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I hope they are correct. I also hope we will continue to be more careful about germ control from here on out in myriad ways. I hope we do not blithely go back

I hope they are correct. I also hope we will continue to be more careful about germ control from here on out in myriad ways. I hope we do not blithely go back to "business as usual" in a way that fosters future pandemics as if we learned absolutely nothing here.

Covzire 6y ago
I worry also about an overreaction. At some level people who can survive a virus with little to no symptoms are better off contracting it than not, if only to form the antibodies to be ready for future mutants they might come in contact with. The behavior changes we make because of COVID could be dooming a lot of people to one day encounter much worse mutant viruses they could have been ready for.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  I really hate this kind of logic. I get where it comes from but I still hate it. I have a genetic disorder that causes a compromised immune system, so germ control is my life. My life got better in some important ways with the entire rest of the world being less germy and disgusting. About one of out every five people is officially labeled "handicapped" and at least one study suggests that up to three out of every five people may have more minor impairments that they mostly cover up and don't want to label as a "handicap" because it's stigmatizing. A great many people with various handicaps are immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable. A lot of handicapped people saw some things improve for themselves while the entire world temporarily felt that germ control was super important. As one of those people, I am very concerned that "business as usual" will be a terrible thing for me. I've tried to figure out how to write about what kinds of best practices I would like to see, but that never really gelled in part because I became very concerned it would make me a target for the fear and anger of a lot of people during a global crisis. I didn't want some sort of lynch mob to descend upon me while much of the world applauded their depravity because, hey, scapegoats rather than solutions seems to be a very popular pursuit in the world generally, even during "normal" times and folks seem to double down on that during crises. Maybe I will still find a way to write about it and have some kind of influence on moving the needle gently but firmly in the right direction. And maybe not. I don't have much of an audience and like Rodney Dangerfield "I get no respect" and yadda.
  - Covzire 6y ago
    Don't get me wrong I'm very open to a cleaner world. I watch videos of people walking around Tokyo and I marvel at the clean streets. Minimizing places for viruses to grow and mutate is a common ground I think nobody would attack anyone for suggesting, if they're well thought out and not attached to something already political anyway.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      I'm still thinking about it. I think positioning, attitude and so forth would be hugely important for any hope of success. Some things take more thinking than others to figure out a good approach to them.
  - luxuryballs 6y ago
    But your genetic disorder shouldn’t be extended to negatively impact others, knowing your unique situation means you need to manage your risks. It’s entirely unfair and a violation of privacy for people to have to be brought into your health decisions and vice versa. Why would it ever be reasonable to expect the government to keep tabs on random strangers just because I have a genetic health condition? I would much rather die than force someone else to suddenly be required to base their free agency around what happens to work best for me, especially because I am 100% going to die no matter what. It just seems totally illogical to remove freedoms at scale to prevent something that is ultimately inevitable. Basically seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water, what’s the point of having a society at all if people have to be micro-managed to the point of being enslaved to each other’s mortality? It just seems so obviously a mistake and a huge slippery slope. What’s next, they tell us which people have to die so the rest of us don’t have to be burdened with them? That is essentially exactly what this type of government/healthcare overreach is doing.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      I shouldn't have to tell people I have a genetic disorder to have them respect my desire to keep their damn hands off of me. Expecting random strangers to not touch me is not some huge invasive expectation. Quite the contrary: The people who think they are entitled to touch me are being invasive and making an imposition. People should not feel that because I'm poor or an attractive woman or whatever that touching me is appropriate behavior when we are total strangers. That's just one example and I don't intend to discuss this further with you.
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  Simply put, you don’t know if you’re someone who can withstand the virus. Many people walk around untested, and demanding we act as if they’re ready and safe to have their health pushed to it’s limits is reckless.
- wvenable 6y ago
  I haven't had so much as a cold in the last... checks calendar... year. Humans are much more capable of containing basic every-day pathogens than we seem to have thought.
luxuryballs 6y ago
What we learned should be not to decimate small businesses like tossing leaves to the wind “don’t worry we’ll build back better!” and let people decide their own risk taking. I think that it’s almost more terrifying than the thing itself that more people aren’t mostly incredibly disturbed by the insane violations of privacy and speech. Literally you should not, in a free society, be able take such injurious actions based on something that the average person cannot even verify. It should never be that a tiny group of experts just have to be trusted to make decisions for everyone while the vast majority of the people are completely incapable of actually even seeing the threat. The vaccine thing too is absurd, amazing how quickly a public health crisis becomes an attempt at side stepping private health decisions. No amount of “but people could die” can justify this, that’s an irrelevant point, because there never a time when it was proper to remove autonomy for such a reason! It’s a total invasion of privacy that the government should even know where most people are at most times, what they are wearing or eating, or that private individuals should be corralled like cattle for the sake of “all cattle”, I just wish people could see what a huge privacy violation it is when a government decides that the most important thing above all else is to try and keep everyone alive as long as possible at the expense of each other and at the expense of freedom to avoid such an arrangement, privacy for bringing you into it in the first place, and opportunity cost of when you end up with no choice due to violent demands of state.
