VIP Cat Lady 🐀

vipcatlady 📷 She/Her. PDX. Vegas. Fashion. Geek. Celiac. #donothing #snarktography #genericcelebrity #actuallyautistic RCTID COYI SF Giants

[Jess @MeetJess]

Alzheimer’s doesn��t start at diagnosis.
It starts decades earlier — with inflammation, vascular damage, immune dysregulation.
COVID hits all of those pathways.

I’ll keep my respirator on ✌🏼

[Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA @michael_hoerger]

I remember when they said kids don't transmit COVlD much because they are short, small, and have tiny lungs. They lied.

[PACO @PacoOnPause]

I'm going to try to change your perspective on COVID in under 2 minutes and I'm going to use this tweet as a springboard.

[Olenka Sayko @coco_chatel]

It’s fucking COVID taking a sledgehammer to everyone’s immune systems for the past few years which basically sets you up for getting more sick more often and more intensely from viruses you would have shrugged off before your brushes with COVID.

[Clean Air Club @Clean_Air_Club_]

Once again asking white people to confront the fact that their choice to not wear a mask anymore is directly tied to white supremacy

https://t.co/1GDRK6xYVW

[Pat Just Pat 🍉 @PatTheSocialist]

How anybody can continue ignoring the damage we're doing to kids is beyond me. Especially, so called leftists

[Nicole @n_e_rd]

To all the libs out there freaking out about what to do, the government probably fucking loves that you’re getting sick over and over and raising your chances of disabling illness and lowering your chances to fight back by not wearing a goddamn mask.

[VIP Cat Lady 🐀 @JKesgard]

Lolz. I know most of you have unfollowed me by now because of stuff like this, but where's the lie? Enjoy your brunch and your months... years of coughing.

[VIP Cat Lady 🐀 @JKesgard]

Yep.

[PACO @PacoOnPause]

if you're worried about the rise in fascism, I made this video for you..

[VIP Cat Lady 🐀 @JKesgard]

@JJ9828 I'm sorry. I'm focusing some positive energy your way. I actually have some to spare for once! ❤️

[ᴘᴏᴛᴀᴛᴜᴍ @pot8um]

If you’ve been ignoring covid and catching it repeatedly, you now have underlying conditions that ensure norovirus, RSV, H5N1, pneumonia, and even a common cold kicks your ass

I don’t want this for anyone but you need to know the inevitable result of multiple covid infections

[JoeyTuccio @joey_tuccio]

We are getting reports of HUNDREDS of dogs being turned into shelters because of the fires. We never needed fosters & adopters more than now. If you can foster or adopt in the LA area, please DM me. If you don't live in LA, please share this post. You never know who will see it.

[PACO @PacoOnPause]

a few follow up thoughts on the phones frying brains..

[David It Up! @Dave_it_up]

The Heart of a Friend, Quentin: After COVID-19

I wanted to share a story about Quentin. A few winters, before the floods took the Lyndonville Diner, he stood outside, holding a cup of hot coffee. He had this way of flat-palming the cup, so it wouldn’t burn his hand. His fingers tapped jittery against the paper.

Quentin often pressed his fingers to his neck, just below the jaw, counting his heartbeats. “One hundred twelve,” he said without looking up. “Yesterday it was seventy-four.” He asked me to log it into an app, keeping a running tally of a heart that wasn’t behaving as it should. He’s young, younger than me.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” he finally met my gaze, his voice edged with a nervous laugh, but his eyes carried something heavier. “How your heart can feel like it’s still beating, still doing its job, but deep down—you know you’re not okay.” He paused, rolling the napkin into a tight little cylinder. “They say I’m fine. But I can feel it, you know? Something’s not fine. Feels like my blood’s pushing through sludge, like the pipes are rusting out.”

Quentin didn’t stay long. He finished his coffee and disappeared into the snowy streets of Lyndonville. I sat there, staring at the napkin he left behind, wondering how many Quentins were out there, counting their beats, waiting for something to break.

