly. Stop blaming shit on individuals and go after the healthcare system. The system that will have to deal with increasing pandemics.

People don't want to live their lives with a mask on their face. They just don't.

The idea of wearing a mask stresses you out so much it's a health risk? But you're sOoo tough you're not worried about a "common flu" that killed millions?

Be honest, you're totally isolated anyway because the stress of other people that have thoughts that might not align with yours terrifies you.

Uhh, yeah, the pandemic had no impact psychologically on billions of people. I think the long COVID has ruined your reading comprehension.

you need to consider how the "reality show" of the pandemic affected people and subsequently the mask became a lot more than what it is as a physical object, so it is no wonder it can cause a great stress to some people

It's not just the mask either, the isolation from people, government crackdowns all over the world. Police checks in certain countries. It is deeply ironic that someone so worried about COVID itself hasn't even thought about the mass psychological impact on the planet.

It's very clear people aren't doing well even a few years on. That seems to be the general consensus. Bro might do well to consider that maybe the problem is with them.

You forgot 1 thing, beautiful looking people with handsome faces are restricted from flaunting their aesthetic assets and likewise they cannot peruse the appearance of their future romantic partners. It's like ugly authoritarian clones resent and seeth in jealousy of the unique beautiful individuals that get all the sexual favors for free!

So true, at the moment I am restricted by a stainless steel Christian/Maoist chastity belt, very frustrating!

Yeees, the fascists don't like folk having free orgasms every day, they make us pay for and feel guilty about orgasms. Free sex wasvaround a long time before hippies.
Masks, underwear, gloves, hair-nets, condoms, it's all so oppressive!

"...a "common flu" that killed millions"

That didn't happen, you liberal chump.

Influenza had a much higher fatality rate than Covid, and state of exception policy allowed healthcare administrators and doctors to rule out any death as "Covid" as long as the patients had similar symptoms. Same for the massive relocation of patients from hospitals to nursery homes in several major countries.

Covid IS real; it is posing a threat to people with detrimental medical conditions; but it got systematically amplified in its fatality.

You sound scared, bro.

Is that why you spend all day on a anarchist website calling anarchists liberals?

Don't be scared, bro. The liberals can't make you wear a mask if you never leave your room. Got em!

If you want to make a space chin diaper only fine just do it. Like, what's stopping you? Like, if I organize a party at my house, it is literally MY party. I make the rules. If I want chin diapers fine. If I don't fine. And you can do this too!

Be the change you want to see in the world bro.

amusing how grown folks can't just say "mask." why this attempt at infantilization? how horrible for you all to be so alienated from your own sense of vulnerability that you then try to project it onto others.

You should consider this thing, a sense of humor. AKA its a funny term.

The pro maskers in this comment thread are really grasping at strange psychological straws here. I can honestly say whatever you are implying is like the opposite of the person you're talking to.

There's some sort of break here and it's not on my end.

Get off your high horse Nettle. You stated your opinions, preformed your fake openness, than slam other who disagree with you.

Bro, auto-retarded CO2 asphyxiation (tOootally a real thing) during pony-play is sOoo fun! Plz try! Giddyup!

Are you drunk, high AND bored or just 2 outta 3? I remember when anews trolls were actUally funny :(

Seriously though, explain why a bar or nightclub should cater to people who want to wear masks when the majority of people most impacted don't want to wear them? It makes no sense.

If I have a broken limb, I'm not going to the protest likely to turn into a riot because I take responsibility for myself. Or I don't and understand the consequences.

But the one thing I don't do is demand the protest is safe for me. Like, who do you even think you are lmao.

I'll never wear an Ear Fastened Hominid Paper Respiratory Filter, or EFHPRF!

I'm asking this in all sincerity: given that COVID and its mutations are likely going to circulate for decades, is the expectation to mask in perpetuity?

This single part below is the basic liberal kernel that most people in the US believe in, but is completely untrue. if you apply this to economics (which this paragraph actually does) it could have been taken straight from the federal reserve website. the world is NOT an accumulation of individual attitudes and actions, despite what the leftoids, afropessimists, anarchists, and other radical liberals want you to believe. it is not your fault that you have to go to work, and you cannot solve any of these problems on an individual or subcultural basis.

