I got a call this morning from my friends I used to gather with at the senior center for Saturday morning card games, more or less begging me to return, wondering if I was truly staying away because of Covid or if they had somehow managed to offend me, etc. They are all vaccinated but not wearing masks. They are also all old, most older than I. The last place I want to be while infections are peaking yet again is among some of the most vulnerable, vaccinated or not. I just explained that I need to see the infection rates go way down, that I do not want to catch even a mild case of Covid, risk 'long covid", etc. I think they understand, at least intellectually.
The guy who made the call is in his late 70s and his thinking is, I don't have too many more years left and I don't know when this is going to be over, if ever, so ... I am vaccinated and I'm going to live my life.
I told him, that is actually a rational point of view and if I had fewer years ahead of me and didn't have a child at home I might have a similar calculus at some point, but I'm not there yet.
My wife's friends are gathering (outdoors, but maskless) for a picnic and contact sports and she is sitting that out as well. It is not that this activity is in itself terribly risky (at least it's outdoors, unlike my guy's group) but that the various individuals involved are very lax in the rest of their lives. One visited a sister in NYC who is a semi-retired nurse who inexplicably refuses to mask, and she hasn't quarantined after the visit. Many of them eat out, with minimal precautions. Many have children at in-person school in some form or other. All it takes is for one of those to get infected and spread it around. No thanks.
While I don't live in a part of the country that's full of maskholes and Trumptards, even here, people just can't maintain the discipline to be inconvenienced one minute longer. And those who might prefer to, are being forced back to in-person jobs, and enduring peer pressure like these invitations to be carelessness. Heck, if I had school-age children coming home every day from whatever exposure they had, I might say "fuck it" myself. It's a kind of dark cynicism that seems to be settling in. Last-stage capitalism has a way of getting people to just give up in the interest of "bringing the economy back", too.
The guy who made the call is in his late 70s and his thinking is, I don't have too many more years left and I don't know when this is going to be over, if ever, so ... I am vaccinated and I'm going to live my life.
I told him, that is actually a rational point of view and if I had fewer years ahead of me and didn't have a child at home I might have a similar calculus at some point, but I'm not there yet.
My wife's friends are gathering (outdoors, but maskless) for a picnic and contact sports and she is sitting that out as well. It is not that this activity is in itself terribly risky (at least it's outdoors, unlike my guy's group) but that the various individuals involved are very lax in the rest of their lives. One visited a sister in NYC who is a semi-retired nurse who inexplicably refuses to mask, and she hasn't quarantined after the visit. Many of them eat out, with minimal precautions. Many have children at in-person school in some form or other. All it takes is for one of those to get infected and spread it around. No thanks.
While I don't live in a part of the country that's full of maskholes and Trumptards, even here, people just can't maintain the discipline to be inconvenienced one minute longer. And those who might prefer to, are being forced back to in-person jobs, and enduring peer pressure like these invitations to be carelessness. Heck, if I had school-age children coming home every day from whatever exposure they had, I might say "fuck it" myself. It's a kind of dark cynicism that seems to be settling in. Last-stage capitalism has a way of getting people to just give up in the interest of "bringing the economy back", too.
