As the title says, I’m currently arguing with someone who thinks that every single person who is currently not taking precautions/not masking is an irredeemable piece of shit, and that at best, they deserve no sympathy if they get sick or die, or at worst, they deserve death. And that if they are unwilling to change now, they will never have the capacity to change. And the implication is that trying to convince people or doing any kind of activism isn’t all that useful because all these people are immutably selfish and ableist, and the only thing that will get every single one of these people to change their mind is if they get disabled/become directly affected in a bad way. And they keep talking about how the only way things are going to change is if we reach a tipping point with so much death and disability that the ruling class will have no choice but to bring back protections to mitigate/eliminate COVID. Because there won’t be enough people to work to keep society functioning basically.
Am I wrong to think that this is very defeatist and frankly grotesque? Because to me, the implication is that they’re hoping for the amount of disability and death to become so acute and staggering that the ruling class will have no choice but to intervene I guess? This is without considering the development of next-gen vaccines that can severely reduce or eliminate COVID transmission and/or the development of therapeutics that can prevent long COVID. But if the vaccines failed and the therapeutics got nowhere, who’s to say that this so-called tipping point they’re waiting for won’t take decades? Why would you wait for things to get that awful in lieu of doing COVID activism/organizing in the meantime?
I also really don’t think the ruling class is ignorant to the sheer level of death and disability that COVID is going to continue to wreak if left unchecked. There are a myriad of examples of the ruling class still taking precautions for themselves (e.g. everyone has to test still before they can be around Biden), and even some of their authoritative outlets like the WHO have said that 1 in 10 infections results in long COVID and that we can expect hundreds of millions of people to need long-term care in the future, if this current trajectory continues. I understand that COVID is pretty unique for our lifetime, in terms of the massive death and disability it has already brought, and is still dangerous in large part because it is so infectious and there is no long-term lasting immunity. But, post-viral illnesses are not new. Social murder is not new. If we reach this so-called tipping point with so many people dead and disabled that there aren’t enough people left to work to keep society functioning, what is stopping the ruling class from getting rid of child labor laws, dipping into labor from abroad, etc. to mitigate this?
On one hand, I get the urge to be misanthropic toward people like that. Everyone who is walking around unmasked in public has the potential to give someone a disabling or deadly case of COVID, including to us. Obviously that’s especially bad for anybody who is already medically vulnerable. And for people who are especially vulnerable, I think the vitriol toward people not masking especially makes sense. And I understand that American culture is especially toxic and individualist and bigoted. But like, just because you do activism doesn’t mean you have to like these people or be their friends or even treat them with kid gloves, lol (like I know shaming can work for some people and different tactics can work on different people and different contexts).
But like, I completely disagree with the notion that people can’t have their minds changed. Like hasn’t like literally every single social justice movement for a certain issue with any kind of success started with support from a minority of people, and activism led to a majority of people to eventually adopt that same viewpoint, and eventually that public pressure led to the government being slightly less shitty and alleviating some suffering? For the COVID pandemic, aren’t their literally parallels with the AIDS epidemic, as far with it largely being ignored (I know COVID wasn’t initially, but it’s effectively at that point now), and that things only started changing for the better once groups like ACT UP started getting involved?
And I still think the overwhelming majority of blame has to lie with the ruling class and all the people carrying water for them who have repeatedly bombarded the public with messages expressing COVID is over for the last 2-plus fucking years and that you don’t have to worry if you’re vaccinated and that bad outcomes only happen to people who are already medically vulnerable. Many people, for example, stopped masking and never looked back once Biden and the CDC said people didn’t have to mask any longer if they were vaccinated, way back in 2021. Same shit with mask mandates being lifted, many people stopped masking as a result. Propaganda works and is an insidious beast if used to perpetuate harmful behavior. And I think it would be wrong to to not consider that factor in the choices that people are currently making.
Is ableism an exception to the notion that people are amendable, and they actually cannot change their (ableist) ways?
I don’t understand their viewpoint at all, can someone explain? I’m not sure if I’m wrong either because I’m able-bodied and almost certainly still have some ignorance about disability.
Edit: I also think a not-insignificant number of people who are no longer taking precaution in public actually still have a concern about COVID deep down inside, but they are so inundated with being surrounded with other people no longer taking precaution, that they’re basically just going along with the crowd and maybe don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb or perhaps they are concerned with being harassed by rabid anti-maskers. All of this is to say, I think there is a genuine psychological factor going on in the choice of whether to mask or not, too.
