It is year 5, friends, and I will be honest: I am not doing great! My wife and I have been hit once again this evening with the startling shift in decorum when we asked the organizers of an event we would have liked to attend about their Covid policies (spoiler: there aren’t any, there won’t be any, and fuck you for asking, thanks).
Navigating a shrinking world that used to be so full is jarring. I am genuinely not sure how I am supposed to continue existing in society as a person with an autoimmune condition, the highest risk category beside the elderly as it stands- at least, until they change that, too. If by some miracle Covid were eradicated in an instant, if the world “went back to normal” tomorrow, I don’t know how I could after seeing the last four years of this. Four years of my world getting smaller and smaller and smaller until it is only me left to wither and blow away, a tickle of an afterthought to tease the damaged brains of all my peers, drifting; huh, wonder whatever happened to her. Who needs enemies when all and sundry are happy to abandon you- no, endanger you- for the mild inconvenience of wearing a piece of cloth? I talk to my old friends and they speak as if I already died; you did this! I want to scream, this is your fault!
but instead I nod and say how I’m doing well, thanks, hope you’re hanging in there too (no I don’t, not really. I hope you get exactly what you deserve). Everyone has gone mad and by the time they feel the effects of it all it will be too late- and a small wonder if I live to see it through, thanks to them.
I try to stay optimistic. It’s a big world, I guess. Perpetual house arrest at the hands of an effectively zombified populace is not exactly fuel for hope, though. I am not happy, but I don’t have sadness in my heart anymore. I barely have love left in me. All I have is anger, and hate. So, so much hate. A brand of hate which will never go away- and I hate that. Hate. HATE.
I don't even have any comorbidities, I'd just rather take the small inconvenience of wearing an N95 than risk getting permanent damage to my brain/lung/heart/etc. Fortunately I was already pretty isolated so I'm relatively used to it and can probably handle this isolation better than the average person, but I agree. I can't have solidarity with people who are willfully killing people because it would be annoying to take precautions. The most frustrating are the those on the "left" who have decided mass death is okay because they need their treats. Hate is the right word to describe how I feel, and as far as I'm concerned, it's justified.
I don’t have any health issues thank god, I mask to protect myself and my family, and because I know it annoys and disturbs fascists and liberals. It also looks cool.
My kids are in public school and they’re also like the only ones masking. Even the boomer nurse whose husband has cancer is not masking. One of my kids asked a few nights ago if he could take his mask off; after we looked through the data for about an hour he changed his mind. There’s plenty of information about this shit from mainstream websites and science publications. Liberals and fascists would rather play Russian roulette with airborne mad cow disease than undermine whichever of their preferred political parties is in power. It’s also just cheaper at this point to ignore covid than to take it seriously—in the short run.
There’s about a fifty percent chance that Trump is going to win the presidency in a few months. I hope that if he does, libs go back to pretending to care about covid, since doing so would undermine his presidency and sabotage short-term profits at many businesses.
I hope that if he does, libs go back to pretending to care about covid,
I have joked about this with my wife but I actually think that’s almost certain to happen if and only if he ever says the word Covid. If he never mentions it or says anything about it while in office, libs won’t do shit. He needs to give them the words they love to play with so much; we have seen they don’t care about material reality.
he's gotta have to take credit for "beating covid" right?
I feel you hard, comrade. More and more of my leftist circle has stopped masking and gone back to normal. I can send high quality peer reviewed research all day, and it just seems to annoy them. The language that the Twitter/Facebook community uses is "entitlement", I know that this isn't used as much by leftists, but it feels right in this context. Like why would one not do something teenie tiny so that your comrade does fucking get ill, disabled, or die.
The thing that really really gets to me is this: the fucking absolute worst people won't mask. The rich, the fascist, the QANON types. Why the fuck are they are role models now. And proportionally, a much much higher percentage of the poor and non-white people ARE masking. LIke who the fuck is your hero, Jordan Peterson who or the actual proles in your world.
I feel for you very much, comrade. I don't actually have an auto-immune disease, so it must be much much harder for you. I honestly wish you were here. We'd chill out with the two HEPA filters, I'd be N95'd as normal, and we'd both feel safe.
Non-maskers, pls pls fucking reply so I can tell you what a fuckhead you are.
I'll come to to you, and lay myself upon the chopping block.
Do you want to hear the reason i stopped masking? The tldr is nihism but you can read on and hate the rest of what i write too.
When cocid first came out i was like most people working an "essential" position that really really wasnt, and i think i was probably still a radlib then (I fancy myself a baby commie now but id leave that for others here to gauge). I was absolutely dismayed when i saw first-hand proof that society as it is built does not care if we live or die. Like gobbed. You might say I'm still angry about it. I learned that there was no limit to how little they cared.