- TheDong 6y ago
  There's a massive difference between contagious diseases with exponential growth potential and the other freedoms you talk about. For a closer analogy than "what people are wearing or eating", what about "what people drive and how fast in public areas". The government introduced speed limits, regulations on vehicles, and driver licenses, all of which significantly limit who can drive what, and how fast. All of this is enforced by police. Why is it fair for the government to do that? Because dangerous driving kills other people too, not just you. It's not a personal choice in a vacuum to drive drunk at 100mph, but a personal choice that kills others. Covid is similar. Limits on gatherings, requirements to wear masks, etc are all because personal decisions also affect others at a larger scale. A pandemic, when it's not controlled, will spread exponentially and cause significant death and health problems. I think there might be a reasonable discussion to be had about the role of the government in this, but that reasonable discussion does not start with claims that the government is treating us like cattle or that "but people could die" is not a valid justification for government action. The chance of people dying is a valid justification. I think it was a valid justification for requiring a driver license, for making drunk driving illegal, and I think it's probably a valid justification for the current restrictions and regulations. You can apply this similarly to some of your other points: a tiny group of experts determine what standards make cars street-legal in the US and decide that drunk driving is dangerous, and their decisions impact everyone, etc.
refurb 6y ago
Why wouldn’t we go back to normal? We’ve done that after stock market crashes, housing crashes and other pandemics. That’s what humans do. It takes about a decade or two before people assume it will never happen again.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  For one shining moment, while the world burned, my life sort of worked because people were willing to let me take a wide berth around them without them glaring at me like I was some evil, hateful bitch for not wanting to be coughed on. I don't want the pandemic to persist, but I desperately hope that the end of the pandemic doesn't have such a negative impact on my life as an individual with a compromised immune system as to make me wish it would come back. I don't think that's an unreasonable thing to hope for, though I'm aware I may well not get it. I long ago got the memo that it's a shitty world full of shitty people and, no, this shitty world doesn't give a damn at all about my welfare or what I want. The world has been not at all shy about letting me know that.
  - rimliu 6y ago
    Yes, it may be a news, but the world does not revolve around you, and it should not.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      Nor do I expect it to.
throwaway20148 6y ago
Can you explain what you mean by germ control? Covid is primarily transmitted by sustained exposure to aerosols. Much of the disinfecting we are now doing now is essentially performative.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Much of the disinfecting we are now doing now is essentially performative. Yes, a lot of the things we are doing are performative. Most people don't really know how to use masks effectively and a lot of how people interact with their masks makes things worse, not better. I work really hard to just avoid being exposed to germs because of my situation. I try to not touch a lot of stuff in public and this is not the norm. I hate it when people "helpfully" want to get me a cart. I can get it myself. Keep your hands off my cart. I saw someone blow their nose under their mask just a few feet from me. I wish we would focus much more on messages like "Don't blow your nose in crowded public spaces" than on "Wear your mask." There have been so many incidents like that and I have been toying with the idea of starting an "incident report" file to talk about specific incidents and why this stuff makes me crazy. I don't like people talking at me unnecessarily. I don't like people laughing near me. That's almost as bad as people coughing at me. I will shower as promptly as I can if someone does cough in my general direction or similar. There's a whole lot of stuff I do to simply avoid germs without having to rely a lot on chemical disinfectants because I'm also chemically sensitive. And I am a lot healthier than I am supposed to be so I know this stuff works. If anyone has ideas on how I can effectively start writing about this, I'm all ears. I don't know how to get, say, beta readers or some kind of early feedback. I know it's a touchy topic and feedback and some kind of traction would be enormously helpful in trying to write more about this. I can't seem to get that part, so it ends up being very incomplete, one-off comments on the internet, like this one.
  - helloworld11 6y ago
    What you most sound (or read) like is an extremely angry, resentful human being who carries a nearly misanthropic disdain for others in contexts well outside the scope of the current pandemic. I genuinely feel sorry about your health situation but feeling outright hatred for the majority of relatively healthy people who do certain otherwise normal human things near you is a problem you have. It's definitely not a problem the rest of them should then "fix" by severely curtailing their ordinary behavior.
tim333 6y ago
We could have a proper pandemic response unit like the one Trump disbanded - tweet from 2018 https://mobile.twitter.com/AtomicAnalyst/status/994696175575068672 https://mobile.twitter.com/AtomicAnalyst/status/994696175575...

