Interview with Jonathan Vair

We’re honored to have our first interview with Jonathan Vair Duncan, long-time professional furry artist and soon-to-be guest of honor at Furry Weekend Atlanta. Besides their art, Jonathan and his partner Sasha have given talks at cons and online about understanding the furry fandom and about building community and networks of support within it, from which their Packmates mutual aid group developed. Yatchi (founder of Covid Safe Furs) conducted this interview with Jonathan online in February 2025, and it has been edited for length and clarity.

Y: Hi Jonathan, thanks so much for chatting with us. We’ve got a lot to talk about, but I wanted to start off by checking in on what you’ve been up to recently—I know you’re going to be guest of honor at FWA coming up.

J: Thank you for signal-boosting my experiences. Correct, the GoH slot is a dream come true for me. Since I first attended FWA in 2013, it has become a favorite convention. FWA has a history of positive initiatives that have influenced other cons, so it’s my hope Covid Safe Furs will have a positive impact on their event, too.

As visual artist GoHs, Sasha and I are tasked with generating merchandising and advertising arts on the convention theme. We’re also preparing several illustrated and researched talks on community building within furry. This is on top of our usual furry con responsibilities of exhibiting and selling art at the dealers’ den.

However, these obligations are separate from my personal art, writing, and organizing both inside and outside of the furry fandom. Furry is often growing faster than current staff accommodate for, and I don’t just mean event venues. The average furry, much like the average person, is lost in this immense gap between wanting to do the right thing and feeling powerless to make an impact. Filling this gap within furry is urgent and unsexy work, but fortunately we aren’t doing it alone and we have fun doing it! That’s the work I’m most proud of.

Y: It’s very important work! I’m glad we have you with us and I hope we’ll be able to make things happen.

Tell me about your experience when you got Covid. Was it your first time?

J: My first positive Covid test came after Eurofurence, in September of 2024. The most likely moment of contracting it was either late night in the lobby (where I was one of the few masked up) or the next day, where I sat outdoors with a separate group of asymptomatic carriers. I travelled home, not realizing I was Covid-positive the entire time. After some continued and unusual sniffles, a quick at-home test lit up that second line promptly. I love Eurofurence and owe much to its staff and other contributors. Yet I must admit, my first thought was, “This happened because those in charge of Health & Safety at EF didn’t care whether or not furries got Covid.” I realised that this sentiment also carried into the majority of my friends who unmasked. Sure, none of my friends or EF staff wanted me to get Covid, but they also, frankly, didn’t care enough to act in my defense or others. That’s a painful and seemingly judgmental statement to make, but it is also critical to accept that our intentions do not free us from the consequences of our actions.

I was isolated from my main household for over a week and a half. I gathered creature comforts before my symptoms worsened, but could not use most of them: books, drawing, and playing instruments were too exhausting. I mostly stared at a wall, listened to music and played some video games.

I also had to process a new kind of survivor’s guilt, because I had one of the best possible setups: I work at home, generate my own income as my own boss, and live with two amazing humans who have my back. I couldn’t stop thinking of the victims of Covid who don’t have those privileges. I survived my situation, but I could have just as easily ended up on the streets, like many Covid survivors. Why are we all pretending this isn’t a big deal, or that it’s behind us?

Y: You got infected at basically the exact same time I did—it was my first time ever, too. I remember how difficult and unpleasant it was, not being able to do anything other than stay in bed. How did things progress from there?

J: My Covid-conscious friends warned me that long Covid doesn’t necessarily correlate with initial symptoms. This helped me avoid the crushing disappointment of not being “over it”. Even after multiple negative test results, I felt this odd fatigue, like my pelvis and core were weighted into the ground. I was told to exercise without pushing myself, but even the most trivial thing can debilitate me now. I lost a lot of body strength that I still haven’t been able to safely build up. Time got weirder than it already was, and then brain fog set in. Eventually, I couldn’t tell what was my typical ADHD and what was brain fog, which brought feelings of inadequacy and embarrassment. I couldn’t work, earn income, enjoy my friends or enjoy my own self like I used to. I certainly appreciate life more than I used to, but now every day feels like a waking dream.

Y: That sounds really awful, I’m sorry you’ve had to go through that. Could you tell me more about how it affected you emotionally?

J: Emotionally, getting long Covid wasn’t the problem. It was everyone’s lack of response to Covid that was one of the most devastating things that has ever happened to me.

Years ago on Twitter, I put out an advertisement for a talk Sasha and I were doing, titled How Could We Organize In The Furry Fandom? One furry asked me in response, “How can we organize with able-bodied furries when they keep throwing disabled furries under the bus by abandoning Covid protocols at events?” Surely, I thought, this was just some angry person on Twitter. Surely, able-bodied furries aren’t this bad. After all, I’m able-bodied and I take disabled furry lives seriously. This furry graciously accepted my request for more details in a call, and the details were grim. I was tearing up when I learned about the Disabled Furries group chat on Telegram that ended because too many furries died of Covid.

Y: Oh no… that’s absolutely devastating. People need to know that this is something that happened.

J: I still cry when I think of the disabled people who don’t want to be able-bodied, because they hate seeing what able-bodied people are capable of doing to disabled populations. I remembered when a disability justice advocate live tweeted their own death, going, “This isn’t going to change things, is it? I’m dying for nothing, aren’t I?” I believed these perspectives and promised to act as if their lives mattered. But people say they care enough all the time. And at the end of the day, talk is cheap.

