It’s honestly been fucking baffling watching people be like “I didn’t wear a mask during covid I ain’t wearing one now” like alright bro breathe that toxic smoke ig, you do you.
Like, at least with covid it wasn’t visible. The virus isn’t visible, you don’t show that you caught it till later, and sick and dying people usually aren’t super visible to the public. But this is smoke in the air!!! You can see it! When you breathe in it hurts! Immediately!
Have they come so far they now just completely disagree with the idea that it’s possible to filter the air you breathe? Are they about to start rejecting germ theory? Return to humoral theory?
It’s like some weird horseshoe theory thing where a group is well off enough in the imperial core that, generally speaking, they’re not usually affected by natural disaster, pandemic, societal unrest, whatever, that eventually they start believing it literally cannot affect them. And then like 100 million of them die of Covid.
Are they about to start rejecting germ theory
I think that ship sailed some time ago lol
Yeah in my experience accusing someone of not understanding germ theory makes them go "wtf of course I understand it" but then within the next few sentences they thoroughly prove that they do not lol
I ghet the impression most people never learned it in the first place.
People still think cold temperatures or drafts of air make you sick, very few actually understand germ theory
I wonder if it's about admitting that there are things beyond your control that you have to change to deal with. A lot of people in the US recognize that their way of life is extremely fragile and probably going away. It's a terrifying prospect and they don't know what to do but try and stonewall it with denial. Any real change in behavior, no matter how minor, is a potential gap, a place where coming to terms with the falling apart of things can come streaming in.
i live in a city where its like this for half the year. even if you wear a mask there is a good chance you will get eye infection.
Seriously overestimating how much they can own people. COPD is not contagious.
Lmao I never realized how NYC-centric this site was til these smoke posts. I'll wear a mask now because I have them and I'm wearing them indoors already, but probably a tenth of this country experiences air quality like this every year, and no one was going out and buying masks to deal with it. At-risk groups (I'm in one) stay indoors as much as possible, as with many other natural disasters from heat waves to ice storms. That's literally it. That's all you have to do to survive this.
Like you just don't get to play sports or go for a hike or sit in a park or however you recreate outside for a week/month/season, however long it takes for the smoke to clear. It's not that big of a deal. Yet another view from ninth avenue moment for NYC.
Like you just don’t get to play sports or go for a hike or sit in a park or however you recreate outside for a week/month/season, however long it takes for the smoke to clear.
Bruh people have jobs
Yeah that's fair. I worked a physically-intensive job outside every year during fire season, idk what to tell you. That's why I said you cut recreation, because there's other times you have to be outside in order to survive this hellworld.
Heat waves are far more catastrophic for human health than wildfire smoke.
To be fair, the smoke blanketed something like 20% of the American population over the last few days. Everywhere from Boston to DC got pummeled to some degree or another.
Good point, I forgot about that with how all the content seems to be coming from NYC.
Yeah, and I'm probably underestimating it too. Lots of areas inland were affected as well.
The NYC centric focus is probably just because it's such an iconic place, and the sky scrapers make for an extra dramatic visual effect. It's also where it was the worst for a bit (in addition to Philly) so it naturally had the most dramatic effect on photos too.
Like, I've lived on the West Coast so this is unfortunately old news to me at this point, but this is probably the first time these East Coasters have seen such man made horrors. People out west are genuinely traumatized by wildfires, you can hear it when people who evacuated describe it. Their entire demeanor changes, and there's a broad sense of doom we all get during fire season that's palpable in the air, not at all unlike the smoke itself. This is the East Coast's first time experiencing it though - it makes sense that it is making an impact.
It's wild that covid has resulted in a significant portion of society now hating the idea of any kind of risk reduction at all, purely out of spite.
“Taking literally any action to prevent harm from coming to me or the people around me is for pussies”
That attitude predates COVID tbh. Lotta people think seatbelts are unnecessary, and I can't even tell you how many times I've seen people refuse to use PPE in industrial environments because it "isn't necessary".
Americans are the stupidest and cruelest people on the planet. We can't even tolerate the appearance of making considerations for others, even to our detriment