Covzire 6y ago

I worry also about an overreaction. At some level people who can survive a virus with little to no symptoms are better off contracting it than not, if only to form the antibodies to be ready for future mutants they might come in contact with. The behavior changes we make because of COVID could be dooming a lot of people to one day encounter much worse mutant viruses they could have been ready for.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
I really hate this kind of logic. I get where it comes from but I still hate it. I have a genetic disorder that causes a compromised immune system, so germ control is my life. My life got better in some important ways with the entire rest of the world being less germy and disgusting. About one of out every five people is officially labeled "handicapped" and at least one study suggests that up to three out of every five people may have more minor impairments that they mostly cover up and don't want to label as a "handicap" because it's stigmatizing. A great many people with various handicaps are immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable. A lot of handicapped people saw some things improve for themselves while the entire world temporarily felt that germ control was super important. As one of those people, I am very concerned that "business as usual" will be a terrible thing for me. I've tried to figure out how to write about what kinds of best practices I would like to see, but that never really gelled in part because I became very concerned it would make me a target for the fear and anger of a lot of people during a global crisis. I didn't want some sort of lynch mob to descend upon me while much of the world applauded their depravity because, hey, scapegoats rather than solutions seems to be a very popular pursuit in the world generally, even during "normal" times and folks seem to double down on that during crises. Maybe I will still find a way to write about it and have some kind of influence on moving the needle gently but firmly in the right direction. And maybe not. I don't have much of an audience and like Rodney Dangerfield "I get no respect" and yadda.
- Covzire 6y ago
  Don't get me wrong I'm very open to a cleaner world. I watch videos of people walking around Tokyo and I marvel at the clean streets. Minimizing places for viruses to grow and mutate is a common ground I think nobody would attack anyone for suggesting, if they're well thought out and not attached to something already political anyway.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    I'm still thinking about it. I think positioning, attitude and so forth would be hugely important for any hope of success. Some things take more thinking than others to figure out a good approach to them.
- luxuryballs 6y ago
  But your genetic disorder shouldn’t be extended to negatively impact others, knowing your unique situation means you need to manage your risks. It’s entirely unfair and a violation of privacy for people to have to be brought into your health decisions and vice versa. Why would it ever be reasonable to expect the government to keep tabs on random strangers just because I have a genetic health condition? I would much rather die than force someone else to suddenly be required to base their free agency around what happens to work best for me, especially because I am 100% going to die no matter what. It just seems totally illogical to remove freedoms at scale to prevent something that is ultimately inevitable. Basically seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water, what’s the point of having a society at all if people have to be micro-managed to the point of being enslaved to each other’s mortality? It just seems so obviously a mistake and a huge slippery slope. What’s next, they tell us which people have to die so the rest of us don’t have to be burdened with them? That is essentially exactly what this type of government/healthcare overreach is doing.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    I shouldn't have to tell people I have a genetic disorder to have them respect my desire to keep their damn hands off of me. Expecting random strangers to not touch me is not some huge invasive expectation. Quite the contrary: The people who think they are entitled to touch me are being invasive and making an imposition. People should not feel that because I'm poor or an attractive woman or whatever that touching me is appropriate behavior when we are total strangers. That's just one example and I don't intend to discuss this further with you.
TameAntelope 6y ago
Simply put, you don’t know if you’re someone who can withstand the virus. Many people walk around untested, and demanding we act as if they’re ready and safe to have their health pushed to it’s limits is reckless.
wvenable 6y ago
I haven't had so much as a cold in the last... checks calendar... year. Humans are much more capable of containing basic every-day pathogens than we seem to have thought.

luxuryballs 6y ago

What we learned should be not to decimate small businesses like tossing leaves to the wind “don’t worry we’ll build back better!” and let people decide their own risk taking. I think that it’s almost more terrifying than the thing itself that more people aren’t mostly incredibly disturbed by the insane violations of privacy and speech. Literally you should not, in a free society, be able take such injurious actions based on something that the average person cannot even verify. It should never be that a tiny group of experts just have to be trusted to make decisions for everyone while the vast majority of the people are completely incapable of actually even seeing the threat. The vaccine thing too is absurd, amazing how quickly a public health crisis becomes an attempt at side stepping private health decisions. No amount of “but people could die” can justify this, that’s an irrelevant point, because there never a time when it was proper to remove autonomy for such a reason! It’s a total invasion of privacy that the government should even know where most people are at most times, what they are wearing or eating, or that private individuals should be corralled like cattle for the sake of “all cattle”, I just wish people could see what a huge privacy violation it is when a government decides that the most important thing above all else is to try and keep everyone alive as long as possible at the expense of each other and at the expense of freedom to avoid such an arrangement, privacy for bringing you into it in the first place, and opportunity cost of when you end up with no choice due to violent demands of state.

