cosmicBiologist

WHY WE MASK: It's Not "Just A Cold": A Handy Scientific Guide to Surviving COVID-19 Together

Here, have a free science zine with a ridiculously long title! Endless thanks to my partner and fellow disabled artist, Kimball Anderson aka @earnestattempts, who helped through the entire year-long process with art edits and image descriptions (located in the alt text). Additional thanks to my friends Dupe and Caitlin, who gave me thorough copy-edits, and every friend who read drafts or listened to me rant about COVID-19.

Feel free to spread it far and wide! And hit me up if you're interested in printing &/or distributing free copies :D

Read WHY WE MASK with Endnotes - includes working URLS so you can read the scientific papers I cited for yourself. Plus links for all the other resources, and a full transcript.

Download WHY WE MASK - Free PDFs to read, print, and share! Any donations go towards print copies &/or local mask blocs.

Can't get enough free printable COVID zines? Check out @newlevant's excellent What's Up With COVID & How To Protect Yourself: 2024 Ed! It was a huge inspiration in the final stretch.

Extra pages under the cut:

My name is Fatima, a 21-year-old woman🤰.Just one month before the war, I was engaged, dreaming of a warm home and a small family.But the war tore us apart—my fiancé and I were separated between northern and southern Gaza, with no way to communicate💔.

Despite the pain, we held on to hope. Months later, I left my family and joined him.We got married, believing it was the start of a new life.But the bombing returned, and we were displaced again… Now we live in a fragile tent in western Gaza, awaiting the birth of our first child amid conditions unfit for life🥹😭.

I’m pregnant🤰, and my due date is near🥹. I have none of the essentials I need as a mother or even as a human being🙏.We lack everything: medical care, food, clean water, and basic supplies for childbirth and the baby🥲.

I’m not asking for the impossible—just enough to protect my life and my baby’s

Your donation is our only hope🥹😢.

My campaign is new and has not received much support. Please support me and my family.

https://chuffed.org/project/helpfatema

I am from Gaza — a father whose only goal is to keep his children alive.Our home was destroyed 🏚️,

and we no longer have a place to shelter.We move from one place to another, searching for safety, warmth, and a piece of bread 🍞.

My children go to sleep hungry 😢,and my wife and daughter were injured and are still living with pain 💔.

There is no work, no income, and no certainty about tomorrow — only fear.In Gaza, we do not dream big dreams.We only dream of a day that passes in peace 🌅,

a meal that fills our children’s stomachs,and a night where they can sleep withouut the sound of bombing.This is not just a story of sorrow,but the testimony of a human being trying to survive,clinging to life despite everything.Gaza is not numbers.

Gaza is faces, children, and hearts that grow tired — but never surrender 🇵🇸

My name is Abdullah Salem, I am 27 years old, married, and a father of two daughters, Iman and Masa. My wife, Sarah, is currently seven months pregnant. Before the war, I worked as a driver and lived a simple but stable life. Everything changed when my car was destroyed, I lost my job, and our home was completely destroyed.

Today, we live in a tent under very difficult conditions, struggling with food shortages, lack of clean water, and rising prices. I am doing my best to provide for my family and protect my children from hunger. We have also lost several family members during the war, and every day is a struggle to survive.

If you are able to support or share my campaign, any contribution—no matter how small—can help us secure food, water, and basic necessities. Thank you for taking the time to read our story and for giving us hope.

I am Jaafar from Gaza. I am currently in northern Gaza, and we have not yet been displaced to the south. Things are very difficult here — the cost of moving to the south is $1,000, and a single tent also costs $1,000, if we can even find a place in southern Gaza. The south is overcrowded, and renting a plot of land costs $1,000 per month, or even more depending on the area. 🙂😢

I started a donation campaign in the middle of the war and received good support, but due to personal circumstances, I recently created a new link, and unfortunately, I have only received a small amount of donations so far. 😓💔 I appeal to you to help me with my new campaign and donate whatever you can 🥺😭. Every amount you give will save the lives of my family and me and may help us cover the cost of moving to southern Gaza! 😓 Thank you, and I pray that God blesses you and provides for you 🧡🫂

Here is the donation link ⬇️**

Link to the article

So my grandma turned away from him and to the other mom and said “I have another daughter. She doesn’t go to this school and she’s a star softball player with her own bat. You can tell your daughter to stop bothering mine or you can drive her to the hospital with a shattered jaw. That’s your choice.” And walked out.

Few months later that girl stole a necklace from my aunt. My grandma called the cops and they all drove to her house to get it back. The cop came outside with it and said he told the family my grandma wouldn’t press charges if they gave it back. My grandma took the necklace and said “Then you’re going to have to go in and tell them you lied because I am pressing charges. She’s a thief and I want her treated like one.”

She was a nurse up until recently (finally retired after trying and failing 4 times)

She got into it a little later in life and worked as an army nurse for a while before working regularly as a hospital nurse.

Most of the other nurses were either also new and young and did what they were told or older and experienced and were used to being bullied by the doctors. As she had dealt with soldiers and had to learn to tell army dudes what to do, she had no interest in letting doctors treat her less than them.

At her hospital the doctors would go into a room looking for something, ransack it, then leave it messy for a nurse to clean up. The first time one tried that on her she stood in the door and said he wasn’t leaving until he cleaned his mess. He tried to say he was busy and couldn’t take the time to clean and she said if someone started dying she’d let him know, and didn’t move until he cleaned his mess.

She became a terror to the doctors who she did not let give any shit. If she paged a doctor and he didn’t come right away, he needed a good reason and lying wouldn’t work because the nurses would tattle and say he was doing a crossword and ignored her, so if she paged they had to go after her or else she’d yell at them.