"As much as we would prefer to believe otherwise, most of us spend the majority of our lives reproducing the very systems that are killing us or that claim to be against. Each time you show up for your shift waiting tables you help to keep the exploitation inherent to restaurants. Every time you pay your credit card bill you help reify the stranglehold of debt on our lives. Every time you see a cop pull someone over and you don’t disassemble his car while his back is turned you help reify the authority of police."

" it is not your fault that you have to go to work, and you cannot solve any of these problems on an individual or subcultural basis."

yes, that is the point; it isn't my fault AND it is also true that going to work etc reproduces & extends the systems of oppression. this, dear friend, is the predicament we are in currently.

ok i'll bite, since you seem intelligent. how does working reproduce capitalism? you realize that politics is just war right? its not actually about ideas. if not going to work does not end capitalism, how does attending work produce it

The world is now a poisonous mess. Yet, I still drink the water and eat its fruits. There is a diverse horizon of fetishism and nerdery... as it has always been... though more so now... even within the homogenies.

I'd like to know how to motivate everyone to burn the shit down. Any ideas? I've tried a few things, like convoluted, multifaceted and interweaving sophisticated stories that fail to assimilate everything else. Turns out I only really know how to motivate myself with any success.

I always wear a mask.

Breathing too high concentrations of CO2 will cause a number of bad health effects including hypercapnia and heart & respiratory disease.

Demonstration: https://jefferymoss.blogspot.com/2020/05/carbon-dioxide-toxicity-hyperca...

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24808-hypercapnia

We're supposed, like all other mammals, to be breathing in 02, or oxygen.

Pro-maskers are totalitarian sheeple.

two links that are completely useless to the point. one connects masks with not getting enough oxygen and has no citations from anyone at all, much less someone who skeptical people might trust, and the other is just a definition.

11:42, anyone who takes your post seriously needs some help. you're really validating the whole "sheeple" vibe

Wait till their galaxy brain learns about the existence of severe acute respiratory syndromes and how they are spread...

"ingestion" => "inhalation"

...as you libcucks are so picky about letters and wording.

Who masks "all the time" the gimp from Pulp Fiction, that's who! Permanent ingestion (sic) of CO2... are we trees??? Bro...

Who tho permanently ingests (sic) CO2 AND masks "all the time"? Nobody! What would "all the time" entail??? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU BRAINMEAT?!?

I'm glad you seems to side with the science. Oh bit not that science! This science! Fauci!!!!

I ingested a CO2 once and my oh my did it increase my orgasmic duration AT LEAST 02 times as much. Maybe look into it.

I'm sorry. I should have been more explicit. I always wear a mask when setting fire to shit.

"breathing in 02, or oxygen"

HAHAHAHAHA the intelligence!

Did Q send you?

they just mean that you could call it either, not that they'r different things

"They" also totally meant that "02" is the same thing as O2 if you thinking binary like all of Q's smartest soldiers.

CHECKITOUTCHECKITOUT

cover my mouth and nose with my hand? harder to breathe!!!

scream in to the fartbong? get pinkeye from carbon dioxide!!!

KNEEL BEFORE SCIENCE, SHEEPLECUCKS

Dont you sheeple see that we totally care about the health of people!!! Don't wear masks it makes it hard to breathe in the virus! Oh wait the virus isn't real it's just a cold nobody really died. Well nobody except obese people and well they had it coming! Masks are how they control our beauty! DOn't give in! Be free! We need 02 to count to 03 plus 2020 which is 2023! Checkmate maskcucks!

You joke but in 2020 is when the lockdowns were affecting most people and the reptilians do not need as much 02 like we mammals so you played yourself; libcuck.

There are layers to this beyond your 02 deprived mind's capability. 2020, or 20/20, is the measure of perfect vision. If you take mammals that should breathe 02 and one step removed from 03 and then add that to 2020 you get 2023 which is NOW. They want to eliminate, not only, your ability to breathe 02 but also your ability to have perfect 20/20 vision so you can't see them coming to take away your freedom.

Yeeeeeeeesss! Finally someone who understood that 2012 was really 2021, but +02 because 2030 - 7 = 2023!!! 00000 TWOOOOO! That's the trick of how they fool us all. Wake up.

Namaste!

i'm just sayingthere's enough to call bullshit in the actual content, you don't have to pull out your chicago manual.

Are Os and 0s the same in your world too?

