I’ve been flip-flopping between that tendency to believe people just need to be more informed and feeling hopeless because of the societal systems in place that keep us in these nightmare situations.
Thanks for sharing—I like the way this was distilled.
I have had Black Lives Matter signs in my yard for over 10 years.
Last year, my sister killed herself cause a window that should have been locked, wasn’t. Her Black
Life did not matter.
My first cousin, 1 of 8 that I have, died of a fentanyl overdose in the tent that he was living in, in Nevada.
His Black life did not matter.
Really, in the USA, what I have finally accepted, is that no life matters. Not Herman Cain’s, not Colin Powells, not Trump’s billionaire friend, not the priest who went to Trump’s outdoor party, not the baby from Wisconsin who died from
RSV, not the pregnant Native American incarcerated, not all of the prison inmates dying from heat, or from sepsis, or from
Covid.
No. Life. Matters.
For some
Reason,
White Americans do
Believe that their white life matters. That their children’s lives matter. So there is no way that covid could be that bad. The government would not let their child die from an airborne virus that can attack the kidneys directly. Can cause cirrhosis of the liver. Thus-
People do not need more information about sarscov2 and all the ways it can kill human beings. We know that it kills in the short term. If you want to know all the damage sarscov2 does in the long run, there are thousands of scientific papers online going back to 2020. If you want to know, if you have internet access, have sight, and read English at an 8th grade level, it takes 5 minutes to find out all the ways that sarscov2 damages the human body.
I worked in state public health 2019-21. Leaders could not understand why they got death threats for wanting to save people from themselves. By requiring a cloth mask instead of making and giving everyone a n95 mask that works. By closing bars for a minute. By telling kids to wear masks to play hockey.
People don’t want to be saved from themselves. They want to protect their sense of self at all costs. Even at the cost of their own life, their children’s lives, their family’s lives. The leadership of the health department was also surprised that they weren’t the top state in saving lives. They were mediocre. They didn’t understand the state demographics nor did they understand how people living in rural areas would respond.
People will let their children die, rather than move away from toxic air or water. People will vote to have their social security taken away, to protect their racist views. Humans are predictably irrational. We lie to ourselves that we make rational and logical decisions, when we don’t.
My spouse lied to himself that he would not get Covid by playing pickle ball indoors in Dec 22. I begged him not to go. I begged him to wear a kn95 mask. I lied to myself that my spouse wore a mask and that it would be safe to sleep in our shared bed.
Our lies to ourselves have cost my health, my job, and ~$200,000 and counting. I had sepsis last summer, and am lucky to have survived with little damage.
The next time that I thought my spouse had covid when he said it was his asthma, I slept in another room. He had to wear a mask in the house and the air cleaners were on full blast. Of course he had covid. I didn’t get it this time.
Is Covid causing all new cancers? Of course not.
Sarscov2 is causing:
More still births
More congenital defects
More premature births (many don’t survive)
More maternal deaths
More cancers and more blood cancers
More deaths from flu, rsv, and other diseases
More cardiac arrests
More TIA’s
More strokes
More depression (inability to make serotonin)
More suicides, more murder/suicides
More cases of sepsis
Etc
Etc
Etc
And remember, my life doesn’t matter- and yours doesn’t either.
I am depressed. Even with the 3 serotonin reuptake inhibitors that I take for long covid.
We Executed our 14 year old
Pomeranian on Sept 9 and 2 days ago, we had to execute my favorite dog
Of this century. She was only 9. She had cancer, that had spread to her lungs. She couldn’t lie down. She could not settle herself, even with drugs.
The house is empty without the 2 dogs. They were demanding and barked and snuffed and made their demands known all day and all night long if necessary.
We never have enough time with our dogs.
We have a new puppy and a 6 year old dog, who is the daughter of the one we executed on Weds. They are quiet. And are happy to be with each other.
I know that we are lucky to have dogs and to be able to let them go before they die painful traumatic deaths. Knowing this doesn’t make it easier. I never thought we would lose our 2 most interesting dogs within 30 days of each other. But we did.
I am the caregiver and I am lost without them. I am heartbroken.
Theresa, I feel for you so 💔💔 No magical words of wisdom or solace to share, just that a stranger on the internet is thinking of you in this incredibly difficult time. And these words were the perfect distillation and contribution to Nate’s original analysis: “People don’t want to be saved from themselves. They want to protect their sense of self at all costs.” Thank you for taking the time to thoughtfully comment.
