↓
 
Home » The lingering psychological effects of the pandemic

The lingering psychological effects of the pandemic

The New Neo Posted on by

Almost as soon as the pandemic guidelines began to be issued – regarding handwashing, social distancing, and the like – I said to several friends, “We’re all going to wind up with OCD before this is through.”

I was making a joke, but I was somewhat serious, too. Obsessive-compulsive symptoms and phobias are not that difficult to trigger in the susceptible, and they can be especially difficult to eradicate once they take hold.

And so it has come to pass. For example, commenter “physicsguy” describes the following:

One of nephew”s wife just went on a rant about how she was feeling things were getting better then the CDC pulls their “stunt”. She has 2 kids; 4 and 2. Every since this pandemic started she has behaved irrationally. The kids have not had any outside contact in 14 months. It was only in the last month she let the grandparents see the kids but only within 6 feet even though they were all vaccinated. She now is very upset about not being able to take the kids out as people will no longer be wearing masks. Very sad.

Very sad and very predictable, actually. This woman, as the mother of young children, is already in full protective mode anyway. That protectiveness has been ramped up by official declarations that stoke fear, for over a year.

For some people it can actually take quite a lot to undo all of that. And, as in the old “How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb has to want to change” joke, the person has to want to change. The person has to force herself or himself to abandon a set of behaviors that have not only made that person and the children feel safe, but that has seemingly kept them safe in actuality. After all, they’re alive and well now, right? They might have remained alive and well even without those measures, but that’s not the way it feels.

I have long felt that there would be people who will never give up the habits they’ve developed during the COVID year. Some of those habits are reasonable, such as more handwashing, although that can get into unreasonable territory, too, depending on how often it’s done. But keeping children home indefinitely is not warranted by any type of scientific fact and is almost certainly damaging to them psychologically, although some will find it tempting.

And some have always found it tempting. After all, isn’t that what the fairy tale Rapunzel warns us about?

Comments

The lingering psychological effects of the pandemic — 56 Comments

  1. It’s also a political virtue signaling thing for some but I’m not sure that will last very long.

    It has become a secular religion for so many of these people.

  2. Also, let’s be honest, this is mostly (mostly I repeat) a younger white woman problem and also a city vs rural thing. I know a couple young mothers who live in smaller towns that have been pushing back at this garbage involving kids for a year now.

    One has even gone a couple of vacations involving flying with husband and three small children in the last year.

  3. I can see a bit of this in myself, and I’ve never been any sort of compuslive neatnik or germophobe. Although I’ve taken the pandemic seriously, I’ve never felt anything strong enough to be called “fear” about it–just sort of “well, this is not that big a deal, but I don’t want to get it, so I’ll follow the recommendations.” I’ve been vaccinated for a couple of months now (I think), and my area has not been particularly hard-hit by the bug. But after putting gas in my car yesterday I felt compelled–not too strong a word–to use the hand sanitizer that’s still in my car. I’ve been pumping gas since whenever it was that self-service became the norm, and never gave two thoughts to the possibility of picking up a disease that way. I can only imagine what this has done to people who already had problems with compulsive behavior and/or germ obsessions.

  4. Rachel Maddow, paid many millions per annum for spouting nonsense and conspiracy theories, is very, very worried that she may have to rewire her brain (such as it exists) in order to process the non-wearing of masks, while the ineffably annoying youngster David Hogg will be continuing to wear his mask lest he possibly be mistaken by anonymous strangers for a conservative. Dave Rubin, the very amusing former leftist, has been posting, via his Twitter, various examples of “progressive lunacy” under the heading “leftism is a mental disorder.”

  5. My daughter’s inlaws are very leftish and we worried a bit when we visited them a couple of weeks ago but all was fine. No masks indoors, etc. They are quite “artistic” as is her husband. Need not have worried.

  6. David Hogg will be continuing to wear his mask lest he possibly be mistaken by anonymous strangers for a conservative.

