Bluesky

What most people think of as "the flu" is just a cold. Full-blown influenza is no joke at all indeed.

The flu is a familiar disease, and young people with strong immune systems rarely die from it or experience long-term health consequences from having had it. So it's not scary to most people, because they've never lived through a flu outbreak as bas as the spanish flu, and because they don't know anyone for whom getting the flu would be a death sentence.

But Covid was a worse pandemic because when it infects, it can be completely benign or completely suffocating, and there's very little way of knowing which will happen to you. And if you do get it, there's a much higher chance it leaves serious scars that you'll carry for the rest of your life.

People need to treat bad things as bad and be willing to set aside familiarity and comfort for the safety and well-being of others. Instead they downplay how bad something they don't understand is going to be, because they want others to believe the same and not change their behavior, because their own comfort is more important than protecting the people who will be hurt the most

They had the flu, obviously a weaker strain of it, got better quickly or barely noticed it, and decided to “well, it wasn’t bad for me; obviously, everyone is making a big deal out of COVID too,” not realizing they are an exception and not the rule.

Conservatives and Republicans make all their decisions based on personal experience alone, not putting themselves in other people’s shoes.

It’s why their go-to is “pick yourself up by your bootstraps.” And they mean it unironically 🥴

Using Bojack images in your replies should be mandatory

Its cause those deaths were not visualised with a pile of bodies. It was just a number that's mind boggling, unless you were in relevant field you don't understand.

They didn’t physically see it.

Understand, most people who had a relative go into the hospital with COVID, some did FaceTime, yes, others did not have or use that tech. But FaceTime, when possible, was usually a head shot with vague glimpses of some hospital equipment and maybe a nasal cannula. Again, nothing unusual.

So what happened is people who saw their loved one go in, or distantly out of context on FaceTime, rarely saw the sick struggles or the healthcare staff working on them while in crisis. No visitors allowed, with full bans in effect at many locations for the duration.

The family experience could be: I talked to him, he went to the hospital for 2-5 weeks, and then I picked him up, and he was fine then too. The time he spent in the hospital remaining a hazy black hole in their loved ones’ awareness. No eyes laid on anything but flu like symptoms in some cases.

Others, their loved one went in looking flu-ish, and never came home. No eyes on. No witness to the progression, the struggle for air, the decline into death. Again, a hazy black hole of awareness with a crazy, inexplicable outcome because the last time you saw your loved one, sure they felt bad enough to go to the hospital but they were fine, or so it appeared.

The experience of hospitalizations for loved ones is one of a black hole in their first hand awareness of what actually happened with COVID.

To be clear, as awful as all of the above is, the visitor bans were necessary for multiple reasons.

They’re super racist. They had brown people they could hate.

It couldn't be manipulated as an excuse to invade another country and take their resources; if the general origin of COVID was a country smaller than China, I bet we would be balls to the wall "investigating the origins" of it and "helping cleanup/recovery" for years.

oh and while we're there, might as well set up an airfield and/or dock. And while we have those lets give you some military aid. Lets just call it a military base. We live here now.

Has nothing to do with math. They don't have a brown person to blame for it and unite behind a common enemy.