Obnoxious Canary's Rumpus Room

Live in the

mollusk

I was bored so I took a mental age test, twice

Taking an avg., I’m 11

Adam Conover: Okay, this is gonna be super fun to explain. It’s likely because of something called “Hollywood Accounting”. See, the CW network doesn’t actually make the shows it airs. Instead, they’re made by a studio that’s part of the same parent company, and the CW network pays that studio to air the shows. In that way, they’re able to show a loss even though the entire company is making money off of all those sweet superheroes in love.

Now why would they go to all that trouble? Huh. You think it could be because it allows them to reduce the amount they pay in taxes, royalties, and other profit-sharing agreements? Actors, writers, directors, and producers are often entitled to a backend - a percentage of the profits that a show or movie makes. But if the show or movie lost money, then the company doesn’t need to pay those people. That’s why, according to Lucasfilm, Return of the Jedi, one of the most popular films of all time, has supposedly never gone into profit. And why stars like Harry Shearer and Peter Jackson have had to sue movie studios just to get paid.

So short answer, these companies are cooking the books in order to cheat on their taxes and cheat their own talent out of money.

I need to emphasize that I can't post the "before" pictures that go with these because the men did not have faces. The injuries were so extensive that these men were missing nearly all of their facial features, and through cutting-edge techniques that "looked scary" at the time (e.g. extensive skin grafts), Gillies saved these men from a medical nightmare.

People saying it’s “encouraging” that most deaths are people with 4 or more comorbidities are trying to imply that only disabled people are going to die.

And I’m glad a lot of you are on board with the fact that it’s fucking evil to cheer for the idea that vulnerable people will be most affected.

It’s also just not true.

You as a healthy abled person can easily have 4+ of these comorbidities.

The CDC’s list of “comorbidities” (not to be confused with “underlying conditions”, they’re different) is 152 pages long and includes things like:

lactose intolerance

marijuana use

mild depressive episode

pollen allergy

“obesity”

vaginal/vulval yeast infection

autism/”childhood autism”/Asperger’s

“short stature not otherwise classified”

migraines, also, headache (they’re 2 different ones)

insomnia

tinnitis

gerd (a common type of acid reflux)

constipation

acne

“pain in joint”

“pain in limb”

“low back pain”

UTI

heavy periods

cough

hiccough

sneezing

urinary incontinence or retention

eating “too much” or too little

broken bones

medication overdoses

drug “of addictive potential” in bloodstream

traffic accident

fall

“contact with hot tap water”

and just… basically anything medical or medicalized that a person can have.

Ever told a doctor literally anything about your body? You probably have four or more of these.

Anything in your chart is a comorbidity, even your lactose intolerance or your acne.

While some conditions on the list might mean you’re more likely to get severely ill, many of them really don’t. They aren’t meant to - that’s not what the list IS.

It’s just a list of conditions that were in a patient’s chart when they died.

The idea that “people with 4+ comorbidities are 75% of deaths” means “most people are safe” is complete and utter nonsense.

A lot of people are going to die in the next few months, and the official story is that they were going to die anyways because they were already just so sick before covid! so YOU shouldn’t try to be careful or agitate for better covid protection! because YOU aren’t at risk! (unless you’re one of those disableds we’ve already written off.)

The CDC director says fuck disabled and chronically ill lives. I’m also going to point out that you’re significantly more likely to be disabled if you are Native American or Black so this is also racist. The CDC out here officially cheering our deaths is just the perfect way to start 2022.

So while it IS good news that Omicron is apparently less deadly than previous mutations, it is NOT in any way acceptable for the CDC or the press to throw literal millions of people under the COVID bus and just shrug it off like, "Welp, they were sick anyway."

1) This disease is still killing people, they’re not acceptable losses, and covid can also mutate further into a even more new variants so the shortened quarantine is super fucked up. Also she listed just the number of dead, there are a lot of people still getting disabled and getting long covid, including vaccinated people. 

It’s 100% for economic reasons and not for public health reasons, which is why there are conflicting recommendations from other orgs. “Sick people that tested positive should quarantine long enough to be safely uninfected” should be one of the bare minimums we’re doing, even more important than vaccines or masking because they’re confirmed as infectious. 