    Hogg is an unfortunate example of a youth who hasn’t been sufficiently cut down to size by people who know more (either because he’s been immersed in a matrix created by negligent adults or because he’s a self-important twit you cannot reach).

  7. The worst nuts and phobics among us had a field day. I suspect they will continue their nutty ways without fear of criticism.

    Just today I was considering the prospects of ALTO and the commercial hand sanitizer business.

  8. Mac,

    About ten years ago I worked rather closely with a certified OCD, germaphobe. Nice guy. Very gregarious. He also seemed rather aware that many of his actions were irrational, but he couldn’t stop doing them. After a few weeks I started thinking to myself, “Self, it probably does make sense to wash your hands after shaking hands with someone else.”

    So, I started doing that. I didn’t make an obvious deal of it. I went on shaking hands as much as before, but if I shook someone’s hands I’d make a mental note to not touch my face or mouth until I had a chance to wash my hands. I’ve had the longest stretch of avoiding colds and flus I’ve ever had in my life (although I somehow managed to contract COVID). It could be coincidence, but I’m staying with the habit. Again, I didn’t make a drastic change. My spouse didn’t even notice I had made the alteration until I told her after a few years. I’m definitely not OCD, but I do recommend avoiding contact with your face, eyes, mouth… after shaking hands, until it’s convenient to wash your hands. During the pandemic I was sanitizing my hands after pumping gas. I’ve stopped doing that, but it’s probably not a bad routine.

  9. I don’t even want to list the lunacy I’ve witnessed in the past year. It would take pages, and, I doubt my experience is different from what any of you have witnessed. And it continues.

    Our government leaders and press have missed a great opportunity to educate many on disease prevention and spread. No surprise, they chose fear, votes and ratings over improving the lives of others.

  10. About 5 years ago I was in a store near a big, fancy, glass elevator. A young couple with a child in a stroller and a son about four years old walked towards the elevator. The four year old got really excited and asked his mother if he could press the button. She paused for what seemed like forever, acquiesced, then the second he touched the button she grabbed his hand and untopped a bottle of hand sanitizer she produced from a clip on her purse faster than Wyatt Earp could unholster his side iron. She scoured both of his hands in the stuff and scrubbed them. As I walked on I wondered what the boy’s future would be like.

    Although I cannot share the feeling, it is sensible that new mothers would become hyperfocused on their children’s well being. A mother has a lot of time and energy wrapped up in simply incubating and birthing a child. With the ridiculously premature gestation of humans, mothers also spend the next 18 – 24 months keeping their newborns alive with few lapses for a break or rest. As neo, writes, it can be very hard for mothers to relax that necessary concern as their children grow independent. I think my wife was fairly level headed about it all, but there were definitely times, as the father, where I stepped into ensure my kids were encountering risks and developing their own sense of trial, error, examination and re-examination.

    We are going to need dads to step in and help their wives disconnect from the panic they have been thriving on for over 12 months.

  11. Besides all of the above mentioned factors there’s the primal, subconscious fear of contracting a possibly fatal and communicative disease. Of all the ways one might unexpectedly die, that has to rank near the top.

  12. That story about physicsguy’s nephew and family is really sad. I am very grateful that my granddaughter, soon to be three, was in day care/nursery school throughout, without masks on either the children or the teachers. The school did ask parents to mask for drop off and pick up, and a couple of times there were COVID scares, which did not affect any children.

    The insistence that kids in school must continue to mask is nuts, and abusive of the kids.

