The other day after mutual aid, I took public transit back afterward with some other people, and a few started complaining about how uncomfortable masks were, and then they all proceeded to not wear one on public transit. :doomjak:
I know our institutions and the social murder they are condoning are the real ones to blame, but idk, I can't help but feel disappointed by shit like this still :deeper-sadness:
Fuck I would had yelled at those fools. I found that anti-masking leftists are huge fucking cowards and if they even feel slightly threatened they will prob mask, at least in my city lol.
To carry out the social murder, the bourgeoisie needs a lot of the working class onboard to spread the virus, and look what we have here. Pure eugenics shit, this cross-class alliance of bourgeoisie and proles to kill off disabled people in order to eat a mediocre cheeseburger indoors at a restaurant or to catch 3 different viruses at a grocery store to pretend "its all normal" got to be resisted. We gotta break this cross-class alliance imo.
And yeah it's really stupid to me how many people are willing to risk (repeat) infection with an insanely contagious novel virus and posing risk to themselves, and others like restaurant workers--who may feel deeply uncomfortable about coming into contact with hundreds of unmasked people in the public each day but have no other job prospects--just for a fucking meal.
Maybe I'm a weirdo, but pre-pandemic, I never loved eating in restaurants anyways (idk, it may be in part cuz :im-vegan: and was always used to getting dragged to restaurants where there were little or no options for me). So many restaurants are just loud as fuck and blare the shittiest music, I could have made a better meal at home or done takeout/delivery instead.
I think a lot of it is because so many people are just insistent on socializing and meeting in these restaurants and cafes though. And it fucking sucks trying to make friends right now, let alone finding a partner, if you refuse to do indoor dining. :doomjak:
Yeah this is like the main reason why I been making a lot more disabled friends, cause they will actually do shit about the pandemic lol. Its not true with all of them but it has helped for sure.
Restaurants definitely suck, they are literally pressure valves (like bars) so that the working class does not revolt. And they are also exploitative as hell, so many of my friends had horror stories working at them no matter if the bourgeoisie running them was hella rich or a small business tyrant.
Resyaurants are a scam. Theyalways serve you tiny overpriced portions. You end up hungry and feeling riped of. Yes even mc donalds. The only exceptions are kfc(doez not exsist were i live) the large chiken bucket is suficient. And buffets.
I probably would have said something if I hadn't literally just started here, so like we don't even know each other's names yet lol. I'm still too craven for that right now anyways cuz I have bad social anxiety, but trying to work on that. I agree that's the principled thing to do though.
I found what helped me in those situations is that I was honest that I am immuno-compromised and that their actions can severely impact my life. I usually was firm in those convos and did not really yell. That gotten some people to mask for me. Tbh even if your not immuno-compromised it might be worth saying it just because of how bad the virus is long term.
Usually the people who mask in response end up being pretty good comrades, and the ones who don't usually end up being bad in other ways.
I'm not immuno-compromised, but yeah, I've seen the science with repeated COVID infections/long COVID and am just like NOPE, masks for me/no indoor dining/etc. Even though I guess I'd call myself "healthy", I'm starting to think the distinction between "healthy" and "high-risk/immuno-compromised" isn't very useful, just because being "healthy" is not a permanent thing that can be counted on, especially in the face of a still-ongoing, highly contagious, debilitating, deadly pandemic. Healthy and high-risk/immuno-compromised alike are both at risk during this pandemic. And frankly that was true before the pandemic because the way capitalists handle public health to begin with is naturally really fucked and post-viral chronic illnesses have always been a thing. But obviously it's really grave right now because COVID has evolved to be extremely contagious and all the long-term effects won't be known for years.
And yeah I can definitely see so-called leftists who still won't mask for an immuno-compromised person like yourself as being reactionary in other ways.
Yeah, acknowledging the pandemic still exists as a leftist but not even masking on places like public transit/doctors offices/grocery stores/etc. is the same energy as "we see you, we hear you" lmao.
