We're really struggling to let go of our old familiar lives and realize we have to life differently from now on in order to keep going.
It's a bit like Norman Bates keeping his mother in the attic. We can't move on fully when we've still got one foot in the past and expect everything to go on as it always has up to this the start of this tragedy. Our lack of acknowledgement of what's real is creating a horror show of our own making. Here are three recent threads to help further this point.
Media Taming of Covid
Every couple of months or so a headline tells us it's over or it's at least better, and we can all relax and go back to normal. T. Ryan Gregory curated a history of the "defanging and taming" of Covid:
"February 2021: "Superspreading drives the Covid pandemic--and could help to tame it" from a Nature article of all places!
June 2021: "With Covid tamed, it's a 'grand reopening' in California." They "turned a page on the pandemic"!
September 2021: "With the virus 'defanged' by high vaccination rates, the Danish government dropped all remaining restrictions this month" in a Science article asking, "Will the pandemic fade into an ordinary disease like the flu? The world is watching Denmark for clues."
January 2022: "Now that science has defanged Covid, it's time to get on with our lives," from The Guardian.
February 2022: "Covid: How new drugs are finally taming the virus," from the BBC.
July 2022: "Covid reinfection has a silver lining--one that may help tame the pandemic," from Fortune.
December 2022: "Is Covid a common cold yet?" from The Atlantic.
March 2023: "Covid tamed, but it is time to mask up again," in Times of India.
September 2023: "It all suggests we've tamed SARS-CoV-2 into submission" in the CBC's article, "Researchers are still untangling the risks of catching Covid over and over.
January 2024: "No one could have foreseen this" (Gregory's predicted headline.)"
Dealing with Minimizers IRL
We're very quick to grasp any straw that can give us a sense that it's really not all that bad. We're surrounded by minimizers in real life, so that doesn't help. Salvatore Mattera collected come-backs to say to minimizers when they make arguments like, "If everyone were sick from Long Covid, wouldn't we notice?" (I added the links and image below):
"Point out the big name bands and acts that have recently cancelled individual shows or entire toors because of Covid or illness in general. Bruce Springsteen, Metallica, Aerosmith, etc. If you look, you can find many examples of niche bands, but focus on the ones everyone knows.
Point out the labor shortage. If they're a right-wing type, ask them if they think it's normal McDonald's has to pay $20+/hour to find people. Cite research showing millions are too sick to work. Bring up the Federal Reserve citing Long Covid as a driver for the labor shortage.
Point out the ongoing issue with attendance in schools. That huge number of kids across literally the entire world are missing school, and school districts are panicking. At the same time, bring up the teacher shortage - that thousands of open jobs for teachers can't get filled.
Point out the data that shows the staggering increases in the number of disabled people since 2020. Show them the data that the number of sick days workers are taking on average is going up.
Minimizers commonly say something like, "You can't live in a bubble," or the original, "You can't live in fear." To respond to this, ask them about everyday activities that many people don't do because they are too risky. Focus on things that are ordinary and sort of common sense. For example, you might ask, 'Do you often drive a motorcycle? Do you have unprotected sex with strangers? Do you drive drunk?' Most people would say 'No' to all those things. When they do, point out that a Covid infection is riskier."
A commenter made a good point: "I also say 'I don't know anyone with cancer, so I guess cancer isn't that prevalent because what is invisible to me surely isn't that bad.'" Another: "Ask them how many people they know on Facebook who've passed away young or who have had heart issues lately. I know of three people my age (40s) who've died of either heart or unknown to me issues." A final comment: "Usually men are not willing to share they now suffer from erectile dysfunction. Many of them super young, too."
Similarities Between Covid and HIV/AIDS
We're seeing just the beginning of understanding of this extent of this phenomenal experience. Finally, Gregory Travis explains the trajectory that seemed to have to happen to get to some real changes in mitigating Covid by comparing to the travesty that was the public health response to HIV/AIDS:
"Sickness and death from HIV/AIDS was brought to a virtual standstill in the USA not by vaccines, not by antivirals, not by horse paste, but by a vigorous public health campaign designed not around treating those who became infected, but by preventing infection in the first place.