  13. So much of what has happened seems like wild bad dream. First the virus suddenly appears and old people in nursing homes die. Then the country shuts down for two weeks to flatten the curve. Which extends to another month. Things get better and all seems to be looking up. Then the fall wave comes and more shutdowns are ordered. In the meantime the medical establishment poo poos any sort of therapeutics even when the POTUS is treated and cured. And a small number of doctors claim they can treat people early on with HCQ or Ivermectin. These doctors and therapeutics are demonized by the establishment. Additionally, the vaccine companies go into overdrive to produce at least three viable vaccines in less than a year. As if by magic they do something that normally takes several years. The vaccine is distributed, but the medical establishment proclaims rules that make it seem that the vaccines aren’t all that protective. Toss in the fact that almost every detail of the pandemic has been politicized. Mask wearing becomes a totem of one’s political stance. Guidance from the FDA, CDC, and Fauci the Waffler is conflicting, confusing, and often based on hunches or a desire to control behavior. Who doesn’t want to wake up from this dream?

    And here we are. Tantalizingly close to the goal of herd immunity, no one seems to know how to guide the nation smoothly back to normal. Masks up, masks down? Vaccination passports? Open all schools? Go to sports arenas again? Take vacations? Have a Fourth of July barbeque with family and friends? And many more questions remain divisive and controversial.

    For many people, what they have done -isolate as much as possible, wear masks, wash their hands, etc. all seems to have worked if they never got infected. It’s probably luck that they didn’t get infected, but it feels like all those things protected them. They are hard to give up. Especially if the virus is still out there.

    Having been in in the most vulnerable group, I certainly tried to be careful and do all the recommended defensive measures. They have become habits that I will slowly change (except wearing a mask – that has to go as soon as possible.) as it becomes more clear that the vaccines are working as advertised and the virus really is disappearing. Right now Snohomish County is just at the peak (hopefully)of its fourth wave. If things go as expected, the cases should decline from here into summer and by July 4th the county should have reached herd immunity through a combination of vaccinations and recovered cases.

    The Guv, King Jay, is saying the state may open up more fully by June15th. But he has snatched the apple away before. I hope he delivers this time.

  14. I agree with Griffin: progressive virtue signaling plays a huge role here. Some will genuinely develop OCD tendencies (or have preexisting tendencies greatly enhanced), but many others are simply carrying on with their pathological need to appear (at all times) brilliant, well-informed in all ‘science’ matters, and deeply compassionate; to follow loyally and without question, whatever the current progressive orthodoxy might be.

    Put another way: if tomorrow the muckety-mucks at the CDC announced masks were now determined to be counterproductive and even dangerous (because, SCIENCE!) for the fully vaccinated, if Saint Anthony Fauci gave a press conference concurring, if the NYTimes ran an editorial endorsing, if the vapid, unfunny gasbags of late night comedy (Kimmel, Meyers, Oliver, Noah) all parroted….the masks would all but disappear within 48 hours. Same with distancing, excessive hand washing/sanitizing, etc.

  15. Hogg will be fortunate indeed if he is cut down at all and not gibbeted. But he can keep his mask on.

  16. We’ve seen people, some are even our own relatives and loved ones, who have spent the last 12+ months in a perpetual state of fear*, on a spectrum from low-grade unease and anxiety to a level of frothing angst in which the afflicted person almost vibrates with the jitters. I can only imagine what happens to a human brain that has been marinating in adrenaline and cortisol for over a year.

    That brain is cooked, cooked like ceviche fish in vinegar and lime juice.

    *Fear of COVID, fear of people who aren’t afraid of COVID, fear of fascists, fear of Trump supporters, fear of police, fear of Russians, etc.

  17. The Venn Diagram of Neurotics and Virtue Signalers must have a considerable chunk of Intersection (no… not *that* Intersectionality, you in the back).

    We live in fairly trying times — and things are likely to get worse during the coming years. It’s going to be interesting because all of us here grew up and lived through a very rare mainly peaceful historical anomaly — so we have life-long friends and acquaintances who have never been properly tested. Nor have we, ourselves, for that matter.

    So it’s no surprise that we are now surprised and bemused by what we are seeing in some friends and acquaintances. It’s all very well when societal stress levels are low. But now, the devils come out to play.

    FWIW: The supposed Chinese curse ‘May you live in Interesting Times’ is apocryphal — and has the smell of an Oxford Common Room about it. Chinese curses tend to be very much to the point; the Orientals are not inscrutable when their blood is up.

