As U.S. health guidelines start to loosen as COVID-19 cases fall from record-high levels of infection, we look at how there there are still millions of immunocompromised people who face acute risk of illness and feel they have received little to no guidance on how to stay safe in a prolonged COVID-19 world. Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Ed Yong of The Atlantic spoke to immunocompromised people for his new report and says, “While a lot of the world opens up, their world shuts down, and they feel left behind and abandoned by the government, by their friends, by their workplaces.” Yong notes immunocompromised people “want their lives back, too,” but are just asking for structural solutions to help keep them and non-immunocompromised people safe.
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We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
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