My mother died at the beginning fo the pandemic (March 20th, 2020) not of Covid. We dad a very small family memorial that summer, and then I commissioned a video tribute from all the people she had touched at the hospital where she worked. It made me feel better and was fairly easy to do.
Be careful when you get the booster. For the first 10-14 days you'll be significantly more vulnerable to COVID than you were before you got it. Then the protection kicks in.
I don't think posts like "Sleazy E"'s should be deleted or flagged as "disinfo" because I think that entire dynamic just makes the paranoia and chaos worse. But i *do* think there should be a convention of flagging someone who posts a whopper and then never comes back to provide links when asked to.
The director and deputy director of the office of vaccine research and review resigned in disgust a couple months ago over how quickly and unsafely boosters are being pushed. I know lots of people here are twitter addicts but some of us have lives and won't necessarily be able to reply within an hour.
Swing and a miss, buddy. Your metaphor is incoherent. The first shot increases vulnerability to COVID for a couple weeks. The second doesn't because it is generally taken within the protective shadow that starts two weeks after the first.
Boosters are generally taken months after dose two when their efficacy has largely faded, meaning their increase in susceptibility to COVID in the short term is not strongly countered. Numerous examples can be found below:
It seems to me the responsible thing to say is "the data from Israel suggests that the booster might not be working very well, though new cases may be due to season and fewer lockdowns, not due to vaccine ineffectiveness, we don't know yet." Different than "dont get the booster it gives you COVID."
I didn't say that. I told him to be careful in the short period of time after he gets the booster. I tell my family and friends not to get any boosters but Freddie's meds combined with his age might put him in the cohort that has a chance of benefitting from a booster.
I'm so sorry for your loss - I too love a person who "extracts a cost to be close to and then repays that cost with rare and complicated gifts of personality"—the best kind of person, really.
And thank you for the breath of fresh air on COVID restrictions. I'm higher risk than many, and have also diligently followed all of the precautions, while cautiously trying to ease back into normal life...but to me, both extremes are making it so hard on the rest of us. Those who refuse to take any precautions limit my and others' ability to engage in any semblance of normalcy, while those who push for more and more restrictions quite literally do the same.
It was extremely funny to me that when I was browsing twitter when news of T H E O M I C R O N V A R I A N T broke and The Palmer Report of all people one was one of the only non-science accounts on there making the case for remaining calm, waiting for more research to be done because most variants peter out, etc.
It's crueler in that the same feeling hearts that demand the world stop in one moment, flip, dissipate, distract, repel, attract in response to the world over the next few. We are blessed that the world is sufficiently stable and repetitive to re-stir our hearts again down the road.
"We do not grieve forever, but move on. We mourn for a few days and then continue with our lives. Such underreaction poorly equips us to comprehend Yehuda’s death. Nineteen years, 7053 days, of life and memory annihilated. A thousand years, or a million millennia, or a forever, of future life lost. The sun should have dimmed when Yehuda died, and a chill wind blown in every place that sentient beings gather, to tell us that our number was diminished by one. But the sun did not dim, because we do not live in that sensible a universe. Even if the sun did dim whenever someone died, it wouldn’t be noticeable except as a continuous flickering. Soon everyone would get used to it, and they would no longer notice the flickering of the sun."
Thank you for writing this. One thing I genuinely worry about with this stuff is the mask effectively never going away, especially during the winter, for people who work public facing service jobs. I see people on social media who have work from home jobs and never leave the house tweeting at Gov Hochul demanding a new mask mandate despite the vaccine passport in place. Meanwhile I have worked and worn the mask during work for forty hours a week through almost the entire pandemic, lost my job during the second NY lockdown and had to take the bus to Jersey to work. Now thanks to the vaccine passport I can enjoy my job again, but I feel for workers on the West Coast where the mask mandate resumed, regardless of vaccine status, during the delta variant. I would loathe to see a two tiered system emerge in the big liberal cities, where one class of people wears a mask for two seconds while going into a bar or restaurant to enjoy themselves, while another class waits on them wearing a mask for their entire working day, forty hours a week forever.
I really, really worry about this with kids. Schools are very safety oriented (for good reasons, but also for fear of lawsuits), and kids are a captive population.
My kid is in preschool (just turned three) and they have to wear masks all day. Which is insane because a) covid actually IS *less deadly than the flu* for children and b) the whole reason for preschool is to get these kids used to interacting with their peers! It makes me furious.
My kid is in preschool, too, and I felt the same way for a while. But I have to admit that she seems to still manage to play with other kids. Her best friend is speech-delayed, and he seems to do okay, too. Your kid will probably adjust. If they are happy going to school in the morning, it's probably okay.
I don't think it's great. I don't think little kids should be in masks at all, and I think they would have more fun without them. I don't want to exaggerate the extent of the problem, though. I'm more worried about the masks being like D.A.R.E or sunscreen permission forms - something that annoys everyone while being mostly ineffective.
My preschooler doesn't mind the masks. In fact he barely notices he's wearing one--I have to remind him to take it off in the car on the way home.
However, the rule to stay 3ft apart is hard for him, especially since he's so excited to have friends after 2 years of isolation with adults. I'll never forget the day he told me sadly, "We're not allowed to hug at school."
If you mean that mid-pandemic we haven’t done any controlled trials of masked versus unmasked kids distancing or not, and seen how many develop covid then no, OK. Such a thing would never be approved by an IRB anyway, although eventually there will no doubt be some conflicting observational studies that compare too many apples and oranges to make clear sense.
But if you’re saying that mask + distance is not more effective (and still imperfect) than mask or distance alone (which are each even more imperfect) that defies logic and goes against the current best understanding of infection control experts re SARS-CoV-2.
Whether it might not be good for kids, for _other_ reasons, to wear masks all the time and never touch each other, that’s a different conversation. It’s a conversation that should be had. Everything is a trade off. No choice in life is risk-free, and every choice in life has a cost-benefit attached. But in a community, say, with low vaccination rates, high case rates, full hospitals, and open schools, the cost-benefit (to the school staff and other adults in the kids’ lives) likely justifies masking plus distance.
Other local conditions might dictate other local responses than that. Say, high vaccination rates, low case rates, and plenty of room in the hospitals might dictate a different best response.
None of this is known to a certainty. None of this is cut and dried. People in multigenerational households with an elder with cancer will feel differently than people with no one particularly at high risk.
I'm still stuck in, "I'm grateful schools are open at all," mode.
Our kids are too young to mask effectively, anyhow — at least, judging by the rate of bugs our schoolgoing child has brought home already since flu season started. So I'll be happy to see masks go. But, as plenty of people like to say, especially to the suffering, "Life owes you nothing," and if that is true, even my children, whom I instinctively believe are owed so much they're owed a considerably better mother than they have, aren't owed the schooling that's best for them.
Regular in-person school with masks is second-best, but so much better than our experience with what's less than second-best. So for now, I'll keep taking it.
I'm hopeful next year it will be over in schools but I'm glad I don't have children. There's a 100 percent chance many of these young kids wearing the mask every day for two years will probably have anxiety issues about not wearing them when the time comes they can take them off.
I used to think there would be weird psychological effects long term, but I don't think so anymore. Kids adjust. It's going to just be another rule in the cramped, rule-bound lives our kids have been leading for the past 20 years.
I used to worry about that, but since my kids went back to school this fall I don’t anymore. They wear masks at school and don’t wear masks at sports practice and birthday parties/other private gatherings and they seem to transition between the two seamlessly. My kids are pretty adaptable to the mask at this point and don’t complain but they also het pretty excited at the idea of schools not requiring them next year.
The CDC will never, ever, ever, /ever/ issue a press release saying it's ok to not wear masks. They've been wanting widespread mask usage during flu season for virtually ever.
No, they will never tell us this is over. Too many people are making far too much money and enjoying far too much social and political power for that to ever happen.
What’s your theory of the case? Who’s the power behind the throne here, Big Mask? The money that’s being made is in large part in spite of covid restrictions, not because of them. The flow of capital has determined which restrictions have been attempted and how seriously they’ve been enforced, but make no mistake, the ruling class wants the pandemic to go away so capital can flow fully unimpeded by such minor obstacles as “all our warehouse workers caught covid” or “we have to pay employees more to get them to show up.” The idea that mask mandates (for example) are themselves a major profit engine is not supported by the evidence.
I think we are already seeing this happening, unfortunately.
I saw a TV cooking show that was recorded post-pandemic where all the rich stars were enjoying a dinner unmasked while those that served them were fully masked up, and only appeared on-screen for a second.
And I'm sure they could try to justify it by saying that people don't want to see others masked. And that's true - they don't.
But the workers who have to live much of their lives like this are just as important as the TV stars who weren't even eating most of the time.
