23: viral

Ephemera

Get in touch (even about vaccination): [e-mail] https://www.patreon.com/ephemerapodcast

http://storiesfromtheinter.net/about http://storiesfromtheinter.net/zine

Audio engineering is kindly provided by Miguel Tanhi of Much Different, a live podcast recording venue in Brooklyn, NY.

— FURTHER READING:

“Almost half the world is living through this pandemic without Internet”:https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/07/world/internet-inequality-coronavirus-intl/index.html

Kate Petrova’s thread on Amazon scented candle review data:https://twitter.com/kate_ptrv/status/1332475475726381056

That image from FARK.com: https://storiesfromtheinter.net/post/669434840080384000

The LA Times’ followup reporting, interviewing Eddie Moreno’s colleagues:https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-02/fbi-train-derailment-mercy-naval-ship-extremist-groups

This episode's cover art is a simplified explanation of SARS-CoV-2 lineage descent, published by and alongside the Pango viral lineage nomenclature system. I chose it because I think it cleanly illustrates the ever-evolving state of the virus worldwide. http://pando.tools/ https://www.pango.network

For a comprehensive list of all documented viral lineages of SARS-CoV-2, try scrolling through this link for a few minutes: https://cov-lineages.org/lineage_list.html

Finally, a note: as I edited and published this episode, the WHO declared the Omicron variant to be a "Variant of Concern", leapfrogging the intermediary "Variant of Interest" status. In Pango nomenclature, Omicron was previously known as B.1.1.529. There are other nomenclatures too but basically you'll probably only ever hear Pango nomenclature or WHO nomenclature. I don't know very much about Omicron at all but I want to stress, at this time, that travel bans are ineffective at preventing international transmission, and that vaccination remains the #1 most effective tool we have to protect ourselves from this pandemic. Access to those vaccines is an enormous issue of vaccine equity and vaccine imperialism. As director-general of the WHO Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has pointed out, eight billion doses of vaccine have been administered worldwide. The supply exists, but it is constrained by imperialism and the rent-seeking profit motive. I applaud US president Joe Biden's seemingly-sincere attempts to end the vaccine patents and liberate the world from our global pandemic. Nursing unions in nearly 30 countries are begging him to do so. If we do not protect the entire world from this plague, it will never leave us. Ephemera will be back with a much less depressing episode, shortly before Christmas.