I don’t have anything nice to say. Hundreds of millions of people failed the shopping cart test. But it wasn’t returning a shopping cart. It was the lives of their own families, their friends, the most vulnerable people in society, and everyone they passed on the street. The refusal to take precautions and the gleeful abandonment of any mitigation was a monstrous and unforgivable act. The stakes were life and death, yet all that was asked of them was to wear a fucking mask, and they refused. The fleeting discomfort of a mask was not worth millions of lives, even the lives of their own vulnerable family members.
Covid has been a great revelation to me about what Americans really are.
Your friend is right. Masking is praxis because:
- It protects you and the people around you.
- It infuriates liberals and fascists.
People who don’t mask are not comrades.
And I still think the overwhelming majority of blame has to lie with the ruling class and all the people carrying water for them who have repeatedly bombarded the public with messages expressing COVID is over for the last 2-plus fucking years and that you don’t have to worry if you’re vaccinated and that bad outcomes only happen to people who are already medically vulnerable.
(responding not to you but to the ruling class narrative about COVID)
Saying that COVID won’t affect you because you’re healthy is a very funny thought. You may be healthy now, but after a few infections you won’t be healthy anymore. There is no dividing line between the healthy and the sick; the world is in reality composed of the sick and the not-yet-sick. You are not immune to disability.
But like, I completely disagree with the notion that people can’t have their minds changed.
There is no need to change anyone’s mind. You do not need to convince people that wearing masks is good when you can force them to wear a mask. The way to restore mass mask wearing is to bring back mask mandates.
you still gotta change the minds of the people who can make such mandates, and the pigs who would enforce it and we saw how that went the first time with
NGL I still mentally think what your friend is saying, and my day to day attitude probably mirrors their ideas. Obviously being misanthropic is very pointless and maybe even non Marxist. I just need to deal with 100+ non maskers every single day, including multiple people who are actively being dickheads about my precautions, and frankly I’m very tired. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I wish that I could be nicer to these people. If I’m in an OK mood, I’ll try to be friendly. If they actually enter a debate with me (very rare), I’ll 100% give them the science and make every effort to be kind to their lack of knowledge.
If you catch me with a clear head, oh absolutely people have fallen for the propaganda and they deserve some sympathy. Our world’s leaders deserve all the scorn, and thoughtless liberals probably don’t know much better. But I’m human and being the only one in a mask, being laughed at, people coughing near or at me, it stresses me out. I’m literally sorry (unironically) that I’m not charismatic enough to be the cool guy with the N95. I probably am the angry dude with the N95.
One thing that I try to remind myself about: more people mask the further one gets away from well-off white people. I don’t want to generalise, but working people, immigrants, and BIPOC around me mask way way better. I think it’s easy to fall into hating people when you’re surrounded by labour aristocrat mayos, but I don’t think that everyone is this terrible.
Its very easy to wear a mask when everyone else is wearing one and very hard to wear a mask when nobody else is wearing one.
I had a trip to Japan some months back, and they were still stringently masking nationwide. Because I didn’t want to fail a COVID screening in the airport, I wore a mask for a month straight prior to departing. People constantly gave me weird looks. I had coworkers keep asking if I was sick. It was alienating and kinda depressing to have to deal with people who - not six months prior - were also all masked up.
By contrast, when I got to Japan all the social queues were reversed. Not masking got you ugly looks. I got stopped in a hotel hallway and - very politely - offered a mask by an attendant at one point. I felt almost naked without a mask on in public, simply because everyone was wearing them. Joggers were wearing them. People wandering alone in the park were wearing them.
I flew ANA to Japan (everyone masked). I flew United home and over the intercom the pilot announced that once we took off you could take off your masks. And guess how many people went along with it after take-off?
sigh
There’s a real herd mentality at work here that can’t be discounted. Social pressures mean a lot, and mass media informs those social views. It almost makes me a Trot, realizing how much weight mass media has on our day-to-day lives. A handful of right-wing shock jocks really do rule our world.
Its very easy to wear a mask when everyone else is wearing one and very hard to wear a mask when nobody else is wearing one.
