We are a group of people from across Mendocino County, CA, who care about disability justice and COVID-19/Long COVID prevention and education. 

We aim to:  

• Increase access to prevention tools and resources for all
• Build connection and community with other like-minded people in our region 

We offer: 

• Masks, tests, and air purifiers for personal use
• Masks, tests, and air purifiers for events
• Masked social meetups and events

Please read more here about what we are offering our community.

You can use these “page jumps” to help navigate this page. Clicking on each question will make you automatically scroll to it!

• Why are we offering this?
• Is Mendo Clean Air Club a nonprofit?
• Do you take donations?
• What is disability justice and why does it matter to our group?
• Why might I want to think more about filtering the air?
• Why should I protect myself and others from COVID?
• What is Long COVID?
• What do I do with all of this information?
• Where can I find current rates of COVID?
• What do I do if/when I have COVID?
• Remind me again how I can get clean air tools and find community?

why are we offering this? 

We started the Mendo Clean Air Club because the COVID-19 pandemic has not ended, Long COVID and other post-viral conditions are on the rise, and it is impacting the health and wellbeing of our community on many levels. 

While the vast majority of our local public institutions, nonprofits and health care providers continue to ignore these impacts despite the evidence, we choose to face them and offer our region real tools and resources to prevent transmission and keep each other safe. 

We call ourselves a clean air club because we recognize that breathing clean air by utilizing masks, air purifiers and other tools is vital—not only for stopping the spread of COVID-19 and other airborne illnesses, but also for protecting ourselves during the era of climate change, especially during wildfire season. Our group is one of hundreds of clean air organizations and mask blocs throughout the country working to help make their communities safer.   

We also know that many people in our region do not have access to accurate or up-to-date information about COVID-19, but are feeling the harmful effects of repeat infections on their health, or seeing it in their loved ones. In addition to lack of current and accurate information, we know that many locals want to keep themselves safe, but do not have access to quality masks, tests or air purifiers, most often because of financial barriers.  

is mendo clean air club a nonprofit?

No! We are a group of regular, everyday people from across Mendocino County doing grassroots mutual aid. We are stepping up to increase access to masks, air cleaning tools, tests and evidence-based information where our local public health department, nonprofits, and health care providers have fallen short or have given up entirely. 

Want to join us? Get in touch!

do you take donations?

Yes! Contact us to donate masks or other clean air tools.

what is disability justice and why does it matter to our group?

Disability justice is deeply important to our group because we see and understand the connection between different forms of structural oppression, such as racism/white supremacy, ableism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, colonization, imperialism, and (last but not least!) capitalism, and how they impact health outcomes related to COVID-19. As so many have noted, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to expose equity issues across our society, including deeply-rooted racism and ableism in public health and healthcare settings, insufficient protection for workers, insufficient protection for children, and more. 

Drawing from the wisdom of Sins Invalid, a leader in disability justice work that established the 10 Principles of Disability Justice, we share the collective belief that:

• All bodies are unique and essential. 
• All bodies have strengths and needs that must be met. 
• We are powerful, not despite the complexities of our bodies, but because of them. 
• All bodies are confined by ability, race, gender, sexuality, class, nation state, religion, and more, and we cannot separate them.

We especially embrace the disability justice approach that it is ALWAYS worth the effort to center access needs and protect each other from harm. If you want to learn more, follow some of our favorite disability justice folks: 

why might I want to think more about filtering the air? 

Illness: Maybe you…

• Are tired of being sick
• Can’t afford to miss work 
• Can’t afford to become disabled or further disabled
• Don’t want to miss out on fun planned activities in the short term
• Don’t want to lose the ability to participate in the things you love in the long term
• Agree with us that nobody should have to risk serious illness from routine activities like picking up a prescription or going to the post office

General Health: Maybe you…

• Need relief from seasonal allergies
• Want protection from air pollution
• Want protection from wildfire smoke
• Are interested in filtering dust, pet dander, microplastics, bacteria, and other pollutants in your home using ventilation methods like air purifiers or airflow through open windows

Community Care: Or maybe you…

• Want to be in solidarity with communities disproportionately affected by COVID and Long COVID—including, but not limited to, disabled and immunocompromised individuals, BIPOC communities, and workers
• Want to keep loved ones, and your whole community, safer
• Want to keep public spaces accessible for disabled and immunocompromised people
• Are ready to push back on our government and public health agencies for abandoning their duty to public health
• Want to use your ability to protect large numbers of people (as one infection can spread to many, the reverse is also true: breaking one chain of transmission can create significant ripple effects!)

why should I protect myself and others from COVID?

Many people experience their COVID infections as not very severe (or even asymptomatic, meaning no symptoms at all!) and conclude that COVID is similar to a cold, believing that further protection for themselves or others is unnecessary. 

This is false. Significant internal damage occurs in the body during and after each COVID infection, which can affect every system and organ in the body. 

It has become clear from empirical research into the wide variety of post-COVID symptoms, presentations, and related diagnoses (many of which are outlined below) that COVID infections do not only affect the respiratory system.

Over the past few years of research, our picture of COVID has been clarified: it is not merely a respiratory illness; rather, it is a vascular disease transmitted through a respiratory route, with respiratory symptoms.

