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It’s grim - to start a new year, tweeting about the pandemic. But here we are.
I’ve spent the past months coming to terms with the fact that most of my neighbors - & a huge swath of America - know of Covid’s lethality, & simply do not care.
They know it’s a very real threat.../1


2/...to their health/lives, & to the health/lives of others. And they do not care.
They don’t.
They care about their wants. Their level of enjoyment of the moment. That’s what they care about.
Not whether they’re sick or dead.
Or whether their loved ones are sick or dead.

3/ It’s nihilism. And it has taken root in our society.
We must grasp this, so that we can stop expending energy trying to get them to care.
They won’t.
They don’t.

I’ll share just one example, from within my own circle.

My daughter is an equestrian. Quite good, actually...

4/ And we had to stop her training at the barn she’s always known due to their lack of vigilance with Covid (she’s at a different barn now). But she’ll still mask up & go visit the horses she trained & loves.

Just before Christmas, we brought peppermints to the horses...

5/...& ran into her old trainer. A lovely young woman, who can not grasp why we are no longer at the barn - despite how well we’ve known each other (for years now).

She knows our reason, she believes Covid is real, yet - doesn’t understand why we’re reacting the way we have.
This is an interesting review and a good intro to new municipalism (or what @davidjmadden calls 'socialist municipalism')

But it misses some key aspects of what makes the movement distinctive, and distinct from London's municipal socialism.
So here’s a thread on municipalism...


Municipalism is not simply “a political stance as well as an approach to shaping the built environment” (as @davidjmadden puts it) – it’s a distinctive strategic approach to democratising the local state and transforming urban economies using urban spaces as a platform…
1/

Municipalism adopts a ‘dual power’ strategy: 1) supporting commons and practices of commoning through which a more democratic, cooperative (and potentially prefiguratively postcapitalist) ‘solidarity economy’ can be instituted;
2/

...and 2) seeking to take hold of the political institutions of the local state through mobilising social movements for winning electoral office, to reimagine and transform the state from within, through guerrilla occupation of bureaucracies, in order to support 1) above.
3/

Means and ends are intertwined in a prefigurative politics that ‘feminises’ the state’s decision-making processes and subverts technocratic managerialism in favour of 'collective theory-building' and open-source, crowdsourced deliberative-democratic policy-making.
4/
For clarification, I'm not saying disabled people who are or are seen as smart aren't oppressed. All disabled people face ableism to one degree or another.

I'm saying no disabled person is oppressed specifically because they are or are seen as smart.


When I asked for accommodations in school and they wouldn't give them to me because I'm "smart" (which is a social construct btw), I wasn't actually being oppressed because I was smart. I was being oppressed because I was disabled.

If the school didn't see me as smart, I would've been put into special ed, which is often extremely abusive and really its own layer of oppression. I would've been able to advocate for myself even less and much of my autonomy would've been even more stripped away.

I've experienced only the tiniest slice of what people who aren't perceived as intelligent have experienced and even then there's a marked difference.

People often don't see me as intelligent because they mistake my Tourette's for an intellectual disability or severe mental health issue.

For many, I am immediately more humanized as soon as I can speak coherent sentences and they recognize me as smart.
My mentor/dear friend told me that I speak up AND speak out, and how this is rare.

Today, I want to talk what it's like when I see, sense & feel that a more senior Black woman is attempting to sabatoge me and assassinate my character. A💔 🧵

It all started here. I joined @PublicHealth in 2018 and was elected chair in 2019. As can be seen, I was SO excited that the members of this section believed in my leadership enough to elect me to this


Since I cross paths with very few other Black women epidemiologists in these academic streets, I was looking forward to working with the Black women leaders in this section.