  19. I can’t imagine being so afraid that you’d give up your entire life for a year. That you wouldn’t see family members for a year, or even longer. That you’d keep your children isolated. I’m sorry, I just cannot empathize with that level of fear. In my rational mind, I know it’s sad and I should feel bad for people who felt like they had to isolate themselves, or refrain from seeing their grandparents or grandchildren, but my first reaction is to feel contempt.

    Maybe because I know so many people who managed to stay somewhat reasonable, I don’t comprehend why everyone else had to be so nutty. I live in New York City, and I didn’t wear a mask while walking around outside, I didn’t wait for the CDC to tell me the obvious. My grandmother celebrated her 95th birthday with family last year. Nobody canceled the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s for me and my family. I met a 60-something woman who never stopped visiting her elderly mother throughout the pandemic. And after she was vaccinated in March, she didn’t wear a mask except when required by a building and didn’t expect me to wear one around her, either. Again, March, because she was using common sense, not waiting for the CDC to give her permission to do something common sense would tell her she was able to do. A lot of my family members and family friends in their 50’s and 60’s traveled, went to restaurants, and saw their relatives. A lot of them got tired of masks, restaurants not being fully open, being told that restrictions would still be in place even with the vaccines, the general fear-mongering, etc.

    BTW, I hate the “happy” videos of people getting to see their grandchildren for the first time in over a year. It’s not happy to me, it’s actually horrifying and makes me very angry.

  20. @shadow:

    “BTW, I hate the “happy” videos of people getting to see their grandchildren for the first time in over a year. It’s not happy to me, it’s actually horrifying and makes me very angry.”

    You’re right to be so.

    What also bugs me is the idea that there are people out there who think that it is desirable to make a public spectacle of their emotions.

  22. I’ve been fortunate in that I have nobody in my extended family that lived in fear like so many. Maybe because a lot of my family live in smaller towns and rural areas away from the Seattle area and in my experience that makes a big difference.

    We have basically spent the last 15 months trying to make things as normal as possible for my 90 year old mom even if that means not following the scaremongers all the time. She went to small family gatherings, in person doctor appointments, out to eat several times made short visits to various family members all before the vaccines even existed. We weren’t reckless but the fact of the matter is at her age she doesn’t have that many years left and to totally waste one of those years seemed cruel.

    Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.

  23. @Zaphod “What also bugs me is the idea that there are people out there who think that it is desirable to make a public spectacle of their emotions.”

    I absolutely hate the genre of YouTube video (and occasionally local news report) of returning soldiers surprising their children, sometimes in very public settings. Yes, it makes you misty to see them crying for joy, but what a disgusting, horrible thing to do!

    (The related genre of soldier’s dogs seeing them for the first time after a deployment are okay though. They’re dogs, not children.)

  24. For some reason, I don’t get infectious diseases. I’ve had one cold and no flu in the last fifty years. What goes wrong with me takes me to the bump shop. I did have an infectious disease specialist as a primary care doc. She and her nurse said, “We only see you when you’re hurt,” which seemed like the right thing to do.
    What at first seemed to be some kind of flu turned out to be a mitral valve thing which had to be repaired. Here’d I’d been reproaching myself for getting out of shape….
    Due to my age and other circumstances, I don’t feel particularly territorial about such time as I may have left.
    So why worry?
    I did the mitigation thing when required in stores and such like When my obligations took me to visit elderly, I masked and sanitized, because I might have been “carrying”.
    But I have seen some nutcases, such as the astoundingly common view of people driving alone while masked.
    People want to feel in control. That the world is random, that there’s nothing we can do something which might jump out of the bushes and bite us in the butt is really scary. It’s a relief to BELIEVE that something we do will allow us to control, to a certain extent, at least, our fate.
    As has been said a number of times, a real pandemic doesn’t require panicked reporting 24/7. But since few of us outside the nursing homes saw our friends dropping like flies, the kung flu was “out there”. Someplace. No place. Every place. Invisible.
    Most of our friends and such family as are nearby started taking things pretty easily early on.

