People say they understand why you’re apprehensive about gathering in groups, but their commentary, rationale, and actions prove that they really don’t.
Some people are too cavalier, not only about the pandemic, but about their own health and well-being. To think that they care about yours, is silly. The fact that people still ask why you’re masked, or why you’re not eager to crowd into poorly ventilated spaces, as if they’ve been in a coma since March 2020, tells you all you need to know.
Old folks used to say, “A hard head makes a soft behind”. Covid is whipping a lot of butts of people who thought a virus cared anything about their plans, schedules, mantras, affirmations, political views, fitness regimen, or religion.
Some invitations require no thought at all. Your “no” to careless plans for you is as easy as breathing…because you happen to like breathing.
It’s funny how people are curious to know what you’re going to do, as if your consent or approval condones a thing, and rids it of its stupidity. If you do it; if you go; if it’s alright with you, they’ll feel better about their decision to drop their guard.
Your “no” is a reminder of something that others would like to ignore—the pandemic.
Sure. It's a buzzkill to talk about Covid, but the testimonies of people who managed to survive Covid, should be enough to make everyone reconsider anything even bordering on risky.
I couldn’t have made up the SECOND community robocall message (in two weeks) that warned of a Covid exposure. It would be funny if it were not so preventable:
“…this is to notify you that a person has tested positive for Covid who visited the resource center today. This person was a vendor, and a speaker at the health fair. She was handing out COVID-19 test kits. An intern administered a test to demonstrate how to use the test kits, and her test came back positive. If you were exposed to this person we encourage you to get tested…”
A health fair. HEALTH.
SMH.
People are throwing caution to the wind, and thinking their choices are making others feel badly or left out. Some are frustrated and even mad that their loved ones and friends are still taking the pandemic seriously.
Being angry with, or ridiculing others for exercising wisdom, caution, or care, and doing what’s best for themselves, won’t make them move any differently. It won’t make them love, or like you any more, or less. Branding people scared, silly, reclusive, paranoid, a hermit, a fear mongerer, or a chicken won't overshadow the reality of millions of deaths caused by an airborne virus.
Loudly boast that you’re going to live your life, if that makes you feel better about the chances you take with your own health, but you don’t get to dictate how others preserve theirs. Neither manipulative religiosity nor psychology will work to get people to engage in what may have been harmless fun in 2019, but is dangerous today.
“You gotta die from something” is not the convincing, mind-changing selling point you think it is.
Many have not tested positive for Covid-19, nor any of its variants, and by their choices, demonstrate that they’d like to keep it that way.
You have to be alive to live your life. Whether you think others are happy or not, never crosses their Covid-free minds. Blunders like the one that inspired my neighborhood's robocall make you wonder if people are trying to infect others on purpose.
Perhaps the issue isn’t why some choose to limit their activities, but why some are so anxious to get away from their homes and families. It’s only a prison if you don’t want to be there. It may be a foreign, puzzling concept, but some people have actually created home lives that they enjoy, don’t seek to escape, and the pandemic merely provided them with more quality and quantity time.
The pandemic has certainly exposed a lot about what’s normal and functional, real and fake, secure and in disarray, and what’s not.
The opinion that others are somehow missing out, lonely, wasting away, or suffering, cowering, and crouched behind locked doors, because they don’t choose to do what you do, or go where you go, is laughable.
Contentment is not boredom.
Caution is not fear.
Faith is not foolishness.
Sacrifice is not stupidity.
Optimism is not ignoring history or reality.
Patience is not waste.
Misery, ignorance, denial, and mischief, however, still love company, and are the driving force behind dumb decisions.
A scheme isn’t any less stupid or unwise because more people go along with it. It’s just more tragic when people who knew better, get hurt. The news throughout the pandemic is littered with stories of deceased people who abandoned their better judgment in order to please someone else, or be a part of the in-crowd.
Too many people want what they want without considering the impact it will have on others. The pandemic, the insurrection, and even the war in Ukraine, are perfect examples of how one person’s selfishness and thoughtlessness wouldn’t matter if so many weren’t so eager to please and comply.
It doesn’t take much to see how the pandemic response was botched in the beginning; how it was politicized; how competence and expertise was demonized; how lies and conspiracy theories made the truth hard to find; and how a simple piece of cloth became a point of contention.
Today, it seems that everyone is doing their own thing. It’s like the pandemic is suddenly, miraculously over, but there’s nothing normal about the state the world is in. Never mind the world. In local communities people won’t consider the still un-vaccinated children, seniors, and immuno-compromised patients among them.
Just last week, people who probably decided it was safe for them to board an airplane because of mask mandates, found themselves potentially exposed to Covid in mid air, as thoughtless passengers removed their masks and cheered.
There are millions of people who shouldn’t be sick or dead right now, but they allowed themselves to be manipulated by opportunistic fools who cared more about their agendas and money, than the well-being of others. Vigilance has given way to carelessness. Denial seems to be the name of the game these days.
All I know, is that the friendly, fun apps I use, have turned into veritable obituary columns. Every single day friends, and friends of friends are extending condolences, thoughts and prayers.
As it was during the AIDS epidemic, there’s a hush-hush attitude about the manner in which people are dying. Covid-19 and her variants are still taking people out, but now there’s shame in saying it out loud— especially if people were known for brazenly playing down the severity of the pandemic.
People are criticized for even talking about the pandemic, as if not mentioning it will make it go away.
Covid is banking on logic like that.
#pandemic
#covid19
#groupthink
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