One time in particular a doctor was chatting with a nurse and didn’t notice she’d paged him five times. When he realized he went running down the hall, saying “Out of my way, [name] is mad at me!”

When my moms gallbladder was inflamed and near bursting after my brother was born, she went to my grandmas hospital. They told her she was fine and to wait, while she was on the floor holding her stomach and crying. My dad called my grandma and told her the situation so she marched down to the ER and said “That’s my daughter, what time today can you get her in for surgery?” When they tried to say they thought she should go home my grandma wouldn’t let them. Luckily they got her into surgery in time to avoid it bursting.

So my grandma turned away from him and to the other mom and said “I have another daughter. She doesn’t go to this school and she’s a star softball player with her own bat. You can tell your daughter to stop bothering mine or you can drive her to the hospital with a shattered jaw. That’s your choice.” And walked out.

Few months later that girl stole a necklace from my aunt. My grandma called the cops and they all drove to her house to get it back. The cop came outside with it and said he told the family my grandma wouldn’t press charges if they gave it back. My grandma took the necklace and said “Then you’re going to have to go in and tell them you lied because I am pressing charges. She’s a thief and I want her treated like one.”

She was a nurse up until recently (finally retired after trying and failing 4 times)

She got into it a little later in life and worked as an army nurse for a while before working regularly as a hospital nurse.

Most of the other nurses were either also new and young and did what they were told or older and experienced and were used to being bullied by the doctors. As she had dealt with soldiers and had to learn to tell army dudes what to do, she had no interest in letting doctors treat her less than them.

At her hospital the doctors would go into a room looking for something, ransack it, then leave it messy for a nurse to clean up. The first time one tried that on her she stood in the door and said he wasn’t leaving until he cleaned his mess. He tried to say he was busy and couldn’t take the time to clean and she said if someone started dying she’d let him know, and didn’t move until he cleaned his mess.

She became a terror to the doctors who she did not let give any shit. If she paged a doctor and he didn’t come right away, he needed a good reason and lying wouldn’t work because the nurses would tattle and say he was doing a crossword and ignored her, so if she paged they had to go after her or else she’d yell at them.

One time in particular a doctor was chatting with a nurse and didn’t notice she’d paged him five times. When he realized he went running down the hall, saying “Out of my way, [name] is mad at me!”

When my moms gallbladder was inflamed and near bursting after my brother was born, she went to my grandmas hospital. They told her she was fine and to wait, while she was on the floor holding her stomach and crying. My dad called my grandma and told her the situation so she marched down to the ER and said “That’s my daughter, what time today can you get her in for surgery?” When they tried to say they thought she should go home my grandma wouldn’t let them. Luckily they got her into surgery in time to avoid it bursting.

"A planned community in Arizona has used time-honored Mediterranean strategies to keep temperatures down and attitudes high.

Western civilization has grown remarkably climate conscious over the last 20 years, but not when it comes to building, civic planning, and especially zoning. Perhaps the interiors of buildings are becoming more climate adapted, and in some cases the facades as well, but in a way that’s a little like inventing a freezer designed to keep ice cream frozen while sitting next to a fire.

Wooden or concrete boxes arranged side-by-side across leveled ground with sprawling, largely treeless gardens and concrete sidewalks alongside wide, blacktop roads is simply a culture of construction that has to be abandoned if living in a world of 2°C or higher annual temperatures [or, hopefully, less than that, but nonetheless likely over 1.5°C] is to be tolerable.

Fortunately for Arizonans, change may have finally arrived in the form of a carless, planned community that looks and feels like a Greek island village.

In the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, Culdesac has arisen as a 17-acre mixed-use neighborhood from the ground up to stay cool and local, taking the concept of the 15-minute city, where anything a resident might need is only 15 minutes away, and putting a Mediterranean spin on it.

Buildings are tall, thick, and totally white. The residential areas look like they were built atop of the ashes of the Phoenix zoning code burnt in effigy. Crammed together, they create narrow streets and alleys that are almost constantly shaded, through which wind is channeled and accelerated in passing.

Windows open towards each other, allowing wind that enters one building to exit into another, while the total lack of asphalt means that the ground temperatures are a staggering 50-60°F lower than pavements beyond the limits of Culdesac.

No privately-owned cars are allowed to enter the neighborhood, in which electric bikes, robotic mini taxis, and light rail shuttle people around town, to downtown Phoenix, or out to the airport.

The street life is lively—there are no cars to bisect movement between the 21 different businesses and eateries, among which is a James Beard Award-winning Mexican restaurant, DIY ceramic business, and some stores run out of apartments—a big no-no under Phoenix zoning laws.

“Once you pull the cars out,” Architect Daniel Parolek who designed Culdesac, told BBC, “there’s so much more opportunity to make a vibrant, thriving community.”

His inspiration was sun-soaked locales like Italy, Greece, and Croatia, where town centers were designed before the automobile and before air conditioning.

Technically speaking, the entire Culdesac neighborhood is one apartment complex, but the paseos, or little alleyways, open up into plazas of open space exactly liked one would expect in a little village in the Cyclades.

Because no one has to jump in a car to get from place to place, people run into each other, sparking conversations, relations, and breaking through the counterintuitive phenomenon of big city loneliness, which in Phoenix hits particularly hard.

“Culdesac Tempe has shown that people do want to live car-free in the US, even in a metro area like Phoenix that’s often seen as the poster child for car dependency,” says Erin Boyd, Culdesac’s government relations and external affairs lead. “This success has shifted the conversation around what’s possible in American development.”