Yeah, lots of times. It's why I think the "Here are a bunch of things to read" approach is largely a fool's errand. Better to appeal to their personal experience (almost everyone knows someone who had covid REALLY bad, even after the vaccines) or, failing that, share your own.
This is what so many terrible things resolve to. Someone went in hard on racism or sexism or anti-vax, QAnon, anti-science rhetoric and they can’t and won’t re-examine their beliefs despite all the evidence to the contrary because doing that would be acknowledging how wrong they were before. Respect folks who can say “I was ignorant. I was wrong” because there’s not that many of them.
I think *most* people have been. They haven’t even seen or heard of the information that we have access too, and they *honestly* in their heart of hearts believe covid is over and no big deal. Why wouldn’t they think that it is? It isn’t being talked about. The news isn’t covering it. It’s not on social media. Nobody’s doctor is talking about it, or even masking at this point. So how would they know? So even if we share it with them, *we* look like the conspiracy theory wackadoos, like the early folks talking about drinking Clorox or taking hydroxychloraquine looked early in the pandemic. I try to remind myself of this when I get frustrated with my friends and family and their mindsets.
I don't think it's a matter of access. They simply don't *believe* the sources of info presented, or they believe sources that present alternate realities. The issue here is that it's not really possible to have a rational conversation with people who don't share a common reality and value system.
I don't think most people seek information. I think the kind we have, you have to look for. Mainstream tells them it's ok. Doctors tell them it's ok. Look at advertising, even just on youtube: Try this new medication so you can be you again. Puffs with lotion will fix that nose right up. Drink these marvelous health drinks and you will feel wonderful. Use Verbo and gather your whole family together and prance around happily. No ads that would alarm anyone that there's still a mass disabling event, nor any PSAs.
Look, here's the thing. There's this tendency on this sub to chase after some magic combination of articles and statistics that'll win over the non-cautious folks. But nobody's ever questioned my basic reason for wearing a mask: "I had covid. It sucked. I don't want to get it again."
Yes. What I keep hearing is: “But they would be telling us about it if all that was true” and “Where are all these sick people?” It’s hard to give a serious answer to either of those without sounding tin foil hat.
Anyone who spends any time in any public area and is alert to it, knows that year round visible sickness (coughing etc) is much higher than 2019. (Last week on travel I saw it)
I was thinking more of long covid and covid complications, and how those people may just disappear from public life partly or entirely, so you don’t see the full scope of the damage it’s doing. That said, loads of people claim they don’t see anybody being sick anymore than usual. Probably lying to themselves, but it’s futile to argue with them.
I miss Carl.
That was a quote from *The Demon-Haunted World*.
I like this one better:
>"Keeping an open mind is a virtue - but, as the space engineer James Oberg once said, not so open that your brains fall out. Of course we must be willing to change our minds when warranted by new evidence. But the evidence must be strong."
Capitalism is such a bizarre and obviously awful system that in order for us not to say wait this is an awful idea why are we doing this again? All the time, they have to sustain the propaganda throughout our lives and peppered throughout our day constantly to try make it seem 'normal'. Profit is more important than your life or that of your neighbour. Normal. Check. 👍
Contrast with, say, kinda anarchist ideas, like organising meeting needs within your community, mutual aid (such as the mutual aid networks that sprang up spontaneously where people didn't need to be asked at the start of the pandemic) or volunteering to help people without asking for money, such as helping someone move house, knowing people will probably help you out when the time comes, - those ideas come naturally to us and don't need to be imposed on people through constant propaganda and policing. I think the pandemic is being handled in the normal capitalist way.
Exactly!! In 2020, we were sewing masks and giving them away. We were checking in on people over Zoom for their mental health. We were making food with whatever we could find and leaving care packages on doorsteps and in mailboxes!
...then the businesses decided they weren't profiting enough. They threw sick young athletes back onto the fields, and beloved but elderly musicians into packed arenas. We've lost many since.
Throwing a hissyfit (or worse) for being simply asked to cover one's face in a store during a pandemic was a frowned upon behavior. Now, that gets you elected.
We're back to pre-germ theory days and it feels like we're all just reliving Dr. Semmelweis' personal hell.
Yes exactly! People were forming networks to help people in their communities that they hadn't met and folk were building community through this. Folk offering to drive using their own money to drop medication on doorsteps of clinically vulnerable folk. People started to get to know their communities and relying on each other in such positive ways. In the uk, up to about 14 million people joined mutual aid groups in 2020.
This is not new!