I had asked for basic, basic protections for us (in these early days when you couldn't even buy masks and hand sanitizer). I wanted these things provided because the large company had a better chance of procurement but they didn't even bother saying they couldn't, they just wouldn't because of "costs."
I also watched with dawning horror at the government who (laugh at this if you want, i do) i thought would at least protect their workforce. I thought at the very least they cared about the value i produced for their economy.
Who knew i was no cynic, but impossibly naive? They actually am fine if we die, they think of us as a bulk resource. Next guy up is just as good.
I'm sure this is a story so far everyone has experienced themselves.
Armed with all this new info i told my wife something i think was prescient but more knowledgeable folks will just say "duh" to, was "no matter how the government responds to this eventually it will be to put every bit of the response, and the responsibility onto the citizens."
Somehow, they would make it our fault, force the decision to be a personal one, their number one priority would be one of shifting the burden and the blame.
And so they did. They didn't provide proper mask info or masks at all, force companies to provide proper ppe, force businesses to comply. They made it a choice, and constantly allowed business to run as usual. Not only a choice, but they let it (allowed or on purpose) to be a matter of money. Managers of some businesses would not mask and would make fun of who did, front facing restaurants had their servers mask but had lax rules for employees out of view (and of course themselves). Again i am not surprising anyone I'm sure.
(All this time i masked up anyway. I believe (still believe) in their efficacy). I committed to masking. A friend lost a mother and another lost their grandma. (Before the vax). I committed to never taking a chance, never getting sick for myself, but even more for others who had weaker immune systems. I was so worried about this, especially as there was talk of silent carriers. I developed an anxiety disorder, long dormant (or ignored/self medicated) that could no longer be denied.
All around me of course, were people who should be more careful, old people and children, blah blah that i silently hated for living so free without knowing what i did for them.
Yes the masks triggered panic attacks, cuz they usually start when i feel like they're isnt enough AIR in the world. Yes i still wore them. More often i think my attacks would trigger initially at my dismay at the people around me not doing what they should to protect themselves regardless of what the government said compounded by my incandescent fury that the government was found exactly what i thought they would, fuck-all (besides blame shifting).
I kept wearing them after the vax came out. Even as so few others did.
I finally snapped when after all that work i still got COVID. I did what i could despite the others not doing it, and got it. But it wasn't just the fact i got it, it was the fact i am in fact a silent carrier. (The only way i even knew was i tested before a flight). I heard about free tests and signed up, but they never came. I went to the store and bought a few, but i couldn't do that every time. So my worst fears were true. The only way I'd ever know i have the virus is if i test, and testing all the time is not free. And i know now as you all know that this isn't going anywhere, it won't be beaten. Because of the fact our society needs money and disregards our lives means this is forever.
So i gave up. I won't sugar coat it. I'm not fucking proud of it. But i just... cannot accept the responsibility for everyone else on this, when the people who are are gleefully denying theirs. When i see how individual effort is superceded by the colossal efforts of the bougeoise working in tandem in their words and deeds to undermining our little efforts.
Because somehow now the mask has become intrinsically linked to their depravity and my helplessness, and i start having a panic attack when i feel the weight of both of them on my face. A mask to me, represents systemic failure and the failure of individuals to effectively combat it. It makes me angry, so, so angry when i feel it, when i see it.
I don't expect this will go over well, i just complained for 10 minutes about something y'all have the same experience on. I stopped masking, knowing the responsibility was on me, forced on me, and I ultimately made the decision to deny that it was mine.
Im sorry. I'm sorry that i couldn't do it anymore. When i see masked people i avoid them as much as possible for their safety. I don't go to large gatherings. I haven't done karaoke since before. (Singing into a shared mic is really bad i hear).
I accept your anger for my part in societies failure. I share your anger at our diminished lives (from so much more than COVID). I direct mine at the government, and the fact they deliberately put us in this position, and so easily made it our problem.
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You're admitting to letting anti-masker CHUDs effect your decisions more than your immunocompromised comrades who could die from exposure to this virus. Your framing it as individual effort vs the bourgeois machine, without seeing that it's mutual aid and building class solidarity. You could easily take your point of individual action vs "the machine" all the way to giving up and calling all leftist politics useless.