And it really fucking sucks that our institutions like the CDC, if you follow their messaging closely, basically just assume that high-risk people are completely siloed from greater society because of COVID and consider this acceptable. And it's profoundly upsetting to me knowing that there is a subset of the population that feels they have to live like this just to survive right now. "Return to normal", my ass. Fuck this eugenic bullshit.
If you're a leftist and you can't even be bothered to mask in essential places that you know high-risk people might need to access, fuck you.
It is still a virus which is spread by individuals in the end, and countries like Japan and even Mexico had been able to reduce COVID spread by there being a masking culture.
Leftists can organize to change the culture so that people mask no matter what the gov says. Even if that work only gets like 10% more people masking, that is still less COVID spread than no one masking. I also think with some regions in this country the work is probably easier to pull off than others, which is noteworthy imo.
I also know multiple people who are pushing folks in their union to mask. Its been hard but they have managed to get some peeps to mask more. I say that is better than nothing.
What methods are you thinking of? Almost everyone around is a literal lib, and they don't mask, and these are the ones who scolded conservatives a few years ago. Unless you're in charge of rules then no one is going to listen to you.
Leftists can at least have a masking culture in their own venues and at their own indoor actions.
Disabled people like me don't deserve to die though. This approach gets us killed.
I have a congenital heart defect, part of why I got involved in covid relief efforts.
This implies that those deaths can be prevented; at the current state of both the development of the virus and the bourgeois states legal framework for public health they can't be prevented, only delayed a year or two at most at the cost of immense human suffering, with the maximum amount of suffering potentially being inflicted being mass death by starvation due to economic disruption in the global south
Is that because women are more likley to seek diagnosis or because of some fisiological thing?
That is interesting. Ussually it is the other way around with males being more illnes prone that is why i asked.
The cortisol thing is interesting. Hopefully it means long covid can be treated.
Treat hogs are a death cult. There's no saving them from themselves and any impediment to their consumption is an existential threat. I think that like the Black Death there's just going to be a silent war of attrition until the social order can no longer sustain itself. Even if we raised hell, nobody would listen from the masses to the businesses to the politicians. Capital is protected from lawsuits by employees and the state thinks it can win the half of the electorate that doesn't believe the virus exists.
The war for COVID was lost after Spring of 2020. The next war is over the depopulated workforce. We can only survive until then.
i still wear masks (its cold its just strictly better to wear masks honestly it keeps my face warm) because it still has a small benefit of preventing a high dose infection at least. that with vax and i feel reasonably safe though still anxious. havent been hit super hard for a year or so now so im wondering if my body got with the neoliberal program or if ive just been lucky
Am I a bad person for not wearing a mask because 99% of everyone else is also not wearing a mask and wearing them has caused me panic attacks in the past?
I am vaccinated and boosted and I got it in 2020 and then again earlier this year, and wearing the masks just feels pointless now. They did it. They did the Deus Ex thing where they ask Why contain it and then it spills over into the schools and churches and the bodies pile up in the streets. It killed any faith I had left in this country or the people who inhabit it and have any level of power. The white horseman has ridden and we wither in his wake, and I want to do so without teetering constantly on the edge of a panic attack because my stupid fucking brain can't tell the difference between a slight decrease in airflow through my nose and somebody strangling the life out of me.
EDIT: To contextualize a bit further I worked grocery in 2020 and 2021, moving into an office job after that. I masked for a long time, but after the county mandate expired and was never renewed again... most people are vaccinated in my office, we have an office policy of masking up if you have any symptoms of any illness, not just covid, and our people traffic isn't too heavy... I feel like I'm making excuses but it really feels like the battle is lost, it has been decided by Those In Charge that a certain subset of the population will be fed into the wood chipper and there's really not a lot we can fucking do about it.
Not a bad person because mask wearing is so infrequent now that you're not adding much danger.
Wish you were able to comfortably wear one for your own health, though.
