Jeanne Marrazzo, new leader of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, everyone:
Can I make a quick digression? We recently had a long Covid [research] meeting where we had about 200 people, in person. And we can’t mandate mask-wearing, because it’s federal property. But there was a fair amount of disturbance that we couldn’t, and people weren’t wearing masks, and one person accused us of committing a microaggression by not wearing masks.
And I take that very seriously. But I thought to myself, it’s more that people just want to live a normal life. We really don’t want to go back. It was so painful. We’re still all traumatized. Let’s be honest about that. None of us are over it.
So there’s not a lot of appetite for raising an alarm, especially if it could be perceived subsequently as a false alarm.
Edit - thanks for the help in bypassing the paywall.
Wearing a mask? TRAUMATIZING
Watching as millions upon millions die from something that is completely preventable? No big deal, I sleep well at night.
I am not entirely sure what is going on with people, but I spent this morning yet again in a mandatory in person meeting. At least three people were visibly sick or saying like they are "coming down with something". This has been going on since August now.
But the real kicker is the way a young person pipes up with "It's the weirdest thing, I have been having such intense migranes in the past weeks after I had the "summer flu". I had migraines as a kid, but never as an adult. It's the weirdest." Then several other people piped up to voice their new such weird and mystical health issues.
And there I sit, listening to this same stuff in some form week in and week out. And keep thinking to myself that maybe it's my autism or maybe it's something else, but how do these people not put two and two together, even now. Or ever. I get that they are underinformed, but still.
And I suppose the mask is like this for most, not trauma but just gone entirely as an option. Covid literally does not exist for most people anymore. Or something. I don't know anymore.
It's just lib brain. Everything is always lib brain. Libs do not see cause and effect, they do not see the material world. Things just happen to them and within them and around them and those things are totally unconnected to each other and that's where their thinking about things ends.
Unironically my partner has had persistent migraines for like 2-3 weeks in a row now and I wasn't sure what the problem was. Them getting covid at least 6 times hasn't even crossed my mind as an option
Lib views are determined by a combination of what their authority figures say and what their peers say. If this comes up against a conflicting material reality, this may spark change, but this is unlikely, especially if that change would require the liberal to actually do anything, even something as trivial as wearing a mask. The authority figures and all of their peers are saying COVID is over, and so, in the mind of the plague rat liberal, it is over.
Also, just curious if anyone else has had the same experience as me, but I'd never even heard of a "summer flu" until like 2023, and it's always just seemed like absolutely transparent cope about what is clearly COVID.
It is incredible to me the mental gymnastics people will go to in order to forget not even a decade ago when people were by and large absolutely 100% not sick this often. This is what tells me they know what they’re doing. They understand what’s happening, but have chosen the comfortable(?) lie until the curtain falls. If you can remember your favorite old tv show, you can remember what life was like before now. It wasn’t this, and there is a very clear through-line of cause and effect.
Yeah no summer flu existed before. Or constant allergies. Or blood pressure meds for people in their 30s. Or Christmas flus for that matter.
I also love the levels of splaining they will go to to prove their covid isn't covid. Educated adults who very well know you don't get sick from being cold straight up say things like "got the sniffles because I was out in the cold too long" and similar mental acrobatics. And the longcovid stuff is: aging (in people in their 30s), genes, stress, bad luck. It's never covid.
Also, just curious if anyone else has had the same experience as me, but I'd never even heard of a "summer flu" until like 2023, and it's always just seemed like absolutely transparent cope about what is clearly COVID.
Show
It was a thing in books at least. Tho, I've seen a couple indicating it may have actually been Lyme disease irl. So always a cover for something else apparently.😅
So there’s not a lot of appetite for raising an alarm, especially if it could be perceived subsequently as a false alarm.
That's the whole damn point in raising an alarm!
"The fire alarm going off allowed the residents to stop the fire with just a quick blast from a handheld extinguisher. But since there wasn't a lot of fire I guess we really don't need the fire alarms after all. I mean, they're so loud and annoying!"This made me recall an article I read very early in the pandemic. Just found it, and it's a real time capsule: "It’s hard to accept these sudden recommended changes to our routines, and the open-endedness is horrifying—or even worse, the prospect that this could be the new normal, at least until a vaccine is developed." Ahahahahahaha. But the relevant section:
Susan Joslyn, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, studies people’s responses to weather forecasting and finds that “false alarms” in major weather events, like tornado warnings or hurricane evacuations, result in a loss of trust. If you evacuate five times and nothing happens, you might believe the forecasts mean nothing; if you socially distance for two months and the virus never reaches your town, you might believe it was a false alarm, too, even if that social distancing is what kept the virus from taking hold. The same holds true with focusing on the worst-case scenario.
