Apparently they’re going either way, so the question is if I want to indirectly contribute just myself to Covid spread. I’ve had Covid relatively recently so I think I’m supposed to still have immunity but that doesn’t stop me from spreading it, right? It’s a Friday at noon so the movie theater will be mostly empty ish.

    • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]
      ·
      5 months ago

      Genuinely though, why not? Not in a debate-bro way, I want the argument I can make next time so I can maybe convince them to stay home too. I also want to know how badly I fucked up

      • barrbaric [he/him]M
        ·
        5 months ago

        First off, it's going to be an extreme uphill battle if your family members are refusing to mask, because in my personal experience once someone crosses that line they never come back (well, for adults, anyway). I'm glad to see that you're at least taking it seriously enough to be wearing an N95. My main arguments that I give to other people in my life are as follows:

        • COVID wastewater levels are still very high, meaning COVID hasn't gone away. As a result, we should still take COVID seriously and take necessary precautions, because everyone agrees that catching COVID is bad.
        • As the vast majority of people are no longer taking any COVID precautions, any time spent indoors (or outdoors in large crowds) therefore comes with an elevated risk of catching COVID. We wouldn't go to a restaurant without a mask in 2020, right?
        • Vaccinations/recent COVID infection will provide a short term reduction in your risk of catching COVID, but it's not a reduction to 0, and this assumes the variants are the same (which atm at least is likely for recent infection as I think the dominant strain is at like 80% of all cases).
        • The more times a person gets COVID, the more likely they are to suffer from a variety of health complications like heart attack, stroke, long covid, etc. Additionally, each time someone gets COVID it seems to weaken theirimmune system, making future infections more likely.
        • Knowing all this, is going to [insert event here] worth the risk of long-term and potentially permanent damage to [my/your/our/whatever] health?

        Imo seeing a movie one could easily watch at home in a few months is not worth it.

        Lastly, while it's not relevant to the case at hand, when it comes to general socializing, ~50% of COVID transmission is from asymptomatic people and home tests have around a 50% false-negative rate. IIRC the CDC's recommended testing regimen is three tests on three consecutive days, but that can be prohibitively expensive and ime very few people are willing to go through the effort. To give some personal context, I'll acknowledge I'm somewhat of an extremist. Outside of maybe a dozen interactions with people who have been willing and able to do those tests, the only other event I've gone to since COVID started was a sibling's wedding (where I wore an N95 at the outdoor ceremony and then didn't attend the reception).

        • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]
          ·
          5 months ago

          I can’t believe that I’ve been “Covid-aware” for a few months now and it’s still far worse than I conceived of it as (and I already thought of it as an invisible airborne murder virus that was still circulating through the population). That’s… fun.

          I don’t know if I’ll be able to get it through to them for the reason you already specified, which sucks, because I’m living with them and they’re paying for really luxurious and nice lodgings for me, and have been generally supportive of me. I wish I could get through to them but the hyper normalization has resulted in them thinking of any kind of request I give them to mask or take precautions as “scary” and like some kind of intrusion.

          • barrbaric [he/him]M
            ·
            5 months ago

            Yeah, it's extremely frustrating. Really shows the power of propaganda, though I imagine it also helps that people desperately want COVID to be over because the alternative is, as your family member pointed out, "scary". I'd suggest taking a gander at the Covid.Tips link in the sidebar, as it was made explicitly as an aid to convince people to take COVID seriously.

            • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]
              ·
              5 months ago

              I’ve actually read Covid.tips already, and it’s a great resource- I may not have internalized it very well because I was reading it in the context of having just gotten out of an argument with family