    Spent last week on Cape Cod and in travels nearby. Indoors, masking was pretty universal. As the week went on, it diminished and outside was down to maybe a third of the folks, even walking on a crowded street.
    Lots of folks in Boston on the Freedom Trail and thereabouts were masked. Half the people in Norwich, CT–family origin.
    End of the week and west through MA, NY, PA, OH, and MI, fewer and fewer masks. Last rest stop near Lansing, MI, about a quarter of the folks going in and out were masked.

    You NEED to visit Plimout Plantation. The re-enactors are splendid and maintained their characters through masks.

    The guy who played Miles Standish, the colony’s hired soldier, had a neat thing. He’d ask somebody if he or she wanted to try on a period helmet. I asked–it was too small–if you could cook in the thing, which dates me. He made a very oblique reference to service.

    I gave him a reference, trying to be in character myself, that Parma, during the time of the Armada, had marked out garrisons which contained English troops. That sort of thing is immensely enjoyable…point is, the masks didn’t make a difference.

  25. Richard Aubrey:

    I’ve been to Plimouth Plantation quite a few times. Fun.

    By the way, regarding masked people riding alone in cars – I think that at least some of them are doing a bunch of nearby errands and find it more tedious to take the mask off and on, off and on, than to just leave it on for short hops in the car. I’ve done that on occasion, just for convenience.

  26. So I was a “touch” germophobe pre-COVID. I would force myself to do it, but I didn’t like shaking hands in business situations, touching public doorknobs, etc. I’d have anxiety attacks if someone I didn’t know would touch me, like tap my shoulder in public. I did all sorts of therapy, even tried hypnotism in desperation in November 2019 before I went on a 2020 New Years cruise. I still had two panic attacks on the ship, one when a total stranger slapped my back in a bar.

    Then COVID hit. You know what COVID did to me? I stopped my newspaper, went to all bills paid electronically, and quarantined what little mail I had for two days before opening it. I started wearing gloves to fill up the car.

    But I was always was, and still am, an anti-masker. What I rationally know was a hysteria worsened my touch phobia for a year, but I refused to put on a mask outside. I wore gloves to fill up my car, but rolled my eyes watching others wearing masks while filling up outside.

    That last sentence may seem strange, but a phobia is by definition irrational. It really is not about germs, but about keeping anxiety at bay. Even if your conscious says you are safe and gloves at the pump are silly, anxiety can overwhelm you, put a sense of dread in you for hours, prevent working or relaxing. So you do what you think are little things to prevent the anxiety since it is easier than having it. For me that was wearing gloves, but of course that just makes it worse in the long run since those little things you do to keep anxiety at bay keep getting bigger and bigger. Next thing you know you can’t leave the house.

    At any rate the vaccine put my mind at ease and I am back to getting a newspaper and reading my daily mail. I even touched a public door handle a few times with no issues, but the gas pump will take a little longer.

  27. @Germie:

    Much respect for your personal account and courage in dealing with this.

    Your experience of starting from a very low threshold of disgust/fear of dirt/germs and how you responded to the Great Covid Fear makes for an interesting contrast with the people who never had any prior concerns about hygiene and then went off the Deep End last year.

    The big question is why would people who prior to last year exhibited very high or non-existent disgust thresholds (Hello, Progressive Xirsons!) in all or most facets of their lives suddenly develop this over-arching Covid phobia ex nihilo?

    It’s a Puzzlement.

    https://vimeo.com/45346724

  28. I live in Manila (diplomat at the US Embassy) where we have been under masking, curfews, and lockdowns in one form or another since March of 2020. There was a presidential shoot-to-kill order in effect for a while in the beginning for anyone that caused a public disturbance at a covid checkpoint – two people were killed by police this way, and it was finally lifted. I left in May last year taking advantage of POTUS’ offer of “Authorized Departure” and worked in the US until returning to Manila 4 months later – it was even more draconian then. Masks mandated everywhere, indoor or out, and face shield over masks when indoors. This is still ongoing. At least there was some sanity at the Embassy. Then Nov 3 came, and … Biden. Now the insanity of masks all the time and everywhere is in the embassy.