I'm a waiter, I can't hate the NYC vaccine passport because it has allowed me as a fully vaccinated person to go back to not masking at work and love my job again. I can breathe easy, talk to guests (you can't hear a damn word someone says with the mask on) and show off my smile, I'm making way more in tips because people are happy for some normalcy. Like FdB said, the city seems to be back. Unfortunately the West Coast cities, Boston and Chicago still require masks for all hospitality workers even if you are vaccinated, they brought them back during the delta wave. I see some people say, don't comply, resist. I agree in spirit but when it's comply or lose your livelihood, what's the right thing to do?
I live in Boston and, yes, it is weird that the mask mandate remains here.
Since the most progressive candidate won our mayoral election, I suspect it will remain that way for now, unfortunately.
It is security theater at this point for the vaccinated, I think, just like much of what we do at airports, but I think our mayor-elect would lose credibility with much of the left if she were to say it was time to lift the mask mandate.
I see people who work in the kitchens and bring food to the counter not masking now. And I'm not going to complain - after all, I am only in their restaurant for a minute, so I don't have to deal with the heat.
I think people will largely comply for now if it's a matter of their job. But I wish it wasn't that way since I don't think "the science" really supports it. Especially since none of the people eating at the restaurants are masking, even when they aren't drinking or eating.
I will say that the lack of vaccine passport in Boston has been good in some respects because the vaccination rate is lower in communities of color and, until recently, children weren't able to be vaccinated at all. So if there were a vaccine passport here, these groups wouldn't be able to attend cultural institutions here like museums. That's the reason our acting mayor gave for not imposing one - that she felt it was racially discriminatory.
So these public policy decisions are complex. And they are all a risk-benefit analysis, not something that some magical entity called "the science" can dictate.
I was visiting some cousins in MA and I was impressed by how well they seemed to take a middle ground. My cousins were fans of Gov Baker, they seem to think that having a technocrat in charge helped lower the temperature on the COVID culture war.
One positive thing I will say is that there is not a mask mandate in Boston anymore for places of worship. MA also let people start gathering in person for church services sooner than most states did (back in May 2020, with reasonable restrictions, including masks at that time).
I should say, too, that I am not opposed to masks altogether. I started wearing one well before it became mandatory. There were a few times that I wore one back in March 2020 before I got shamed into thinking that that was wrong somehow. (I already had construction-style masks in my house prior to the start of the pandemic.)
From what I've read, I believe that masks are a helpful mitigating strategy and means of source control when people are not vaccinated. But once people are vaccinated, I don't think they add enough additional protection to make them worthwhile.
I still comply with the mandates without public complaint because being a nuisance about it seems pointless, just like complaining about TSA's rules would be. But I don't use masks in any contexts anymore where they are not required or where I'm not surrounded largely by people who would be uncomfortable if I were unmasked.
You're absolutely right that this is a class system - almost a caste system, given the lack of social mobility prevalent in the US in general and the coastal elite cities in particular. I believe this to be by design, because any sober reading of the science would at this point show masking and lockdowns to be of limited effect (especially when compared to vaccination, which is of much greater effect when it comes to preventing death and hospitalization.) I can't see anything other than the deliberate here. It's security theater but only the proles have to put on the drama mask. Then the elect, the cloud people, will *see* others in masks and thus know they're in a Safe Space, but they won't have to inhale their own cappuccino and biscotti fumes.
I live in Nevada. We had a full-ish lockdown for probably 3 months. Thing is, this was partially voluntary: the Strip shut down before the government stepped in. After that, we had capacity constraints. Restaurants were capped at 50% capacity, despite them looking pretty darn close to full. We've also had a mask mandate the whole time, though many of these masks sit below the nose, or even below the chin. I've never seen a vaccine passport, and I've only had to present my card at optional workplace visits. Nowadays, it seems like every restaurant and public event is packed.
And this is in a state with Democratic governor, two democratic senators, and a democratic legislature.
I don't have any grand conclusions here, other than that maybe NY went uniquely crazy over this stuff.
I'd also like to add that I fully support any mandate that makes the Nets worse.
I think you're largely correct. Not that only NY went nuts, but that only certain areas of the country went collectively nuts over the pandemic, and that it's a smaller area than the people living in them think.
I work in NYC and live on Long Island. The difference in response between the two was so vast that it's gotten morbidly funny. My friends and colleagues in NYC have been in full panic mode for two years now (although Freddie is right that they've more than started to even out at this point. It's ending). On Long Island - where cases were just as awful as NYC for a long time - people started to get annoyed by the restrictions pretty quickly, and never embraced the mask-wearing culture that Freddie describes. There are large rebellions about school closures, masking, and vaccine mandates - that's where all the heat is now.
But for day to day life? I'm not even sure what the rules actually are, and haven't been sure for what feels like a long time. I only wear my mask where explicitly required by the building I'm in, which is pretty much limited to my son's nursery school.
I haven't been in the city for a couple of months, but every time I've been back before that it's been a culture shock. Everyone was wearing masks outdoors, and I even saw people putting on their masks between bites of food at restaurants. Jesus, guys. Just stay home. That can't possibly be enjoyable.
Great piece as always, but I do think that fewer people are impacted by the hysteria than Freddie thinks.
One more data point worth considering: The fact that the highest levels of panic have occurred in densely-populated urban areas isn't a coincidence...the risks are simply higher when people are tightly packed. We have data on spread in ventilation systems in a number of places in the world, for instance. New Yorkers certainly took it too far wearing masks outdoors, but I'm not convinced the indoor restrictions were really that ridiculous, considering the population.
Definitely agree. I didn't really mean that part of it - rules need to be crafted to fit the area (though I would point out that a lot of the rules for New York State seemed designed explicitly for NYC, and that provoked a bad reaction in other areas, particularly upstate. My comment was supposed to be light-ish so I don't want to dig too far into it, but I've got to say that a lot of people and businesses NOT in densely packed urban areas in New York got fucked, hard, and unnecessarily).
I was talking more about what Freddie was addressing, the sort of furious, Permanent Emergency culture complete with informants and gestapo that went along with necessary restrictions. It didn't happen too much where I live, and really, really happened in the city. It was weird to watch.
I was actually an early-masker, I wore one back when the authorities were saying they don't work. Pre-COVID, it's pretty common to see East Asian tourists wear masks. I assumed they did so for good reason, so I started wearing one when the Pandemic hit. I had a friend wear one back in February 2020
We're required to wear masks inside businesses now, though this is a bit of a farce. Like, you walk into a restaurant masked, and then you can take it off the second you sit down. It's dumb, but I'm also not going to pretend it's tyranny.
Yeah, I've been wearing them on planes for years—not consistently and not the entire flight, but as soon as I began doing it, I began to get sick far less often.
i do think it's culturally unhealthy to have these rituals (tables are magical anti-covid bubbles but put on your mask to walk 2 steps and order a beer) that literally everyone knows are fake and don't do anything, but following them means you're one of the good, smart people. it just adds to the sense of nothing feeling real or like it affects anything. voting, global warming, wearing a mask, all these slightly distressing abstractions lurking in the background that you're powerless to stop. not the first step to tyranny or whatever but definitely another tear in the fabric of consensus reality.
Right, I just think it's worth our time to differentiate kinda bad things from really bad things. I make the same criticism towards the woke wrt microaggressions, bad comedy specials, etc.
I wish the energy put against masks or Netflix specials were put towards universal healthcare.
Also I'm not sure what the comparison to voting and global warming means.
sorry, kinda unclear on my part. i just mean to lump covid in with national politics and global warming as another thing that's this huge issue where there's no mass movement to join or way forward for positive change, so there's a sense of unreality as the energy gets directed toward these dumb culture war issues, and the pettiness of the culture war vs the supposed importance of the issue creates a mental disconnect.
First let me say that was a beautiful tribute to your friend.
Second, because my position on COVID-19 sounds like it's almost exactly Freddie's, I want to note that it's a real shame that the pandemic stopped being personal and became so political. In many ways this whole thing was a story about millions of personal tragedies but also amazing human resilience and ultimately a story about countries all across the globe sciencing up a solution. It's a beautiful mixture of all the things that make life so horrifying and so wonderful. That could've been the Covid-19 story.
But instead, we said "fuck it, let's culture war this thing!"
“We” is doing a lot of work there. It’s Republicans. Republicans are the ones who decided to make the pandemic and masks and vaccines political, not some vague “we.”
Freddie, just have to thank you for your writing, as a long-time liberal who has been seeing what you're seeing, but who could never express it so well.
What's badly needed are health authorities who aren't politically compromised. Fauci is compromised -- both in reality and also in public perception. The fact that Biden keeps clinging to him (apparently for no better reason than petty in-group loyalty) is just contributing to the sense of confusion, distrust, and chaos.
