As the title says, I'm currently arguing with someone who thinks that every single person who is currently not taking precautions/not masking is an irredeemable piece of shit, and that at best, they deserve no sympathy if they get sick or die, or at worst, they deserve death. And that if they are unwilling to change now, they will never have the capacity to change. And the implication is that trying to convince people or doing any kind of activism isn't all that useful because all these people are immutably selfish and ableist, and the only thing that will get every single one of these people to change their mind is if they get disabled/become directly affected in a bad way. And they keep talking about how the only way things are going to change is if we reach a tipping point with so much death and disability that the ruling class will have no choice but to bring back protections to mitigate/eliminate COVID. Because there won't be enough people to work to keep society functioning basically.
Am I wrong to think that this is very defeatist and frankly grotesque? Because to me, the implication is that they're hoping for the amount of disability and death to become so acute and staggering that the ruling class will have no choice but to intervene I guess? This is without considering the development of next-gen vaccines that can severely reduce or eliminate COVID transmission and/or the development of therapeutics that can prevent long COVID. But if the vaccines failed and the therapeutics got nowhere, who's to say that this so-called tipping point they're waiting for won't take decades? Why would you wait for things to get that awful in lieu of doing COVID activism/organizing in the meantime?
I also really don't think the ruling class is ignorant to the sheer level of death and disability that COVID is going to continue to wreak if left unchecked. There are a myriad of examples of the ruling class still taking precautions for themselves (e.g. everyone has to test still before they can be around Biden), and even some of their authoritative outlets like the WHO have said that 1 in 10 infections results in long COVID and that we can expect hundreds of millions of people to need long-term care in the future, if this current trajectory continues. I understand that COVID is pretty unique for our lifetime, in terms of the massive death and disability it has already brought, and is still dangerous in large part because it is so infectious and there is no long-term lasting immunity. But, post-viral illnesses are not new. Social murder is not new. If we reach this so-called tipping point with so many people dead and disabled that there aren't enough people left to work to keep society functioning, what is stopping the ruling class from getting rid of child labor laws, dipping into labor from abroad, etc. to mitigate this?
On one hand, I get the urge to be misanthropic toward people like that. Everyone who is walking around unmasked in public has the potential to give someone a disabling or deadly case of COVID, including to us. Obviously that's especially bad for anybody who is already medically vulnerable. And for people who are especially vulnerable, I think the vitriol toward people not masking especially makes sense. And I understand that American culture is especially toxic and individualist and bigoted. But like, just because you do activism doesn't mean you have to like these people or be their friends or even treat them with kid gloves, lol (like I know shaming can work for some people and different tactics can work on different people and different contexts).
But like, I completely disagree with the notion that people can't have their minds changed. Like hasn't like literally every single social justice movement for a certain issue with any kind of success started with support from a minority of people, and activism led to a majority of people to eventually adopt that same viewpoint, and eventually that public pressure led to the government being slightly less shitty and alleviating some suffering? For the COVID pandemic, aren't their literally parallels with the AIDS epidemic, as far with it largely being ignored (I know COVID wasn't initially, but it's effectively at that point now), and that things only started changing for the better once groups like ACT UP started getting involved?
And I still think the overwhelming majority of blame has to lie with the ruling class and all the people carrying water for them who have repeatedly bombarded the public with messages expressing COVID is over for the last 2-plus fucking years and that you don't have to worry if you're vaccinated and that bad outcomes only happen to people who are already medically vulnerable. Many people, for example, stopped masking and never looked back once Biden and the CDC said people didn't have to mask any longer if they were vaccinated, way back in 2021. Same shit with mask mandates being lifted, many people stopped masking as a result. Propaganda works and is an insidious beast if used to perpetuate harmful behavior. And I think it would be wrong to to not consider that factor in the choices that people are currently making.
Is ableism an exception to the notion that people are amendable, and they actually cannot change their (ableist) ways?
I don't understand their viewpoint at all, can someone explain? I'm not sure if I'm wrong either because I'm able-bodied and almost certainly still have some ignorance about disability.
Edit: I also think a not-insignificant number of people who are no longer taking precaution in public actually still have a concern about COVID deep down inside, but they are so inundated with being surrounded with other people no longer taking precaution, that they're basically just going along with the crowd and maybe don't want to stick out like a sore thumb or perhaps they are concerned with being harassed by rabid anti-maskers. All of this is to say, I think there is a genuine psychological factor going on in the choice of whether to mask or not, too.
