During the entire pandemic, I’ve always been one of a handful at most of customers wearing a mask in various Meijer’s in Indiana. Not even all employees, ever. Sigh.
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I still try to have hope that not all are lost.
While public discourse certainly feels like an adolescents misunderstanding of Cogers society based on eristic dialectics, I still hope that someone more calm than me can reach out on a person basis. Just sow the seed of questioning the own beliefs, and deliver some support to a friend, a family member, a trusted colleague or even just some aquaintance who still is doubtful about vaccination, or even opposed.
I, OTH, am differently lost.
ETA: I didn’t mean to dump this on you. I feel it, I wrote it, and I posted it. And I keep it here. Maybe just jump to the last two sentences.
Very much this. The more I know, the more I see, the lonelier I become. When I question other persons actions and inactions talking to my closest confidant, I basically always end up trying to explain why I find it questionable (or just plain wrong). And I do not get positive feedback on my opinions.
I then vocalise my concerns in an escalating spiral, and end up feeling misunderstood and alienated. The one thing I want, truly and deeply want, is each and everyone to take care, to use a cautious approach. I am fine with making exceptions, I am even fine with taking risks at some points. But the risks need to be mitigationable, or containable, or manageable.
A cautious approach is all I demand. I don’t ask for it. I demand it. Based on the known knowns and known unknowns, and allowing for known unknowns.
That’s too much to demand. Apparently, even to much to ASK for.
That said, in my self-pity and self-righteous despair, I am very much aware of my privileges.
I definitely feel for you. You don’t have some of those privileges. I, for one, could choose to ignore much which you have to deal with constantly. And much, much more, I don’t even come into any contact to.
You are a hero, and I hope you know that.
And I sincerely hope that you and your family do get support, and help if you want.
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good up until the end with one guy saying the media lied about trump’s ties to russia ( so people didn’t believe them later about covid ), and the other guy saying the “political elites” should have come together on messaging.
she does have a totally interesting theory that early misapprehension about the dangerousness of covid led to becoming anti-vax now. ( it’s something i saw play out in my own family for sure )
platforming both side arguments though is no good
it misses that trump ( and fox ) deliberately underplayed the virus because it hurt his reelection chances. moreover: it’s not two sides becoming more polarized, it’s one side jumping off the deep end of conspiracy theories because they didn’t want to acknowledge the reality of their own bad decisions
( if i had a cancel wand, “polarized” would be target number one. )
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I thought it was good to keep the last piece in as it showed that this guys opinion is still firmly on looney-land. He didnt learn anything at all.
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I’ve been debating myself on posting this video here since it dropped yesterday. It talks about the reasoning antivaxxers give about why they choose not to get the covid vaccine. Abbi looks at it from her usual informational/philosophical perspective, with her typical compassion and grace.
I can understand if you anyone chooses not to watch it; it can be an irritating subject for those of us who take our civic/social reponsibility to protect ourselves and others seriously. But if the information within helps convince reluctant people to take the shot, it could be useful.
(minor edits for clarity as indicated.)
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I found one of the first responses in the comment thread – which seemed much better than most YouTube comment threads – particularly interesting because it presented something I recognize seeing with regard to cancer, but hadn’t put it together with covid, and now I even know the clinical name for the issue:
I’m a cancer survivor. Personal stats: 1.5 months of radiation treatment, 6 months of chemo, 3 surgeries, 1 recurrance, and 4 years in and out of treatment. When I was going through treatment, I spent a lot of time in waiting rooms getting to know my fellow patients. I observed a phenomenon which I dubbed “suicide by cancer”, but which I learned later is form a shock known by psychologists as “cognitive paralysis”. The number of people who chose to not take treatment in spite of having completely treatable and survivable forms of cancer was heartbreaking. Cognitive paralysis happens when a situation is so terrifying that your brain simply can’t accept that what is happening is real. You become incapable of forming a rational response to the situation. In most cases, simply doing nothing is form a comfort because it allows you to pretend that the “bad thing” isn’t real. if you listen to most people who are voluntarily unvaccinated, you will notice one common thread: they never talk about the virus or it’s symptoms or what a death from Covid looks like. Avoiding looking at the actual alternative to vaccination - as in getting seriously ill or dying from Covid - is something they are very strategic about doing. They always manage to divert the conversation away from the virus, itself. Just as the cancer patients who chose not to take treatment (and just go home and die) never talked about what kind of cancer they had or what form their death would take. Is your “choice” to not take the vaccine really a choice if you’re in the grip of cognitive paralysis and just don’t know it?
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It seems this debate is still going on…
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Well, this thread sure has gone quiet…
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Their strategy was obviously controversial and it may never be known exactly how many deaths could have been avoided if they were more cautious early on, especially in protecting folks in nursing homes that saw a huge amount of death early in the pandemic. But according to Worldometer they’re currently at 1,677 deaths per million of population, almost exactly the same as Austria and way better than France, Italy and the UK, let alone the USA which is nearly double that rate. (Not nearly as good as their neighbors Finland and Norway though.)
This chart from that report is also interesting:
“All cause mortality” is a useful measure because it includes things not normally attributed directly to the virus, such as more people dying from unmanaged diabetes or delayed cancer treatments. I think that in retrospect the measures taken in some places that prevented people from even going outdoors for socially-distant exercise for months at a time did more harm than good. It’s good to see that some groups are going back to look at what measures worked and what measures didn’t so that we’re better prepared for the next pandemic.
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Oopsie
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Thoughts.
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Fresh out of prayers?
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Stockpiling them for a deserving cause. The thoughts aren’t very generous either.
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I’ve got lots of thoughts and prayers for Clive Palmer.
None of them are in favour of his recovery.
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Just FTR, in my case, mostly for personal reasons.
There is still much to learn and discuss. There would be much, much more to rant about, but it’s not worth it any more. Feels like screaming into the void, only sometimes hearing an echo of it. Sometimes listening to other people screaming, and replying in a faint echoing voice.
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