    The fear among filipinos is palpable, and nearly all believe everything the media and their gov’t tell them. Nothing gets questioned, so I play the role of subversive. They certainly get nothing “counter-narrative” from any the other dips at the embassy. I work with true believers whose hatred for Trump as POTUS (and for everyone who comments at this blog) colors every decision they make. They will keep wearing masks until their St. Fauci tells them to stop. At our most recent officer’s meeting we were clearly informed that even though the entire embassy staff (Americans and local) have now gotten both Pfizer jabs (anti)-social distancing and masks would stay in effect, because … shut up.

    These people run the federal gov’t, and they fully intend on running it in perpetuity whatever must be done to do so. At least I retire soon.

  29. Courtesy of the Bee folks.
    https://notthebee.com/article/this-guys-fauci-impression-is-a

    …total scream.
    The accent is great, although the beard kind of ruins it, so maybe listen without watching.

    More from his website. He will even make a personalized message for you to send to some of your phobic friends and relations, for a fee.
    I think he could get a nice beer fund from just the folks commenting here.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nBmpHGhZ3s&list=PL6mJJGI9Nksw7R5oCjS24d3n-65cNZQ0i

  30. @Telemachus:

    “There was a presidential shoot-to-kill order in effect for a while in the beginning for anyone that caused a public disturbance at a covid checkpoint – two people were killed by police this way, and it was finally lifted. ”

    Makes a nice change from shooting people who mess up ‘My Way’ at Karaoke!

    Was talking to my long-suffering part-time Filipina maid (apparently the PC term these days is ‘Helper’) yesterday afternoon and she said that in her Whatsapp chat group, it’s constant hysteria to the extent that she (no dummy) and her similarly cognitively above-average Cebuano friend run a parallel back-channel conversation about just how how sheep-like and credulous the insanity is.

    And the bizarre thing is that the Philippines is used to Death with the Capital D. It’s everywhere… always has been… And if any race of people ever was good at just sentimentalizing a bit, rolling with the blows and then getting over them, it’s the Filipinos. So it’s just wild that this Covid thing has driven most of them bonkers. Social media has to be a big part of it, I guess…

  31. If you want to understand leftoxenomorphism:

    [Q] There is a saying among activists of the Left that “worse is better.” The more alienated and unhappy people feel, the more susceptible they are for recruitment into the revolutionary cause. For that reason leftists deliberately promote policies that they know will cause misery, suffering and chaos. [/Q]

    “Guns and Communism – Richard Poe – LewRockwell”

    https://www.lewrockwell.com/2003/11/richard-poe/guns-and-communism/

    Get this into your skull: leftoxenomorph WORK and LIVE to cause humans misery, suffering and chaos. That’s their MO.

    That’s the operative system. Their objective is to turn civilization into dystopia. Why? To rule.

    When a leftoxenomorph causes a human disaster, she didn’t fail, she succeeded.

    The covid panicdemic disaster has been a HUGE success to lefroxenomorphism. And they are in no hurry to fix it.

    I equate lefroxenomorphism to feminism in scope but much, much faster.

  32. Apparently I’m not the real deal after all. If anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be way over there, dodging Salome.