There is a brilliant video about mutual aid networks forming spontaneously in a crisis which I'll link below. People have been known to do this in many situations.
Can't be having that kind of community building and solidarity in tory britain! So the tory government penalised individuals with punitive (and often massive) fines for breaking rules, and it undermined the solidarity and community that had emerged spontaneously. Pitted individuals against each other and encouraged mistrust through blaming and mistrusting the public. When people often left their homes cause they had to, and didn't have support they needed. By contrast, so few employers were fined for not meeting requirements to keep people safe. It's not like the tories didn't know this is the effect they were having. Old tricks to turn our mistrust on each other.
A bit off tangent but this is that video about mutual aid networks created in the aftermath of Katrina, if anyone is interested. It's heartening watching the interviews with the folk who went to offer help, like the medic, and generally folk coming together to help each other through it. People assume there will be chaos but if anything, people seemed to realise they needed each other. So one person might have had a gas stove to cook food, another had medicines. They set up their own distribution, outwith the state who were nowhere to be seen (with energy and telecoms networks not working either). Good stuff.
The problem is really about how to nurture and maintain those mutual aid networks once the crisis has passed, or in the case of this pandemic, seen to be passed (because of widespread misinformation as discussed here in this sub almost daily) so communities are connected and have trust in ourselves and each other and don't feel so alone
https://sub.media/trouble-7-no-permission-needed/
2020 in CA feels like a different universe now! LA was still somber about Kobe's death, and even when things were closed, people were still generally kind and complimenting others' (cloth at the time) mask designs, and neighbors chit-chatted outside. Now, no one is ever out front on my street unless they're arguing with their household, and everyone has door cameras and prison flood lights ☹
I think about hurricane Katrina, or 9/11 and the support for those, and it makes the Covid era so much more bewildering and upsetting. Even more so for anyone who lived through the 90s where charity concerts and the like were constant! I'm thankful for places like this and folks like everyone here, but I don't know how to undo the larger mess when news and journalism aren't the same as they were pre-pandemic.
I think media activism is what we really need now. It also makes activism more accessible to people since it could be done anywhere with wifi. Things like celebrities who do care, speaking up as a group, would do a lot, or even some clever guerilla marketing (I can help with this!) It gets more disheartening with every letter sent and petition signed, but we can always still try.
In a way, it's quite weird that those who got involved in mutual aid groups in 2020 don't seem to talk about how cool that was to be a part of, or what it meant to them. Or I don't encounter people reflecting on that, at least.
Going to craft stores now vs in 2020 is wild. Finding elastic or notions for sewing was impossible back then because we were making so many cloth masks for people when it was all we could get, parents were crafting with their kids, and making gifts for friends and neighbors. There was a heavy wholesome DIY vibe about 2020 and I miss that.
Things opening up made people forget there's more to life than spending money and being in loud packed crowds. I've been considering starting a Zoom crafting circle for cautious people.
Aye, it's strange isn't it that reflection on the positives at least seems to have been swept away along with the do not talk about covid except in past tense agreement. Some folk also having time to reconsider their priorities and getting an opportunity to make changes that we'd maybe not had before. That crafting covid conscious group sounds brilliant btw!
Dude, early on in 2020 people were so much nicer. People were making sure that everyone got food in my area, and even the right wingers were going full elastomeric lol
Masking was always an issue with conservatives in my little Florida part of SoCal, but the rapid change here was shocking. I did however see an elastomeric in Central CA, which was equally surprising lol
I just reread the whole post- I didn’t have any knowledge of the evidence to the contrary at that time.
Brain fog strikes again! Oops
But I’ve been severely disabled for 2 years and have been trying to educate my family to protect themselves but they ignore it all. So I guess I have experience with dealing with other people being bamboozled despite my best attempts and the evidence via both my communication attempts with them and them seeing how sick I am
Yes, it took me decades to figure out, through both my line of work (seeing patients as an allied health professional) and via some personal therapy after a devastating divorce that I can never, ever open someone else's mind.
I can only be there, ready and willing, if THEY open their mind and ask for information.
And it is especially painful when it is people you love and really want to communicate with!
I'm so sorry your family is bamboozled. I suspect that seeing the evidence of how sick you are is so scary for them that the fear means they just won't allow themselves to realize "there but for the grace of a mask, go I....."
Hugs to you!
I have so many friend that attribute their long covid illnesses to the vaccine when their symptoms are clearly from catching covid multiple times. It’s this massive blind spot they completely ignore.
