Jeanne Marrazzo, new leader of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, everyone:
Can I make a quick digression? We recently had a long Covid [research] meeting where we had about 200 people, in person. And we can’t mandate mask-wearing, because it’s federal property. But there was a fair amount of disturbance that we couldn’t, and people weren’t wearing masks, and one person accused us of committing a microaggression by not wearing masks.
And I take that very seriously. But I thought to myself, it’s more that people just want to live a normal life. We really don’t want to go back. It was so painful. We’re still all traumatized. Let’s be honest about that. None of us are over it.
So there’s not a lot of appetite for raising an alarm, especially if it could be perceived subsequently as a false alarm.
Edit - thanks for the help in bypassing the paywall.
Wearing a mask? TRAUMATIZING
Watching as millions upon millions die from something that is completely preventable? No big deal, I sleep well at night.
I am not entirely sure what is going on with people, but I spent this morning yet again in a mandatory in person meeting. At least three people were visibly sick or saying like they are “coming down with something”. This has been going on since August now.
But the real kicker is the way a young person pipes up with “It’s the weirdest thing, I have been having such intense migranes in the past weeks after I had the “summer flu”. I had migraines as a kid, but never as an adult. It’s the weirdest.” Then several other people piped up to voice their new such weird and mystical health issues.
And there I sit, listening to this same stuff in some form week in and week out. And keep thinking to myself that maybe it’s my autism or maybe it’s something else, but how do these people not put two and two together, even now. Or ever. I get that they are underinformed, but still.
And I suppose the mask is like this for most, not trauma but just gone entirely as an option. Covid literally does not exist for most people anymore. Or something. I don’t know anymore.
It’s just lib brain. Everything is always lib brain. Libs do not see cause and effect, they do not see the material world. Things just happen to them and within them and around them and those things are totally unconnected to each other and that’s where their thinking about things ends.
Unironically my partner has had persistent migraines for like 2-3 weeks in a row now and I wasn’t sure what the problem was. Them getting covid at least 6 times hasn’t even crossed my mind as an option
Lib views are determined by a combination of what their authority figures say and what their peers say. If this comes up against a conflicting material reality, this may spark change, but this is unlikely, especially if that change would require the liberal to actually do anything, even something as trivial as wearing a mask. The authority figures and all of their peers are saying COVID is over, and so, in the mind of the plague rat liberal, it is over.
Also, just curious if anyone else has had the same experience as me, but I’d never even heard of a “summer flu” until like 2023, and it’s always just seemed like absolutely transparent cope about what is clearly COVID.
It is incredible to me the mental gymnastics people will go to in order to forget not even a decade ago when people were by and large absolutely 100% not sick this often. This is what tells me they know what they’re doing. They understand what’s happening, but have chosen the comfortable(?) lie until the curtain falls. If you can remember your favorite old tv show, you can remember what life was like before now. It wasn’t this, and there is a very clear through-line of cause and effect.
Yeah no summer flu existed before. Or constant allergies. Or blood pressure meds for people in their 30s. Or Christmas flus for that matter.
I also love the levels of splaining they will go to to prove their covid isn’t covid. Educated adults who very well know you don’t get sick from being cold straight up say things like “got the sniffles because I was out in the cold too long” and similar mental acrobatics. And the longcovid stuff is: aging (in people in their 30s), genes, stress, bad luck. It’s never covid.
Also, just curious if anyone else has had the same experience as me, but I’d never even heard of a “summer flu” until like 2023, and it’s always just seemed like absolutely transparent cope about what is clearly COVID.
It was a thing in books at least. Tho, I’ve seen a couple indicating it may have actually been Lyme disease irl. So always a cover for something else apparently.😅
So there’s not a lot of appetite for raising an alarm, especially if it could be perceived subsequently as a false alarm.
That’s the whole damn point in raising an alarm!
“The fire alarm going off allowed the residents to stop the fire with just a quick blast from a handheld extinguisher. But since there wasn’t a lot of fire I guess we really don’t need the fire alarms after all. I mean, they’re so loud and annoying!”