Thank you for this Nate - it was such an important look at what is steering the ship (and where and how things went wrong).
The idea that the information doesn’t matter is one I have to remember - because I often fall into the trap of thinking if I can just get the right study in front of a person everything will change.
I should know better - I adopted a vegan lifestyle over a decade ago and in that time have shifted the beliefs and dietary habits of exactly zero people (and been ostracized by far more than zero). The information didn’t matter. And they wanted me to just shut up about it.
This is a piece I’m going to have to read again after I’ve had more sleep - but I wanted to comment because I so appreciate your voice!
The rich and powerful used their wealth and influence to ensure their flow of profits were not interrupted by anything as irrelevant as public health.
We are the ones who do the work though.
So this mass disabling event remains worrying for sections at the top of society.
This is why the business media are more concerned about Long Covid (and other post Covid problems) than the mass media. It's also why there's 5 billion dollars for next generation vaccines and at the same time the mass of the population thinks the current vaccines have done the job.
The ruling class can fool most of the people most of the time.
Brilliant. I'm interested in how this relates to the (liberal) idea that we are living in a 'post truth' world in which the likes of Trump have changed the game by spouting deranged lies to the public. I'm sceptical that there's anything qualitatively different about the lies told by Trump, his untruths are (to an audience outside his base) just more blatant and farcical. People who believe you should inject bleach into your veins or that Hurricane Milton was generated by AI were always going to believe some batshit crazy things. The system was always based on a lie, the war on terror was a lie and so is the claim of Israeli victimhood - these lies aren't any less damaging than Trump's. Clearly something has changed with Trump, and I'm left wondering what that is. I suspect it's connected to liberal ideas of decorum but maybe Project 2025 will prove me wrong.
I think this is right. I don't think Trump changed the game. The internet helped change the tools used to play the game and he then used these tools to play the game in a slightly different way to effect the same outcome: winning power. He was also a political outsider running, nominally at least, against the elites. Beating a Bush and then a Clinton was easy, no lies required.
Very interesting piece in terms of how you highlight how societal behaviour is the issue. But without adequately looking at the main mechanisms that influence societal behaviour. Political pressure and a dominant right wing media are the majority factors that also influenced the thinking of public health. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Perfect example of this: I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons why in the UK that they didn't advocate for use of ffp 2 and ffp3 masks, and instead encourage people to wear 'face coverings' - this was due to knowledge that if the public tried to buy high quality masks, it would have impacted the lack of supply into hospitals and healthcare. Most likely they made that decision initially because of a supply chain problem but also a cost problem because for an airborne virus for those of low income or no income, it is the states responsibility to provide protective equipment to enable the economy to still function. It's obvious to me that the airborne angle was not pushed partly due to political reasons linked to economic reasons which fed back into the group think of public health. So it's not a 'societal' mechanism, it's incompetence and an inability to admit responsibility for serious and grave errors.
Well written, I am very appreciative of your analysis. The only thing I would add is that technology is moving at a faster pace than the human mind can integrate. This is what is strikingly different in this historical moment. I agree with others who have noted we are an irrational species, but I would add we have a high degree of adaptability. I think that may be why we tend to underestimate real threats. Civilizations have risen and fallen over the last 10,000 years (often in response to climate change and disease). Climate change will take millions of lives, but we are 8 billion plus living on the planet. I worry about me and mine due to the politics of the moment, covid, etc. etc. But in geological time, it is likely the human race will adapt and survive…until an asteroid gets us.
"As if rationality (as determined by information) has always been the default setting. As if the singular thing that can explain bad things, things of which I have rarely experienced, must be bad information! Must be viral host manipulation!"
When, in fact, there's a whole subset of social science research that shows just exactly how *irrational* people are when it comes to planning. We don't actually plan for how bad things are actually expected to be, even in terms of normal, everyday events. We actively underestimate negative circumstances on a regular basis, even when we consciously TRY to take that bias into account. I'm not personally very good at worrying, as I think it's an unproductive waste of energy, so instead I actively put some time in my calendar on a regular basis to brainstorm things-that-could-go-wrong, plan for what I would do if that actually happened -and write out those plans and keep them all in the same place so I don't keep brainstorming the same circumstance over and over- and beyond that, I just have actual basic preparations for the ones I think are the most likely and plausible, some preparations for the ones that are less plausible but easy enough to do the beginning prep for and keep on hand, and in the meantime, have a decent savings that will help with any contingency. None of that seems to help my husband, the actual worrier in the family, who when I point to the savings account when he talks about his worries, says he doesn't WANT to have to spend the savings because that's *savings*. ::confused look:: But it would be because something went wrong, and that's what we're saving for?? That account isn't for retirement, that's what the *retirement* account is for, if on some weird circumstance, the economy is still whole and everything is still okay in 15 years and I actually *retire* when I'm 70 and that account is still there...
