It is a pretty irresponsible headline for Ars.
What I do is literally the only thing I have control over. Thatâs why itâs important to me. I was asking your opinion not trying to negotiate with you.
As for the rest of it I donât think I ever engaged in any of that commentary about you but Iâm sorry you felt disparaged and if I did imply any of that I apologize.
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My guess:
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This just made me think if peoples dogs were dying from this they would be more willing to take preventative measures.
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Of all the insanity currently occurring, the one stat that is truly incomprehensible is:
1 in 4 health care workers not vaccinated.
WTF???
A COVID/chronic wasting disease crossover would be pretty wild.
I know a lot of nurses through my partner. Maybe itâs just Oklahoma/Kansas but a decent chunk are Trumpy af.
That really needs to be cut down by job. Janitors at hospitals are technically health care workers. People who do IT work at hospitals count in that too.
Nursing culture has a real, real strong vein of âweâre the tough ones around here who can deal with anything, the doctors and administrators are wimpy BMW driving wimpsâ.
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Thatâs a fair point and definitely a part of the rationalization process for my current behavior. I hadnât exactly thought about it like that but it obviously is. The other half is that we have obviously failed miserably as a society and Iâm really struggling with both my responsibility to that society and honestly a deep seated sense of hatred and disgust towards it. I mean itâs obvious I am not alone, every day we post articles about dumbass Covid deniers dying. Itâs an obvious outlet and coping mechanism with how we feel about the handling of Covid.
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Real ânormalâ might be a vaccine 2.0 or new therapeutic thing if we want a functioning health system long-term. Doubt it is 2020 style lockdowns, but the fantasy of being post COVID just isnât going to happen any time in the immediate future. How exactly it plays out doubt anyone knows. Least disruptive way would probably be something close to a hard lockdown on international travel coupled with a private sector led economic stick vaccine push. This country will live with deaths and disease, but even here like 1000 deaths a week probably a bridge too far.
Obviously ending masks was a giant unforced fuck up that caused death, but doubt masks alone stop exponential spread based on what we know now. That was just reaping what we sowed from our global 2020 fuckups.
Still, a good start would be decoupling masks from vaccination and just making it clear that masks arenât a temporary measure, but rather an opening cost of having some normalcy in the COVID world. Obviously not happening in many states, but blue states should start prepping that message: shirts/shoes/masks just part of civilized 21st century life. Can probably pressure corporations to help out there even in red states (I.e. Disney world)
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Yeah, social cohesion is a real thing. America has had a big problem for years asserting that only individual rights matter, that any concept of a âsocial contractâ is a made up construct that communists are going to use to require that you get a license for your toaster, blah blah blah. The consequence has been a bifurcation of society into basically responsible adults that keep the lights on in society and the willfully ignorant assholes. This was a problem before Covid but it was a problem where most of the responsible people making all the sacrifices at least had tenable lives. Covid has thrown a bucket of kerosene on that smoldering problem and now the lives of the responsible have been made shitty. What is the reasonable social contract bargain for the people that took all the reasonable measures before vaccinations, then got vaccinated, and now are still being asked to make even more sacrifices even thought theyâve âplayed ballâ since Day 1? At some point it has to be acknowledged that even our best behaving people are only human, and you canât ask people to make personal sacrifices forever. People will break.
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Itâs over.
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Yeah fair point, another self-own we havenât started doing that 18 months in. Just so bummed out today I didnât even consider that.
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I think your thinking is correct, but for it to work in practice requires either a) humans to suddenly start acting contrary to observed human behavior patterns or b) a very significant and immediate increase in the public attitudes about the role of a coercive state. I donât see either as being practical, although b is one possible outcome of all the responsible adults in society getting broken by demands on them arising from the obvious misbehavior of others.
Oh no, Big Vaxx got to Fox! Letâs head over to Facebook for The Truth!
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Assuming we donât suddenly find broad acceptance of coercive state action AND a state enforcement mechanism willing to go along (both big asks) I feel like the negotiation isnât really going to be negotiation, itâs going to a decision. The âresponsible adult classâ, for lack of a better shorthand, choose:
Door A - Find untapped wells of emotional and psychological reserves and make big personal sacrifices for an indeterminant length of time to technocratically calibrate the spread of Covid and Covid variants to some manageable level for the greater good
Or
Door B - Pull up the drawbridge, use collective political power and wealth to ramp up the production of services and protections to support the responsible adult class exclusively, minimize the personal sacrifices and do whatever we can to shift risks to other groups
This isnât really a negotiation. Who are they negotiating with? The anti vaxxers who mock and spit on them for having made a bunch of sacrifices for 18 months while they fucked around? I think that you could convince people (and we largely did) to choose Door A when there were no vaccines, but I just cannot see any outcome post vaccines other than the responsible class rushes through Door B and slams it shut behind them. The attitude will be âif you have a problem with that, talk to the antivaxxersâ and I donât see a way to negotiate against it.
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Would have guessed fewer would have been vaccinated.
The ones I know who donât get it are a 50/50 mix of conservative morons and new agey morons. Regardless, theyâre quite similar. Theyâre stupid fucks who think theyâre independent thinkers who get their news from facebook.
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Nothing is going to get better in this country unless and until the adults get comfortable using force to make idiots behave. Thatâs it. I know that makes people uncomfortable and slippery slope yadda yadda yadda, but a third of the country is just plain gone.
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I think thereâs a âhitting rock bottomâ phase to get through first. The question will be what does that look like? It wasnât Donnie Dumb Dumb, heâs a symptom of the problem. It could have been Jan 6 but Congress didnât jump on the opportunity to crucify insurrectionists (especially insurrectionist in Congress) like they should have. Weâre still drawing live to Nazis 2.0, or ISIS With Football. Actually those two outcomes may be the highest probability.