What some people call "varying views", others call "updating". And anything BLM and you guys tend to get way upset. I don't consider myself woke, but hearing y'all turn every topic to racial issues is making me woke-adjacent, I think.
The "updating" happened after a 16 month delay in the case of the lab leak theory. Fauci is very much part of the story of how this delay happened. Your premise that this shouldn't in any way impact how we assess his trustworthiness as a high-level public servant is not a defensible position.
Since you're (to use your words) "not sure what all you're talking about here", it occurs to me that you've been inside of a sealed epistemic chamber regarding the Wuhan lab story since summer 2020 and still think of it as a "crazy conspiracy theory." In other words: you are the one who isn't updated. Would you like me to send you links from all of the high-prestige academic journals and high-prestige media outlets which started acknowledging from May 2021 onward that the lab leak theory is very plausible and reasonable and should never have been stigmatized? I'll only send you links if asked to.
Please cite where Fauci stated "BLM can go ahead and not wear masks". He clearly stated that "all crowds are a risk for transmission". But do go on with your horseshit.
There's no 'necessarily' there, at all, and this does go to my previous point. This is conspiracy-level stuff. If Trump had shut up and let Fauci do the talking, he's probably still be president. Instead, he whined and looked for scapegoats, because That's Like His Whole M.O.
Fauci himself created the conditions in which half the country, at least, would be unlikely to trust him:
1) the whole switcheroo on masks
2) the decision to be inconsistent and partisan when condemning some public gatherings but not others
3) this being most important: the decision to aid the stigmatization of the lab leak theory, which is now widely understood to have a better-than-alright chance of turning out to be the correct theory.
Would anyone else in that role have made different decisions? Maybe, maybe not. But the outcome of the flow of events is that a type of public servant who needs high levels of trust is actually very distrusted. The obvious solution is to replace him with a fresh face--and this is so obvious that Biden's refusal to replace him is itself starting to look suspicious.
See, I'm apolitical on this one. If Biden had given Trump the CREDIT (which WAS due) for seeing the vaccine developed in record time, the Trumpites would-a been accommodating, right?
Didn't happen either.
Gimme a break with YOUR theories, conspiracy or otherwise.
Even if Fauci is 100% innocent of all the things he's been accused of (seems rather unlikely to me), he's such a polarizing figure now that having him resign and getting a fresh face in that role, someone capable of inspiring trust from both sides, would only be a good thing. Do Fauci admirers really disagree with this? Why keep someone that polarizing and distrusted by half the country in that role ad infinitum? What is the productive benefit of doing that?
Because then you're making an unprincipled, irrational decision to mollify people who are wallowing in political grievance. That sets a dangerous precedent.
Unprincipled and irrational how? Public servants step down all the time. The flow of events tends to gradually tarnish their reputation of being "above the fray." Since it's important certain kinds of public authorities be widely perceived that way, and Fauci isnt widely perceived in this way anymore (due mainly to his own decision-making), this seems like an appropriate time for a public servant to step down -- which, again, is a normal thing to happen, not a "dangerous precedent."
There is no proof he's doing anything for political reasons. Was first appointed in the Reagan era, and has worked during different administrations. Fauci is a scientist, and shouldn't buckle to a rightwing media mob that's trying to score points. Again, that would be terrible for the future if America faces something like this again. He should calmly go about his job.
If anything, we should do more to assure the independence of agencies like the CDC, so they can't be influenced by something like Trump.
Refresh my memory: How hard DID he and his team come down on the BLM protests? Or, put another way, IF he condemned them (which I wonder) why was this not made generally known?
Because “half the country” I.e., Republicans, will distrust anything or anyone remotely reasonable. These are people who refuse vaccines, think climate change is a hoax, believe that the world is 4000 years old, etc. You can’t appease such people.
Perhaps I'm being too cynical, but I feel like whatever person you put into the office is going to be raked over the coals, dunked on, and ignored at every point where they speak of something that goes against a tribal sacred belief.
I'm not right-wing and I think I could make a good case why Fauci is no longer a good face for pandemic response.
Setting aside any other controversies - like the funding of the research at WIV that may have been gain-of-function or the research on dogs - he's simply too cautious to be credible with most Americans.
If I recall correctly, he said the other week that he couldn't necessarily say whether it would be safe for Americans to gather for Christmas. And this was while Delta was on the wane and before the latest variant (which we don't know enough about to say anything yet).
The reality is, most Americans are already gathering with their families for the holidays. Fauci has been tuned out because of his extreme risk aversion.
Most Americans have recognized that the pandemic is not exempt from risk-benefit analysis, and that there's a cost to never seeing people in person again too, even if it can't be quantified in body counts.
Why didn’t Trump fire him? Fauci doesn’t have a great bedside manner. But I think he’s honest if not always timely. The dunking on him is unhelpful & dishonest. There’s grifters on both sides. He’s not one of them.
I'm a Trump supporter since 2015. One of the worst things Trump did was to subject us to this head-bobbing Keebler elf. In a sane society he'd be in a disgraced but comfortable retirement.
I lost my best friend over this time period who died in January 2021 (not COVID). I had a virtual Mass said in her memory that was not much comfort. Thank you for expressing what many of us likely felt losing people during this period.
I read about places in the U.S. where not masking is treated like smoking, and it seems dreadful to me. Online I see a lot of people being outraged if they see people unmasked. I've had the shots & booster and keep a mask handy for the federal buildings (like the USPS) that require them. But I live in the South and most people don't mask except where required. We are outside a lot, maybe that helps. Schools were open all during 2020-2021 w/o masks. Children are seated further apart and ventilation systems improved. Children have after-school sports outside w/o masks. Life has been fairly normal and people are not tormented by the "Praetorian guard of busybodies" (This line was wonderful). Plus a really good college football season and MLB season have kept spirits up. Life does not need to be as constrained as it is in some places.
Okay, but at the same time, let's acknowledge that most of the actual violence that has occurred around masks (in the US and elsewhere, such as Germany) has happened when an anti-masker has been asked to put on a mask, often in a location where doing so is a requirement. While I agree with you that life doesn't need to be as constrained as it is in some places, we also need to have a reasonable "traffic light" system for putting restrictions back in place when case numbers get high or new variants come into play.
In my experience over this time in this place people have not been violent about masks. They tend to avoid places where masking is required, not fight about it. It may be self-regulation and avoidance of conflict. I know there is news when violence happens over masks, but in my daily life since March 2020 going many places including restaurants and concerts it has not been awful. I think the MSM such as Forbes like to highlight things that are awful so people who read it imagine ominous context.
I think knowing where to go and not go helps. I'm mostly grateful that the children in my life have not been subjected to draconian masking but, again, most of what they do is outdoors.
My kids have been handling masking fine. They don't complain. I got them duplicates of styles they find comfortable. And I will say, in the past 18 months, the only illness in our house has been a mild cold, caught from a preschool cousin who doesn't always wear masks at school (teachers do). I can't say I miss all the germ transmission (even if the *reason* is more about preventing them from touching their mouths and noses directly).
I don't wish to minimize what happened to those people, but this is just a few anecdotes. If there's evidence that there's been a statistically significant rise in violence due to people refusing mask mandates, I'd be interested. But viral videos of "Anti-masker loses her shit" are not reality. And even an article highlighting a half dozen shootings (which are chosen for an article about a topic, not rigorously researched data points) in a country of 330 million people are not significant. A higher percentage of Americans were murdered because of The Beatles' Helter Skelter.
A certain percentage of people are just shitty and do shitty things. No big conclusions you can take from that.
I live in the South, as well. The SEC governors have definitely been more resistant to restrictions. On the one hand, that means (for example) that the Delta curve went up and down much quicker. On the other, a lot more people died because of these policies than would have otherwise.
Pro-mask and vax myself, but anti-lockdown at this point. My theme is more man v. nature - we can't beat biology on the terms and expectations that have been set. Some good tools have been developed, but they're not good enough. Think the virus is just going to make a pass or two over humanity, in various forms, before we can definitively judge its behavioral convergence. Gotta fact up to that, imo.
Underlying health issues also a factor. I have lost track of state statistics. Is SEC area worse than NYC or NJ? I locked down for 6 weeks then decided life wasn't worth it that way. I am vaxed & booster but avoid places where masking is required as much as possible. Walk more. But , when 95K people come to town for a football game I do a min-lock down until the air clears. I think if we trusted each other and yelled at each other less it might be better.
The "top" 2 deaths/1 million are MS and AL, 6 of the top 10 are SEC states. NY and NJ are up there, but they got hit first when there was no Vax or treatment.