But all of that is because I'm autistic and *weird*. And I know it. That's not normal for humans and science shows it. Humans are NOT rational beings. (I'm weird, but even I'm not rational. I can't deal with how bad society is right now and where we're headed on a consistent basis. I take it out, look at it seriously, plan for it, in SMALL DOSES, and then I put it away and STOP THINKING ABOUT IT most of the time, because I can't honestly live that way. (This doesn't mean I'm not wearing my N95 mask 100% of the time when I go to my work conference next month. I'm not *that* irrational. I've only had COVID *once* this entire time and I DON'T WANT IT AGAIN. I COULDN'T THINK FOR FOUR MONTHS and while the brain fog did clear (it was pretty distinctive the way I woke up one day and it was just GONE) I'm pretty sure my brain works differently than it did before. I didn't used to have this constant *monologue* in my head like I do now. I can't put myself to sleep like I used to by writing character backstories in my head and running a new character through their introduction to a universe, because the monologue in my head keeps interrupting the play, essentially, that I used to be able to just *watch*. It's very different and I don't like the fact that my brain doesn't work the same way that it used to. It's autistic hell. It's also made my job a lot harder. Two years later and I still can't do my work as quickly as I used to. And I fucking ramble a LOT more than I used to, as can be seen by this post. It's REALLY hard for me to keep on topic so I have to spend a lot of time going back and editing my emails, but I'm not going to edit this post because it shows my problem. UGH. I normally edit my comments and posts to blogs but this is really telling. Stupid brain.)
No, I was talking about humans not being rational when it comes to planning. There really is a huge amount of research into how humans, even when shown what to expect in terms of what percentage of things will go right and wrong, will still plan for more things to go right for them than is statistically normal. We do NOT plan for things to go wrong, even when we think we do. Even the most pessimistic of us tend to plan for *less* things to go wrong than really do.
Good stuff, great to see it as part of the zeitgeist. I've been reading some of the philosophy of epistemology and the idea of what is true for humans is an interactive thing, not a solo pursuit. We work together and compete between to co-create human knowledge. What you write about here applied before the SARS pandemic and to more than pandemics. I'd say the pandemic exposed the way humans create truth more than broke it. I believe knowing how truth is created is helpful to finding our way.
I think this video by Ed Yong about his experience in reporting on the pandemic, especially long covid, is worth the half hour it takes to watch it.
I was going to sit here and write that the main difference between calling medical providers heroes and clapping for them versus treating them as disposable would be the different administrations, and the current one is supposed to be the good guy or at least the lesser evil.
But then I reminded myself that you’re talking about the UK, But I’m still gonna go ahead and blame the Biden administration for this. The US has been trying to normalize Covid since the beginning. Maybe the UK was doing it first but I’m still gonna go ahead and blame Biden for this.
Not one administration would have done anything differently.
The billionaires (the kings) dictate how we serfs (the wretches) should be treated.
We need more health care workers. Free training. Bonuses to spend time in rural areas. Loan forgiveness. More
Schools…
The health care worker shortage could be solved- but the billionaires don’t want it to be solved.
Covid could have been stopped. But that’s not what the billionaires wanted.
This country was founded on slavery and designed to keep slavery in place in perpetuity.
We slaves or serfs or wretches, sell our lives away to have the essentials to live. Mostly white people get to retire and get social security at 67. American Indians are dead at age 65. Black people are dead at age 67.
So on average- I have 6 more years to live. 6. Not 26. 6. Oh- and I won’t get social security- cause I won’t live long enough.
Project 2025 solves the worker shortage by raising the social security age to 69.
This is absolutely brilliant and much needed. I’ve spent a long time thinking “if only people knew” but you are right they don’t want to know, and even if they do they believe that they can’t change their behaviours anyway unless forced to do it. Covid should have been the death of our current capitalist system, I still think it will die but it will be a slow drawn out death rather than the short sharp one it could have been
Thanks Nate, you made several interesting points. Maybe this recent article will help:
"None of us want our families & friends to be deceived & harmed anymore than they already have. If you know anyone who needs a strong dose of highly effective Love & Truth, this will help them...":
Yes, no amount of information, or facts will “save” people actively drowning who physically attack lifeguards trying to save them.
