My friend took this photo. Why - WHY - is anyone sitting around outside in this horrendous air? People have lost all connection to reality and common sense responses to danger.
Almost like we spent a year getting people to go back to work and ignore a plague, and it worked
People only cared about COVID in the first place because the media was prepared to fearmonger (in a good way) about it because it was believed to be of Chinese origin (or at least foreign) and no one in the ruling class has any idea how bad it could be because they have a bias to avoid comprehending or mitigating disasters (they always come out on top anyway).
Then it was deemed inconvenient and they did the opposite. Both times people were completely passive in their comprehension of reality being managed by the media.
I am literally walking in to the grocery with my gasmask right now and all I have to add is :screm-a: :kitty-cri-screm: :bird-screm-2: :shinji-screm:
Lol now that I think about it there were totally people on the west coast who were dealing with wildfires and COVID at the same time and still felt like wearing a mask was too much of an ask
Just completely :blob-no-thoughts: unless they are personally feeling that they are asphyxiating I guess
I feel like I've dived in to an unrecoverable conspiracy theory spiral, but then I go double check my sources (the literal us government) and reassure myself that Covid didn't actually get better or go anywhere and there are probably more people infected now than at previous peaks, and i sit in my little house with my little severe mental health problems isolated from humanity and losing what is left of my mind.
Y'know, I'm not even sure that's true anymore. We had one of the year's major waves in wastewater peak in the middle of July last year. We keep introducing floods of people each time we roll back a preventative measure so that it ends up throwing off the reinfection rhythms between variants. I think the covid seasons are gonna be a bit chaotic to predict for the next few years as everyone's temporary immunity syncs back up.... if they ever do, there seem to be multiple variants out there that aren't in competition with each other.
And who knows what adding China's population back into the mix is gonna do. :doomer:
Honestly, as someone who was born in Tehran (and has gone back multiple times), traveled all over India, live in SF through multiple summers of wildfires (including the amazing 'orange day') and is currently in NYC for this, it isn't that bad compared to the rest. Billions of ppl live in cities with air quality as bad as, if not worse than what it is like here in NYC right now and they still go on with their daily lives. It's not good that we have to live like that, but seems a bit alarmist to see all the bougie people here act like it's the end of the world and they'll die if their outside for more than a few minutes.
you may have noticed NYC people have a thing where whatever phenomenon happens to them is automatically completely unique and inscrutably world shattering.
big snow in Maine? who cares. big snow in Manhattan? literally the end of the world, snowmageddon!!
hurricane in Mississippi? yawn. hurricane in New York? 6 movies, 35 very special TV show episodes, God has abandoned civilization.
wildfire smoke in western new Mexico? what's a New Mexico? wildfire smoke among the NY skyline? all the legions of hell are here.
it's the convenience store/ bodega thing all over again.
I dunno, this smells like a bonfire, Tehran literally smells like strong gasoline all summer long.
I mean, smell isn't really a scientific indicator of how healthy the air is. I guess the air smelling worse can affect you mentally more in that moment but I assume everybody is talking about the actual amount of pollutants in the air
NYC:
https://www.iqair.com/usa/new-york/new-york-city
https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/new-york/10021/air-quality-index/349727
Tehran:
https://www.iqair.com/iran/tehran
https://www.accuweather.com/en/ir/tehran/210841/air-quality-index/210841
Didn't Tehran make it so that odd and even numbered license plates drive on different days to reduce smog? I think they have the same geographic set up as LA surrounded by mountains that keep the smog in.
I was gonna say something similar (although im not from Tehran). I was seeing aqi is like 340? Not that that isnt terrible but that is like a normal day in some cities in India.
I'm told indoor air quality is often ever worse than outdoor. At this point i feel like I should make a little hepa filter bunker. Maybe go back to my plan to make. A miniature backpack oxygen concentrator.
CO2 is usually higher indoors, particulates are a different story. Just put a bunch of plants in your house ig
In Delhi we have an air filter that cleans the air inside. Before tuning it on the air inside is also going to be extremely fucked up
If you asked these people why they're outside you're not gonna get ignorance or apathy, you're gonna get an angry misguided sense of defiance
It's a workday, so the people in the photo are either unemployed, retired, or tourists and those categories of people will be damned before they let even the thinnest slice of satisfaction or happiness slip them by, especially over smoke, SMOKE!?
Of course it's still a total lack of regard for one's health, but that won't stop anyone who engages in defiant copium
In Shanghai in the 2000s, the air was so bad that the sky was yellow instead of blue and you couldn't see more than half a mile.
It's not nearly as bad by me but seeing neighbors just chilling in this stuff and some of them being much older was blowing my mind.
Meanwhile I've got a N95 mask on to check my mail not because of a particular health reason but just because I don't want to breath that shit if I can help it.
Excuse me but this is just mother nature making sure that both the east and west coast are able to enjoy the breaking bad mexcio filter, why are you being against fun?
As someone who's been in forest fire smog before, you smell it less inside even without an air purifier. Maybe after several consecutive days.
Don't get me wrong, it's not good, but it's better than being outdoors in my experience. When it gets really bad I bust out my respirator, even indoors.
I don't know if it applies to conditions like smoke, but i'm told air quality is often worse indoors than outdoors. Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, folks. They're good!