NGL I still mentally think what your friend is saying, and my day to day attitude probably mirrors their ideas. Obviously being misanthropic is very pointless and maybe even non Marxist. I just need to deal with 100+ non maskers every single day, including multiple people who are actively being dickheads about my precautions, and frankly I'm very tired. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I wish that I could be nicer to these people. If I'm in an OK mood, I'll try to be friendly. If they actually enter a debate with me (very rare), I'll 100% give them the science and make every effort to be kind to their lack of knowledge.
If you catch me with a clear head, oh absolutely people have fallen for the propaganda and they deserve some sympathy. Our world's leaders deserve all the scorn, and thoughtless liberals probably don't know much better. But I'm human and being the only one in a mask, being laughed at, people coughing near or at me, it stresses me out. I'm literally sorry (unironically) that I'm not charismatic enough to be the cool guy with the N95. I probably am the angry dude with the N95.
One thing that I try to remind myself about: more people mask the further one gets away from well-off white people. I don't want to generalise, but working people, immigrants, and BIPOC around me mask way way better. I think it's easy to fall into hating people when you're surrounded by labour aristocrat mayos, but I don't think that everyone is this terrible.
Its very easy to wear a mask when everyone else is wearing one and very hard to wear a mask when nobody else is wearing one.
I had a trip to Japan some months back, and they were still stringently masking nationwide. Because I didn't want to fail a COVID screening in the airport, I wore a mask for a month straight prior to departing. People constantly gave me weird looks. I had coworkers keep asking if I was sick. It was alienating and kinda depressing to have to deal with people who - not six months prior - were also all masked up.
By contrast, when I got to Japan all the social queues were reversed. Not masking got you ugly looks. I got stopped in a hotel hallway and - very politely - offered a mask by an attendant at one point. I felt almost naked without a mask on in public, simply because everyone was wearing them. Joggers were wearing them. People wandering alone in the park were wearing them.
I flew ANA to Japan (everyone masked). I flew United home and over the intercom the pilot announced that once we took off you could take off your masks. And guess how many people went along with it after take-off?
sigh
There's a real herd mentality at work here that can't be discounted. Social pressures mean a lot, and mass media informs those social views. It almost makes me a Trot, realizing how much weight mass media has on our day-to-day lives. A handful of right-wing shock jocks really do rule our world.
Doing the right thing is hard and often punished. It's still the right thing. Doing the wrong thing is often easy and rewarded. It's still the wrong thing. This isn't talking over someone or cutting in line. It's the social murder of the most vulnerable people in society.
I understand why people failed. And I don't forgive them.
I see a lot more people masked up in the service sector, even now. There's definitely a class divide.
But accusing people of murder for failing to wear N95s is... let's just say that hasn't been my experience. The most reliable indicator of getting COVID - from my own aggregate of anecdotes - has been whether or not you've got a kid in daycare. Good luck getting a toddler to mask.
Social murder differs from the more common, criminal kind in that it's inflicted by society on oppressed populations. There are lots of ways to mitigate the spread of Covid in daycares, schools, offices, and everywhere else. Few if any of them have been implemented because by and large America would prefer that disabled people die than spend a penny to prevent it.
Is a consequence of public policy, not of individual actions. "Not wearing your mask is social murder because COVID" is no different than "Not riding your bicycle is social murder because Climate Change". It displaces a demand for social reform with individualistic moralism.
If you're working hourly and can't sit at home waiting for your kid to recover from what you're not sure is COVID because you can't afford testing kits anymore, and you drop the kid off into a classroom full of other kids, there is no known way to prevent every other kid in the room from contracting this highly contagious disease. Once that kid enters the classroom, talking about COVID mitigation is like pulling the pin on a grenade and talking about shrapnel mitigation. But all the events leading up to a sick kid going into a public place are fundamentally unavoidable in the American economy.
Yes. There are regional policies that seek to force the number of COVID infections to as close to zero as possible. But they aren't individualistic decisions. They aren't panaceas, either. Masks are great at getting that R number down, but they aren't bulletproof (particularly among kids and adults with bad hygiene).
Once the social standard for disease mitigation slips, trying to point out individuals who fail to wash their hands or don't wear a mask or ride the bus when they're running a fever or do any old thing that risks propagating disease is a fool's errand. They are no more culpable for the deaths caused by the epidemic than some dude in a pick-up truck is responsible for the current heat wave.