COVID forced the inhumane & infantile to finally experience the inhumanities of capitalism they almost always were able to paper over, while forcing others whom they view as beneath them to shoulder, which made them mythologize that they deserve to forever be sheltered from those same inhumanities.
This is what broke them, and why they are willing to sacrifice everyone and everything in an inhumane infantile delusional violent destructive death cult temper tantrum
This is how Trump convinced republicans to drop Covid safety - only liberals mask!
This is how Biden convinced liberals to drop Covid safety - only disabled people need to mask!
Discomfort is the root of education, growth, change, revolution, adaptability & empathy, thus those who lived sheltered from almost all discomfort stagnated never growing into mature empathy filled humane people.
Believing that finding the right words phrase information or magic word to defeat evil (like in Harry Potter) is a childish liberal fantasy.
“Are you going to wear your mask forever?” “You have to live your life!” Etc, are all cult like thought terminating cliches they are chanting to comfort themselves with.
So what do we do?
I’ve stopped wasting my time and energy on former loved ones who actively lie to me, and actively try to harm me. Thats abuse. I’ve grieved their loss and have connected with fellow humane people who are trying to build a Covid safe humane community that we might not enjoy the benefits of, or even our kids but hopefully our grandchildren’s generation might.
I’m done placating and coddling the inhumane and entitled, are you?
When Covid appeared, the thought that this virus is bad so its spread must be curtailed did not win the hearts and minds of our leaders. There were halfhearted half assed lockdowns with too little income support.
Why? Because we cannot be supported while our government funds bombs dropped on Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and in the fullness of time, Iran. Because Ukraine must march on Moscow at our government's behest or die trying. Success! Ukrainians are dying.
Flagging a non sterilizing vaccine as a 'tool' was the betrayal of the concept of public health.
I know where this all ends for me personally -- my ashes. But the end has not arrived in over seven decades. With the studies documenting how Covid ravages one's immune system, for those younger, ashes to ashes, dust to dust may take less time to achieve.
Yes. We are doomed. My father, who died 20 years ago from lung cancer at the age of 60, always thought he was the smartest person in the room. He had me read the Marching Morons (yes, that is the title) by C.M. Kornbluth, when I was 11 years old. I have read the problematic story many times. My dad also had me read Atlas Shrugged when I was 14. My father was very liberal, except when it came to stupid people. As a second generation refugee from the Russian Pogroms, it was odd that he advocated for the genocide of stupid people.
Anyway, between the destruction of the planet, famine, sarscov2, bird flu, etc., humans are facing mass extinction. And all of us will suffer, smart and “stupid.”
I completely empathize. There was a lot of dark money (combined with egomaniacal tendencies) behind the so-called "anti-vax, anti-lock down" 'left' influencers.
"Experts did oversell vaccines, vaccine passes were nonsensical, the media did flip from crisis to normality at a dizzying speed, people will still give you covid and long covid! But government lockdowns also saved millions of lives, vaccines saved millions, and not everyone at all times will give you covid and long covid! Covid caused a record drop in life expectancy but governments stopped accurately recording infection levels!"
And the science behind the RNA vaccines really IS still in its infancy and there really *isn't* enough data to know how safe they really are and any reports about adverse effects are getting swallowed up by COVID itself because correlation is not causation and you it's really effin' difficult to *prove* causation when you have numbers this big of how many people have had the vaccine, multiple shots, but have also had the virus itself, one or even multiple times, and they both cause some of the same problems - or at least people are claiming they both cause the same things, as there's not much proof. We can *mostly* prove (or at least highly link together) that COVID causes the brain problems and the heart problems...but there's also a pretty high link for the vaccine causing some of the same things in many people who actually haven't had the virus itself, especially the heart problems rather than the brain problems. But they're not accurately recording either one to connect the issues, it's just researchers pulling together the data and making correlations. (But anyone who makes correlations to the vaccines gets shouted down regardless of their data.)
This was helpful, Nate!
I’ve been flip-flopping between that tendency to believe people just need to be more informed and feeling hopeless because of the societal systems in place that keep us in these nightmare situations.
Thanks for sharing—I like the way this was distilled.
I have had Black Lives Matter signs in my yard for over 10 years.
Last year, my sister killed herself cause a window that should have been locked, wasn’t. Her Black
Life did not matter.
My first cousin, 1 of 8 that I have, died of a fentanyl overdose in the tent that he was living in, in Nevada.
