Herman

The “pandemic of abandonment”: Navigating friendships five years into COVID-19 - The Sick Times Over the last five years of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many people have experienced significant changes and ruptures to their personal relationships. People with Long COVID and people taking COVID...

I'll have more to say about this later, but for now I want to share this piece I was honored to write for @thesicktimes.bsky.social about friendship & COVID. I hope ppl will read it if they are the covid-cautious friend or if they are not, and find some clarity here
thesicktimes.org/2025/01/30/t...

So in short, protect your online privacy, and that of others, as best you can! Remove the tracking information when sharing links. ☺️

In the cases with marketing platforms, you're probably best off trying to search for the website, article, or information you're looking for via DuckDuckGo (which does not track you) to find it in an alternative way to access what you want while avoiding the tracking.

Sometimes marketing platforms are used to send emails, and those links are hard to anonymize as they use their own domain, may not use a query string, or obfuscate the target URL (e.g. via a redirect) while tracking who clicked the link. E.g. d4lwht04.na1.hubspotlinks.com/Ctc/RL+471/d8nq06/VW9yyH...

However, sometimes the query string is essential because it specifies what content to load (e.g. www.perlmonks.org?node=Tutorials), and removing it will load a generic page or throw a website error.

The "Copy link without site tracking" option in Mozilla Firefox helps in some situations, but it's imperfect and many people don't use Firefox (especially on mobile devices).

On Twitter, you can delete anything from the ? onward: twitter.com/jack/status/20?s=46&t=GNhm... The important parts are the user account name and the "status" (post identifier).

Similarly, with Instagram, anything from the ? onward can be removed so the sharing ID is omitted: www.instagram.com/p/C_Le3j9pG52/?img_index=5&igsh=MW... (The img_index indicates which image number to display in a slideshow during the initial load.)

On Amazon, nothing after the ASIN needs to be included in the URL. Copied Amazon URLs can be incredibly long and include not just tracking, but also search terms used to find a product. A link might look like www.amazon.ca/dp/B004M5HIQI?crid=LH528... and you can remove everything from the ? onward.

When the "Share" button is clicked on a YouTube video, you'll get a URL such as youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=sEl... and you can remove everything from the ? onward (unless you want to set or keep an offset start time for playback in the t= parameter).

Most of the time (but not all of the time), the query string in links being shared is irrelevant to loading the desired page content. The query string can be used to track who opened a link, from where, when, how many times, and so on. What does this look like for some popular sites?

The tracking in question is often contained in a web address (URL) query string. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_s...) This is the part of the URL that begins with a question mark.

Even many technically knowledgeable people don't seem to realize this, or if they do, they do not act to remove the tracking information despite it being quite easy to do so. I don't see much mention of this and I often see links copied without the tracking removed, so I thought I'd post about it.

There are notable privacy implications for yourself and others with sharing links that are simply copied and pasted as-is, because a social graph can be created when links are shared and then re-shared by others. You can usually remove this tracking.

Do you share links with people? If you're reading this, I bet you do. There is often unique tracking information embedded in links that are shared when you copy and paste them. Let's discuss how to avoid the tracking. A thread... 🧵

I made a donation! If you are able, please consider making a donation as well. #GivingTuesday #Donate

On the subject of living life while being disabled and Covid safe. When you wear a mask and take basic daily precautions, you are showing care and compassion to your friends and family who are otherwise relegated to the sidelines.

Anakin and Padmé 4-panel meme. Anakin: E. Coli alert! 1 dead, 39 sick! Recall contaminated carrots! Padmé: Great job taking foodborne illnesses seriously! How about airborne pathogens? Anakin: (says nothing). Padmé: How about airborne pathogens??

#EColi #Carrots #FoodSafety #COVIDisAirborne #COVIDsafety

Anakin and Padmé 4-panel meme. Anakin: Sequencing of H5N1 from the B.C. patient reveals a mutation favourable for H2H transmission. Padmé: So, you're going to immediately implement airborne mitigations, right? Anakin: (says nothing). Padmé: Right??

That being said...what's your top 10 list? Do you think I missed anything? I feel like I probably did and am forgetting something obvious... 😅

Your mileage may vary. On approved credit. Dealer may sell for less. 😄

I want to take a moment to acknowledge the immense privilege required to be able to access and afford all of the things on this list. All of this has required an unprecedented personal investment of thousands of dollars due to the collective failure of our public health authorities worldwide.

#15: Cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) mouthwash. Similar to nasal sprays, CPC mouthwash is certainly not a substitute for a respirator, but may provide some infection risk reduction benefit in combination, and might also be a good tool in maintaining general oral hygiene (talk to your dentist).

#14: Various nasal sprays including astodrimer sodium, iota-carrageenan, nitric oxide, & others. Not remotely a substitute for a respirator nor highly effective alone, yet nasal sprays may provide some benefit as an additional mitigation layer to reduce the risk, duration, or severity of infection.

#13: Novavax JN.1 vaccine. Thanks to the government not procuring Novavax for fall 2024, many Canadians who need/prefer a non-mRNA-based vaccine have to forego a vaccine dose or cross the border at their own expense. No sterilizing immunity, but reducing side effects & the risk of serious outcomes.

#12: Far UVC emitters with 222 nm bandpass filters. Skin- and eye-safe with a reasonably high daily threshold limit value (TLV), they can inactivate pathogens for an extra mitigation layer for indoor settings such as small social events, but they do not replace FFRs, ventilation, or air purifiers.

And now, the honourable mentions!

#11: Safety goggles. Mucous membranes are a possible vector for infection and a protective benefit has been shown for eyewear. They don't provide a perfect seal and like face shields, may actually trap aerosols, but can protect against ballistic droplets.

#10: A hypochlorous acid (HClO) generator; HClO is an excellent general disinfectant including wound care and household sanitizing. Although the risk of fomite transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is extremely low, there are other pathogens worth avoiding and it serves well in a belt-and-suspenders approach.

#9: Powered air purifying respirators (PAPRs). Unfortunately unaffordable to many, these offer a superior level of protection that is more forgiving than FFRs as a tight seal is not required. We have used these and lent them to friends for environments with a high or unknown level of risk.

#8: Rapid antigen tests (RATs). Despite their limitations, they are still useful, especially when molecular tests are not more plentiful or remain unaffordable to some. It is a shame that free distribution of RATs is largely discontinued/inconsistent in many locales. We frequently buy our own RATs.