But before our approach to controlling HIV/AIDS became enlightened, it had to be depraved, cruel, and indifferent. HIV/AIDS was vigorously asserted to only affect a 'vulnerable' group that also happened to be untouchable: Homosexuals, Haitians, and 'feeble' hemophiliacs. (Sound familiar?).All of today's excuses for inaction were present: 'Correlation is not causation' - 90% of US hemophiliacs contracted HIV infections regardless of sexuality, gender, age, and the only thing they had in common was blood transfusion. 'There's no proof it's in the blood supply.'Then people who mattered started dying: Rock Hudson, Liberace, Michael Bennett, Amanda Blake.A family of hemophiliacs was driven from their home by an arsonist. Ryan White was barred from school by angry suburbanites. White children started dying, and Middle America took notice.
From a craven politically-captured public health bureaucracy, to university and hospital administrators more concerned with their individual career prospects than with telling the truth, to unscrupulous confidence artists selling disinformation to the gullible... Every single ugly aspect of the human condition that HIV exposed with the resolution of an optical microscope, Covid exposed with the resolution of an electron microscope. If pandemic were a movie franchise, HIV/AIDS would the The Godfather, and Covid would be the better sequel.The most powerful tools to treat disease are tools that prevent infection in the first place.For HIV it's safe sex. For Covid, it's safe breathing.Wear a fucking mask.
He also mentions the excellent documentary And the Band Played On, which outlines the struggle to get action on HIV/AIDS; it makes the similarities to Covid strikingly obvious. I mentioned the book in July. Travis further provides a timeline of key events:
1979 - Ryan White infected
1982 - CDC links AIDS to blood and AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency) replaces GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency)
1983 - CDC warns blood banks of 'possible' problem with blood supply; France discovers the HIV virus
1985 - CDC says HIV is not a concern because it's 'not airborne', and President Reagan mentions AIDS for the first time
1986 - Surgeon General Koop calls for sex education to control AIDS; Switzerland begins testing blood; and public awareness campaigns begin
1987 - AZT is approves which requires one dose every four hours, 24 hours/day; Regan calls AIDS 'Public Enemy #1; VP Bush is heckled after calling for mandatory testing; the US shuts the border to the HIV+, and Canada stops distribution of tainted blood
1990 - Reagan apologized for the neglect of the epidemic while president; Halston dies; Keith Haring dies; Ryan White dies
1991 - Magic Johnson announces he has HIV, and Kimberly Bergalis, who contracted HIV from her dentist, asks US congress to force health care workers to be tested for HIV
1992 - Early use of AZT shown to have no benefit; Arthur Ashe and Rudolf Nureyev die
1993 - Robert Reed dies; CDC creates the first list of 'AIDS defining illness--a list of illnesses resulting from HIV infection, and four French officials are sent to prison for allowing HIV-tainted blood into French blood banks.
1994 - Randy Shilts, author of The Band Played On, dies
1995 - Greg Louganis reveals he has AIDS; Japan prosecutes Green Cross Pharmaceutical Corp for dealing in tainted blood; Kaposi's sarcoma (skin cancer) in HIV infected is shown to be caused by common herpes virus due to HIV compromised immune system
Like HIV/AIDS, Covid shows up as a flu-like illness, then comes back later in a wide range of symptoms because it affects so many parts of the body. People who were HIV+ got flu-like symptoms in the 70s, then started getting seriously ill with this mysterious disease in the 80s. We're short of blood donors now when many regular donors bailed because the Red Cross won't require masks. We're not yet at the point when people are being arrested for being sloppy with precautions (because there are none), but that will come. And my brother died after getting Covid from the dentist (but not from Covid). I've actually been coping with a toothache for weeks now, but I might go the Castaway route rather than take my mask of in a dentist's office!
We're at the public health bureaucracy, misinformation, and "university and hospital administrators more concerned with their individual career prospects than with telling the truth" part of the game. Children are dying, but not enough for it to kick things into action, despite being the crux of much of the spread.
If this timeline is anything to go by, we won't see a massive, clear, and accurate education mandated for another five years or so, and court cases to force permanent protections in health care might be another five years after that. AIDS became the #1 killer of Americans 25-44 in the 90s; Covid is still just #3. It took until 1995 to get minimally effective antivirals on the market, which were massively improved in 2010. So, with Covid, maybe we'll have drugs that eliminate the risk of LongCovid some time in the next 15 years or so.
At least we didn't start by calling it Elderly Related Immune Deficiency!!
In the meantime, while we wait for public health to get on top of a vigorous campaign to prevent infections, WE know what we need to do. To reiterate Travis, because it clearly needs to be said yet again, "Wear a fucking mask."
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