Let's see:

We mammals are supposed to be:

a) "breathing in 02, or oxygen"
b) breathing in Zero-Two, or Oxygen
c) breathing in O2, otherwise known as oxygen

You are so smart. Please use your smarts to save the children being trafficked beneath Comet Pizza!

Seriously though, all the nay-maskers will be scrambling for the best masks when ebola goes virulently airborne. This has a 90% death rate, and even with immunization, only the privileged few affluent nations will survive. OR The Chinese or Russians already have it in labs, and even the anarchists in Muhrica will be running to the Federal health services to be saved, ooOooh tEh IronY.

Walmart was handing out free N95 masks so I got a stack of them. LOLbertarians need to get with the plague protocols and stop worrying about "muh freedum".

I was an early COVID-19 case in the outbreak before there was a test or plague protocols. I had begun to hear about it in the news. I had to take my dad to an infectious disease clinic for infusions after a foot surgery for 42 days in a row. We both got sick a couple weeks in and nobody paid attention to us. I even told my dad to tell the doctor I was sick with something that matched the symptoms on TV. It was like an awful flu and I thought my dad would die from respiratory distress. We weathered it at home with OTC medications. The last day of infusion after we had started to recover they had a checkpoint at the clinic testing people's temperatures. I have mostly recovered but I think my dad has long covid. When I was feeling better I skated past the hospital and saw the COVID-19 tents outside the ER. A doctor waved at me and the reality of the epidemic hit home. It's no joke, listen to Fauci, do what he says.

WOW. is this anews or NPR? ….the thin skin between them has long been ruptured like a cheap condom during an all-night dry fuck on the beach. The final nail in the coffin for me in giving up on most anarchists was witnessing how they dealt with covid. was covid real, for fucking sure, that’s not the point, but how so many people become bootlicks for the system’s response was nauseating and how people shamed, pressured, guilt tripped, and even forced others into going along with their managerial behavior was even worse. the pandemic was a mellow dress rehearsal for what is coming up for a world of 8 billion and rising domesticated humans living in a rapidly degenerating world (on so many levels). how they responded was pathetic and often authoritarian. i shutter to think how they will respond to just about everything up the road. good luck out there….

shudder

the intersection of IDPol, "science", pharma, tech, mass stupidity, and general submission got us here and will only make things worse....meanwhile what is queerness tops people's concerns.

covid is real. what do you suggest be done during a pandemic? if only there were a virus that only killed the baddies, eh?

that you felt "shamed, pressured, guilt tripped" to my reading, means you had something to feel shame etc about.

to speak of domesticated humans as if you aren't typing in English on a us-ian website, lol, give me a break! but you are correct, none of us is prepared for what the end of this world will do to us, for sure. that is why i'd rather take my chances with people who think care is important and possible, & not with knee-jerk reactionary antis who only do the opposite of what daddy tells them. anarchy is about thinking critically for oneself isn't it, so why get stuck in mere opposition? nothing is all of one thing and none of the other, or are you still trapped in binaries?

wow. way to twist it up to fit your stupidity. well, you and lumpy can for the rest of us, since we are still twiddling our thumbs.
oh, and the world (and "anarchist" space) is full of people who will care all autonomy right out of you, turn you into cyborgs, or just put you out of your misery for your own sake....have fun!

bro if you think covid is real what have you done to take care of you and yours? what have you done that is not what science or the state said to do? I'd really like to know. in the event of an actual pandemic how do you act? you personally. i am actually asking. maybe you can clue the rest of us in on your profound wisdom.

because my reasoning is this - covid is of a certain size, yes? masks filter those particles (and wildfire smoke as well), yes? i enjoy the functionality of my healthy lungs, i don't actually care if the state tells me to do this, if it actually works, i will do it.

maybe the difference is i believe there is more to living than mere flat, political, so-called anarchy.

"maybe the difference is i believe there is more to living than mere flat, political, so-called anarchy."

wow. missed my point i guess. i have no interest in “living than mere flat, political, so-called anarchy” that’s absurd. in fact, i advocate the complete opposite of that.

but to your question, i did what i normally do, just ramped up some, try to live as healthy as i can, boost my immune system with herbs and physical activity, limit my contact with the rest of the herd outside my people, and decide for myself and with my people how we wanted to deal with it.

but that really wasn't my point, either.