I started observing that the communication to me was minimal, there was little documentation on processes & procedures, and I was (and felt like) an outsider here. I also felt bad vibes, and tried to set up a mtg to check in on communication & leadership styles. It never happened

Then, our annual meeting happened, & I had been struggling with what I experienced as condescending communication and unwelcoming culture. I was like this can't be right, let me contact @PublicHealth staff for some support.
Still confused about the 2nd dose vaccine supply? Me too, but I think this is what happened: 🧵

Let’s go chronologically. Last Thursday, governors wrote a letter to @SecAzar requesting second doses not be held in reserve and instead immediately be made available:


2. Friday, CNN reported the Biden team planned to do just that:


3. Tuesday @SecAzar said OWS would make the change as well.

Azar: "We can now ship all of the doses, that had been held in physical reserve with second doses being supplied by doses coming off of manufacturing lines with quality control going


4. @SecAzar also noted in that announcement:

"Each week, doses available would be released to first cover the needed second doses, and then cover additional first vaccinations." (4)

5. There was an expectation that with release of 2nd doses would come an immediate increase in # of doses states could order.

That... didn't happen:
SO @AnnDrogyne WHO IS SEEN ON @jamesenglish0 CHAT SHOW, @shaunattwood CHANNEL, WHO CAME ON #Twitter GATE CRASHING MY #FightToSurvive A #CorruptAndComplicitGOP


AS @GOVUK @UKHouseofLords CONTINUE TO ATTEMPT TO BURY #MYTRUTHDOC WHO ACTED AS IT WAS ON MY SIDE TO THEN JUST TURN THE TABLES ON MYSELF AND @Michell55125993


BY IMPLYING THAT I AM LYING SURROUNDING @PrincipalStAns AKA HELEN KING BEING INVOLVED IN THE ONGOING #coverup OF #THETRUTH IN THE KILLING OF MY CHILD @forambrose1984 .

I HAVE THE UNTMOST #Respect FOR CHANCER WHO HAS BEEN REAL.

I DON'T KNOW WHO TRUTHY IS BUT

I AM ASSUMING IT'S JAMES OR AM I WRONG GINA @chris43094330 @ProductsSystem /#LovellTwins👭🏾 .


https://t.co/szNEqNAzDa
I think we have to consider what "unity" means.

In the most foundational sense, unity exists whether we want it to or not. Our fortunes are tied together. We all impact each other. That form of unity carries risks, benefits, and, mostly, responsibilities. /1


The trouble with calling for "unity" after you, say, abused a procedure to jeopardize and break trust and invite violence in the foundation of representative government, is that it sounds like a shield, not a shared responsibility. /2

It sounds like "we are all one, so there can be no critique of each other." But then saying, "and actually THOSE PEOPLE are the REAL problem" which turns it into "we are all one, but I am the best, so there can be no critique of me." /3

Living into our unity means that we absolutely have to look at each other sometimes and say "you are sorely wrong about this, and you must accept responsibility for your wrongness for the sake of all of us." /4

That does not equal "you should no longer exist and we hate you forever." If you are a United States Senator (for example) and you translate "there must be accountability" to "I've been banished along with 70+ million others," you're being immature and purposely disingenuous. /5
A little venting: How do you get nutrition journalists to do their job? I spoke to @TamarHaspel 2 months ago. I suggested she interview MDs who prescribe LCHF/keto diets to their patients, to understand the passion, and ob experts who now buy into the carb/insulin/keto logic.


She had my book, The Case for Keto, which cited over 120+ MDs and she had the endorsements from leading researchers (attached). But none appear in this article. Just @whsource, a blogger, and @KevinH_PhD, and @GardnerPhD.
Claude Rains would call them "the usual suspects."


At the time, @TamarHaspel told me she didn't have time to do that kind of journalistic research: i.e., her job. Is that too much to ask?

Considering the exploding prevalence of ob and db, the public health crisis, can we get journalists to work a little harder asking why?

Finally, why is this so hard to understand?

Re "nothing can defeat the caloric balance equation," @tamarhaspel says "To lose weight you have to burn more calories than you absorb."

NO, IF you are losing weight, THEN you are burning more calories than you absorb.


The energy balance equation says the two things are equivalent--THAT'S WHY THERE'S AN EQUAL SIGN (=) BETWEEN THEM.

It doesn't say one causes the other. It says they are equivalent.

That's the tautology. That's the laws of physics.