Yeah I'm in kind of the same place, mentally. I can talk a lot of smack about how we need to wind down the masking hysteria and just deal with the fact that not everyone is going to get vaccinated, but still: I imagine that I'll stay away from Madison Square Garden shows for... well, maybe forever. Honestly, I felt a little claustrophobic in Broadway theaters long before the pandemic. I'm not interested in heading back there, and I don't see a future where I am.
Then again, I'm not trying to stop anyone else from doing these things. I guess that's the main point.
We went to a symphony yesterday with our two older sons. Everyone over 18 was required to show proof of vax and we had to wear masks. It was still lovely. (Theater wasn't fully packed either.)
I think the whole lockdown/masking need not have been so draconian--especially among children. I'm helping several women with back up childcare because I work online and the impact of all this on women, especially, is incalculable. It's a patchwork in that daycares close a lot. but I can take the kids at home (my online work is flex). I have not gotten sick being around children (maybe a headache from the rambunctiousness). The first few months I put masking tape down between their play area and my office...ha ha. Like that worked. But I've now had 1 1/2 years living somewhat normally and I am glad I did. Have friends elsewhere still bunkered down who ask me if I fear for my life? Actually I feared that bunkering was no life.
What I've come to hate, more than anything, is coming to see how this "Praetorian Guard of busybodies" lives in a life inside me, a life that works through me. You can call it a totalizing drive toward social domination; you can call it the "spirit of Enlightenment"; you can call it bullshit and say it's not there. But it's there. Waiting with a pulsating, bright-orange glow.
It kills me that people act like a world where you just sit inside on Zoom all day and get everything delivered to your door was possible. I can't think of anything which typifies the bourgeois nature of today's liberalism more than that. It's as if many of them literally think everyone works an office job and the people making, building, and delivering everything simply don't exist. It's no wonder this attitude caught on like wildfire in Manhattan and other urban liberal enclaves. They are the poster children for this kind of thinking.
I hate even talking about COVID. Two years of arguments has been enough for three lifetimes.
This is such an important point. So many people glorify "essential workers" with their social media posts while making people slave in-person at minimum wage jobs to sustain their comfort.
Have you watched The Leftovers? I'm nearly done with season two of three. There's a cult that wears white and doesn't speak and smokes and follows people around ominously and their whole thing is "we are a living reminder" of what happened. They don't want people to move on; they refuse to let people move on, sometimes in horrific, cruel fashion. One of its members lost her mother the day before the worldwide event that the show is premised on, and she's resentful of the fact that her loss has been subsumed.
I think the resentment, or at least the bewilderment, of the world going on is nearly universal with any major loss--or even a good life-changing event, like the birth of a child. When one's inner life is radically altered, the observation of "normalcy" in the world is an affront. We are all precious; we are all insignificant.
I didn't know it was based on a book - I'll have to check that out.
Everyone told me to stick with The Leftovers if for no other reason than for the amazing series finale. Everyone was right. Man, that last season was something.
I like all his novels, and they also seem to result in good films or TV shows (he also wrote Little Children and Mrs. Fletcher--and The Abstinence Teacher, although I'm not sure if that one has ever been adapted).
TYTY, for this FINE essay, Sir Freddie. :) Sorry so long. Didn’t plan to get so philosophical, and mebbe should-a concentrated more on the present difficulties. Mind just didn’t go down that road tho.
I understand that most all are concerned about this new Omicron variant. Best wishes to all.
Me? I go by the so-called scientific recommendations. Getting booster tomorrow. ALWAYS wear mask because I (almost) NEVER go out. Just my lifestyle before, during, and after. Hasn’t changed ‘cause-a the pandemic. That’s just me. Being retired has advantages, I admit.
Don’t concern myself too much with what other people do. That’s just me.
But whole entire THING, to me, falls into category “what-i-can’t-control.” I would prefer to live, make choices in the hope. But COUNT on it? Memento mori, right? Said before I’m extremely WEIRD, but I make sacrifices for inner tranquility, which comes in handy sometimes. Especially LATELY.
The author’s comments in double-quotes:
***
“Maybe Omicron really is ‘the big one,’ but they’ve said that about every last development in this endless story, so how would we ever know?”
‘Truer words were never said,’ right?
***
“And while they want you to mask up and vaccinate and obey other rules, what’s much more important to them than regulating your behavior is that they let you know that you don’t feel the right way about Covid.”
Weeeel, like I ‘said’ in comments to Your previous, why does it even REGISTER what ‘they’ say. How does what ANYone says, including this right here, have ANY effect on who You fundamentally BE. True, if requires a tough choice. Choice isn’t to ignore, but to KNOW. Know who You ARE. That’s it, tho not easy, it’s simple.
***
I’m not normally cognizant of themes, but if I was here I would say this quote encapsulates it:
“And so true compassion requires that we say to them, ‘you must take the time you need, but the world tumbles on regardless, and if you take all the time you want your life will not be the same when you return.’”
So where You say the following, I would think that thinking ABOUT the before times is waste of effort, right?
“To prefer the before times is a mark of terrible unseriousness.”
***
“We have created an entirely new epistemology of public health science in the past couple of years, one that is somehow not a branch of medicine or biology but of public relations. Its vectors are not pathogens but perceptions. It tracks not the spread of disease but the spread of blame.”
Haha! Right You ARE! Never THOUGHT of it that Way, but true.. true…
***
“Whether it should reawaken is angels dancing on the head of a pin, a trolley problem, a dorm room pass-the-bong puzzler. It can’t be answered and doesn’t matter.”
Hm.
***
“Time only spins forward, for good and for bad, even during a pandemic, even when THIS. IS. NOT. NORMAL. No time stays special forever, and people like living life. It’s no more complicated than that.”
Yah. One-a those ‘Is really simple, but hard-ta DO’ thingies.
***
“And while we will light the candles and whisper at the memorials and teach the children, in time the victims will seem no more real than those of Genghis Khan. That’s just how history works.”
Weeeel, I’m first generation after the genocides. If second generation after can forget them, that’s on THEM. How many generations should genocide be REMEMBERED, and the horror be CONTEMPLATED? I’d say as long as societies are still PRACTICING it around the world, in recent memory.
***
“central message of Kazuo Ishiguro’s brilliant, underappreciated The Buried Giant, that even genocide succumbs in time to the relentless disintegration of human memory, and that nothing endures the passage of generations and the fog of time.”
See above.
***
“They tell me that forgetting is not a biological error, but a survival mechanism, that we are not meant to remember forever that which we could not really endure in the first place.”
Interesting philosophical/biological point. To me, anyway.
***
“That’s where we live, between our feeling hearts that see every life and death as sacred and our thinking minds that can't help but render all of it ordinary over time.”
The more I look, the more I sense that the feeling hearts have become a vestigial organ. Not just in me, I assure You.
***
“That was another lesson of 9/11, that there is no such thing as constant vigilance, that the concept is a contradiction in terms. Abnormal becomes normal. Life goes on.”
That’s a bug. A dangerous CHOICE to make these days in particular, right? Can’t say ‘In My Humble Opinion’ on this one.
Two responses to my first post as a subscriber.
Your excellent post made me think (constantly) of one of my favorite poems, Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts. Great pairing of poem and painting, too. http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/auden.html
My mother died at the beginning fo the pandemic (March 20th, 2020) not of Covid. We dad a very small family memorial that summer, and then I commissioned a video tribute from all the people she had touched at the hospital where she worked. It made me feel better and was fairly easy to do.
Ozymandias might be worth a look, too.
Be careful when you get the booster. For the first 10-14 days you'll be significantly more vulnerable to COVID than you were before you got it. Then the protection kicks in.
TYTY. Was thinking on getting mop cut. Link for more info?
Dude, dont post that without links. Otherwise you're just rumormongering.
I wish I were.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.08.21252200v1.full.pdf
Page 5 shows the strongly negative VE in the period shortly after dose 1. Not neutral, negative.
Study is about 1st and second doses, not the booster. Also, the way you're interpreting the significance of the negative sign doesnt seem right.
This sounds like nonsense. I looked online and could not find anything about this.
It sounds to me like you've misunderstood the fact that it takes 10-14 days for the booster to kick in at all, just like the original shots did.
I don't think posts like "Sleazy E"'s should be deleted or flagged as "disinfo" because I think that entire dynamic just makes the paranoia and chaos worse. But i *do* think there should be a convention of flagging someone who posts a whopper and then never comes back to provide links when asked to.
The director and deputy director of the office of vaccine research and review resigned in disgust a couple months ago over how quickly and unsafely boosters are being pushed. I know lots of people here are twitter addicts but some of us have lives and won't necessarily be able to reply within an hour.
Nah, see above.
nonsense, its like saying you're less drunk immediately after your third drink.
Swing and a miss, buddy. Your metaphor is incoherent. The first shot increases vulnerability to COVID for a couple weeks. The second doesn't because it is generally taken within the protective shadow that starts two weeks after the first.
