"Why I Still Really Don't Want to Get Covid"

[cosmolinguist]

This is from the U.S. but I think a lot of us can identify with a lot of it.

Some of the most powerful and highly visible people in the country are gathering and celebrating—and getting sick—as though the coronavirus is no longer a threat... It is increasingly hard to opt in or out of this kind of experience...

Perhaps you are like me, and you’re still wearing a good fitting mask in indoor public places and gatherings (and being choosy about what activities to do in the first place). When I’m out, I am sometimes one of the few people donning a KN95 or N95 mask. There may not be overt social pressure to take off the mask, others may not even care, but it makes me feel like a bit of an outcast anyway. Despite this, I have no plans to take off my mask indoors anytime soon. There are good reasons, still, to delay getting infected.

...But to have access to carefully mitigated gatherings is, unfortunately, a huge privilege, as is having the means to deal with the fallout should you get sick.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Living as a disabled person has often felt like a parallel reality — this willful denial makes it more acute.

[finch]

We're still concerned about long covid and it feels like a lot of people don't even believe it exists or something.

[recently_folded]

Yes. But tragically, the government messaging has been horrific and people have been told it's over by the CDC and that's that. Misinformation is more relentless and more attractively-written than scientific information, especially since the latter is often phrased more technically than many people who have come through the public school system can follow.

I take a drug known to have immunosuppressant aspects, but there's no quantification of that and no credible studies have been done wrt covid with it. So I have absolutely no data on how at risk I am and to what degree I am able to respond to the immunizations. I mentioned my concern to my oncologist, who is the one prescribing it, and he said "it does?" So yeah, with that level of helpful guidance, I've now been isolating totally, except for 20 medical appointments since 3/20—never failing to see unmasked staff, even in the oncology infusion lab. I'm now losing volunteer roles that were important to me because of the rush to resume in-person meetings and events. But no matter how important, they're not to die for. Hand me a mask: I want to live.

[silveradept]

The speed at which we went from "take care of each other" to "it's over, whee!" has been really disheartening, especially since it isn't actually over and there's a lot of pretending going on about how things are going. Not that you can find accurate numbers that easily any more.

[sfred]

Yeah