Doing the right thing is hard and often punished. It’s still the right thing. Doing the wrong thing is often easy and rewarded. It’s still the wrong thing. This isn’t talking over someone or cutting in line. It’s the social murder of the most vulnerable people in society.
I understand why people failed. And I don’t forgive them.
This isn’t talking over someone or cutting in line. It’s the social murder of the most vulnerable people in society.
I see a lot more people masked up in the service sector, even now. There’s definitely a class divide.
But accusing people of murder for failing to wear N95s is… let’s just say that hasn’t been my experience. The most reliable indicator of getting COVID - from my own aggregate of anecdotes - has been whether or not you’ve got a kid in daycare. Good luck getting a toddler to mask.
Social murder differs from the more common, criminal kind in that it’s inflicted by society on oppressed populations. There are lots of ways to mitigate the spread of Covid in daycares, schools, offices, and everywhere else. Few if any of them have been implemented because by and large America would prefer that disabled people die than spend a penny to prevent it.
Social murder
Is a consequence of public policy, not of individual actions. “Not wearing your mask is social murder because COVID” is no different than “Not riding your bicycle is social murder because Climate Change”. It displaces a demand for social reform with individualistic moralism.
There are lots of ways to mitigate the spread of Covid in daycares, schools, offices, and everywhere else.
If you’re working hourly and can’t sit at home waiting for your kid to recover from what you’re not sure is COVID because you can’t afford testing kits anymore, and you drop the kid off into a classroom full of other kids, there is no known way to prevent every other kid in the room from contracting this highly contagious disease. Once that kid enters the classroom, talking about COVID mitigation is like pulling the pin on a grenade and talking about shrapnel mitigation. But all the events leading up to a sick kid going into a public place are fundamentally unavoidable in the American economy.
Yes. There are regional policies that seek to force the number of COVID infections to as close to zero as possible. But they aren’t individualistic decisions. They aren’t panaceas, either. Masks are great at getting that R number down, but they aren’t bulletproof (particularly among kids and adults with bad hygiene).
Once the social standard for disease mitigation slips, trying to point out individuals who fail to wash their hands or don’t wear a mask or ride the bus when they’re running a fever or do any old thing that risks propagating disease is a fool’s errand. They are no more culpable for the deaths caused by the epidemic than some dude in a pick-up truck is responsible for the current heat wave.
Telling people that they got what they signed up for if they don’t mask and get sick is fair enough, but the desire to put people into entirely walled-off categories of Other is a pathological mindset.
Watching your entire culture very clearly state that they are happy to watch you die in agony so they can go to Applebee’s makes it very clear that you are the Other.
If it means anything, they probably genuinely think that it’s not going to kill you and it’s no big deal. They’re mostly just misinformed, not evil
Am I wrong to think that this is very defeatist and frankly grotesque
you’re right. there is no point to a kind of activism that is unable to approach people complying with social coercion because they’re all personally morally bad.
to be honest we just -lost- covid, and this reads like the last guerillas in the hills after the Spanish Civil War unwilling to pivot tactics expecting some miracle military victory if they keep to the campaign. and that guerilla campaign is definitely not going to go anywhere if you assume every person who laid down their gun is a fascist now.
obviously not so extreme in the COVID example, but the evil-nonmaskers are in some proportion people forced and coerced to remove them for employment. i’m not sympathetic to the implication this was an individualistic choice freely made by empathyless ghouls.
i’m not saying people still masking & taking precautions should stop to approach other parts of the population, but a pre-emptive unwillingness to work with people currently unmasked betrays a fundamental ignorance of and lack of confidence in the people. everyone’s fucking interested workplace and public safety, but we can’t expect everyone to behave perfectly until we have secured the rights for everyone to be able to
Honestly, this resonated with me a lot (and several other comments in this thread), thank you so much.
I’ve been very depressed the last two years (I’m depressed for other reasons and trying to get help for that, but COVID stuff is a big part of the depression, but I digress), as I’ve watched all the communal protections get hollowed out over time, and simultaneously, many people around me went back to normal, including friends and family. It is very disappointing and also very atomizing, but sometimes it’s also not hard to feel like it’s a betrayal. And maybe framing it as a betrayal is wrong to begin with, because I think I’m giving credence to this notion I so often see in COVID-cautious communities that every single person who is not masking or decides to drop masking is a huge piece of shit who is completely irredeemable and who will not, under any circumstance, ever change their behavior for the better. And I don’t know, accepting that framing, i.e. people can’t change and that our family and friends are deliberately trying to hurt us by no longer masking, is very depressing to me. Because if that is some incontrovertible fact with all things in the world, then what the fuck is the point of advocating for anything?