Boosters are generally taken months after dose two when their efficacy has largely faded, meaning their increase in susceptibility to COVID in the short term is not strongly countered. Numerous examples can be found below:
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/are-booster-shots-increasing-covid
This link is more interesting.
It seems to me the responsible thing to say is "the data from Israel suggests that the booster might not be working very well, though new cases may be due to season and fewer lockdowns, not due to vaccine ineffectiveness, we don't know yet." Different than "dont get the booster it gives you COVID."
I didn't say that. I told him to be careful in the short period of time after he gets the booster. I tell my family and friends not to get any boosters but Freddie's meds combined with his age might put him in the cohort that has a chance of benefitting from a booster.
Well said. Thanks.
I'm so sorry for your loss - I too love a person who "extracts a cost to be close to and then repays that cost with rare and complicated gifts of personality"—the best kind of person, really.
And thank you for the breath of fresh air on COVID restrictions. I'm higher risk than many, and have also diligently followed all of the precautions, while cautiously trying to ease back into normal life...but to me, both extremes are making it so hard on the rest of us. Those who refuse to take any precautions limit my and others' ability to engage in any semblance of normalcy, while those who push for more and more restrictions quite literally do the same.
It was extremely funny to me that when I was browsing twitter when news of T H E O M I C R O N V A R I A N T broke and The Palmer Report of all people one was one of the only non-science accounts on there making the case for remaining calm, waiting for more research to be done because most variants peter out, etc.
It's crueler in that the same feeling hearts that demand the world stop in one moment, flip, dissipate, distract, repel, attract in response to the world over the next few. We are blessed that the world is sufficiently stable and repetitive to re-stir our hearts again down the road.
"We do not grieve forever, but move on. We mourn for a few days and then continue with our lives. Such underreaction poorly equips us to comprehend Yehuda’s death. Nineteen years, 7053 days, of life and memory annihilated. A thousand years, or a million millennia, or a forever, of future life lost. The sun should have dimmed when Yehuda died, and a chill wind blown in every place that sentient beings gather, to tell us that our number was diminished by one. But the sun did not dim, because we do not live in that sensible a universe. Even if the sun did dim whenever someone died, it wouldn’t be noticeable except as a continuous flickering. Soon everyone would get used to it, and they would no longer notice the flickering of the sun."
https://www.yudkowsky.net/other/yehuda
Thank you for writing this. One thing I genuinely worry about with this stuff is the mask effectively never going away, especially during the winter, for people who work public facing service jobs. I see people on social media who have work from home jobs and never leave the house tweeting at Gov Hochul demanding a new mask mandate despite the vaccine passport in place. Meanwhile I have worked and worn the mask during work for forty hours a week through almost the entire pandemic, lost my job during the second NY lockdown and had to take the bus to Jersey to work. Now thanks to the vaccine passport I can enjoy my job again, but I feel for workers on the West Coast where the mask mandate resumed, regardless of vaccine status, during the delta variant. I would loathe to see a two tiered system emerge in the big liberal cities, where one class of people wears a mask for two seconds while going into a bar or restaurant to enjoy themselves, while another class waits on them wearing a mask for their entire working day, forty hours a week forever.
I really, really worry about this with kids. Schools are very safety oriented (for good reasons, but also for fear of lawsuits), and kids are a captive population.
My kid is in preschool (just turned three) and they have to wear masks all day. Which is insane because a) covid actually IS *less deadly than the flu* for children and b) the whole reason for preschool is to get these kids used to interacting with their peers! It makes me furious.
My kid is in preschool, too, and I felt the same way for a while. But I have to admit that she seems to still manage to play with other kids. Her best friend is speech-delayed, and he seems to do okay, too. Your kid will probably adjust. If they are happy going to school in the morning, it's probably okay.
I don't think it's great. I don't think little kids should be in masks at all, and I think they would have more fun without them. I don't want to exaggerate the extent of the problem, though. I'm more worried about the masks being like D.A.R.E or sunscreen permission forms - something that annoys everyone while being mostly ineffective.
My preschooler doesn't mind the masks. In fact he barely notices he's wearing one--I have to remind him to take it off in the car on the way home.
However, the rule to stay 3ft apart is hard for him, especially since he's so excited to have friends after 2 years of isolation with adults. I'll never forget the day he told me sadly, "We're not allowed to hug at school."
That is so sad :(
Masked kids have to stay 3ft apart? That's completely absurd. There is absolutely no science behind that, at all.
If you mean that mid-pandemic we haven’t done any controlled trials of masked versus unmasked kids distancing or not, and seen how many develop covid then no, OK. Such a thing would never be approved by an IRB anyway, although eventually there will no doubt be some conflicting observational studies that compare too many apples and oranges to make clear sense.
But if you’re saying that mask + distance is not more effective (and still imperfect) than mask or distance alone (which are each even more imperfect) that defies logic and goes against the current best understanding of infection control experts re SARS-CoV-2.
Whether it might not be good for kids, for _other_ reasons, to wear masks all the time and never touch each other, that’s a different conversation. It’s a conversation that should be had. Everything is a trade off. No choice in life is risk-free, and every choice in life has a cost-benefit attached. But in a community, say, with low vaccination rates, high case rates, full hospitals, and open schools, the cost-benefit (to the school staff and other adults in the kids’ lives) likely justifies masking plus distance.
Other local conditions might dictate other local responses than that. Say, high vaccination rates, low case rates, and plenty of room in the hospitals might dictate a different best response.
None of this is known to a certainty. None of this is cut and dried. People in multigenerational households with an elder with cancer will feel differently than people with no one particularly at high risk.
None of this is simple. It is certainly the case that masking + distance is more protective though. It’s the “Swiss cheese” model and it’s far from controversial. See https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/the-swiss-cheese-model-of-covid-19-defence-what-it-means-how-it-works-1.4429716
None of this is good for children. I repeat - NONE OF THIS.
I'm still stuck in, "I'm grateful schools are open at all," mode.
Our kids are too young to mask effectively, anyhow — at least, judging by the rate of bugs our schoolgoing child has brought home already since flu season started. So I'll be happy to see masks go. But, as plenty of people like to say, especially to the suffering, "Life owes you nothing," and if that is true, even my children, whom I instinctively believe are owed so much they're owed a considerably better mother than they have, aren't owed the schooling that's best for them.
Regular in-person school with masks is second-best, but so much better than our experience with what's less than second-best. So for now, I'll keep taking it.
I have no doubt that you are a good enough mother, even if you aren't the mother you imagine your kids need.
Also, heh, we have just about the same biography: "Former data analyst, current SAHM."
I'm hopeful next year it will be over in schools but I'm glad I don't have children. There's a 100 percent chance many of these young kids wearing the mask every day for two years will probably have anxiety issues about not wearing them when the time comes they can take them off.
I used to think there would be weird psychological effects long term, but I don't think so anymore. Kids adjust. It's going to just be another rule in the cramped, rule-bound lives our kids have been leading for the past 20 years.
I used to worry about that, but since my kids went back to school this fall I don’t anymore. They wear masks at school and don’t wear masks at sports practice and birthday parties/other private gatherings and they seem to transition between the two seamlessly. My kids are pretty adaptable to the mask at this point and don’t complain but they also het pretty excited at the idea of schools not requiring them next year.
The CDC will never, ever, ever, /ever/ issue a press release saying it's ok to not wear masks. They've been wanting widespread mask usage during flu season for virtually ever.
No, they will never tell us this is over. Too many people are making far too much money and enjoying far too much social and political power for that to ever happen.
This will be over when we tell them it's over.
What’s your theory of the case? Who’s the power behind the throne here, Big Mask? The money that’s being made is in large part in spite of covid restrictions, not because of them. The flow of capital has determined which restrictions have been attempted and how seriously they’ve been enforced, but make no mistake, the ruling class wants the pandemic to go away so capital can flow fully unimpeded by such minor obstacles as “all our warehouse workers caught covid” or “we have to pay employees more to get them to show up.” The idea that mask mandates (for example) are themselves a major profit engine is not supported by the evidence.
I think we are already seeing this happening, unfortunately.
I saw a TV cooking show that was recorded post-pandemic where all the rich stars were enjoying a dinner unmasked while those that served them were fully masked up, and only appeared on-screen for a second.
And I'm sure they could try to justify it by saying that people don't want to see others masked. And that's true - they don't.
But the workers who have to live much of their lives like this are just as important as the TV stars who weren't even eating most of the time.
I'm a waiter, I can't hate the NYC vaccine passport because it has allowed me as a fully vaccinated person to go back to not masking at work and love my job again. I can breathe easy, talk to guests (you can't hear a damn word someone says with the mask on) and show off my smile, I'm making way more in tips because people are happy for some normalcy. Like FdB said, the city seems to be back. Unfortunately the West Coast cities, Boston and Chicago still require masks for all hospitality workers even if you are vaccinated, they brought them back during the delta wave. I see some people say, don't comply, resist. I agree in spirit but when it's comply or lose your livelihood, what's the right thing to do?
