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At what point do we say "Fine, stay inside and live your life as a hermit, but the rest of us are returning to normal."? I feel like these neurotic people have

by jdhn 5y ago

At what point do we say "Fine, stay inside and live your life as a hermit, but the rest of us are returning to normal."? I feel like these neurotic people have way too much clout and are holding back reopening progress.

helen___keller 5y ago
> At what point do we say "Fine, stay inside and live your life as a hermit, but the rest of us are returning to normal."? Has this not already happened? Where I live all covid restrictions have been dropped, sports games are at full capacity, masks optional everywhere but public transit and hospitals, and so on
SyzygistSix 5y ago
I don't think most of the people who feel this way are neurotic. I think most of the people who feel this way are treated very poorly and are forced to work more than 40 hours a week and don't get paid a living wage. We don't hear from them because they don't write for The Atlantic. I don't hear people on HN who want to continue working remotely being accused of being neurotic or being molly-coddled, and they get get paid well and have very good work conditions. I agree that the author is courting some kind of depression or neuroticism. But the subtext I heard in the article is that a lot of the things that people have not had to deal with during the pandemic are things we have known are bullshit for a long time. And now that we have seen proof that they aren't necessary, people are reluctant to go back to accepting those bullshit conditions. Especially when we saw how poorly healthcare workers and service workers who did work during the pandemic were treated. And again, those people don't write for the Atlantic but I have a feeling they were well represented by this article.
- __blockcipher__ 5y ago
  I have the opposite interpretation. Only this class of people was actually able to "not participate in society" for 18 months: > I don't hear people on HN who want to continue working remotely being accused of being neurotic or being molly-coddled, and they get get paid well and have very good work conditions. By "this class of people" I don't literally mean people on HN but people in the typical yuppie lines of work. Someone who's actually working class has not had the luxury of doing so. Even if you got every stimulus check that covered maybe 10% of the expenses over the last 1.25 years. So the people who could stay inside indefinitely either never lost their job (transitioned to remote or already worked remote pre-pandemic), or they lost their job but had such a massive nest egg that they were able to weather it. Actual working-class people have not been sheltering inside for 18 months. In my opinion it's unhealthy to do so, so I'm not alleging that it would be a good thing if the working class hid inside too, but rather that the "I'm not ready to return to normal" crowd is driven by neuroticism and a crippling fear of life itself rather than it being some actual necessary result of this respiratory virus pandemic.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    One of the things I realized during the pandemic was that the ability to "not participate in society," or more specifically, the option to choose when and how you participate in society, is amazing and valuable. Most of us don't have this option. We have to work in a stupid office or behind the counter at some restaurant and we have to deal with assholes on the road, and we have to rely on disagreeable people to do stuff we can't do ourselves, and it all boils down to these little forced-interactions with people all day every day, just to live. Yuck! I'm blessed to have a computer job that can be done from home, and because of that, this past year has been the best year of my life, because it became acceptable to simply opt-out of all this crap. I realize not everyone had this option, and I truly feel humble and grateful that I have. One of the things I'm looking forward to most in retirement is having the financial independence to just yeet myself off to the woods and live as a hermit, never having to deal with society again, unless it's on my own terms.
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    I know a good number of service industry people that have been out of work for 18 months and are not very interested in going back to work under the old terms.
kilroy123 5y ago
I was out partying the last two weeks. This is happening now. (Granted not in the US and in a country with a much better COVID situation)
notacoward 5y ago
No, it is not OK to call people "neurotic" like that. Nor is it OK to criticize "these people" who are unlike you for holding anything back when they're not. Reopening is based on epidemiological safety, and people staying home are no threat to anyone in that regard. You know who is? People rushing to be everywhere they used to be as much as they used to be, as though there were never any costs associated with that. There were. There were psychological (and hence productivity) costs for some. There were environmental costs. There were social costs. "Reopening" is never going to mean going back to exactly the way things were, and it shouldn't. Get over it.
cornhole 5y ago
if you look outside, it's happening now.

by jdhn 5y ago

helen___keller 5y ago

> At what point do we say "Fine, stay inside and live your life as a hermit, but the rest of us are returning to normal."? Has this not already happened? Where I live all covid restrictions have been dropped, sports games are at full capacity, masks optional everywhere but public transit and hospitals, and so on

SyzygistSix 5y ago

I don't think most of the people who feel this way are neurotic. I think most of the people who feel this way are treated very poorly and are forced to work more than 40 hours a week and don't get paid a living wage. We don't hear from them because they don't write for The Atlantic. I don't hear people on HN who want to continue working remotely being accused of being neurotic or being molly-coddled, and they get get paid well and have very good work conditions. I agree that the author is courting some kind of depression or neuroticism. But the subtext I heard in the article is that a lot of the things that people have not had to deal with during the pandemic are things we have known are bullshit for a long time. And now that we have seen proof that they aren't necessary, people are reluctant to go back to accepting those bullshit conditions. Especially when we saw how poorly healthcare workers and service workers who did work during the pandemic were treated. And again, those people don't write for the Atlantic but I have a feeling they were well represented by this article.

__blockcipher__ 5y ago
I have the opposite interpretation. Only this class of people was actually able to "not participate in society" for 18 months: > I don't hear people on HN who want to continue working remotely being accused of being neurotic or being molly-coddled, and they get get paid well and have very good work conditions. By "this class of people" I don't literally mean people on HN but people in the typical yuppie lines of work. Someone who's actually working class has not had the luxury of doing so. Even if you got every stimulus check that covered maybe 10% of the expenses over the last 1.25 years. So the people who could stay inside indefinitely either never lost their job (transitioned to remote or already worked remote pre-pandemic), or they lost their job but had such a massive nest egg that they were able to weather it. Actual working-class people have not been sheltering inside for 18 months. In my opinion it's unhealthy to do so, so I'm not alleging that it would be a good thing if the working class hid inside too, but rather that the "I'm not ready to return to normal" crowd is driven by neuroticism and a crippling fear of life itself rather than it being some actual necessary result of this respiratory virus pandemic.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  One of the things I realized during the pandemic was that the ability to "not participate in society," or more specifically, the option to choose when and how you participate in society, is amazing and valuable. Most of us don't have this option. We have to work in a stupid office or behind the counter at some restaurant and we have to deal with assholes on the road, and we have to rely on disagreeable people to do stuff we can't do ourselves, and it all boils down to these little forced-interactions with people all day every day, just to live. Yuck! I'm blessed to have a computer job that can be done from home, and because of that, this past year has been the best year of my life, because it became acceptable to simply opt-out of all this crap. I realize not everyone had this option, and I truly feel humble and grateful that I have. One of the things I'm looking forward to most in retirement is having the financial independence to just yeet myself off to the woods and live as a hermit, never having to deal with society again, unless it's on my own terms.
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  I know a good number of service industry people that have been out of work for 18 months and are not very interested in going back to work under the old terms.

kilroy123 5y ago

I was out partying the last two weeks. This is happening now. (Granted not in the US and in a country with a much better COVID situation)

notacoward 5y ago

No, it is not OK to call people "neurotic" like that. Nor is it OK to criticize "these people" who are unlike you for holding anything back when they're not. Reopening is based on epidemiological safety, and people staying home are no threat to anyone in that regard. You know who is? People rushing to be everywhere they used to be as much as they used to be, as though there were never any costs associated with that. There were. There were psychological (and hence productivity) costs for some. There were environmental costs. There were social costs. "Reopening" is never going to mean going back to exactly the way things were, and it shouldn't. Get over it.

cornhole 5y ago

if you look outside, it's happening now.