So, I added all the important details of the call to our organizing talk and told everyone I could how important Covid protocols were to our high risk and disabled relatives. I told all my friends, my fans, the Packmates Discord, and even convention staff that we need to do better to protect disabled furries. I made sure my boyfriend (besides Sasha), who is elderly, had recent invasive surgeries, and thus also high-risk, remained vigilant with our protocol. Then I watched his friends (even medical professionals and hospital volunteers) drop protocol. He dropped his own protocol without telling me, because it’s harder to act in care when none of your friends do, and inadequate CDC guidelines lulled the masses into a false sense of security.

Y: I can imagine how crushing that must have felt.

J: Virtually all the people I trusted with that disabled furry’s testimony, one by one, acted as if I told them nothing at all. They’re overwhelmed. They’re tired. To internalise the struggles of Disability Justice is to confront one’s own humanness to its very core, an important but brutal assignment even for the able-bodied person. It would be unfair to reduce this to a failure of individual character. It would also be unfair to ignore the reality: abandoning masking protocol and encouraging the mutation of Covid is essentially playing eugenics with human lives. Down to an individual choice, this is nearly always because masking indoors is less important to many people than cherishing the lives of their fellow humans. I won’t be complicit in that, regardless of how few people in my life hold my values.

Back to this disability advocate furry: They put in a ton of work to teach convention leadership about these struggles, to build better events that are safer and more accessible for everyone. Nearly everyone had kind words and showed sympathy. Then, when push came to shove, there was virtually nothing to show. Even today, few large conventions care. I watched a Disability Justice member livetweet their final Covid exposure, including a message along the lines of, “Oh my God, I’m dying and it won’t even make a difference, will it?” This was years before I first tested positive, but I believed them and advocated for what they asked. After it disabled me directly, it was a process of mourning. Even when I made mistakes, I gave everything I could to better the furry fandom, but I recognized most of my fans and my friends wouldn’t act any differently even if I died of Covid. From that point on, everyone in my life was placed in a binary: “Would they act differently to protect their fellow humans, knowing what I know? Or would they throw me, too, under a bus?”

Y: I always hold out hope that things can be different and people can be better, but experiences like that make it very challenging.

J: Perhaps the worst part of it all is trusting kind and wonderful people with how badly I’m doing. They say, “I wish there was something I could do to help.” I say, “There is. Mask up indoors and ask for masking mandates at your events.” Nearly none of them actually cared enough to do this. Some even assumed I cared this much only after getting Covid myself. No. I was invested and understanding before I got Covid. I act this way because disabled lives matter. I met people where they were on the subject, to avoid being overbearing, but I’m definitely pushier now than ever. That conversation always costs me a lot more energy than the person I’m talking to, and I push not only for my survival but for theirs as well.

Most of my online interactions happen with my friends and fans in the Discord server my partner and I made. Initially this online space was for fans of my art, writing, or streams. Since then it has moved to Packmates, a furry mutual aid project. The whole point of Packmates is to start thinking like a collectivist, to view yourself as a part of the whole, organizing for a better world, instead of identifying as an isolated victim of a predatory system. And yet, I would see many of our Discord members knowing how badly long Covid hit me yet acting no differently. One member of Covid Safe Furs told me, “Until there’s a social cost, there’s no reason to believe any of your loved ones will mask when you aren’t around.” They were right. They may do it for me, but they won’t do it for a stranger, but they’ll act like they should when they talk with me about my feelings. If they only adopt Covid consciousness to cater to me alone, they’re completely missing the point.

Y: It takes a lot for people to live up to the values that they profess. I admire that you’re trying to do so.

Your career as a furry artist involves a lot of travel and a lot of conventions, on top of the art itself. How has that been affected?

J: I cannot contribute to shared responsibilities like I used to. My livestreams used to be important to myself and my audience, but I can no longer hold a stream schedule. I can no longer set up nor tear down at dealers’ dens. My disabled partner’s body is slowly deteriorating, which is exacerbated by my inability to help him like I used to. Sometimes I can’t walk or stand. I can’t confidently hold social appointments anymore, nor can I fulfill art deadlines. I used to be able to work a day or two after a convention. Now I need at least a week to recharge. Furry conventions used to be highlights of my life. I have attended maybe over 100 of them. Now I don’t want to go to them anymore. I hate seeing how many furries love my art but don’t love me enough to protect me. I hate seeing conventions cherish my attendance in the dealers’ den table but not cherish my own life enough to ask attendees to mask up for my safety. I hated being one of the only people I knew who didn’t throw disabled furries under the bus, so I had to relearn what it is like to do art that isn’t about this topic.

That said, I want to highlight the leadership of Further Confusion for mandating masks in the dealers’ den and art show. This gesture made a world of difference to me and proved that some conventions are already choosing to do better.

Y: What would you most like to say to fans of your work and to the rest of the furries out there?

J: Please forgive my directness here. I only say this because protecting able-bodied feelings amounted to little in this struggle, and I would rather trust you with reality:

To abandon masking mandates during Covid is to throw especially disabled furries under the bus. To pretend Covid is over is to place your fellow humans in a eugenics experiment without their consent. Disability justice is not a niche side project—it is our future. To abandon disabled lives is to forfeit a future to fascism.

If we truly want fascists to fuck off from convention spaces, perhaps we should start with the ableist inside of our own hearts.

Y: Indeed, every change has to start with ourselves. Thank you so much for opening up about all of this, Jonathan.

Find Jonathan Vair and his work on his website, Patreon, Bluesky, and elsewhere. He and his partner Sasha will be guests of honor at Furry Weekend Atlanta, May 8–11, 2025, where they will be vending as well as hosting the panel “Building Real Community in Furry”. Jonathan will also be hosting a second panel on the FUTUREPUNK art theme he contributed to for FWA.