He was the first person to welcome us to Vermont. Hardworking and kind, he was going to do all the fix-it work around our house, but after COVID, he never recovered.

Humans aren’t built for slow crises. We’re wired for explosions, tigers in the bushes, and fires we can see and feel. But a slow burn? A pandemic that quietly dismantles your insides while the world moves on? Forget it.

COVID-19 is still here. It’s still killing people, still wrecking lives, and still doing its slow, insidious damage to the body—especially the heart. We’ve moved on because the acute phase is over, but the prolonged and chronic phases? They’re just getting started.

The word “vessel” comes from the Latin vasculum, meaning “small container.” We are little containers of blood, oxygen, and life. And SARS-CoV-2? It’s ripping those containers apart from the inside.

The heart relies on vessels to deliver blood and oxygen to every corner of the body, but the virus doesn’t care. It scars the walls, clogs the highways, leaves tiny landmines in the system. Even people like Quentin, who “recovered,” are walking around with damaged vessels, their hearts working overtime to push blood through pipes that aren’t what they used to be.

Quentin’s heart wasn’t failing, not yet, but it was struggling. “They ran tests,” he’d said, “and everything looks normal. But it’s not normal. I know my body.” He wasn’t wrong. Studies show that SARS-CoV-2 can cause inflammation and scarring in blood vessels long after the initial infection is gone, setting the stage for heart disease, strokes, and worse.

Quentin’s little game with the napkin got me thinking. Try this: sit still, press your fingers to your neck, and count your heartbeats. Do it every day for a month. If your body’s healthy, you’ll barely notice a change. But imagine your vessels are inflamed, your heart’s overworked, and your blood’s thicker than it should be. The numbers won’t stay steady. They’ll creep up, like Quentin’s, and you’ll feel it—that quiet sense that something’s just… off.

That’s what SARS-CoV-2 is doing to people. It’s not dramatic. It’s not Hollywood. It’s a slow, grinding process that leaves you worse every day, even if you can’t put your finger on it.

This isn’t the first time we’ve faced a slow-moving killer. HIV pulled the same trick, lurking in bodies for years before exploding into AIDS. Back then, the world ignored the warning signs because the damage wasn’t immediate. Now, SARS-CoV-2 is pulling the same con, and we’re falling for it all over again.

Quentin didn’t wait for his heart to give out. He was fighting for every beat, every day, tracking his body’s quiet rebellion on scraps of napkin. The rest of us? We’re pretending the clock isn’t ticking. But it is. SARS-CoV-2 isn’t done, and the damage it’s causing will ripple out for decades.

The question is, will we learn from history? Or are we doomed to watch it repeat itself, one heartbeat at a time?

Love always,

David

[Jess @MeetJess]

A well fitting n95

[ᴘᴏᴛᴀᴛᴜᴍ @pot8um]

“We must not comply in advance!”

You’re already doing it.

It’s why you, your family, friends & everyone around you are sick all the time.

Put a mask back on!
Don’t be afraid to be the only one.

We’re still in a pandemic & your health is fucked from it. Protect your baseline.

[Derek Franks @Derek_a_Franks]

In the times before polio was virtually eradicated, the well known paralysis it caused actually only affected 1-in-200 people infected with polio.

But we still did the work to eradicate polio in the west.

In comparison, studies show 1-in-5 C0VlD infections leads to Long C0VlD.

[Hazie Thompson @haziethompson]

We will ‘rediscover’ this early 2020 information every 6 to 9 months ad infinitum.

[I Brake 4 Ants @ibrake4ants]

He should be angry. Everyone who believed the lie that covid is “mild” and that we no longer needed to take precautions to prevent it should be ANGRY. If this isn't you yet, it likely will be one day. Please, let’s rise up together to protect our future!

[The Yeti of Kananaskis @kananaskinyeti]

New CDC Covid map just came out