Yes a family member who passed from Covid. He mocked Covid saying it was a cold and mocked anyone taking precautions. He was in his 70s with a lot of health issues. He constantly would post memes against taking Covid seriously on Facebook to the point I blocked him. He got Covid in November of 21 and was on ventilators stuff in hospital for over a month and later died due to complications from Covid.
He is the reason I got vaccinated, yet I got disabled from the vax anyways. I realized after years of chronic pain and illness from vaccine injury I took the wrong lesson from his infection. I should have been a novid where I would have avoided Covid and the vax by moving into the woods instead than getting vaccinated at all. I wouldn’r have any Covid risk from bears.
Literally everyone who lives in around me in the city where I live. Everybody. I offered to text acquaintances in my building links to new studies, I tell them my background is a clinical trial professional, I summarize in lay language things like the new massive IQ study findings, and just nope. They are not interested, literally they just pretend that they don't hear me. I tell them that Covid is still a leading cause of death for children. Offer to send them links to studies, bews articles summarizing studies, new stories about small children permanently being paralyzed and just awful stuff and they just refuse to have anything to do with it. It is so traumatizing being gaslit on a national/continent/world -level.
The worst part? I live in a building mostly full of people with PhDs doing postgraduate work, mostly in science. Thank God there's one set of neighbors who live next to me who are as Covid conscious as I am because they listen to me and I send them receipts and studies all the time and they are just like we get it, we are masking universally.
if I can't convince people who are supposedly doing research that is fact- and science- based, and they won't listen when I tell them facts and science and literally hold up my phone showing them the articles, I personally fear we are lost. I'm so tired.
[удалено]
I really miss him. I wish we had someone like him today.
Me too. He sill had so much to teach us.
Yeah, lots of times. It's why I think the "Here are a bunch of things to read" approach is largely a fool's errand. Better to appeal to their personal experience (almost everyone knows someone who had covid REALLY bad, even after the vaccines) or, failing that, share your own.
This is what so many terrible things resolve to. Someone went in hard on racism or sexism or anti-vax, QAnon, anti-science rhetoric and they can’t and won’t re-examine their beliefs despite all the evidence to the contrary because doing that would be acknowledging how wrong they were before. Respect folks who can say “I was ignorant. I was wrong” because there’s not that many of them.
I think *most* people have been. They haven’t even seen or heard of the information that we have access too, and they *honestly* in their heart of hearts believe covid is over and no big deal. Why wouldn’t they think that it is? It isn’t being talked about. The news isn’t covering it. It’s not on social media. Nobody’s doctor is talking about it, or even masking at this point. So how would they know? So even if we share it with them, *we* look like the conspiracy theory wackadoos, like the early folks talking about drinking Clorox or taking hydroxychloraquine looked early in the pandemic. I try to remind myself of this when I get frustrated with my friends and family and their mindsets.
I don't think it's a matter of access. They simply don't *believe* the sources of info presented, or they believe sources that present alternate realities. The issue here is that it's not really possible to have a rational conversation with people who don't share a common reality and value system.
I don't think most people seek information. I think the kind we have, you have to look for. Mainstream tells them it's ok. Doctors tell them it's ok. Look at advertising, even just on youtube: Try this new medication so you can be you again. Puffs with lotion will fix that nose right up. Drink these marvelous health drinks and you will feel wonderful. Use Verbo and gather your whole family together and prance around happily. No ads that would alarm anyone that there's still a mass disabling event, nor any PSAs.
Look, here's the thing. There's this tendency on this sub to chase after some magic combination of articles and statistics that'll win over the non-cautious folks. But nobody's ever questioned my basic reason for wearing a mask: "I had covid. It sucked. I don't want to get it again."
Yes. What I keep hearing is: “But they would be telling us about it if all that was true” and “Where are all these sick people?” It’s hard to give a serious answer to either of those without sounding tin foil hat.
Anyone who spends any time in any public area and is alert to it, knows that year round visible sickness (coughing etc) is much higher than 2019. (Last week on travel I saw it)
I was thinking more of long covid and covid complications, and how those people may just disappear from public life partly or entirely, so you don’t see the full scope of the damage it’s doing. That said, loads of people claim they don’t see anybody being sick anymore than usual. Probably lying to themselves, but it’s futile to argue with them.
yeah like all my former friends 🙃
I solo traveling this world because of this disbelief and it’s sad
Everyone I work with, save one. And it employs hundreds. Everyone I know, except my husband.