His Black life did not matter.
Really, in the USA, what I have finally accepted, is that no life matters. Not Herman Cain’s, not Colin Powells, not Trump’s billionaire friend, not the priest who went to Trump’s outdoor party, not the baby from Wisconsin who died from
RSV, not the pregnant Native American incarcerated, not all of the prison inmates dying from heat, or from sepsis, or from
Covid.
No. Life. Matters.
For some
Reason,
White Americans do
Believe that their white life matters. That their children’s lives matter. So there is no way that covid could be that bad. The government would not let their child die from an airborne virus that can attack the kidneys directly. Can cause cirrhosis of the liver. Thus-
People do not need more information about sarscov2 and all the ways it can kill human beings. We know that it kills in the short term. If you want to know all the damage sarscov2 does in the long run, there are thousands of scientific papers online going back to 2020. If you want to know, if you have internet access, have sight, and read English at an 8th grade level, it takes 5 minutes to find out all the ways that sarscov2 damages the human body.
I worked in state public health 2019-21. Leaders could not understand why they got death threats for wanting to save people from themselves. By requiring a cloth mask instead of making and giving everyone a n95 mask that works. By closing bars for a minute. By telling kids to wear masks to play hockey.
People don’t want to be saved from themselves. They want to protect their sense of self at all costs. Even at the cost of their own life, their children’s lives, their family’s lives. The leadership of the health department was also surprised that they weren’t the top state in saving lives. They were mediocre. They didn’t understand the state demographics nor did they understand how people living in rural areas would respond.
People will let their children die, rather than move away from toxic air or water. People will vote to have their social security taken away, to protect their racist views. Humans are predictably irrational. We lie to ourselves that we make rational and logical decisions, when we don’t.
My spouse lied to himself that he would not get Covid by playing pickle ball indoors in Dec 22. I begged him not to go. I begged him to wear a kn95 mask. I lied to myself that my spouse wore a mask and that it would be safe to sleep in our shared bed.
Our lies to ourselves have cost my health, my job, and ~$200,000 and counting. I had sepsis last summer, and am lucky to have survived with little damage.
The next time that I thought my spouse had covid when he said it was his asthma, I slept in another room. He had to wear a mask in the house and the air cleaners were on full blast. Of course he had covid. I didn’t get it this time.
Is Covid causing all new cancers? Of course not.
Sarscov2 is causing:
More still births
More congenital defects
More premature births (many don’t survive)
More maternal deaths
More cancers and more blood cancers
More deaths from flu, rsv, and other diseases
More cardiac arrests
More TIA’s
More strokes
More depression (inability to make serotonin)
More suicides, more murder/suicides
More cases of sepsis
Etc
Etc
Etc
And remember, my life doesn’t matter- and yours doesn’t either.
I am depressed. Even with the 3 serotonin reuptake inhibitors that I take for long covid.
We Executed our 14 year old
Pomeranian on Sept 9 and 2 days ago, we had to execute my favorite dog
Of this century. She was only 9. She had cancer, that had spread to her lungs. She couldn’t lie down. She could not settle herself, even with drugs.
The house is empty without the 2 dogs. They were demanding and barked and snuffed and made their demands known all day and all night long if necessary.
We never have enough time with our dogs.
We have a new puppy and a 6 year old dog, who is the daughter of the one we executed on Weds. They are quiet. And are happy to be with each other.
I know that we are lucky to have dogs and to be able to let them go before they die painful traumatic deaths. Knowing this doesn’t make it easier. I never thought we would lose our 2 most interesting dogs within 30 days of each other. But we did.
I am the caregiver and I am lost without them. I am heartbroken.
Theresa, I feel for you so 💔💔 No magical words of wisdom or solace to share, just that a stranger on the internet is thinking of you in this incredibly difficult time. And these words were the perfect distillation and contribution to Nate’s original analysis: “People don’t want to be saved from themselves. They want to protect their sense of self at all costs.” Thank you for taking the time to thoughtfully comment.
Thanks Jack, glad you liked it
Thank you for this Nate - it was such an important look at what is steering the ship (and where and how things went wrong).
The idea that the information doesn’t matter is one I have to remember - because I often fall into the trap of thinking if I can just get the right study in front of a person everything will change.
I should know better - I adopted a vegan lifestyle over a decade ago and in that time have shifted the beliefs and dietary habits of exactly zero people (and been ostracized by far more than zero). The information didn’t matter. And they wanted me to just shut up about it.
