I Talked to a Journalist and They Sucked

 US-A T0d@y popped onto my radar looking to talk to people with chronic illness about covid now that everyone's back to normal.

I offered to be interviewed and we had a call.

But I didn't meet the requirements of their narrative bias and was told a few weeks later that they didn't use me in the article, but that my thoughts informed their take.

And then it wasn't even an article published in US-A T0d@y. It ended up in some regional paper that had the kind of hard paywall conservatives could only dream of having at the southern border. 

The misrepresentation of their affiliation and allowing people to think they were national media was interesting. (Perhaps they do work at that publication or are part of the syndicate, but I wouldn't know the details because the journalist didn't disclose shit. Apparently, even as a nobody, I need to do due diligence with the media.)

The things I said that disqualified me from being part of the article...

1. We need better vaccines and treatment and it needs to be more widely available.

2. I don't need anyone else to wear a mask or be vaccinated because I can control my risk well with an N95. We don't get sick when we wear masks.

3.If we had better vaccines or treatments, I wouldn't even need the N95.

So guess what angle the article took? It focused on 'everyone needs to wear a mask and get vaccinated and this is why people with chronic illness are suffering, because people won't protect them' which is a flawed narrative when N95s (or p100s if you want to get hardcore) work and when the vaccines are imperfect. The latest reporting is that the boosters start waning after two months and are not protective for those with chronic illness...far from the efficacy we need.  (Here's the full preprint study if you need it: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.02.23286561v1.full.pdf --they have a whole discussion about why it might be the vaccines aren't working.)

WTF is a vaccine going to do better than an N95? Nothing.

The article was solely focused on interpersonal dynamics and fomenting the discontent that feeds the culture wars. People won't protect us. Other people need to get vaccinated. Other people should do what I need. 

Apparently we're still not allowed to say things like 'wear an N95' or 'the vaccines kind of suck' or 'I can't access Paxlovid or other treatments reliably, the system isn't working.' And I must be the only person in the world more interested in where science is on better vaccines and treatments, instead of trying to control or blame what millions of other people do.

We are moving too slow and fighting without effective tools.

We are choosing flawed narratives that ignore that. 

We are not having quality discourse.

Humans really suck at pandemics and the media isn't helping. Like, wow. I didn't expect everyone to be so awful. How have we not gone extinct long before now? Oh right. Smart people have been saving our asses for centuries now. But to what end? This? Is this the pinnacle of human achievement??? Is this what all our smarts have achieved? This bullshit? Really???

PS: From that article I linked above: "The omicron-targeted shots also did not reduce the risk of severe Covid in chronically ill adults younger than 65, the study found."

I just want to point out, I can feel the flu vaccine kick in when I have the flu. I can tell the difference between having the vaccine and not having it. In comparison, I could not feel any of the covid vaccines kicking in when I was sick. It was like I had nothing on board.

I know this is an unpopular take, that it counters the overarching narrative that's been crafted, BUT THE VACCINES ARE NOT DOING ENOUGH. The media and the government can scream all they want that people need to get vaccinated, but it's not working as advertised and the data is starting to show that.