TheDong 6y ago
There's a massive difference between contagious diseases with exponential growth potential and the other freedoms you talk about. For a closer analogy than "what people are wearing or eating", what about "what people drive and how fast in public areas". The government introduced speed limits, regulations on vehicles, and driver licenses, all of which significantly limit who can drive what, and how fast. All of this is enforced by police. Why is it fair for the government to do that? Because dangerous driving kills other people too, not just you. It's not a personal choice in a vacuum to drive drunk at 100mph, but a personal choice that kills others. Covid is similar. Limits on gatherings, requirements to wear masks, etc are all because personal decisions also affect others at a larger scale. A pandemic, when it's not controlled, will spread exponentially and cause significant death and health problems. I think there might be a reasonable discussion to be had about the role of the government in this, but that reasonable discussion does not start with claims that the government is treating us like cattle or that "but people could die" is not a valid justification for government action. The chance of people dying is a valid justification. I think it was a valid justification for requiring a driver license, for making drunk driving illegal, and I think it's probably a valid justification for the current restrictions and regulations. You can apply this similarly to some of your other points: a tiny group of experts determine what standards make cars street-legal in the US and decide that drunk driving is dangerous, and their decisions impact everyone, etc.

refurb 6y ago

Why wouldn’t we go back to normal? We’ve done that after stock market crashes, housing crashes and other pandemics. That’s what humans do. It takes about a decade or two before people assume it will never happen again.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
For one shining moment, while the world burned, my life sort of worked because people were willing to let me take a wide berth around them without them glaring at me like I was some evil, hateful bitch for not wanting to be coughed on. I don't want the pandemic to persist, but I desperately hope that the end of the pandemic doesn't have such a negative impact on my life as an individual with a compromised immune system as to make me wish it would come back. I don't think that's an unreasonable thing to hope for, though I'm aware I may well not get it. I long ago got the memo that it's a shitty world full of shitty people and, no, this shitty world doesn't give a damn at all about my welfare or what I want. The world has been not at all shy about letting me know that.
- rimliu 6y ago
  Yes, it may be a news, but the world does not revolve around you, and it should not.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    Nor do I expect it to.

throwaway20148 6y ago

Can you explain what you mean by germ control? Covid is primarily transmitted by sustained exposure to aerosols. Much of the disinfecting we are now doing now is essentially performative.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
Much of the disinfecting we are now doing now is essentially performative. Yes, a lot of the things we are doing are performative. Most people don't really know how to use masks effectively and a lot of how people interact with their masks makes things worse, not better. I work really hard to just avoid being exposed to germs because of my situation. I try to not touch a lot of stuff in public and this is not the norm. I hate it when people "helpfully" want to get me a cart. I can get it myself. Keep your hands off my cart. I saw someone blow their nose under their mask just a few feet from me. I wish we would focus much more on messages like "Don't blow your nose in crowded public spaces" than on "Wear your mask." There have been so many incidents like that and I have been toying with the idea of starting an "incident report" file to talk about specific incidents and why this stuff makes me crazy. I don't like people talking at me unnecessarily. I don't like people laughing near me. That's almost as bad as people coughing at me. I will shower as promptly as I can if someone does cough in my general direction or similar. There's a whole lot of stuff I do to simply avoid germs without having to rely a lot on chemical disinfectants because I'm also chemically sensitive. And I am a lot healthier than I am supposed to be so I know this stuff works. If anyone has ideas on how I can effectively start writing about this, I'm all ears. I don't know how to get, say, beta readers or some kind of early feedback. I know it's a touchy topic and feedback and some kind of traction would be enormously helpful in trying to write more about this. I can't seem to get that part, so it ends up being very incomplete, one-off comments on the internet, like this one.
- helloworld11 6y ago
  What you most sound (or read) like is an extremely angry, resentful human being who carries a nearly misanthropic disdain for others in contexts well outside the scope of the current pandemic. I genuinely feel sorry about your health situation but feeling outright hatred for the majority of relatively healthy people who do certain otherwise normal human things near you is a problem you have. It's definitely not a problem the rest of them should then "fix" by severely curtailing their ordinary behavior.

tim333 6y ago

We could have a proper pandemic response unit like the one Trump disbanded - tweet from 2018 https://mobile.twitter.com/AtomicAnalyst/status/994696175575068672 https://mobile.twitter.com/AtomicAnalyst/status/994696175575...