So a lot of the anger is because the policy is now writing those people off instead of still treating proper quarantine as still important. And doing it for shitty reasons. 

Alongside that:  

2) “Only people with complex health issues are dying, this is good news in the context of omicron” is rhetoric that’s dismissing said people as acceptable losses and saying “good news, everyone else is okay!” 

People with complex health issues are still dying when they might otherwise not and plenty of the complicating health issues aren’t immediately fatal by themselves, or even in concert with each other. People can have multiple comorbidities but not necessarily terminal comorbidities. These are people that might otherwise live. “It only kills X group of disabled/ill people, not everyone else, this is promising!” is 100% ableist and dismissive of their lives in terms of how to speak about it. 

Even in terms of phrasing, that information can be communicated in a less of an ableist way. “While people with four or more multiple comorbidities are still at high risk, the majority of people aren’t with omicron. [lists all the stats she listed] This is proof vaccines are offering protection for most and we should try to maintain high vaccination rates. We also need to maintain high rates of vaccination and boosters, as well as masking, to keep protecting the still-vulnerable groups.” 

Plus, ideally, a less stupid quarantine policy. 

Part of ableism is not being aware that phrasing is dismissive of the very lives of the disabled. Speaking about this in a non-ableist way is something the leader of the CDC should be conscious of setting an example as a major leader in public health. Context doesn’t change the shitty phrasing and how someone in her position should just be more thoughtful about it than the average layman. She should be the MOST thoughtful about it. Maximum amount of thoughtfulness.

Pair that with the actual quarantine policy being economically motivated... and it’s a bad look. 

And keep in mind. I say this as someone going back into healthcare myself after being out of it during covid. This is kind of shameful and embarrassing on a professional level

I also say this as someone with a few comorbidities and with a parent that’s immunocompromised and has at least 4 comorbidities. My mom’s life isn’t an acceptable loss and “good news, everyone else is okay!” would be no comfort if she died. She’s only 65 and the health issues she has aren’t easy but provided she doesn’t get some heinous life-crushing illness, even with her comorbid conditions she can expect a normal life expectancy. (And all her organs are in fairly good shape.) I’d like to have her around ten more years if possible, thanks. Could be the difference between her seeing me get married or not.  

tbh the people with multiple comorbidities dying are some of the most tragic cases because they often do everything right. In many cases they would survive otherwise, and are conscientious about their other health issues. But they’re dying despite personally doing what they should be doing and getting vaccinated and boosted, all because of the carelessness and uncaring-ness of others, and shitty choices in public policy. 

I know we have all been hit with the “only disabled people are dying” bullshit for the past two years. and I’m sick af of it too. I’m not saying we should be uncritical of her phrasing or her decision to break in an explanation about comorbidity and death rates for no real contextual reason. Like that was a fucked ableist choice and we can and should demand better.

Clearly her poor phrasing was ableist. But to jump from that to it’s a deliberate form of eugenics is inflammatory af. It takes the wider context of the conversation out to increase the inflammatory nature of it. The CDC needs to do better overall all the way around. But just pretending it’s some fucking conscious bias in which everyone is actively encouraging the deaths of disabled people is actually not doing anything to improve shit. It’s just putting everyone in outrage mode.

The “what the fuck” going on here is instead of coming from individual people it’s coming from the head of the CDC. Is she advocating open eugenics? Like...lining people up to kill them? No, but her sloppy wording is being paired with public policy that she absolutely has a hand in shaping. 

Were it anyone else, even some high-ranking medical professional in a non-policymaking org, this’d be a shitty ableist faux pas they should re-think. 

Pairing it with shortened quarantine time? Being a person that has a hand in actual public policy? Yeah, that does nudge it into actual eugenics, even if maybe she isn’t cackling and contextualizing it that way. The problem with eugenicists is they don’t always sit there twirling their mustaches and sometimes their actions cause death through inaction rather than action.  She’s decided certain people are an acceptable loss. And CDC policy is what most other bodies are going to stick to.  

When paired with the policy she absolutely has some control over, it’s not just shoddy wording. The policy itself is going to kill some people and she’s got the stats on how many.