AND, i never said that i felt "shamed, pressured, guilt tripped”, i didn’t at all, i said people tried to make others feel that way, big difference, try to read what is actually there.

but the bottom line is that people so quickly took the system’s (the gov’t, pharma, and medical wings) narrative on every level from the virus to the solution hook line and sinker and any other take was leveled as fake, misleading, racist, ableist, etc. and anarchists followed suit almost completely, and still do. that is the fucking problem.

and don't call me bro.

"anarchists" were never a monolith except in whatever passes for your brain ... then you outsmarted yourself, which wasn't that hard, THEN you blamed everyone else for it. THEN you complained here, then it was now and then i don't know what happened but we'll see.

whatever lumpy, i said MOST anarchists, which was and is true, sadly.
MOST anarchists stayed pretty damn close to the dominant narrative and solution, which was and continues to be fucking lame

bro is about attitude & delivery more than about gender at this point. sigh.

Nettle, no offense intended ( i literally just stumbled upon this back and forth) but why didn"t you use that other trendy buzzword of liberals: "tone"? I'm also sincerely puzzled by what you mean when you say "you'll aLWAYS BE ON THE SIDE OF PEOPLE WHO CARE"? Bernie Sanders claims to "care", Anthony Fauci claims to "care", AOC claims to "care", cops claim to "care", and Joe Biden claims to "care"...So what the fuck do you actually mean with this liberal (non) analysis?

you are no doubt puzzled by what i mean because i said -"that is why i'd rather take my chances with people who think care is important and possible" not [i'll] aLWAYS BE ON THE SIDE OF PEOPLE WHO CARE" .

not that accuracy is is important to you.

what IS your point? that some anarchists followed guidelines set by health officials & governments? funnily enough those guidelines sound like what you did, at least in terms of limited contact with strangers. and of course it is, because in a pandemic there are only so many efficacious strategies. eating healthy and taking tonic herbs is also great but of course the only real remedy is the ending of this world. sadly, there will be much more melting of permafrost and releasing of pathogens not seen in public for thousands of years before that end.

what else is a mask but a way to be isolated in proximity?

no, they are not the same. the devil is in the details, its how and why, but whatever, this all goes nowhere....those who want to seriously talk about the failure of anarchists during covid have done this and are doing it offline. have fun being a good citizen....

staying away from the herd is totes dif from staying away from people, don't get it twisted

...is there a place where this is being talked about online? If so, I would absolutely love to read/listen to it.

speaking of details, you know what existed before the nation state or anarchists or any of that?

infectious disease and ppl doing their best to avoid it, often with superstitious bullshit. anarchists aren't exempt from this, they just practice critical thinking a bit more often than most.

"what else is a mask but a way to be isolated in proximity?"

A way to intoxicate yourself by inhaling too much CO2 your body is made for.

The idiotic idea that masks cause excess carbon dioxide inhalation is demonstrably false. Learn to read.

well Nettle, among sooooo many other things i did on my own terms and in concert with those i care about in my own life, and things i did not do that i was told i was racist, ableist, and an infantile narcissist if i didn’t do, I also did not get the “well researched, harmless, and highly effective” messenger rna jab and all of the endless boosters that were for my and (supposedly more importantly) everyone else’s so-called protection. in my experience, both in my larger community and what i was seeing in print and online, most anarchists were almost completely swallowing the dominant narrative on who, what, when, where, and why, and than spewing it back out uncritically and forcefully. fuck that.

oh, and a mask, which does have some practical applications, no doubt, is so much more than what you claim it to be, not the least of which, it grew into a symbol of submission and of virtue signaling. but go ahead, right me and those who push back off as “white supremacists, conspiracy theory prone, ableists, uncaring pieces of shit” like the rest of anarcho-liberals tried.

I'm sensing some anger from you anon.

this is such a weird thing to say when soooooo many people died from covid. including plenty who felt similarly to you but weren't as lucky. perhaps it was all this back-patting that enabled your body to resist the virus? you are the true übermensch. you're right about everything. you did it. thank you. i love you.

"sooooo many people" died from mismanagement of Covid cases, not Covid itself. The virus itself has a fairly low fatality rate, especially compared to other epidemics in history. Influenza was much deadlier.

And no, just because "sooooo many people died" doesn't mean I SHOULD wear a mask, especially outside where it does absolutely zero since Covid was never officially established to be airborne.

Above all, Covid is done, at least for now... There's no reason to be Fauci's little drones at this point. This makes you look bad as anarchists too.