I live in Boston and, yes, it is weird that the mask mandate remains here.
Since the most progressive candidate won our mayoral election, I suspect it will remain that way for now, unfortunately.
It is security theater at this point for the vaccinated, I think, just like much of what we do at airports, but I think our mayor-elect would lose credibility with much of the left if she were to say it was time to lift the mask mandate.
I see people who work in the kitchens and bring food to the counter not masking now. And I'm not going to complain - after all, I am only in their restaurant for a minute, so I don't have to deal with the heat.
I think people will largely comply for now if it's a matter of their job. But I wish it wasn't that way since I don't think "the science" really supports it. Especially since none of the people eating at the restaurants are masking, even when they aren't drinking or eating.
I will say that the lack of vaccine passport in Boston has been good in some respects because the vaccination rate is lower in communities of color and, until recently, children weren't able to be vaccinated at all. So if there were a vaccine passport here, these groups wouldn't be able to attend cultural institutions here like museums. That's the reason our acting mayor gave for not imposing one - that she felt it was racially discriminatory.
So these public policy decisions are complex. And they are all a risk-benefit analysis, not something that some magical entity called "the science" can dictate.
I was visiting some cousins in MA and I was impressed by how well they seemed to take a middle ground. My cousins were fans of Gov Baker, they seem to think that having a technocrat in charge helped lower the temperature on the COVID culture war.
One positive thing I will say is that there is not a mask mandate in Boston anymore for places of worship. MA also let people start gathering in person for church services sooner than most states did (back in May 2020, with reasonable restrictions, including masks at that time).
I should say, too, that I am not opposed to masks altogether. I started wearing one well before it became mandatory. There were a few times that I wore one back in March 2020 before I got shamed into thinking that that was wrong somehow. (I already had construction-style masks in my house prior to the start of the pandemic.)
From what I've read, I believe that masks are a helpful mitigating strategy and means of source control when people are not vaccinated. But once people are vaccinated, I don't think they add enough additional protection to make them worthwhile.
I still comply with the mandates without public complaint because being a nuisance about it seems pointless, just like complaining about TSA's rules would be. But I don't use masks in any contexts anymore where they are not required or where I'm not surrounded largely by people who would be uncomfortable if I were unmasked.
You're absolutely right that this is a class system - almost a caste system, given the lack of social mobility prevalent in the US in general and the coastal elite cities in particular. I believe this to be by design, because any sober reading of the science would at this point show masking and lockdowns to be of limited effect (especially when compared to vaccination, which is of much greater effect when it comes to preventing death and hospitalization.) I can't see anything other than the deliberate here. It's security theater but only the proles have to put on the drama mask. Then the elect, the cloud people, will *see* others in masks and thus know they're in a Safe Space, but they won't have to inhale their own cappuccino and biscotti fumes.
Interesting, this is such a regional thing.
I live in Nevada. We had a full-ish lockdown for probably 3 months. Thing is, this was partially voluntary: the Strip shut down before the government stepped in. After that, we had capacity constraints. Restaurants were capped at 50% capacity, despite them looking pretty darn close to full. We've also had a mask mandate the whole time, though many of these masks sit below the nose, or even below the chin. I've never seen a vaccine passport, and I've only had to present my card at optional workplace visits. Nowadays, it seems like every restaurant and public event is packed.
And this is in a state with Democratic governor, two democratic senators, and a democratic legislature.
I don't have any grand conclusions here, other than that maybe NY went uniquely crazy over this stuff.
I'd also like to add that I fully support any mandate that makes the Nets worse.
I think you're largely correct. Not that only NY went nuts, but that only certain areas of the country went collectively nuts over the pandemic, and that it's a smaller area than the people living in them think.
I work in NYC and live on Long Island. The difference in response between the two was so vast that it's gotten morbidly funny. My friends and colleagues in NYC have been in full panic mode for two years now (although Freddie is right that they've more than started to even out at this point. It's ending). On Long Island - where cases were just as awful as NYC for a long time - people started to get annoyed by the restrictions pretty quickly, and never embraced the mask-wearing culture that Freddie describes. There are large rebellions about school closures, masking, and vaccine mandates - that's where all the heat is now.
But for day to day life? I'm not even sure what the rules actually are, and haven't been sure for what feels like a long time. I only wear my mask where explicitly required by the building I'm in, which is pretty much limited to my son's nursery school.
I haven't been in the city for a couple of months, but every time I've been back before that it's been a culture shock. Everyone was wearing masks outdoors, and I even saw people putting on their masks between bites of food at restaurants. Jesus, guys. Just stay home. That can't possibly be enjoyable.
Great piece as always, but I do think that fewer people are impacted by the hysteria than Freddie thinks.
One more data point worth considering: The fact that the highest levels of panic have occurred in densely-populated urban areas isn't a coincidence...the risks are simply higher when people are tightly packed. We have data on spread in ventilation systems in a number of places in the world, for instance. New Yorkers certainly took it too far wearing masks outdoors, but I'm not convinced the indoor restrictions were really that ridiculous, considering the population.
Definitely agree. I didn't really mean that part of it - rules need to be crafted to fit the area (though I would point out that a lot of the rules for New York State seemed designed explicitly for NYC, and that provoked a bad reaction in other areas, particularly upstate. My comment was supposed to be light-ish so I don't want to dig too far into it, but I've got to say that a lot of people and businesses NOT in densely packed urban areas in New York got fucked, hard, and unnecessarily).
I was talking more about what Freddie was addressing, the sort of furious, Permanent Emergency culture complete with informants and gestapo that went along with necessary restrictions. It didn't happen too much where I live, and really, really happened in the city. It was weird to watch.
Ah yes, absolutely. I used to live in San Francisco, and it's been really weird to see the way people there have handled it culturally.
I was actually an early-masker, I wore one back when the authorities were saying they don't work. Pre-COVID, it's pretty common to see East Asian tourists wear masks. I assumed they did so for good reason, so I started wearing one when the Pandemic hit. I had a friend wear one back in February 2020
We're required to wear masks inside businesses now, though this is a bit of a farce. Like, you walk into a restaurant masked, and then you can take it off the second you sit down. It's dumb, but I'm also not going to pretend it's tyranny.
Yeah, I've been wearing them on planes for years—not consistently and not the entire flight, but as soon as I began doing it, I began to get sick far less often.
i do think it's culturally unhealthy to have these rituals (tables are magical anti-covid bubbles but put on your mask to walk 2 steps and order a beer) that literally everyone knows are fake and don't do anything, but following them means you're one of the good, smart people. it just adds to the sense of nothing feeling real or like it affects anything. voting, global warming, wearing a mask, all these slightly distressing abstractions lurking in the background that you're powerless to stop. not the first step to tyranny or whatever but definitely another tear in the fabric of consensus reality.
Right, I just think it's worth our time to differentiate kinda bad things from really bad things. I make the same criticism towards the woke wrt microaggressions, bad comedy specials, etc.
I wish the energy put against masks or Netflix specials were put towards universal healthcare.
Also I'm not sure what the comparison to voting and global warming means.
sorry, kinda unclear on my part. i just mean to lump covid in with national politics and global warming as another thing that's this huge issue where there's no mass movement to join or way forward for positive change, so there's a sense of unreality as the energy gets directed toward these dumb culture war issues, and the pettiness of the culture war vs the supposed importance of the issue creates a mental disconnect.
First let me say that was a beautiful tribute to your friend.
Second, because my position on COVID-19 sounds like it's almost exactly Freddie's, I want to note that it's a real shame that the pandemic stopped being personal and became so political. In many ways this whole thing was a story about millions of personal tragedies but also amazing human resilience and ultimately a story about countries all across the globe sciencing up a solution. It's a beautiful mixture of all the things that make life so horrifying and so wonderful. That could've been the Covid-19 story.
But instead, we said "fuck it, let's culture war this thing!"
Yah, even more. TYTY.
“We” is doing a lot of work there. It’s Republicans. Republicans are the ones who decided to make the pandemic and masks and vaccines political, not some vague “we.”
Freddie, just have to thank you for your writing, as a long-time liberal who has been seeing what you're seeing, but who could never express it so well.
What's badly needed are health authorities who aren't politically compromised. Fauci is compromised -- both in reality and also in public perception. The fact that Biden keeps clinging to him (apparently for no better reason than petty in-group loyalty) is just contributing to the sense of confusion, distrust, and chaos.
Yah.
No problems with Fauci, personally. But rightwing hype machine doesn't have much sway on me in general.
