Nora Heaphy

Still thinking about this quote from a writer at NYT who said she "can't quite say [Trump's attacks on trans people are] exactly consequential, since so few lives are materially affected."

There are an estimated 1.3 million trans adults in the U.S.

That's equal to the population of Dallas, TX.

American science and medicine has been thrown into chaos and uncertainty over the past week. Here are some stories to get up to speed. 1/12

this is the thing not to lose sight of.

yes, the biology of sex is complex and fascinating, with nearly endless diversity.

but also we don't use biology to decide who gets human rights. like, historically speaking that has not led to good places!

Keep your eyes on Palestine, from the river to the sea.

Hugely important paper reflecting on the material reality of biodiversity research in low-resource settings, versus the (often colonial) narrative of 'unexplored' parts of the world: peerj.com/articles/185...

i’d love to be added!

This is sobering.

USC is advising foreign students to return to campus from winter break BEFORE Trump takes office.

perhaps the most cogent installment of the "I'm a famous person/athlete who got ME/CFS from covid" interview I've seen

love that he's done the reading, and that he draws the links between fatphobia/exercise supremacy, eugenics, and medical mistreatment of long covid

and flomasks! in the guardian!!

Read this please, it is so important that we think about what tactics are effective and not simply show up in the streets and let the police beat, arrest, and jail us for no real political gain.

Taking both tactics and strategy seriously means being willing to adapt when conditions change.

With Schools in Ruins, Education in Gaza Will Be Hobbled for Years Most of Gaza’s schools, including all of its universities, have severe damage that makes them unusable, which could harm an entire generation, the United Nations and others say.

The New York Times is obsessing about campus protestors, and ignores what they’re protesting.

www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/w...

Four years on: the career costs for scientists battling long COVID Many with the condition have found ways around their health problems, but they say more employer support is needed. Many with the condition have found ways around their health problems, but they say m...

👇Courageous academics have gone on the record about how #LongCovid impacts their work. The majority interviewed spoke under anonymity though, showing you the stigma associated with this new disability.👩‍🔬🧪

ℹ️: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Gotta read all the way to the bottom to get to the comparison that people will truly understand: "Medical organizations supporting mifepristone’s availability say the drug’s safety — given the rate of deaths — compares to “ibuprofen, which more than 30 million Americans take in any given day.”

This shot was taken in the whales valley : UNESCO preserved area " , Egypt. It shows the fossils of the whales which lived millions of years ago, these fossils led to the discovery of limbed ancestors, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_whales_fossils.jpg

If you take a sturdy 4WD vehicle southwest from Cairo and drive hours into the desert, across shifting sands, you might arrive at Wadi Al-Hitan, the 'Valley of the Whales'.

This UNESCO site is the best preserved fossil bed for representing whale evolution millions of years ago.

I'm trying to avoid sharing NYT links, particularly regarding Palestine, but this topic is pretty important.
alternative archive link: archive.ph/DH1EI

C.D.C. Considers Ending 5-Day Isolation Period for Covid Americans may be advised that it’s safe to return to regular routines after one day without a fever.

Yes, this brings the CDC guidelines for COVID into line with guidelines for RSV and influenza.

It's not just that is COVID more severe. The guidelines for RSV and influenza are not right either. We need universal paid sick leave, not permission to return to work while still contagious.

I'm One of the Palestinian Students Shot in Vermont. A Ceasefire in Gaza is the Route to Healing. "There is a moral imperative for anyone in a position of influence to take a stand against Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza."

Palestinian-American student Kinnan Abdalhamid was on a walk with his childhood friends, Tahseen Ali Ahmad and Hisham Awartani, wearing kuffiyehs when they were shot at in Nov '23 in VT. Hisham is now paralyzed from the waist down.

Kinnan writes @teenvogue.bsky.social to call for a ceasefire.

This is the last day to comment on this and it’s really important. Changing the way we measure disability will radically reduce the size of the disability population overnight. It will make it impossible to compare year-over-year trends. It will affect dissemination of benefits. Please take a moment

The evolution of SARS-CoV-2 - Nature Reviews Microbiology In this Review, Markov, Katzourakis and colleagues explore the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 at different scales, the phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, factors that drive the evolution of the virus, theories...

Public Service Announcement:

"A popular and incorrect view on the evolution of virulence, frequently expressed in the context of SARS-CoV-2, is that in the long run, pathogens will tend to evolve to be decreasingly virulent"

From www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A family friend died over the weekend because she worked as a receptionist of a place where her husband worked, a client came in with active COVID, they both got it, he got better and she didn’t.

Nothing unusual about this story, just a reminder that it is still happening, every day.

“I witnessed almost every publication that I once held in esteem become complicit in normalizing a level of death once billed as incalculable.”

If your holiday plans are important to you, now and the next few weeks would be a really good time to be extra careful when indoors around others. Covid rates are high and rising and flu and RSV are up there too.

This Is America’s War on Palestinians as Much as Israel’s A discussion of political repression, resistance strategies, and a mass antiwar movement.

We at Hammer and Hope spoke with Mohammed Nabulsi, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement, and Radhika Sainath, a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal a few weeks ago about USA and Palestine, edited transcript here

hammerandhope.org/article/pale...

These are the three Palestinian university students who were shot yesterday near the University of Vermont. Academics, journalists, and politicians are responsible for contributing to the dehumanizing rhetoric against Palestinians.

how do you "make off" with a "network of subterranean fortifications"?

40 Books to Understand Palestine In the last 38 days, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. Another 190 have been killed by Israeli army fire and settler violence in the West Bank. Tens of t…

This is a beautiful list, and just FYI Enter Ghost by Isabella Hamad is one of my favorite novels of the year and I hope more readers will find it. lithub.com/40-books-to-...

Welcome to The Sick Times, a letter from our co-founder Miles W. Griffis It’s not mysterious. A highly contagious airborne virus has spread around the world for the past four years and continues to infect people as I write. SARS-Cov-2 has killed an excess of 23 million �...

Very cool. Betsy Ladyzhets and Miles Griffis have launched THE SICK TIMES--a new digital newsroom devoted to covering long COVID.

Here's the launch letter, and there's a newsletter you can subscribe to: thesicktimes.org/newsletter/

I trust these folks and am excited to see where this goes.

undoubtedly, far more ppl test (-) on day 1 and never test again b/c of lack of access to testing & clear guidance. this paper shows rapid testing (-) on days 1, 2, and 3 *should not* rule out Covid infection, and anyone w/ respiratory symptoms should mask in public at all times, because obviously.