But the truth is, we live in a world–and not just my own country
–that is profoundly ableist. Capitalism is ableist, our institutions are ableist, our politicians are ableist, and white-majority countries and their individualistic cultures are especially ableist. Like even people with visible disabilities are treated like shit and not respected. And many ignorant people think that disabilities are only visible. I don’t think a lot of people even realize that chronic illness is a thing, and that it’s not a pathological thing that people make up to leech off the government and not work. Most people aren’t even aware that able-bodiedness is only temporary and that can be stripped from a person at any time, without warning. And our world consistently barrages us with all this harmful shit that perpetuates ableism from the day we are born. The more I look at it, trying to get the world to change on COVID and ableism was always going to be a massive uphill battle. But just because things look very dismal right now doesn’t mean that it always has to be like this. But if we want the world to become more equitable (and take COVID more seriously and not be ableist more broadly), I don’t see what choice we have but to fight for it. 
Edit: I believe you’re also right about reasons for not masking can be very complex and vary person to person. Some people might be shitheads and nothing will convince them ever, fuck those people, they don’t matter. But I think many people don’t know any better, or they trust our institutions that tell them that COVID is over and no big deal (propaganda works and anyone can be susceptible to it, even us). Or they’re coerced at work by their shithead bosses to not mask. Or they don’t want to mask because no one else is around them and they’re worried about drawing attention to themselves, maybe worried about getting harassed or assaulted by ardent anti-maskers. Like I think we’d be remiss to deny that there is a social/psychological element in all of this, too. I personally still feel weird sometimes being the only one in a setting who is masking, even though I know I’m in the right.
Yeah while I do think a more confrontational praxis is needed, I do think it is possible to get many people to mask again. I think however that the praxis will have to cause a culture shift aimed toward tackling ableism. Its primarily a culture battle and a battle against ableism in my opinion.
I will say that even if that shift happens, which I am hoping for, this mass ableist violence has inflicted trauma on me that I will probably never recover from. And I will probably never view people the same again.
I understand where you are coming from but what makes you think that someone who refuses to mask is going to be onboard with wealth appropriation and redistributing land and housing and all the other strong-arm shit that is a necessary part of any transition from a capitalist economy? For me, the mask is a basic litmus. These people failed it, hard. They are probably redeemable but if you have limited time and resources to talk to people (and you do) then you should focus on others who will be more receptive.
I think the main factor in people not masking is just other people not masking. No one wants to be the odd one out.
I honestly had a lot of success with persuading houseless people to take COVID seriously. I have been involved with some mutual aid work and around 50% (or more) of the people I interact with are very open to hearing about COVID and with receiving masks. I found that I don’t need to sugar coat about how bad COVID is with a lot of houseless people, like directly stating that the government is lying about the virus and bringing up the dangers of Long COVID is enough. I think though this is partly because a lot of houseless people are disabled: many of the ones I interact with are either on SSI or are applying to get on it.
With housed able people though, the only way I got them to budge was by being aggressive against their behavior. Its not always possible, but its been the most successful strategy for me.
absolutist statements are usually wrong but I’m not and I don’t know of anyone who is charismatic enough to make any kind of difference.
if such a parson did exist the state would murder them.
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I also really don’t think the ruling class is ignorant to the sheer level of death and disability that COVID is going to continue to wreak if left unchecked.
lol. why not? awfully strange of them to be letting it rip for the past couple years if they’re not ok with this
I find it hard to believe that they couldn’t be aware at this point. It’s not like they need to be convinced that COVID is bad and that will get them to reverse course. They don’t care, they will always protect their own ass and don’t give a shit if poor people become disabled or die. They have access to all the testing, vaccines, upgraded ventilation, and therapeutics, while many working class people do not. There are a lot of examples scattered out there of people in the ruling class still taking precautions while having the nerve to tell us that COVID is over.