But she goes on to talk about how officials know this, and know how to mitigate it. Well, at one time they did. Now they've given up on that along with any semblance of public health.
Nanny state
'Let 'em touch the hot burner! They'll learn...' Dad state
And I take that very seriously. But I thought to myself, it’s more that people just want to live a normal life.
This kind of smug 'we see you and we hear you' followed by a tacit rejection of whatever it is we just said is the most enraging part of talking with libs. Just say you want us dead! Stop the act, stop pretending, and just say the quiet part out loud the way the fascists have no issue doing.
Also, while I commend any covid conscious people taking a stance no matter how small, I can't help but find the framing of not masking as a microagression laughable. Greeting a mixed gender group with "hey guys" is a microagression. Not wearing a mask during an ongoing pandemic, a mass disabling pandemic that has made all hell break loose for immunocompromised people, isn't a microagression: it's violence. It's a clear use of violence against the disabled by our ableist institutions, and the fact that powerful healthcare professionals can go along with the pretend end of the pandemic is evidence of a rot at the core of the healthcare system. Shame on them.
Your second paragraph reminds me. I just read Devon Price's Unlearning Shame, and was somewhat shocked by his read on Covid, where he talks about how we shouldn't shame people who don't follow health guidelines. The point of "Don't blame individuals for a systemic problem" is fine, but when it comes to actively and repeatedly endangering people's health, there's plenty of room for individual shaming. Like - don't shame someone for having a DUI on their record, fine. But if they still drive drunk every day, that person is dangerous, no matter how acceptable drunk driving might be in their culture.
It's the carrot and the stick, right? As socialists we generally want to move in the direction to positively reinforce the desirable behaviors in society, rather than the punitive carceral approach that we perceive as reactionary. But if you abstract away all personal connection to anti-social and reactionary tendencies in society then you're forgetting that society is actually made up of individuals, and individuals need to be motivated to stop engaging in harmful behaviors. You can't always do that with the carrot, so you'll always need the stick, even if only marginally.
Racism is a systemic problem but that doesn't mean I have to tolerate someone yelling slurs in line at the bank
Shame is an essential tool that prevents the proliferation of bullies in human society. Ruling classes have obviously historically weaponized shame in horrific ways (ahem Christianity), but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Seriously? Shame realistically just enforces social norms. That's often violent.
Shame is a tool and it can be used to mold society in good or bad ways. I don’t see how this is controversial.
No, shame is reactionary. As a social force it is used as a tool of aversion, and cognitively it has wide-ranging negative effects. A culture that employs shame to discipline its people will inevitably create a culture where people cannot be themselves. You state:
Ruling classes have obviously historically weaponized shame in horrific ways (ahem Christianity)
But you cannot just cross off all the ways class society uses shame as weaponization.
Most instances where you think shame could be helpful (presumably in some sort of harmonious socialist society?) is better suited to the revolutionary social force & emotion of solidarity & empathy. Whereas repeated shame crushes one's spirit, instilling a sense of solidarity will only create more positive outcomes both socially and psychologically.
I am not the person who wrote that, no. I do not have solidarity with people whose actions will kill me.
Shame is a universal aspect of human society and existence. Prior to class society, people used shaming rituals to prevent others from exhibiting dominant behaviors e.g. hoarding food in order to maintain communal society and prevent subjugation. I don't think shame is in and of itself a bad thing, it depends on who is wielding it.
Price did provide plenty of examples and research showing that shaming people is counterproductive, but it seemed (I haven't investigated all of the endnotes) like that was all for matters of personal motivation. I'm willing to listen to contrary evidence, of course, but don't we know that shame has worked in matters of public health before? There's a lot less secondhand smoke than there was when I was a kid, and not just in places where ordinances prohibit it. That is, shame doesn't get people to stop smoking, but it might get people to stop smoking around infants.
Thanks for the clarification - I took "positive motivation" way too literally.
As someone who was in fact traumatized by the indifference to the massive number of preventable deaths and permanent damage to people's bodies. People who think masks were the worst part of the pandemic can kindly eat the hair off my ass.
Huh I never personally felt that wearing a mask was traumatizing, my mom dying directly as a result of people just deciding covid was over and not masking anymore certainly was though. My brother helplessly watching dozens of people die in front of him as a healthcare worker probably was more traumatic than wearing a mask but idk maybe we’re just too inconsiderate of the poor folks that had to suffer the inconvenience of wearing them
Wearing a mask was the least traumatizing thing of the pandemic! It's the most comfortable my autistic ass has felt in years, don't even know why, but it was so nice to be able to just have my face covered in public for the first time
Fuck these ghouls
I'm pretty sure it's not that wearing masks is traumatic per se. It's that experiencing the pandemic - a deadly years long event where the government did nothing to help people - was traumatic, and the response these people are having to their trauma is to try to ignore it as best as possible. Which means not masking, and freaking out when people mask. We're so cooked.