This is a piece I’m going to have to read again after I’ve had more sleep - but I wanted to comment because I so appreciate your voice!
That's lovely of you to say thank you
Great analysis!
The rich and powerful used their wealth and influence to ensure their flow of profits were not interrupted by anything as irrelevant as public health.
We are the ones who do the work though.
So this mass disabling event remains worrying for sections at the top of society.
This is why the business media are more concerned about Long Covid (and other post Covid problems) than the mass media. It's also why there's 5 billion dollars for next generation vaccines and at the same time the mass of the population thinks the current vaccines have done the job.
The ruling class can fool most of the people most of the time.
Brilliant. I'm interested in how this relates to the (liberal) idea that we are living in a 'post truth' world in which the likes of Trump have changed the game by spouting deranged lies to the public. I'm sceptical that there's anything qualitatively different about the lies told by Trump, his untruths are (to an audience outside his base) just more blatant and farcical. People who believe you should inject bleach into your veins or that Hurricane Milton was generated by AI were always going to believe some batshit crazy things. The system was always based on a lie, the war on terror was a lie and so is the claim of Israeli victimhood - these lies aren't any less damaging than Trump's. Clearly something has changed with Trump, and I'm left wondering what that is. I suspect it's connected to liberal ideas of decorum but maybe Project 2025 will prove me wrong.
I think this is right. I don't think Trump changed the game. The internet helped change the tools used to play the game and he then used these tools to play the game in a slightly different way to effect the same outcome: winning power. He was also a political outsider running, nominally at least, against the elites. Beating a Bush and then a Clinton was easy, no lies required.
Very interesting piece in terms of how you highlight how societal behaviour is the issue. But without adequately looking at the main mechanisms that influence societal behaviour. Political pressure and a dominant right wing media are the majority factors that also influenced the thinking of public health. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Perfect example of this: I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons why in the UK that they didn't advocate for use of ffp 2 and ffp3 masks, and instead encourage people to wear 'face coverings' - this was due to knowledge that if the public tried to buy high quality masks, it would have impacted the lack of supply into hospitals and healthcare. Most likely they made that decision initially because of a supply chain problem but also a cost problem because for an airborne virus for those of low income or no income, it is the states responsibility to provide protective equipment to enable the economy to still function. It's obvious to me that the airborne angle was not pushed partly due to political reasons linked to economic reasons which fed back into the group think of public health. So it's not a 'societal' mechanism, it's incompetence and an inability to admit responsibility for serious and grave errors.
Well written, I am very appreciative of your analysis. The only thing I would add is that technology is moving at a faster pace than the human mind can integrate. This is what is strikingly different in this historical moment. I agree with others who have noted we are an irrational species, but I would add we have a high degree of adaptability. I think that may be why we tend to underestimate real threats. Civilizations have risen and fallen over the last 10,000 years (often in response to climate change and disease). Climate change will take millions of lives, but we are 8 billion plus living on the planet. I worry about me and mine due to the politics of the moment, covid, etc. etc. But in geological time, it is likely the human race will adapt and survive…until an asteroid gets us.
Hyper novelty, too fast for our brains and bodies to evolve. Brett Weinstein has some great talks on this
"As if rationality (as determined by information) has always been the default setting. As if the singular thing that can explain bad things, things of which I have rarely experienced, must be bad information! Must be viral host manipulation!"
When, in fact, there's a whole subset of social science research that shows just exactly how *irrational* people are when it comes to planning. We don't actually plan for how bad things are actually expected to be, even in terms of normal, everyday events. We actively underestimate negative circumstances on a regular basis, even when we consciously TRY to take that bias into account. I'm not personally very good at worrying, as I think it's an unproductive waste of energy, so instead I actively put some time in my calendar on a regular basis to brainstorm things-that-could-go-wrong, plan for what I would do if that actually happened -and write out those plans and keep them all in the same place so I don't keep brainstorming the same circumstance over and over- and beyond that, I just have actual basic preparations for the ones I think are the most likely and plausible, some preparations for the ones that are less plausible but easy enough to do the beginning prep for and keep on hand, and in the meantime, have a decent savings that will help with any contingency. None of that seems to help my husband, the actual worrier in the family, who when I point to the savings account when he talks about his worries, says he doesn't WANT to have to spend the savings because that's *savings*. ::confused look:: But it would be because something went wrong, and that's what we're saving for?? That account isn't for retirement, that's what the *retirement* account is for, if on some weird circumstance, the economy is still whole and everything is still okay in 15 years and I actually *retire* when I'm 70 and that account is still there...