Like you mentioned the propaganda machine made people just deactivate. I still mask up but it’s a pain in the ass, my glasses fog, I’ll sometimes need to put gauze behind my ears because the straps of the mask are rubbing too much. For a lot of people the authoritative voice said they’re cleared paired with just wanting to be done with masking led to the result we’re in.
Not everyone immediately dropped the mask when they dropped mask mandates but as time went on the individual inconveniences applied pressure on people to just accept it, everyone else that’s done it is fine after all. Similar to how Americans have a vested interest in buying into the propaganda against 3rd world nations people had a vested interest in stopping masking because it kinda sucks to do for now into forever.
The way we responded to COVID meant that there was no end date for when it was truly defeated and without robust lockdowns we had no end in sight which means people are looking at the prospect of masking forever, avoiding gatherings, and socially isolating. With no end in sight once again those pressures applied until over time basically everyone had stopped these activities as well.
There was no proper response from the ruling classes, half measures and bad/manipulative communication created an environment where anti masking became political. I would argue though that these are not individual moral failures anymore than how people continue to drive cars and use single use plastics in their daily lives.
At this point individual choices are very toothless in the face of the lack massive societal movement. There are those that are ideologically in favor of these things and will defend them as god given freedoms and I’m not really referring to them.
Society in general doesn’t value disabled people and often ignores their needs. For a lot of people they never even consider that someone might not be able to simply reach an item on a higher shelf because they’re in a wheelchair. It’s the lack of consideration in the slightest that’s upsetting that person. All my explanations touch on a very selfish rationale for peoples actions. Nobody has considered, unless they’re exposed to someone that’s heavily immunocompromised, what havoc it could put into someone’s life. “It’s just the flu” I hear time and time again from coworkers, but we’ve also watched it kill like 10 people on our rehab unit that were in that delicate state to start with.
I see where they’re coming from but I don’t agree with them. Propaganda isn’t a brainwashing tool and requires a receptive populace to start with but in the face of the abject failures of the west’s response and a complete disregard to the third world, is there much we can do at this point other than revolution to change these conditions that make non-masking such a preferable solution to an ongoing pandemic?
still mask up but it’s a pain in the ass, my glasses fog
Have you tried N95s or KN95s? I find that poor fit masks cause air to blow up at my glasses, which shouldn’t be happening. BTW this is also the consensus of r/masks4all is that fogging often but not always means a poor fit, and by God that community tracks their shit.
So I use the 3M Aura and Vflex and neither of them fog up my glasses as the air is spreading out quite evenly around the full surface area of the mask. I’m not sure what your experience is going to be, but it’s worth a try.
I suspect that you’re not still doing surgical masks, but if you are, please do change as they’re not very effective as protecting you, and ya they fog up one’s glasses like mad.
I use kn95s and it’s only noticeable when I’m at work, breathing heavily with zero airflow. When out and about or with moving air the issue is mostly ignorable. Only other time is when I’m using a fresh mask for the first 30 minutes until it gets that good seal.
This is just my experience, but I want to say, consider changing your mask and maybe upgrading to N95. The latter are designed to have as little airflow restrictions as possible. But, you know, you know what works best for you.
I don’t think everyone not masking is irredeemable, no, but I also completely understand where that sentiment is coming from. I know many disabled people who have essentially been forced out of public life because they just don’t feel safe
It’s hard not to be misanthropic about this, but health authorities convinced people that it’s safe to drop precautions, and since the only people who didn’t trust the CDC previously were right wing and anti-vax cranks, it’s hard to convince anyone that covid is still a threat without coming off like a paranoid crank.
Peer pressure works, and if you want to go back to normal you’re going to be infected, and now a lot of people have one or two covid infections, and 9 out of 10 times there is no discernable long term damage, so people think infections are benign and the more the merrier.
Look at this shit from Ashish Jha
We couldn’t even get social norms changed so that people would stay home while sick, and they invented the idea of “immunity debt” to make it everyone’s mission to spread disease.
There are going to be covid breathalizers coming out, which will let you know if you have covid within minutes, and if we widely adopted them it could be part of a strategy to eventually eliminate the disease, but do you think anyone is going to bother using them outside of emergency rooms?
It’s just captialist powers being evil for money like usual.
Dr. Ashish Jha is the dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University and was the White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator.
Didn’t realize this absolute ghoul failed into yet another ghoulish position.
