Easter Effect is how we’re referring to it here in Quarantine Towers, should be starting up any day now, and it is the most depressing thing I can think of.
So many people went to church last weekend, I hope they took good pictures because they’re going to need them I have very mixed feelings about making my experience anything other than personal, and I’ll tell you why I feel like a lot of rebels (and other questioners such as myself) take in advice and they are instantly unable to follow it Stick a fork in their own eye first People would physically rather die a fiery death than feel that their autonomy was ever in question The more passionately I say “please, save yourself, don’t let what happened to me happen to you” the more it will make some people run the exact opposite direction I can’t even tell people “you don’t want this” because it will automatically make someone think YEAH I DO, you don’t know my life And obviously anyone who uses the phrase “trust me” as in “TRUST ME, you do NOT want this” should be written off, trust kinda goes without saying To recap, this was my experience: I was exposed to COVID-19 by someone who went out with active symptoms and believed that “everyone was overreacting” because only ~300 people were infected in our state at the time That opinion has not aged very well and it has only been a month I was pretty much asymptomatic for over two weeks By the time I found out I had been exposed to someone who tested positive, the person who infected me had passed the coronavirus on to at least 7 additional people, not including me or my husband I didn’t start to get really sick until the next day Probably because I went for a run And then my husband did not start showing symptoms until the 22nd day after I was exposed His was such a mild case that he wasn’t convinced he had it And that is where the gamble comes in.
These are non-physical routes to infection Problems in the mind, what we call Thinking Errors Faulty cognition, pseudo-skepticism Our culture has a huge problem with this, part of our concept of rugged individualism I am a rugged individual, I’m beating COVID after all, I am also a marathon runner and wilderness backpacker and I train in Krav Maga, not exactly a wilting lily But my personal liberty ends right at the place between my fist and your nose And now, I have to extend that concept to the airspace around me and my greasy little fingerprints, dainty yet tainted I was reading some blowhard who said, she believes, quote, very strongly in herd immunity, unquote What, enough to enforce it ON ME? I beg your absolute PARDON I’ve thought a lot about the person who got me sick, cordial not close, radical empathy exercise What must it be like to be in her position, talking one day about how something was nothing to worry about, two days later bedridden, deathly ill How staggeringly hard it would have to be to admit that your error might kill you Then to have to do the math and realize that you had been hopping around like a happy little bunny, infecting your friends That nine other people might die or get hit with tens of thousands of dollars in hospital bills because of your opinions on current events Usually our passionate beliefs or even casual opinions are not literally matters of life and death Still, most people are going to dig in their heels and double down, truly won’t change their minds, might not even change their minds after people in their own family start to die It’s not that I would want an apology from my friend, for she is my friend, I think she is lovely and I hope that she emerges in thriving health I would, though, really love for her to just say, “yes, I was wrong” Not cook me meals, since I’m still ill, or pay for my medicine, which I have just had to reorder, or help me with the chores that I am still too sick to do, nothing like that Just to say, I made a mistake But that is the 800 billion dollar phrase, the one thing that people cannot do, their heads would explode first Personally I learned to apologize freely, widely and often when I worked in customer service It doesn’t even sting Admitting you made mistakes or that you were wrong is the foundation of adulthood, impossible to be a serious person if you can’t do it I have no idea how my friend would feel about this, I have no intention of bringing it up with her, from what I have heard she has been very sick indeed And that is punishment enough, for those who are into the whole punishment thing, which I am not Karma is not my responsibility, thank goodness, too tired for that I do have a survivor’s guilt problem since I got sick, even though it is a matter of debate whether I have officially “survived” yet It has occurred to me, if only I were a better writer, maybe more people would be convinced by my story and they would stay home, avoid feeling like a bag of wet trash at least, much less not kill their friends and family But then I remember, the more someone gets all “preachy” or whatever the more other people have to double down and do the opposite, prove a point, point being “I can’t be told” Using my personal experience, count out 15 days from Easter Sunday and that is when anyone like me would finally get in bed, then for some weird reason tack on an additional 7 days for their partner It’s gonna be a while The true consequences of the Easter Effect may not be seen for three or four weeks It’s always a bad idea to make predictions but I will stake my reputation on that, I will cry when the numbers come in as I usually do, nobody should have to go through this I think it will take until the third wave before everyone is finally ready to pay attention Until then we pay in other ways Best reason not to gamble is that the odds are not in our favor And it’s not numbers we’re talking about, let’s not lose sight of that when we look at the statistics Comments are closed.
|
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
Categories
All
|