But all of that is because I'm autistic and *weird*. And I know it. That's not normal for humans and science shows it. Humans are NOT rational beings. (I'm weird, but even I'm not rational. I can't deal with how bad society is right now and where we're headed on a consistent basis. I take it out, look at it seriously, plan for it, in SMALL DOSES, and then I put it away and STOP THINKING ABOUT IT most of the time, because I can't honestly live that way. (This doesn't mean I'm not wearing my N95 mask 100% of the time when I go to my work conference next month. I'm not *that* irrational. I've only had COVID *once* this entire time and I DON'T WANT IT AGAIN. I COULDN'T THINK FOR FOUR MONTHS and while the brain fog did clear (it was pretty distinctive the way I woke up one day and it was just GONE) I'm pretty sure my brain works differently than it did before. I didn't used to have this constant *monologue* in my head like I do now. I can't put myself to sleep like I used to by writing character backstories in my head and running a new character through their introduction to a universe, because the monologue in my head keeps interrupting the play, essentially, that I used to be able to just *watch*. It's very different and I don't like the fact that my brain doesn't work the same way that it used to. It's autistic hell. It's also made my job a lot harder. Two years later and I still can't do my work as quickly as I used to. And I fucking ramble a LOT more than I used to, as can be seen by this post. It's REALLY hard for me to keep on topic so I have to spend a lot of time going back and editing my emails, but I'm not going to edit this post because it shows my problem. UGH. I normally edit my comments and posts to blogs but this is really telling. Stupid brain.)
No, I was talking about humans not being rational when it comes to planning. There really is a huge amount of research into how humans, even when shown what to expect in terms of what percentage of things will go right and wrong, will still plan for more things to go right for them than is statistically normal. We do NOT plan for things to go wrong, even when we think we do. Even the most pessimistic of us tend to plan for *less* things to go wrong than really do.
Good stuff, great to see it as part of the zeitgeist. I've been reading some of the philosophy of epistemology and the idea of what is true for humans is an interactive thing, not a solo pursuit. We work together and compete between to co-create human knowledge. What you write about here applied before the SARS pandemic and to more than pandemics. I'd say the pandemic exposed the way humans create truth more than broke it. I believe knowing how truth is created is helpful to finding our way.
I think this video by Ed Yong about his experience in reporting on the pandemic, especially long covid, is worth the half hour it takes to watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddy5uMdzZB8
I was going to sit here and write that the main difference between calling medical providers heroes and clapping for them versus treating them as disposable would be the different administrations, and the current one is supposed to be the good guy or at least the lesser evil.
But then I reminded myself that you’re talking about the UK, But I’m still gonna go ahead and blame the Biden administration for this. The US has been trying to normalize Covid since the beginning. Maybe the UK was doing it first but I’m still gonna go ahead and blame Biden for this.
Biden, Harris, Obama, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan…
Not one administration would have done anything differently.
The billionaires (the kings) dictate how we serfs (the wretches) should be treated.
We need more health care workers. Free training. Bonuses to spend time in rural areas. Loan forgiveness. More
Schools…
The health care worker shortage could be solved- but the billionaires don’t want it to be solved.
Covid could have been stopped. But that’s not what the billionaires wanted.
This country was founded on slavery and designed to keep slavery in place in perpetuity.
We slaves or serfs or wretches, sell our lives away to have the essentials to live. Mostly white people get to retire and get social security at 67. American Indians are dead at age 65. Black people are dead at age 67.
So on average- I have 6 more years to live. 6. Not 26. 6. Oh- and I won’t get social security- cause I won’t live long enough.
Project 2025 solves the worker shortage by raising the social security age to 69.
https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/what-is-driving-widening-racial-disparities-in-life-expectancy/
This is absolutely brilliant and much needed. I’ve spent a long time thinking “if only people knew” but you are right they don’t want to know, and even if they do they believe that they can’t change their behaviours anyway unless forced to do it. Covid should have been the death of our current capitalist system, I still think it will die but it will be a slow drawn out death rather than the short sharp one it could have been
Thanks Nate, you made several interesting points. Maybe this recent article will help:
"None of us want our families & friends to be deceived & harmed anymore than they already have. If you know anyone who needs a strong dose of highly effective Love & Truth, this will help them...":
https://supersonicuniversal.substack.com/p/powerful-quotes-for-the-covid-compliant
Yes, no amount of information, or facts will “save” people actively drowning who physically attack lifeguards trying to save them.