Granted, what Fauci has been facing is a moving target, so I don't hold him to account for varying views.
It's not right-wing to see how political he is. BLM okay to go without masks. But the little guys?
What some people call "varying views", others call "updating". And anything BLM and you guys tend to get way upset. I don't consider myself woke, but hearing y'all turn every topic to racial issues is making me woke-adjacent, I think.
Go fer it.
The "updating" happened after a 16 month delay in the case of the lab leak theory. Fauci is very much part of the story of how this delay happened. Your premise that this shouldn't in any way impact how we assess his trustworthiness as a high-level public servant is not a defensible position.
I mean, I'm not sure what all you're talking about here, but I know there have been conspiracy theories about the gain-of-function research.
But I couldn't care less about any of the origin theories in the first place. Why exactly do you think they're important in the first place?
Seriously? You hafta ask? Don't You think knowing these things would help determine this research and China's actions appropriate or not?
Since you're (to use your words) "not sure what all you're talking about here", it occurs to me that you've been inside of a sealed epistemic chamber regarding the Wuhan lab story since summer 2020 and still think of it as a "crazy conspiracy theory." In other words: you are the one who isn't updated. Would you like me to send you links from all of the high-prestige academic journals and high-prestige media outlets which started acknowledging from May 2021 onward that the lab leak theory is very plausible and reasonable and should never have been stigmatized? I'll only send you links if asked to.
Please cite where Fauci stated "BLM can go ahead and not wear masks". He clearly stated that "all crowds are a risk for transmission". But do go on with your horseshit.
My mistake, when commenting on Fauci.
Meant Democratic MACHINE, of which Fauci, necessarily, is a part. Don't think he volunteered to be part-a the Trump MACHINE either.
are you having a stroke? what the hell is that last line supposed to even mean?
Fauci is part of the governing MACHINE, right? That makes him political, and not just a disinterested scientist.
There's no 'necessarily' there, at all, and this does go to my previous point. This is conspiracy-level stuff. If Trump had shut up and let Fauci do the talking, he's probably still be president. Instead, he whined and looked for scapegoats, because That's Like His Whole M.O.
Fauci himself created the conditions in which half the country, at least, would be unlikely to trust him:
1) the whole switcheroo on masks
2) the decision to be inconsistent and partisan when condemning some public gatherings but not others
3) this being most important: the decision to aid the stigmatization of the lab leak theory, which is now widely understood to have a better-than-alright chance of turning out to be the correct theory.
Would anyone else in that role have made different decisions? Maybe, maybe not. But the outcome of the flow of events is that a type of public servant who needs high levels of trust is actually very distrusted. The obvious solution is to replace him with a fresh face--and this is so obvious that Biden's refusal to replace him is itself starting to look suspicious.
See, I'm apolitical on this one. If Biden had given Trump the CREDIT (which WAS due) for seeing the vaccine developed in record time, the Trumpites would-a been accommodating, right?
Didn't happen either.
Gimme a break with YOUR theories, conspiracy or otherwise.
Even if Fauci is 100% innocent of all the things he's been accused of (seems rather unlikely to me), he's such a polarizing figure now that having him resign and getting a fresh face in that role, someone capable of inspiring trust from both sides, would only be a good thing. Do Fauci admirers really disagree with this? Why keep someone that polarizing and distrusted by half the country in that role ad infinitum? What is the productive benefit of doing that?
Because then you're making an unprincipled, irrational decision to mollify people who are wallowing in political grievance. That sets a dangerous precedent.
Unprincipled and irrational how? Public servants step down all the time. The flow of events tends to gradually tarnish their reputation of being "above the fray." Since it's important certain kinds of public authorities be widely perceived that way, and Fauci isnt widely perceived in this way anymore (due mainly to his own decision-making), this seems like an appropriate time for a public servant to step down -- which, again, is a normal thing to happen, not a "dangerous precedent."
There is no proof he's doing anything for political reasons. Was first appointed in the Reagan era, and has worked during different administrations. Fauci is a scientist, and shouldn't buckle to a rightwing media mob that's trying to score points. Again, that would be terrible for the future if America faces something like this again. He should calmly go about his job.
If anything, we should do more to assure the independence of agencies like the CDC, so they can't be influenced by something like Trump.
Refresh my memory: How hard DID he and his team come down on the BLM protests? Or, put another way, IF he condemned them (which I wonder) why was this not made generally known?
Because “half the country” I.e., Republicans, will distrust anything or anyone remotely reasonable. These are people who refuse vaccines, think climate change is a hoax, believe that the world is 4000 years old, etc. You can’t appease such people.
If you think the only people who suspected a lab leak starting in spring 2020 were Republicans then you are inside of an echo chamber.
Wow.....LOLOL
Perhaps I'm being too cynical, but I feel like whatever person you put into the office is going to be raked over the coals, dunked on, and ignored at every point where they speak of something that goes against a tribal sacred belief.
How about you just do a little bit of investigating on your own.
I'm not right-wing and I think I could make a good case why Fauci is no longer a good face for pandemic response.
Setting aside any other controversies - like the funding of the research at WIV that may have been gain-of-function or the research on dogs - he's simply too cautious to be credible with most Americans.
If I recall correctly, he said the other week that he couldn't necessarily say whether it would be safe for Americans to gather for Christmas. And this was while Delta was on the wane and before the latest variant (which we don't know enough about to say anything yet).
The reality is, most Americans are already gathering with their families for the holidays. Fauci has been tuned out because of his extreme risk aversion.
Most Americans have recognized that the pandemic is not exempt from risk-benefit analysis, and that there's a cost to never seeing people in person again too, even if it can't be quantified in body counts.
Why didn’t Trump fire him? Fauci doesn’t have a great bedside manner. But I think he’s honest if not always timely. The dunking on him is unhelpful & dishonest. There’s grifters on both sides. He’s not one of them.
I'm a Trump supporter since 2015. One of the worst things Trump did was to subject us to this head-bobbing Keebler elf. In a sane society he'd be in a disgraced but comfortable retirement.
I lost my best friend over this time period who died in January 2021 (not COVID). I had a virtual Mass said in her memory that was not much comfort. Thank you for expressing what many of us likely felt losing people during this period.
I read about places in the U.S. where not masking is treated like smoking, and it seems dreadful to me. Online I see a lot of people being outraged if they see people unmasked. I've had the shots & booster and keep a mask handy for the federal buildings (like the USPS) that require them. But I live in the South and most people don't mask except where required. We are outside a lot, maybe that helps. Schools were open all during 2020-2021 w/o masks. Children are seated further apart and ventilation systems improved. Children have after-school sports outside w/o masks. Life has been fairly normal and people are not tormented by the "Praetorian guard of busybodies" (This line was wonderful). Plus a really good college football season and MLB season have kept spirits up. Life does not need to be as constrained as it is in some places.
Okay, but at the same time, let's acknowledge that most of the actual violence that has occurred around masks (in the US and elsewhere, such as Germany) has happened when an anti-masker has been asked to put on a mask, often in a location where doing so is a requirement. While I agree with you that life doesn't need to be as constrained as it is in some places, we also need to have a reasonable "traffic light" system for putting restrictions back in place when case numbers get high or new variants come into play.
I'll take performative outrage over murder, personally. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/06/15/killing-of-georgia-cashier-is-latest-in-a-string-of-fatal-shootings-over-mask-wearing-here-are-the-rest/
In my experience over this time in this place people have not been violent about masks. They tend to avoid places where masking is required, not fight about it. It may be self-regulation and avoidance of conflict. I know there is news when violence happens over masks, but in my daily life since March 2020 going many places including restaurants and concerts it has not been awful. I think the MSM such as Forbes like to highlight things that are awful so people who read it imagine ominous context.
One of these murders occurred very close to where I live, sadly. I'm glad that people where you live have been chill; people here have been not.
I think knowing where to go and not go helps. I'm mostly grateful that the children in my life have not been subjected to draconian masking but, again, most of what they do is outdoors.
My kids have been handling masking fine. They don't complain. I got them duplicates of styles they find comfortable. And I will say, in the past 18 months, the only illness in our house has been a mild cold, caught from a preschool cousin who doesn't always wear masks at school (teachers do). I can't say I miss all the germ transmission (even if the *reason* is more about preventing them from touching their mouths and noses directly).
I don't wish to minimize what happened to those people, but this is just a few anecdotes. If there's evidence that there's been a statistically significant rise in violence due to people refusing mask mandates, I'd be interested. But viral videos of "Anti-masker loses her shit" are not reality. And even an article highlighting a half dozen shootings (which are chosen for an article about a topic, not rigorously researched data points) in a country of 330 million people are not significant. A higher percentage of Americans were murdered because of The Beatles' Helter Skelter.
A certain percentage of people are just shitty and do shitty things. No big conclusions you can take from that.