Each COVID infection a person gets—regardless of how “mild” it may feel—raises their risk for internal organ damage (as highlighted above), Long COVID (see more below), and death (also outlined below). 

It follows, then, that the only way to prevent this damage is to do your best to prevent COVID infections in the first place. (And, to join us in distributing mitigation materials!)

what is Long COVID?

Post-viral symptoms:

In many cases, post-viral symptoms can be noticeably severe. Groups of these symptoms are currently called “Long COVID.”

Some common symptoms include the damage highlighted above, and also present as:

• Fatigue
• Cognitive impairment (often called “brain fog” and presenting as difficulty thinking or concentrating)
• Memory challenges
• Vertigo/dizziness
• Loss of smell or taste 
• Persistent cough
• Gastrointestinal symptoms like nausea, diarrhea, and low appetite
• Sleep disturbance 
• Dyspnea/shortness of breath
• Joint pain
• Chest pain
• Rashes
• Fast or irregular heartbeat
• Hypertension/high blood pressure
• And more—(200+ symptoms have been identified under the umbrella of Long COVID)

You may have noticed some of these symptoms in yourself or in those around you. COVID is a mass–disabling event; however, due to the minimizing and normalizing language and actions of our leadership—in service of our economic system—many people lack the language or willingness to describe (or the awareness to validate) changes in their health and their experiences in their bodies. 

Knowing that there is no easy path to diagnosis or treatment may also lead people to downplay or disregard what they are feeling. 

And of course, many COVID infections are under-diagnosed due to a lack of testing, a high prevalence of inaccurate test results, and asymptomatic infections. If a person is unaware of their COVID infection, how would they be able to recognize their Long COVID? 

post-viral conditions: 

Some conditions that a COVID infection may exacerbate, create, or trigger include:

• Dysautonomia, especially postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS)
• Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), which has much in common with Long COVID (including how much is still to be understood!) and is often considered a “sister condition”
• Severe fatigue after exercise/post-exertional malaise (PEM)
• Autoimmune disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus
• Heart disease
• Lung disease
• Strokes and blood clots
• Mental health conditions
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Parkinson’s disease
• Diabetes, Type I and II
• Mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS)
• Fibromyalgia
• And many, many more

The effects of Long COVID can vary from hindering a person’s comfort in the world and reducing their quality of life to leaving them bedridden and unable to work or engage in the hobbies and activities they love. There is currently no cure or treatment for Long COVID, and little to no support for those living with it.  

death: 

Lastly, while we have focused above on COVID as a mass-disabling event, this does not mean that mass deaths have not also occurred or are not still happening. COVID remains among the top leading causes of death in the United States (and it continues to be the leading contagious cause of death by far), with hundreds to thousands of deaths occurring each week.

It’s okay to take a moment to reflect on this. It’s okay to be sensitive to this level of life lost. Grief has no deadline, and this a traumatic and ongoing event that our leadership has been erasing, minimizing, and normalizing—leading us as a society, to erase, minimize, and normalize it in our haste to “return to normal.” 

what do I do with all of this information? 

It’s a hard question, and the answer is likely to be very personal! We will offer, though, this video by @themme_fatale, which it has resonated with many people and may provide some helpful framing. (Click anywhere on the video to start or pause it.)

We feel the same. Join us in keeping each other safe < 3

A note on consistency:

You do not need to use all of the clean air tools you have, in all situations, for their use to be beneficial.

For instance, if you go to the club unmasked on Friday and then wear a mask at the pharmacy on Sunday, you are helping making a space that everyone must visit safer and more accessible (as well as protecting yourself from potential illnesses at the pharmacy).

If you have family over for dinner and you decide to open some windows and borrow an air purifier from us, you may end up stopping a chain of transmission, as well as enjoying fresher air overall.

Perhaps it is helpful to know that our Clean Air Club members are still actively masking in your community as well. If so, let us know!

where can I find current rates of COVID?

Wastewater is currently the only real way to track this data. Please see this weekly report by Dr. Michael Hoerger/the Pandemic Mitigation Collective for current trends and forecasts.

Note: As federal and state agencies continue their push to treat the COVID pandemic as “over” (which it is not), tracking methods receive less funding—we no longer have wastewater data being collected in Ukiah or Windsor, where this was done until recently—and the methods become less reliable. This means that any tracking data you see is very likely an undercount.

what should I do if/when I have COVID?

Rest, rest, rest! And, check out these resources below (also found in our Linktree) for more information: 

Read this clear, straightforward, and science-based guidance from The People’s CDC. 

Make a plan in advance for how you will avoid infecting others, including people who live with you. Create your COVID+ plan using this document (doing so in advance will give you time to gather supplies): 

Please see this chart regarding timelines of infectiousness:

The guidelines may have changed, but the scientific backing for the original 14 -day and 10-day isolation periods has not.

remind me again how I can get clean air tools and find community?

You can get in touch with us via email or social media DMs! Check our Contact Us page for all the details.

to find out more about the masks, tests, and air purifiers we offer, please visit this page.

In community and solidarity < 3,

Mendo Clean Air Club