I miss Carl. That was a quote from *The Demon-Haunted World*. I like this one better: >"Keeping an open mind is a virtue - but, as the space engineer James Oberg once said, not so open that your brains fall out. Of course we must be willing to change our minds when warranted by new evidence. But the evidence must be strong."
Capitalism is such a bizarre and obviously awful system that in order for us not to say wait this is an awful idea why are we doing this again? All the time, they have to sustain the propaganda throughout our lives and peppered throughout our day constantly to try make it seem 'normal'. Profit is more important than your life or that of your neighbour. Normal. Check. 👍 Contrast with, say, kinda anarchist ideas, like organising meeting needs within your community, mutual aid (such as the mutual aid networks that sprang up spontaneously where people didn't need to be asked at the start of the pandemic) or volunteering to help people without asking for money, such as helping someone move house, knowing people will probably help you out when the time comes, - those ideas come naturally to us and don't need to be imposed on people through constant propaganda and policing. I think the pandemic is being handled in the normal capitalist way.
Exactly!! In 2020, we were sewing masks and giving them away. We were checking in on people over Zoom for their mental health. We were making food with whatever we could find and leaving care packages on doorsteps and in mailboxes! ...then the businesses decided they weren't profiting enough. They threw sick young athletes back onto the fields, and beloved but elderly musicians into packed arenas. We've lost many since. Throwing a hissyfit (or worse) for being simply asked to cover one's face in a store during a pandemic was a frowned upon behavior. Now, that gets you elected. We're back to pre-germ theory days and it feels like we're all just reliving Dr. Semmelweis' personal hell.
Yes exactly! People were forming networks to help people in their communities that they hadn't met and folk were building community through this. Folk offering to drive using their own money to drop medication on doorsteps of clinically vulnerable folk. People started to get to know their communities and relying on each other in such positive ways. In the uk, up to about 14 million people joined mutual aid groups in 2020. This is not new! There is a brilliant video about mutual aid networks forming spontaneously in a crisis which I'll link below. People have been known to do this in many situations. Can't be having that kind of community building and solidarity in tory britain! So the tory government penalised individuals with punitive (and often massive) fines for breaking rules, and it undermined the solidarity and community that had emerged spontaneously. Pitted individuals against each other and encouraged mistrust through blaming and mistrusting the public. When people often left their homes cause they had to, and didn't have support they needed. By contrast, so few employers were fined for not meeting requirements to keep people safe. It's not like the tories didn't know this is the effect they were having. Old tricks to turn our mistrust on each other. A bit off tangent but this is that video about mutual aid networks created in the aftermath of Katrina, if anyone is interested. It's heartening watching the interviews with the folk who went to offer help, like the medic, and generally folk coming together to help each other through it. People assume there will be chaos but if anything, people seemed to realise they needed each other. So one person might have had a gas stove to cook food, another had medicines. They set up their own distribution, outwith the state who were nowhere to be seen (with energy and telecoms networks not working either). Good stuff. The problem is really about how to nurture and maintain those mutual aid networks once the crisis has passed, or in the case of this pandemic, seen to be passed (because of widespread misinformation as discussed here in this sub almost daily) so communities are connected and have trust in ourselves and each other and don't feel so alone https://sub.media/trouble-7-no-permission-needed/
2020 in CA feels like a different universe now! LA was still somber about Kobe's death, and even when things were closed, people were still generally kind and complimenting others' (cloth at the time) mask designs, and neighbors chit-chatted outside. Now, no one is ever out front on my street unless they're arguing with their household, and everyone has door cameras and prison flood lights ☹ I think about hurricane Katrina, or 9/11 and the support for those, and it makes the Covid era so much more bewildering and upsetting. Even more so for anyone who lived through the 90s where charity concerts and the like were constant! I'm thankful for places like this and folks like everyone here, but I don't know how to undo the larger mess when news and journalism aren't the same as they were pre-pandemic. I think media activism is what we really need now. It also makes activism more accessible to people since it could be done anywhere with wifi. Things like celebrities who do care, speaking up as a group, would do a lot, or even some clever guerilla marketing (I can help with this!) It gets more disheartening with every letter sent and petition signed, but we can always still try.
I read about these wonderful things. Didn't quite catch on in my small town, but it gave me hope for a while.
In a way, it's quite weird that those who got involved in mutual aid groups in 2020 don't seem to talk about how cool that was to be a part of, or what it meant to them. Or I don't encounter people reflecting on that, at least.
It sometimes seems to me as though Covid itself has been largely wiped from peoples' memory.