  33. “…and they fully intend on running it in perpetuity…”
    Yep.
    And they’ll be very hard to stop (since it will soon be made illegal for anyone to try)…

    But maybe the Armed Forces will step in; and while that’s a bit fanciful, I have no doubt that “Biden” fears the possibility, which is why we see things like:
    https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2492530/austin-orders-military-stand-down-to-address-challenge-of-extremism-in-the-ranks/
    and
    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/while-china-plots-war-bidens-military-goes-woke-daniel-greenfield/

    (Even the French are getting a bit antsy…
    https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2492530/austin-orders-military-stand-down-to-address-challenge-of-extremism-in-the-ranks/ )

    Maybe, just maybe, though, “Attack-from-Mars”-style RAMPANT INFLATION will do the trick. Not sure what “Biden” can do about that except blame Trump and his supporters; and that just might work, given the fact the the Corrupt Media will bang out the message 24/7.

    Which may well leave an unexpected war—hopefully not too massive—the only option left. Unfortunately, but these sorts of things tend to clear the air.

    In any event, regarding COVID and its 1001 uses…:
    https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/05/16/mikhaila-peterson-the-truth-about-covid-19.aspx

  34. “…the French…”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/60-french-police-military-say-they-will-support-le-pen-presidential-election

    Imagine that! Concerned patriots in the military and the police! (Guess that automatically makes them “fascists” pure and simple…or maybe just “Deplorable”…)

    Heh, if this is any indication of what’s happening in the US Armed Forces, it looks like Lloyd Austin really has his work cut out or him….

    (Hey, maybe “Biden” will be able to lend him to Macron for a few weeks…that is, if POTUS can remember Austin’s name…and job.)

  36. neo. My wife and I do Meals on Wheels, so I’m in and out of the car a dozen times in a couple of hours. Don’t want to frighten the clients, those who are paying attention, or anybody watching, so I mask. But I hate rebreathing what I just exhaled for good and sufficient reasons (why else would I exhale it if not to get rid of it, right?) so I unmask in the car but hang it from one ear so I don’t have to hunt for it.

    Not surprised about the dipplemats. Had a fraternity brother who maxed out every score known to man and failed his application to State. About thirty years ago, I toured Central America with a faith based group on the peace freak tour. We met with some embassy personnel. I figured that my fraternity brother’s scores were too high to qualify.

    The Filipinos….that’s an oddity. You’d think that people whose sanitation technology hasn’t caught up to the million-bodies-per-square-mile western style of urban living, and multiples for out in the country, would be used to death by invisible means. It’s one thing to freak out about having or not having control over the natural world and its threats. It’s another to go absolutely nuts about one more item you only know about because it’s on television all the time.

  37. j.j. on May 15 at 7 PMI like your post and it helps me to understand my feelings.

    You wrote about the habits/lifestyle we adopted “They are hard to give up. Especially if the virus is still out there.”

    very true. Today I find myself ordering my groceries for delivery. Before the pandemic I would never have done this. I tell myself that it is more convenient than going out to the store. Actually it takes a fair amount of effort to put together the order and make sure that it has the items I want that are available at the store and above the minimum amount. And as always there’s a risk that they don’t have the items I ordered and I do not trust them to substitute properly. But I still do it. So part is convenience and part is hiding out/self isolating.

  38. Bob,
    We ordered our groceries a couple of times during the first wave. It just didn’t work for us. We decided that it was worth the risk, and a small one, if I went to the store at a time when there were few other customers – before 9am on Tues or Wed. Just can’t beat actually picking things out from the produce section. And deciding what to substitute for a brand that’s not in stock at the moment. Hope you get back out there when you feel comfortable. The first time may be very uncomfortable, but each time gets easier.

  40. Just made a connection. Couple of weeks ago, we had some dinner guests, one of whom is a prime mush head. Her only political thought is MEAN TWEETS. Her church group read White Fragility and thinks you can’t be Christian and vote for Donald Trump.
    I was picking up the table ware to put into the dishwasher. She grabbed the knife and spoon, which she hadn’t used, because she didn’t want to have them washed unnecessarily, which would waste energy.
    What on earth is she going to DO if masks are unnecessary and people STOP WEARING THEM?

  41. Richard Aubrey, so your guest is terrified of the virus, but willing to put unused tableware touched by someone outside your household back into your kitchen drawers? How confused.