COVID forced the inhumane & infantile to finally experience the inhumanities of capitalism they almost always were able to paper over, while forcing others whom they view as beneath them to shoulder, which made them mythologize that they deserve to forever be sheltered from those same inhumanities.
This is what broke them, and why they are willing to sacrifice everyone and everything in an inhumane infantile delusional violent destructive death cult temper tantrum
This is how Trump convinced republicans to drop Covid safety - only liberals mask!
This is how Biden convinced liberals to drop Covid safety - only disabled people need to mask!
Discomfort is the root of education, growth, change, revolution, adaptability & empathy, thus those who lived sheltered from almost all discomfort stagnated never growing into mature empathy filled humane people.
Believing that finding the right words phrase information or magic word to defeat evil (like in Harry Potter) is a childish liberal fantasy.
“Are you going to wear your mask forever?” “You have to live your life!” Etc, are all cult like thought terminating cliches they are chanting to comfort themselves with.
So what do we do?
I’ve stopped wasting my time and energy on former loved ones who actively lie to me, and actively try to harm me. Thats abuse. I’ve grieved their loss and have connected with fellow humane people who are trying to build a Covid safe humane community that we might not enjoy the benefits of, or even our kids but hopefully our grandchildren’s generation might.
I’m done placating and coddling the inhumane and entitled, are you?
Well said!!
When Covid appeared, the thought that this virus is bad so its spread must be curtailed did not win the hearts and minds of our leaders. There were halfhearted half assed lockdowns with too little income support.
Why? Because we cannot be supported while our government funds bombs dropped on Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and in the fullness of time, Iran. Because Ukraine must march on Moscow at our government's behest or die trying. Success! Ukrainians are dying.
Flagging a non sterilizing vaccine as a 'tool' was the betrayal of the concept of public health.
I know where this all ends for me personally -- my ashes. But the end has not arrived in over seven decades. With the studies documenting how Covid ravages one's immune system, for those younger, ashes to ashes, dust to dust may take less time to achieve.
A nice nuclear exchange can make my remarks moot.
It'd all too complicated. You're lost in providing us with information about why information doesn't change behavior.
Well written
Lot of thought went into it
Full of information
It doesn't matter
Here's the truth; people are emotionally driven and most of us are of low intelligence.
Add those two things and you get people doing what is easiest and most pleasant in the current moment.
This will never change because that's how we are wired.
Face it
We are doomed . . .
Haha, thanks Ric. Entirely possible
Yes. We are doomed. My father, who died 20 years ago from lung cancer at the age of 60, always thought he was the smartest person in the room. He had me read the Marching Morons (yes, that is the title) by C.M. Kornbluth, when I was 11 years old. I have read the problematic story many times. My dad also had me read Atlas Shrugged when I was 14. My father was very liberal, except when it came to stupid people. As a second generation refugee from the Russian Pogroms, it was odd that he advocated for the genocide of stupid people.
Anyway, between the destruction of the planet, famine, sarscov2, bird flu, etc., humans are facing mass extinction. And all of us will suffer, smart and “stupid.”
Ps- covid is making all of us stupider. 🤦🏽♀️
I completely empathize. There was a lot of dark money (combined with egomaniacal tendencies) behind the so-called "anti-vax, anti-lock down" 'left' influencers.
"Experts did oversell vaccines, vaccine passes were nonsensical, the media did flip from crisis to normality at a dizzying speed, people will still give you covid and long covid! But government lockdowns also saved millions of lives, vaccines saved millions, and not everyone at all times will give you covid and long covid! Covid caused a record drop in life expectancy but governments stopped accurately recording infection levels!"
And the science behind the RNA vaccines really IS still in its infancy and there really *isn't* enough data to know how safe they really are and any reports about adverse effects are getting swallowed up by COVID itself because correlation is not causation and you it's really effin' difficult to *prove* causation when you have numbers this big of how many people have had the vaccine, multiple shots, but have also had the virus itself, one or even multiple times, and they both cause some of the same problems - or at least people are claiming they both cause the same things, as there's not much proof. We can *mostly* prove (or at least highly link together) that COVID causes the brain problems and the heart problems...but there's also a pretty high link for the vaccine causing some of the same things in many people who actually haven't had the virus itself, especially the heart problems rather than the brain problems. But they're not accurately recording either one to connect the issues, it's just researchers pulling together the data and making correlations. (But anyone who makes correlations to the vaccines gets shouted down regardless of their data.)