This made me recall an article I read very early in the pandemic. Just found it, and it’s a real time capsule: “It’s hard to accept these sudden recommended changes to our routines, and the open-endedness is horrifying—or even worse, the prospect that this could be the new normal, at least until a vaccine is developed.” Ahahahahahaha. But the relevant section:
Susan Joslyn, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, studies people’s responses to weather forecasting and finds that “false alarms” in major weather events, like tornado warnings or hurricane evacuations, result in a loss of trust. If you evacuate five times and nothing happens, you might believe the forecasts mean nothing; if you socially distance for two months and the virus never reaches your town, you might believe it was a false alarm, too, even if that social distancing is what kept the virus from taking hold. The same holds true with focusing on the worst-case scenario.
But she goes on to talk about how officials know this, and know how to mitigate it. Well, at one time they did. Now they’ve given up on that along with any semblance of public health.
And I take that very seriously. But I thought to myself, it’s more that people just want to live a normal life.
This kind of smug ‘we see you and we hear you’ followed by a tacit rejection of whatever it is we just said is the most enraging part of talking with libs. Just say you want us dead! Stop the act, stop pretending, and just say the quiet part out loud the way the fascists have no issue doing.
Also, while I commend any covid conscious people taking a stance no matter how small, I can’t help but find the framing of not masking as a microagression laughable. Greeting a mixed gender group with “hey guys” is a microagression. Not wearing a mask during an ongoing pandemic, a mass disabling pandemic that has made all hell break loose for immunocompromised people, isn’t a microagression: it’s violence. It’s a clear use of violence against the disabled by our ableist institutions, and the fact that powerful healthcare professionals can go along with the pretend end of the pandemic is evidence of a rot at the core of the healthcare system. Shame on them.
Your second paragraph reminds me. I just read Devon Price’s Unlearning Shame, and was somewhat shocked by his read on Covid, where he talks about how we shouldn’t shame people who don’t follow health guidelines. The point of “Don’t blame individuals for a systemic problem” is fine, but when it comes to actively and repeatedly endangering people’s health, there’s plenty of room for individual shaming. Like - don’t shame someone for having a DUI on their record, fine. But if they still drive drunk every day, that person is dangerous, no matter how acceptable drunk driving might be in their culture.
It’s the carrot and the stick, right? As socialists we generally want to move in the direction to positively reinforce the desirable behaviors in society, rather than the punitive carceral approach that we perceive as reactionary. But if you abstract away all personal connection to anti-social and reactionary tendencies in society then you’re forgetting that society is actually made up of individuals, and individuals need to be motivated to stop engaging in harmful behaviors. You can’t always do that with the carrot, so you’ll always need the stick, even if only marginally.
Shame is an essential tool that prevents the proliferation of bullies in human society. Ruling classes have obviously historically weaponized shame in horrific ways (ahem Christianity), but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Seriously? Shame realistically just enforces social norms. That’s often violent.
Price did provide plenty of examples and research showing that shaming people is counterproductive, but it seemed (I haven’t investigated all of the endnotes) like that was all for matters of personal motivation. I’m willing to listen to contrary evidence, of course, but don’t we know that shame has worked in matters of public health before? There’s a lot less secondhand smoke than there was when I was a kid, and not just in places where ordinances prohibit it. That is, shame doesn’t get people to stop smoking, but it might get people to stop smoking around infants.
As someone who was in fact traumatized by the indifference to the massive number of preventable deaths and permanent damage to people’s bodies. People who think masks were the worst part of the pandemic can kindly eat the hair off my ass.
Huh I never personally felt that wearing a mask was traumatizing, my mom dying directly as a result of people just deciding covid was over and not masking anymore certainly was though. My brother helplessly watching dozens of people die in front of him as a healthcare worker probably was more traumatic than wearing a mask but idk maybe we’re just too inconsiderate of the poor folks that had to suffer the inconvenience of wearing them