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Just because you had an asymptomatic infection once, doesn't mean you'll always be a "silent carrier" with no ill effects and only be able to tell you're infected through tests. As @buttbidet mentioned, viral load effects severity of infection. Also, every COVID infection, regardless if it's symptomatic, carries a 10%+ chance of developing long COVID.
edit: 3. every immuncompromised person has gone through what you've experienced seeing the capitalist machine embrace COVID, but about 100x worse because the consequences are life and death for us and we've been almost completely abandoned. we've lost friends and family that are "over" dealing with us, we're forced to live as hermits, we can't even get medical professionals to don a mask to keep us safe. Every person I see wearing a mask is a little boost to my morale to keep going, keep fighting through until we can build a world that cares about disabled people. Every "leftist" friend who gives up because they can't handle the societal pressure to comply and be "normal" does the opposite.
Your framing it as individual effort vs the bourgeois machine, without seeing that it's mutual aid and building class solidarity. You could easily take your point of individual action vs "the machine" all the way to giving up and calling all leftist politics useless.
This part is absolutely thought-provoking. This resonates with me. Thank you
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Do you want me to buy you masks? Cuz if it's an expense thing, I'll do it to help a comrade.
A couple of thing: 1) viral load matters. Even if you got COVID, you'd be much worse if you were exposed to more of the virus. So your mask did help you. And 2) N95 masks protect much better and are incredibly breathable. Surgical masks suck for breathing.
cw:terrifying health stuff
The most important thing is that they make someone like OP, could die. Why would you not take a small action to prevent their death and fear of death?
I'm sorry that we're living in a neoliberal hell hole, but we can actively not spit on the suffering if we can help it.
Thank you for the offer of masks comrade. I really appreciate it. Money is indeed tight but not so tight i would feel right accepting your money.
The most important thing is that they make someone like OP, could die. Why would you not take a small action to prevent their death and fear of death?
I will think very hard on this. It goes against my stubborn angry tantrum that it should not be on me to save the world and the nihilistic thought that my choice makes no difference, so I'm gonna have to do some real soul searching ngl. I am looking at the future and all i can see is myself masking forever while nothing changes, and that thought just makes me wanna to sit on down and die.
But i know that in a world where no one takes responsibility someone must. I'm also fighting myself and the rising notion i cannot deny that i don't care at all for the world we are forced to live in, but there are people who hope still, and maybe i can set myself aside and do it for them instead.
I'll attack this nihilistic unhelpful viewpoint and see if i can beat it. If i think of it on the terms you put down perhaps i can.
it should not be on me to save the world
you're not saving the fucking world, you're helping to protect a few people that you're six degrees of kevin bacon with.
put on the mask shinji
everyone else is making the same abdication you are. you can't say you're angry at them and give up yourself. yes, it's a systemic problem but it's also a personal one. you still personally risk harming the people around you. keeping distance from the people who are masked doesn't change that. you've rationalized this but speaking as someone who's disabled from covid, I hope to god I never meet you, because I will punch any 'leftist' who makes these excuses to my face.
please never speak on solidarity, on common struggle, of mutual defense. you put the lie to these terms, utterly bastardizing them. no one who makes such excuses to shirk responsibility to protect our vulnerable is a comrade of any kind. it's such a core and basic tenant that we protect each other, where the state will not, such an essential part of the communist worldview that I do not understand how you feel justified in calling yourself one. you won't kick a homeless person, but if you get them sick and they die of medical complications, well, that's the state's fault?
that this ought to be a collective effort does not negate any and all responsibility you bear. the consequences of your actions are that more people will get sick, more will suffer disabilities, more will lose their livelihoods, more will be made homeless, and some will die. who needs enemies with comrades like these.
t. But i just... cannot accept the responsibility for everyone else on this,
that's not what you're fucking avoiding by giving up.
put on a mask when you're home and practice calmly breathing, your body can re-learn that it gets enough oxygen with the mask on.
Hey comrade, i like you so it bugs me that youre talking like this when i put up a piece of my soul.
Not that i really expect hugs for being selfish.
Please tell me what i am avoiding. Do you mean my personal responsibility? Or simply COVID itself? I told the thread I'm on the chopping block so I'm not arguing with you, i am asking. If your next words are still in anger it won't harm your point, ill still listen, but they may get in the way of your properly framing it for me.
put on a mask when you're home and practice calmly breathing, your body can re-learn that it gets enough oxygen with the mask on.
Unfortunately I think this feeling is partially due to the absolute lack of organization around Covid. The left really dropped the ball (and continues to) on one of the most important crises of our time. At this point, if you still mask, it really is a lonely feeling, made all the more lonely by the more you have to participate in society. I'm lucky that I work from home, don't have schoolchildren (or any children) - really the only interaction I have to have with larger society is to buy shit from the stores occasionally.