Substantiate any of your claims without using the same scientific sources you then discount because they don't fit the narrative you're regurgitating. "ThE ScIEncE SAys" works both ways, dumb dumb.

OR, please, just return to Twitter or 4chan or Truth social instead. You're way too much of a mouthbreathing, idiot parrot of the Q-esq MAGA variety to spend time with we, highly-educated, anarchs.

You have been warned.

covid wasn't what now? oh, "officially established" etc... i thought you held no truck with officialdom.

" OH NOES " that would be a good name for an anarchist candy product, like M + Ms.

[wearing a mask] grew into a symbol of submission and of virtue signaling

HAHAHAAAAAAAAHAHA OMG they have found anews. I guess it was bound to happen. Please delete the entire server. There's no surviving this.

"what else is a mask but a way to be isolated in proximity?"

It's a great way sanctimonious (mostly white) liberals love to virtue signal and grandstand to the world how altruistic & good of a person they are because they (pretend to) care about the immuno-compromised. These haughty liberals are beacons of virtuousness because of their obedience to the government's narrative and mandates, unlike us "evil, SELFISH, trump supporting nazi anti-maskers who commit genocide simply by walking outside unmaksed even when WE AREN'T ACTIVELY SICK WITH COVID". Apparently, we anti-maskers also have the magic ability to transmit viruses we don't actually have to people who are vaccinated against said viruses.

" i'd rather take my chances with people who think care is important and possible, "

oh, like every politician, cops who "serve and protect", doctors, pharma, etc, whatever, you democrat.

Caring about people makes you a cop and a democrat. We’ve reached peak individualism. Real anarchs are sociopaths I guess!

That is ridiculous Nettle, way to try to sound more intelligent than you appear to be. Way to take half of what people say and collage it with your agenda. I generally agree with anon 8:08, and i don’t think they said they felt “shame etc”, or that they excluded themselves from being a domesticated human, and you are the one who lumped them into a crowd who “don’t care about others” or think it is “possible” and who “do the opposite of what daddy tells them”….you, Nettle, seem to be the one who thinks things are “one thing and none of the other” and still trapped in binaries.” But, go on ahead, prove their point for them.

as a person with very limited hearing and moderate difficulty processing particular forms of information and within certain types of spaces already, masks make it tremendously more difficult. i have often felt hyper-anxious, even unable to be within, mandated masked spaces, but i have not demanded that they become mask-free. i have accepted my limitations in those arenas and have compensated in other ways. I am not adding this to have anyone feel sorry for me. we all have our own limitations, but when we demand that they be accommodated in ways that affect other people’s autonomy, not only do we become managers of situations (soft authoritarians), but we create dependents on this special accommodation dynamic. i have always valued my personal independence and responsibility and also hold my anarchist principles above any politicized approach of artificial or managed inclusion. We are all unique and it is up to each of us to claim our autonomy. sure, accomplices, friends, family, etc are awesome to have in this journey, but not when they force (through policy or social pressure) others to accommodate my special needs. If a space is mask-mandated, first i ask for an exception (usually not granted), when that is not possible, i make alternative plans. these seems far more anarchistic then policies which claim to be for everyone’s comfort and safety, which we all know is impossible and often very agenda-driven. i would agree with some of the comments here that the covid pandemic, and many anarchist’s response to it revealed many disturbing trends within the contemporary scenes. anarchists should always value decentralized autonomy over society, the individual over group-think. to the author of this piece who seems to want to discuss reification at length, if their was reification of negative power coming from anarchists during the pandemic, it was primarily by those who took on managerial roles and those who almost exclusively trusted authorities, including governmental, pharmaceutical, medical, technological, and social, and informally and formally projected this onto others in their reification process.

I wore a mask once after they reprogrammed my rna and now all i can think about is girl-dick and beheading unvaxxed babies!

airport authorities forced me to, and then when I saw all these edgy Instagram zoomer "trans" kids wearing masks outside 24/7 like a year after the pandemic's done, I asked myself what are these insecure snowflakes really about.

Way to virtue signal your mask wearing, brah, but are you SURE you survived the C02 poisoning from the forced airport-masking and aren't actually in a vegetative state on a ventilator somewhere dreaming about zoomer trans kids (and their girl-dicks)?

You must will yourself awake, brah otherwise they win!

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