  42. Kate.
    Not confused. Exactly. Virtue signaling on one topic requires ignoring another. But…it takes the same energy to run the dishwasher with or without her knife and spoon.

  44. Well, yes, Richard Aubrey, either the sink or the dishwasher would not use “extra” energy to wash one more knife and spoon.

  47. Kate. I know it. You know it. Our guest did not. Or, if she did, she doesn’t now because she has to save energy…or something. Or maybe it was a reflex and she’s too embarrassed to admit it. But she’s not the kind who would actually catch on.
    But she will tell you what the hell is going on and what good people are required to do….

  49. }}} It’s also a political virtue signaling thing for some but I’m not sure that will last very long.

    It has become a secular religion for so many of these people.

    With any luck, it’ll replace AGW as a religion.

    That would be a GOOD THING.

    Yeah, the idiots would be somewhat debilitated. But I can get along with them paying that price for being stupid.

  50. }}} }}} David Hogg will be continuing to wear his mask lest he possibly be mistaken by anonymous strangers for a conservative.

    }}} Hogg is an unfortunate example of a youth who hasn’t been sufficiently cut down to size by people who know more (either because he’s been immersed in a matrix created by negligent adults or because he’s a self-important twit you cannot reach).

    I have noted in other places, Hogg is this decade’s Cindy Sheehan.

    He’ll get disabused of his significance soon enough. He’s well past his sell-by date.

  51. }}} I’ve had the longest stretch of avoiding colds and flus I’ve ever had in my life (although I somehow managed to contract COVID).

    There is VERY strong evidence that Covid is not particularly transmissible via contact — its dispersal mode is almost entirely via aerosol. That’s why your otherwise reasonable germophobia didn’t help much with it… you avoided contact, which DOES work with the typical flu and cold virii, but it didn’t help much with CV.

  52. }}} About thirty years ago, I toured Central America with a faith based group on the peace freak tour. We met with some embassy personnel. I figured that my fraternity brother’s scores were too high to qualify.

    The late Keith Laumer had an SF series about a character “Retief”, who was a James Bondish rogue who worked as a diplomat. He usually succeeded by being vastly smarter than pretty much all the idiots who WERE working as diplomats.

    They tend to be silly fun, not taken all that seriously.

    Laumer had a career working in diplomacy, so, pretty sure his experience indicates your assumption being spot-on, if his depiction of the profession is at all accurate, as one suspects it is.

    If this seems of any interest:
    https://www.librarything.com/nseries/13656/Retief

  53. OBloodyHell
    I liked Laumer. He did one non-Retief where every action sparked a bazillion different time lines spreading out like fans and you could cut across them. That was interesting. He managed to keep the infinity of possibilities under control for narrative purposes.

    WRT my trip south: I asked one of the dipplemats (h/t Laumer) how long they’d figured out the Nicaraguans were about to revolt, how much warning. He said a couple of days…. I figured the jarhead security guys had a better feel for it by going into town for a few drinks.

  55. All I need to know about foreign affairs politics, I learned by reading Retief.

    “Richard Aubrey, so your guest is terrified of the virus, but willing to put unused tableware touched by someone outside your household back into your kitchen drawers? How confused.” – Kate

    AesopSpouse and I had dinner recently with family. We are a very casual clan, and generally share our restaurant orders, so everyone can have more variety.
    They all came to the table masked (as did we, although they really think it protects them), but then they sampled the community dishes with the forks they had already started using.
    I tactfully substituted unused serving utensils, but still….
    Of course, they are all Democrats who don’t understand why we are Republicans.

    Required reading: where did that “5 micron” line between droplets and aerosols come from? Nobody knew until this researcher started looking.
    Bottom line: “settled science” is only settled because the scientists are too lazy to check their citations, once “everybody knows” something.

    “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.” – Reagan

    https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=wired&utm_social-type=earned

    Great catch by a concerned scientist about her own field, but she still thinks wearing masks helps protect us from viral aerosols. SMH.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

↑