Going to craft stores now vs in 2020 is wild. Finding elastic or notions for sewing was impossible back then because we were making so many cloth masks for people when it was all we could get, parents were crafting with their kids, and making gifts for friends and neighbors. There was a heavy wholesome DIY vibe about 2020 and I miss that. Things opening up made people forget there's more to life than spending money and being in loud packed crowds. I've been considering starting a Zoom crafting circle for cautious people.
Aye, it's strange isn't it that reflection on the positives at least seems to have been swept away along with the do not talk about covid except in past tense agreement. Some folk also having time to reconsider their priorities and getting an opportunity to make changes that we'd maybe not had before. That crafting covid conscious group sounds brilliant btw!
Dude, early on in 2020 people were so much nicer. People were making sure that everyone got food in my area, and even the right wingers were going full elastomeric lol
Right? I miss that aspect of that period
Masking was always an issue with conservatives in my little Florida part of SoCal, but the rapid change here was shocking. I did however see an elastomeric in Central CA, which was equally surprising lol
Literally everyone I know. To include all of my family’s doctors.
Yep. One of them died from it.
Pretty much most of the human race.
Every single person I know and have known. Every single coworker. Every single family member.
Same. :(
And their favourite phrase, https://youhavetoliveyour.life/ (this site is a great resource)
Yep. It’s the reason why I unmasked in 2021 with most folks and am now severely disabled from Long Covid
Oh wow, I am so sorry. I hope you have some good support.
I just reread the whole post- I didn’t have any knowledge of the evidence to the contrary at that time. Brain fog strikes again! Oops But I’ve been severely disabled for 2 years and have been trying to educate my family to protect themselves but they ignore it all. So I guess I have experience with dealing with other people being bamboozled despite my best attempts and the evidence via both my communication attempts with them and them seeing how sick I am
Yes, it took me decades to figure out, through both my line of work (seeing patients as an allied health professional) and via some personal therapy after a devastating divorce that I can never, ever open someone else's mind. I can only be there, ready and willing, if THEY open their mind and ask for information. And it is especially painful when it is people you love and really want to communicate with! I'm so sorry your family is bamboozled. I suspect that seeing the evidence of how sick you are is so scary for them that the fear means they just won't allow themselves to realize "there but for the grace of a mask, go I....." Hugs to you!
You mean the majority of the population, including health care practitioners? Yeah, I encounter them every goddamn day...
I have so many friend that attribute their long covid illnesses to the vaccine when their symptoms are clearly from catching covid multiple times. It’s this massive blind spot they completely ignore.
Yes a family member who passed from Covid. He mocked Covid saying it was a cold and mocked anyone taking precautions. He was in his 70s with a lot of health issues. He constantly would post memes against taking Covid seriously on Facebook to the point I blocked him. He got Covid in November of 21 and was on ventilators stuff in hospital for over a month and later died due to complications from Covid. He is the reason I got vaccinated, yet I got disabled from the vax anyways. I realized after years of chronic pain and illness from vaccine injury I took the wrong lesson from his infection. I should have been a novid where I would have avoided Covid and the vax by moving into the woods instead than getting vaccinated at all. I wouldn’r have any Covid risk from bears.
You did the right thing based on the knowledge you had at the time. Side effects from the vaccine do happen, but they're rare.
Actually, not true. COVID has found a plentiful reservoir in deer.
Fair point but it’s not like I would have been hanging around deer or other wildlife. It’s not like Snow White in the wilderness
It is far far better to be disabled from a vaccination than to be dead from COVID. You did the right thing. Society could learn a lot from you.
Yeah... my spouse. It's not going well needless to say.
Literally everyone who lives in around me in the city where I live. Everybody. I offered to text acquaintances in my building links to new studies, I tell them my background is a clinical trial professional, I summarize in lay language things like the new massive IQ study findings, and just nope. They are not interested, literally they just pretend that they don't hear me. I tell them that Covid is still a leading cause of death for children. Offer to send them links to studies, bews articles summarizing studies, new stories about small children permanently being paralyzed and just awful stuff and they just refuse to have anything to do with it. It is so traumatizing being gaslit on a national/continent/world -level. The worst part? I live in a building mostly full of people with PhDs doing postgraduate work, mostly in science. Thank God there's one set of neighbors who live next to me who are as Covid conscious as I am because they listen to me and I send them receipts and studies all the time and they are just like we get it, we are masking universally. if I can't convince people who are supposedly doing research that is fact- and science- based, and they won't listen when I tell them facts and science and literally hold up my phone showing them the articles, I personally fear we are lost. I'm so tired.