Thanks, shitheads. Glad you're able to eat burgers in restaurants and don't have to feel uncomfortable around your unmasked family members so people like me can have a much harder time.
And on another end of it, I haven't been able to trust people to stay safe before we hang out since mid 2021. I'm considered unreasonable for wanting to hang out outside, despite me being immunocompromised and everyone knowing it.
I’m considered unreasonable for wanting to hang out outside
If you can't hang out inside and you can't hang out outside...
me being immunocompromised
Fucking sucks. I'm just not clear what the solution is. Your friends want to hang out with you, but you all live in a society that's got a contagious virus banging around continuously for years on end. What's the solution?
Mask up? Bring a big bottle of hand sanitizer? Keep at a relatively safe distance and do something that doesn't involve bodily contact?
I get that trust is an issue, but at this point it almost feels like socializing is the modern day equivalent of having sex during the AIDS crisis, maybe pared down a bit since COVID isn't an automatic death sentence. At some point, you're either celibate or you're taking some risks.
I can tell you that the choice I've already made is celibacy (aka being a hermit). Unfortunately, people work very hard to make me feel bad about that choice.
Do you know if n95s are suitable enough for your immunocompromised situation? The statistics on those look pretty good even if others aren't masking up
They are something I use if I have to be in an enclosed space with people, but they aren't fool-proof enough to trust over long periods of time. I'm not willing to risk my life on it.
What’s the solution?
Wear masks and hang out outside. It's not complicated. It's not aids, it's literally sitting in a park or on someone's porch.
This is the easiest shit in the world.
1.) Wear a mask
2.) Go outside
People act like they're being asked to cut out their own liver. It's extremely displeasing.
It has certainly been very revealing of peoples priorities and the power of capitalist hegemony - people fundamentally feel they cannot socialize without spending money. It is not enough to socialize for free in a park, you gotta buy a burger at the same time and also have your desires catered to by not wearing a mask and not feeling guilty about it.
Totally agree, but it fucking sucks living where it's too cold to hang out outside for like a third of the year. Plus having to go into work and being the only wearing a mask. Like I can't be safe and socialize comfortably but I still need to endanger myself to pay rent :doomjak:
"feeling skittish"
Bro it will literally disable you for life if you're healthy. If you go in with a compromised immune system you are utterly fucked.
"Hey we're going to the guns get shot at you club where they shoot guns at you. There's only a 10% chance that you'll get shot with a gun and permanently crippled. Why are you being such a pain in the ass about this?"
Like "Don't get upset when people ask you to hang out in a context that won't literally kill or disable them" is burying the bar near earth's molten iron core.
Thanks for sticking up for me on this. It feels weird to have someone try to twist negative experiences into positives for no real reason.
Bro it will literally disable you for life if you’re healthy.
Leaving aside the truth of it, I don't think this is in line with most people's perception. But also I think the risk assessment is more betting they won't catch it than figuring they'll be fine if they do. My experience is more people overestimating how bad the infection is while vastly underestimating how contageous and ubiquitous it is
I think a lot of people are just fundamentally incapable of understanding their own mortality. Like they know disabled people exist, but either they've never seriously thought about what that means, or they're riddled with Calvinist brainworms and believe in a Just World.
One of the most sobering moments for me was when I realized that just about every late onset disabled person I saw at some point thought they were the exception, that they were invincible, that it was maybe cool and sexy and rebellious to smoke a few packs of cigarettes a day and that they would never be the old guy with the oxygen tank that they now are. :doomer:
That :grillman: attitude and the ongoing pandemic thriving and mutating unchecked is why I continue to hate tiresome memes about "touching grass" said to strangers to dab on them. Some of us have to touch the proverbial grass every day, and more to the point, have no choice but to deal with people that are constantly wet coughing in confined areas. :disgost:
Got covid from a foreman coughing in my face. He was out a month. I had to beg him for my under the table job back after I recovered.
I work in a congregate shelter with lots of medically vulnerable people. The fact that we are one of the only places still asking people to mask, means that those discussions are much more confrontational than when it was expected everywhere. It's pretty futile most of the time and many of us have stopped asking because we don't want to get yelled at and management isn't supporting us, so it ain't worth it.
Shit sucks.
It's been nice at the hospitals I've been at, the door people confront everyone who doesn't wear a mask. It is annoying to remind patients to put their masks on (especially the immunosuppressed ones, like cmon you gotta work with your new reality of having no immune system). It must get pretty rough out there, they don't complain to me when I've asked. Maybe I should get them a card amd some chocolate or something for filtering out the shitheads.
I have so much love for the people who put themselves out there to enforce masks in medical settings and (when it was required) public transit.
Now imagine you're asking the person to wear the mask in the place they live. It's a hard sell.
I'll believe you "have to" in the sense you'll lose your job but it feels prudent to point out that you don't have to in the sense to cover for bad management.
I had this realization a few years ago and ever since then I'm a big fan of the lose-lose situation. Will I get in trouble for this? Yes. Will it fuck over management 10 times more? Yes? I will absolutely (not) do it. If you're at least somewhat not at risk of losing your job, there is no counterstrategy to sinking the boat to spite the captain.
If it's food service you can't really just not do the work of other people. Those meals have to get out there, it can take longer but that just means you're done later.
Yeah it's why I put the qualifier in there. Not feasible for a lot of jobs (without getting fired)
that just means you’re done later
"Sorry, I told you I could only work until 6 today. I'll see ya tomorrow! 🙂"
In theory, you get your coworkers on board. But that requires doing some agitating and... being an agitator is fucking hard. Its awkward and touches a lot of nerves and requires a certain set of skills that need to be refined over time, often through the hard way. It also guarantees an open adversarial relationship with management that adds lots of stress.
At the same time, if you're already in an openly adversarial relationship with your boss and there's an underlying sense of agitation due to the crazy workload...
Its not a question of "everyone gets done later". A lot of it is simply clients piling up in the drive-through line and new people refusing to get in line because the wait is so intimidating. That cuts into store revenues without affecting the amount of time you spend doing your own job. If you really want to be aggressive about it, you can straight up put a warning sign in the window apologizing for the long wait times - thereby guaranteeing you reduce your customer load.
You can also just... give food away for free or undercharge for it or otherwise fucking with the profitability of the business on the DL in a way that hurts management without subjecting you to the abuse of clients. But, again, all that hinges on the whole staff being "on board" so to speak. A tough first hurdle.
the SHEEPLE are not allowing themselves to die of the FAKE CHINA VIRUS, like the SNOWFLAKES they are!
LIBERALS
It's been going on for about five months where I work, and all the other respiratory viruses only started recirculating around here in the past couple months, so if you get sick its hard to know if its covid or something else, and it can take up to four days for a rapid test to show positive, so people will test negative first day and then go about like normal coughing and sniffling everywhere. Xbb has just started getting detected around here, so thats fun.