I live in the South, as well. The SEC governors have definitely been more resistant to restrictions. On the one hand, that means (for example) that the Delta curve went up and down much quicker. On the other, a lot more people died because of these policies than would have otherwise.
Pro-mask and vax myself, but anti-lockdown at this point. My theme is more man v. nature - we can't beat biology on the terms and expectations that have been set. Some good tools have been developed, but they're not good enough. Think the virus is just going to make a pass or two over humanity, in various forms, before we can definitively judge its behavioral convergence. Gotta fact up to that, imo.
Underlying health issues also a factor. I have lost track of state statistics. Is SEC area worse than NYC or NJ? I locked down for 6 weeks then decided life wasn't worth it that way. I am vaxed & booster but avoid places where masking is required as much as possible. Walk more. But , when 95K people come to town for a football game I do a min-lock down until the air clears. I think if we trusted each other and yelled at each other less it might be better.
The "top" 2 deaths/1 million are MS and AL, 6 of the top 10 are SEC states. NY and NJ are up there, but they got hit first when there was no Vax or treatment.
Thanks for this. We this kind of data as whole numbers don't tell the story.
Yeah I'm in kind of the same place, mentally. I can talk a lot of smack about how we need to wind down the masking hysteria and just deal with the fact that not everyone is going to get vaccinated, but still: I imagine that I'll stay away from Madison Square Garden shows for... well, maybe forever. Honestly, I felt a little claustrophobic in Broadway theaters long before the pandemic. I'm not interested in heading back there, and I don't see a future where I am.
Then again, I'm not trying to stop anyone else from doing these things. I guess that's the main point.
We went to a symphony yesterday with our two older sons. Everyone over 18 was required to show proof of vax and we had to wear masks. It was still lovely. (Theater wasn't fully packed either.)
Your last sentence should be repeated on the internet every hour on the hour.
I live a few towns outside a large Northeastern city, and this is basically what life looks like here. Things change rapidly when you leave the city.
I'm jealous of you.
I think the whole lockdown/masking need not have been so draconian--especially among children. I'm helping several women with back up childcare because I work online and the impact of all this on women, especially, is incalculable. It's a patchwork in that daycares close a lot. but I can take the kids at home (my online work is flex). I have not gotten sick being around children (maybe a headache from the rambunctiousness). The first few months I put masking tape down between their play area and my office...ha ha. Like that worked. But I've now had 1 1/2 years living somewhat normally and I am glad I did. Have friends elsewhere still bunkered down who ask me if I fear for my life? Actually I feared that bunkering was no life.
To each their own. If I had a choice, I think I'd go for less bunkering like You did, M. McCook.
What I've come to hate, more than anything, is coming to see how this "Praetorian Guard of busybodies" lives in a life inside me, a life that works through me. You can call it a totalizing drive toward social domination; you can call it the "spirit of Enlightenment"; you can call it bullshit and say it's not there. But it's there. Waiting with a pulsating, bright-orange glow.
It kills me that people act like a world where you just sit inside on Zoom all day and get everything delivered to your door was possible. I can't think of anything which typifies the bourgeois nature of today's liberalism more than that. It's as if many of them literally think everyone works an office job and the people making, building, and delivering everything simply don't exist. It's no wonder this attitude caught on like wildfire in Manhattan and other urban liberal enclaves. They are the poster children for this kind of thinking.
I hate even talking about COVID. Two years of arguments has been enough for three lifetimes.
Jose Saramago's novel,The Cave, predicted this. He won the Nobel Prize and had no higher education.
This is such an important point. So many people glorify "essential workers" with their social media posts while making people slave in-person at minimum wage jobs to sustain their comfort.
Have you watched The Leftovers? I'm nearly done with season two of three. There's a cult that wears white and doesn't speak and smokes and follows people around ominously and their whole thing is "we are a living reminder" of what happened. They don't want people to move on; they refuse to let people move on, sometimes in horrific, cruel fashion. One of its members lost her mother the day before the worldwide event that the show is premised on, and she's resentful of the fact that her loss has been subsumed.
I think the resentment, or at least the bewilderment, of the world going on is nearly universal with any major loss--or even a good life-changing event, like the birth of a child. When one's inner life is radically altered, the observation of "normalcy" in the world is an affront. We are all precious; we are all insignificant.
This was a beautiful piece.
Yah, M. Erin E!
Tom Perrotta's novel (which ends about where Season 1 ends) is also fantastic.
I didn't know it was based on a book - I'll have to check that out.
Everyone told me to stick with The Leftovers if for no other reason than for the amazing series finale. Everyone was right. Man, that last season was something.
I like all his novels, and they also seem to result in good films or TV shows (he also wrote Little Children and Mrs. Fletcher--and The Abstinence Teacher, although I'm not sure if that one has ever been adapted).
ALL CAPS are ITALICS.
TYTY, for this FINE essay, Sir Freddie. :) Sorry so long. Didn’t plan to get so philosophical, and mebbe should-a concentrated more on the present difficulties. Mind just didn’t go down that road tho.
I understand that most all are concerned about this new Omicron variant. Best wishes to all.
Me? I go by the so-called scientific recommendations. Getting booster tomorrow. ALWAYS wear mask because I (almost) NEVER go out. Just my lifestyle before, during, and after. Hasn’t changed ‘cause-a the pandemic. That’s just me. Being retired has advantages, I admit.
Don’t concern myself too much with what other people do. That’s just me.
But whole entire THING, to me, falls into category “what-i-can’t-control.” I would prefer to live, make choices in the hope. But COUNT on it? Memento mori, right? Said before I’m extremely WEIRD, but I make sacrifices for inner tranquility, which comes in handy sometimes. Especially LATELY.
The author’s comments in double-quotes:
***
“Maybe Omicron really is ‘the big one,’ but they’ve said that about every last development in this endless story, so how would we ever know?”
‘Truer words were never said,’ right?
***
“And while they want you to mask up and vaccinate and obey other rules, what’s much more important to them than regulating your behavior is that they let you know that you don’t feel the right way about Covid.”
Weeeel, like I ‘said’ in comments to Your previous, why does it even REGISTER what ‘they’ say. How does what ANYone says, including this right here, have ANY effect on who You fundamentally BE. True, if requires a tough choice. Choice isn’t to ignore, but to KNOW. Know who You ARE. That’s it, tho not easy, it’s simple.
***
I’m not normally cognizant of themes, but if I was here I would say this quote encapsulates it:
“And so true compassion requires that we say to them, ‘you must take the time you need, but the world tumbles on regardless, and if you take all the time you want your life will not be the same when you return.’”
So where You say the following, I would think that thinking ABOUT the before times is waste of effort, right?
“To prefer the before times is a mark of terrible unseriousness.”
***
“We have created an entirely new epistemology of public health science in the past couple of years, one that is somehow not a branch of medicine or biology but of public relations. Its vectors are not pathogens but perceptions. It tracks not the spread of disease but the spread of blame.”
Haha! Right You ARE! Never THOUGHT of it that Way, but true.. true…
***
“Whether it should reawaken is angels dancing on the head of a pin, a trolley problem, a dorm room pass-the-bong puzzler. It can’t be answered and doesn’t matter.”
Hm.
***
“Time only spins forward, for good and for bad, even during a pandemic, even when THIS. IS. NOT. NORMAL. No time stays special forever, and people like living life. It’s no more complicated than that.”
Yah. One-a those ‘Is really simple, but hard-ta DO’ thingies.
***
“And while we will light the candles and whisper at the memorials and teach the children, in time the victims will seem no more real than those of Genghis Khan. That’s just how history works.”
Weeeel, I’m first generation after the genocides. If second generation after can forget them, that’s on THEM. How many generations should genocide be REMEMBERED, and the horror be CONTEMPLATED? I’d say as long as societies are still PRACTICING it around the world, in recent memory.
***
“central message of Kazuo Ishiguro’s brilliant, underappreciated The Buried Giant, that even genocide succumbs in time to the relentless disintegration of human memory, and that nothing endures the passage of generations and the fog of time.”
See above.
***
“They tell me that forgetting is not a biological error, but a survival mechanism, that we are not meant to remember forever that which we could not really endure in the first place.”
Interesting philosophical/biological point. To me, anyway.
***
“That’s where we live, between our feeling hearts that see every life and death as sacred and our thinking minds that can't help but render all of it ordinary over time.”
The more I look, the more I sense that the feeling hearts have become a vestigial organ. Not just in me, I assure You.
***
“That was another lesson of 9/11, that there is no such thing as constant vigilance, that the concept is a contradiction in terms. Abnormal becomes normal. Life goes on.”
That’s a bug. A dangerous CHOICE to make these days in particular, right? Can’t say ‘In My Humble Opinion’ on this one.