I haven’t written in a while because I am utterly depressed with how weak the country has ended up being in its resolve. A few weeks back everyone decided it was cool to get infected with COVID, there was no need to wear masks anymore, public health officials admitting defeat against America’s rigid independence sacrificing the common good for personal comfort over personal responsibility. The social contract price we all used to pay into society for at least a few decades, something too expensive for some to pay, some deciding to be contrary for the sake of it, the other part legitimately scared into getting sick by a group of people ready to suckle money from them later, not realizing the avoidance of sickness is the win, that is true freedom, not being free to infect yourself because you think being an asshole for five minutes is worth every bit of peace you could have felt for years and years later.
I’ve been following a new group on Twitter as of late, the long COVID people & it’s as heartbreaking as I knew it would be, but these people are sustained in sickness, kind of hovering in this illness cloud, their bodies changed in ways that we seem unready to acknowledge right now, this a kind of harbinger of worse coming later, of course. I feel remorseful for the healthy parts of their lives that were sacrificed, some because they didn’t know or didn’t have access to the vaccine because it wasn’t available. I do feel empathy for those who played politics with their lives, unable to remember those old adages about being better safe than sorry, and an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure. I don’t know that people are exactly always cruel about it, but I do think there is something to be said for the group of us who experienced the bridge of the analog digital world in our childhoods and got lost in those divide, some never learning the language of our culture now, left behind sometimes voluntarily and sometimes unwillingly–but a definite divide that won’t let us accept yet another change in our reality, the requirement to cover some people’s most expressive features, their mouths.
I don’t think people have bridged the idea in their heads that wearing a mask for the benefit of everyone is wearing a mask to protect a sick kid in the hospital possibly from your asymptomatic spewing-it is the same model I have spoke about before in protecting him because it was the right thing to do-that not doing so would make you a real piece of shit. Now we are all that sick kid and people can anonymously murder each other, sometimes with direct intention, sometimes through absolute neglect, but understand there a lot of people who had COVID who killed a lot people around them they never heard a peep about it because contact tracing almost became a joke when everyone decided they were cool getting it, believing in the predictions of failure rained down on them largely by the right in the beginning, fully defeating the left not a few years later.
This brings me back to a few points I’d like to make since my absence has been long enough.
*I do not trust the government any longer since they acquiesced not to medical advice rendered through extensive study, but to business, ready to unburden themselves from the loss that a society stuck in prevention would render their stock prices and bottom line. With no attention to ethics, our business sector decided, Fuck all to hell any idea of caution at all–we need money. No matter that the population they serve is largely dependent on a healthy populace, they’ll just replace these old businesses w/un-working models w/new solutions to gain a greater chunk of whatever money you might have in your desperate attempts to feel better. When the CDC decided to listen to Delta’s CEO & relinquish that recovery time to 5 days, you understood it was business getting protection from the government, vs the government protecting us.
*We all have access to the same data–however do understand that a good chunk of those COVID tests that went out did read positive–and with people not guaranteed any sick pay or days, the people who had positives who were asymptomatic probably convinced themselves they were not contagious, likely hurting people around them, the webs of connection exponentially spilling out while killing people and rendering any united response completely ineffective.
*I have medical grade filtration in here so any irritation to the nose is short-lived at best–even with everything blossoming outside and Spring well on its way, the irritation is lessened by the constant movement and filtration of the air in these rooms. I think the air movement is sufficient enough to possibly counter any infection either of us might ever have–he being heavily burdened by too small sinuses and me just sensitive to sneezy things. I do think this is largely the missing element in the prevention angle of things, but we will probably realize that error entirely too late.
Now I’ve been looking at what happened in 1918 vs what happened this time-a lot of the bad reaction was the same, the anti-maskers, etc, but eventually everyone realized what needed to be done, and the lockdowns were universal here. With this globalized world the expectation couldn’t be the same, but ultimately we gave the virus so many bodies to infect and cycle through that Delta was what, 1000x the infection rate of the original version and Omicron was 30x that and the new omicron 1.5x that. Whatever the true numbers are, the virus is getting a lot of practice replicating inside human beings and some are, like I’ve said before, haphazardly giving away their good health to flip someone off who won’t think a thing about them after leaving their line of vision.
I have gone out to a restaurant with 50 foot ceilings, masked in the bathroom, was seated away from the larger groups. There is still fun to be had, but there are precautions we can take to avoid being sick or more susceptible to illness for the rest of your life. I have probably 50 articles to share from the past 3 weeks, sorry for my absence, but I’ll post those tomorrow.