Ok I know that & basically said it anyway. Unfortunately all the people outside the CDC freaking out about masks are not the government
I went four years without even getting a cold. Masks are amazing. My only regret is that I wasn't wearing one before the pandemic.
The air pollution in my city due to all the cremations, the wailing ambulance sirens all day long? Just minor annoyances. The mask, though!
: "It was HORRIFYING! For a brief moment of time it was ME who was told...wh...WHAT TO DO! THE HORROR!"
wearing a mask isnt traumatizing but having my health completely fucking ruined by long covid certainly was
There’s not a lot of appetite for raising an alarm, especially if it could be perceived subsequently as a false alarm.
I wish the interviewer had asked her what her take on seatbelts is.
Well at least i didn't catch heart disease like that clown kakarot. He says its a heart virus but its really because he eats like crap
From context they're saying covid "was" traumatizing and masks et al are a reminder of that.
Idk where they're going with the rest of it.
I would like to read the full interview this is excerpted from to be sure, but I definitely read this as saying "People just want to live a normal life [by not seeing anyone wear a mask]" rather than "People just want to live a normal life [and not be infected with a deadly disease they caught at an infectious diseases research meeting]." Since she started that part with "But," I see it as a response against taking mask-wearing "very seriously." Especially since she doesn't say she took those concerns so seriously that she asked everyone to wear masks.
Edit - Ah, Christ, her next paragraph, thanks to JoeByeThen's link, is "So there’s not a lot of appetite for raising an alarm, especially if it could be perceived subsequently as a false alarm."
America will.never improve because Americans are literally the most spoiled, self centered, selfish, antisocial dipshits in the history of the world.
If wearing a mask into a grocery store to stop a global pandemic was too big an ask what does anybody expect us to overc9me when there's a real issue.
Same with climate change, how many times have you seen people pitching about having to use plastic straws or reusable grocery bags.
Americans are tough and smart and resilient, so long as they dont have to make LITERALLY any personal sacrifices.
"The world is going to literally explode unless you skip going to this one specific movie showing, we will give you a full refund and a personal chariot to another showing at a later date" is a test 60% of the country would fail.
The treatbrained rage against social distancing and masking mandates shattered my hope of Burgerlanders ever collectively agreeing to do anything meaningful about crises ever again.
looking at just the most deranged loud reactionaries and their screeds and tantrums and ignoring the huge masses of people which did distance and mask, as well as the HUGE volunteer movement which undergirded the entire vaccination program, as well as ignoring in general the huge masses of people who have been and are organizing all the time for food distribution and food banking, and the communities that came together and literally chased cops who were trying to evict people during covid out of their town, and those distributing supplies in homeless communities, and who are helping each other in crises and always do (sharing generators, food, gas, water, entertainment, sending food on kayaks or handmade floating crates in floods etc.) as well as who literally travel into disaster regions to bring supplies and help and transport... and those organizing in labor and labor actions, and those coming together in masses for various local and nationwide protests and sit-in encampments and for socialist political organizing, for leftist firearm training, etc. etc.
is really myopic and a misanthropic and reactionary attitude, and I'd urge you to reconsider taking these kinds of stances, Comrade. Maybe you're speaking for yourself that you aren't collectively agreeing to do meaningful things about crises, but that doesn't mean that people didn't, and aren't still today. There are people in Hexbear who have talked about their and their friends' organizing work and also their volunteer work in Carolina right now, as well as have shared links to pool resources for alleviation on top of the general mutual aid threads. Speaking in these myopic and reactionary terms actively impedes these collective acts from growing and being recognized within the communities you speak them, and actively inhibit awareness, inspiration, and growth in people to join those making the world better; by instead pushing essentializing and fatalistic narratives which only serve to drive people to become more insular and atomized and reinforce backwards-facing and misanthropic biases in ways that are not much different from how people get pulled into and into believing narrative frameworks in incel communities.
People coming together, even in "Burgerland," to do meaningful things for each other and their communities both during crises and outside of crises has happened and is happening all the time --- and more and more people are joining not just symptom-alleviation activities and organizations but also organizations which help do so while targeting the core causes of the issues than ever before. More people have been interested in socialist organizing itself than have been in 3 decades. It is essential to not lose sight of that and to not believe or speak misanthropic untruths which only serve to undermine progressive movements and strengthen reactionary ones.