I think a lot more people would mask and feel better about masking if there was more community around it. It's out there, but it's extremely spread out, small, and niche (and mostly online). If I have to go into the real world at all I'm the only one masking (except for a singular storeowner who still wears a surgical mask). I think in 2020 the left was mostly toeing the CDC line because no one really knew anything and everything was still extremely confusing. Unfortunately that meant we never created a culture of masking and of disability politics, but instead of listening to and following the guidelines of this bourgeois institution. And when the CDC said you can go back to normal most people just followed along, as they had been since 2020. Those who tried to keep up with precautions, I think many of them ended up feeling like you do - at one point you just get burnt out, being literally the only person making things harder for themselves with no one to talk to in a still extremely confusing situation.
Maybe you stopped because it didn't make you sick. And now have developed this complicated theory to deny you did it because it didn't affect you personally. It might still do that the next time.
But honestly deciding this while being the asymptomatic person is the reason why longcoviders like me can't choose to just give up.
Also, there is information on how fast masks were dropped when whites learnt that covid impacts them less then everybody else. For some peculiar reason a lot of people suddenly came to the conclusion that they no longer have to care.
This to me explains a lot materially and if nothing else should make a comrade mask up, this should. Solidarity has to be more than just words.
What does someone like me say to that attitude? I can't afford people accepting that we live in covidworld. Carelessness about precautions on the part of anyone else will kill me. Do you understand?
Thank you for reading and responding. I am very thankful that I have maintained a sense of shrewdness through this all. I believe through every bit of resistance I have received- and it has been so much- I have kept my family and those around me as safe as possible. When we were abruptly evicted due to the rent moratorium ending, I found Covid-safe roommates across town who respect us and understand us. I am working on building a wider network of people who won’t treat me like a burden or a nuisance like so many others do, and they might not be explicitly left-whatever but they are doing real, tangible work against one of the biggest societal schisms of our lifetimes, and that’s all I can ask for.
Self-described leftists avoiding masking is a perfect example of, "you are not immune to propaganda". It's just pure (hyper)normalization. A worldwide pandemic was downplayed by capital and rather than congeal around opposing this and organizing to include and defend those most harmed, most of these folks just individually shut down or gave up or, now, even think they should be anti-mask.
You can know all the classics front to back, be Dr. Lenin Expert, PhD, and still carry and adopt poor positions simply because they've been normalized.
It is frustrating to see the lack of thoughtfulness and care among so many of those who call us comrades, OP. The main solace is that all of our comrades are full of contradiction, so this doesn't mean they're all lost causes, even though it is a signifier of how unserious many of them are. Hell, there are entire left orgs that are anti-mask because they, incorrectly, think it will help them talk to proles (as if they aren't of the proletariat already!). Really they're just making excuses for adopting something being normalized by liberalism, making the classic mistake of ceding ground to left libs on this shit and making themselves appear reactionary.
Anyways shit sucks comrade and if you were around me or my orgs we mask up and do things outside and run circles around these left triangulators that tell themselves a little piece of cloth is why they can't organize.
I feel this. I've barely gone anywhere or met with people for years now. I basically lost most of my RL "friends" over this. I can't trust other people to take basic precautions or be honest about if they think they might be sick or give even the slightest fuck about protecting vulnerable people and it's making me feral and hateful and lately giving me unhealthy and violent thoughts.
My partner is immune-compromised and we've been extremely fortunate that we haven't had covid yet. But I'm worried everyday if some thoughtless plague rat were to spread it about how much sicker they would get. No human interaction I've had has been able to override the disgust I feel and even though I've been feeling increasingly isolated and lonely and . Cavepilled and hermitmaxxed it is! At least I have a large backlog of games to catch up on?
The other day my partner was on Xitter chewing out someone who was anti-lockdown and anti-masking and saying it was "traumatic" to have to stay home for a couple months. Someone else saw my partner's rant and said that if my partner said that to their face, they would knock their teeth out. The teeth of a disabled person trying desperately not to be social murdered from disease. People are absolutely fucked over this. I guess I'm not the only one with unhealthy and violent thoughts. At least mine come from a place of protecting vulnerable lives and not from trying to silence or destroy voices that make me feel shame for my selfish treat-chasing behavior.
anti-lockdown and anti-masking and saying it was “traumatic” to have to stay home for a couple months
These are the same people who will say “if you don’t want to get sick just stay home” … and then wonder where you’ve been for the last four years and why those permanent bags under your eyes look so angry.
I guess I’m not the only one with unhealthy and violent thoughts.
By all metrics regardless of how anyone feels about it, people reveling in taking no precautions while remaining willfully ignorant is an act of violence and mired in eugenics. I don’t think resentment of that is irrational.
Yeah, shit sucks. My wife is immunocomprimized, and yeah, we're in a similar situation to you.
I work construction is as well, a job that is already weirdly harsh to just, using proper PPE, so I get a ton of shit for masking (though, 'getting shit' is pretty par for the course on construction jobs tbh). I'm the one they go to at least for hospital work, since around here that at least still requires masks on site from construction personnel, something that is still fucking ridiculous to be controversial at all.
Wearing an N95 during construction is a smart choice even without a pandemic. So many people going home with lungs and noses full of sawdust, drywall, insulation...
Yeah and concrete dust, you don't wanna be breathing any of that.
Someone once asked me, if covid ended tomorrow, just up and vanished, could I ever forgive those who have wronged me in the pandemic?
I think I can forgive them, and I believe I have. I mean I understand what's gone on, there's been a massive propaganda push to manufacture an end to this pandemic, and if local leftist groups are unable to withstand that propaganda push, there's no chance my apolitical lib friends can. I also know how hard it is, to keep up a covid cautious lifestyle in the year 2024. The only reason I can is because I understand the justification for doing so. These others, they need to go to work, want to have a social life, and they don't understand the seriousness of covid. I can scream at them all I want, about the science, about protecting others, but ultimately it's literally just me against the massive propaganda push fed to them from literally every direction, and repeated by other friends and peers with the same standing as me. So it sucks but I get it.
But of course just because I've forgiven them doesn't mean the relationships can ever go back to where they were. Obviously the folks who attacked me and argued with me for taking precautions past summer 2020 I've completely broken off contact with, but even the more apolitical lib types, who have taken a more "live and let live" approach and that I still talk to, I don't think I can ever feel as close with them as I did pre-pandemic. I've seen where, when it comes down to it, where their interests lie. And obviously back in 2020 when most people were masking they were pro-mask, so I don't believe they're a lost cause or anything. But I just don't think I can trust them again. I forgive them, but I'll never feel the way I did about them, and I think it's likely that from here we'll just be in less and less frequent contact until we at one point just stop talking. Sad, but I suppose that's the way it goes.
I mean I understand what’s gone on, there’s been a massive propaganda push to manufacture an end to this pandemic, and if local leftist groups are unable to withstand that propaganda push, there’s no chance my apolitical lib friends can. I also know how hard it is, to keep up a covid cautious lifestyle in the year 2024.
On some level I understand this, but: I am no different than any one of these people, and if I can do it- if I was somehow able to miraculously break free of this unbreakable propaganda to protect myself and others out of necessity- then they can do it by choice. The only marked difference between me and anyone else is that I don’t get the luxury of braving the invisible unknowns of post-infection everyone seems to believe they can power through. I am then, frankly, very sick of hearing how hard it is to maintain precautions from this perspective. I have negative sympathy for it. I very much do not get it.
I guess I feel different because I was already very political by 2020. I was not as terminally online as I am today, but I knew my way around the internet and I knew how to find things and how to analyze things. What that meant is that it was much easier for me to cut through all the propaganda and misinformation going around.
My friends were completely apolitical. We all grew up in the end of history and they never moved past that extremely apolitical lib perspective. They couldn't evaluate misinformation and they sure as hell couldn't cut through official propaganda efforts. I talked to them a bit about things, and I thought I was getting through, but at the end of the day I was just another guy with an opinion. Of course I know I'm right, but to them literally every other person and outlet was saying the opposite of what I was saying, so why should they believe me? I had undergone massive political development slowly over the span of years during a period that was much more stable. What they needed to do was the same thing, but over a couple very chaotic months. It just wasn't gonna happen.
I think to my autistic brain that is just such a foreign concept to be almost alien; my roommate once said that their opinion of the gen pop changed when they understood most people go through life trying not to think about anything- but I have always thought and thought again and then again about everything my entire life. I am always thinking, observing, learning and absorbing information. That’s why, eventually, Marxism and materialism appealed to me so much later in life, but I don’t think you necessarily need to reach that level of development to come to my conclusions at all. Maybe I am, ironically, giving people too much credit… but I am really nothing special. Everyone is capable of this; but they aren’t receptive at all, in my experience, and I don’t know how to grapple with that. I guess that’s where the dialectical part comes in; despite the very clear decline & depravity I/we see, it somehow still must not be enough, not yet.
I struggle with this as well. Just endless lemmings going about their superficial lives as if nothing matters. And maybe they're right? I mean, no one is going to remember 99.99999% of us 100 years from now.
Sometimes it makes me wonder if ignorance really is "bliss"?
It is until it isn't, and by then your hopes are on the godliness of others having survived your bliss coming to save you. Not betting odds I would take on a personal level, let alone societal.
