The most salient thing I’ve noticed about people’s response to COVID is this:
The softer and easier a person’s life is, the more they over react to COVID.
Almost universally, the people who I see in real life and on social media who freak out over COVID, and want mandates and lockdowns, who get boosters and wear masks, are upper middle-class people who do their jobs in comfortable offices behind a laptop.
The most insane COVID responses are from the pampered, stay-at-home, wives of men described above.
People who lives lives that contain virtually no risk absolutely lose their shit in the face of a cough.
And almost universally, the people who I see in real life and on social media who just keep living their lives, maybe they got vaccinated or maybe they didn’t but are not lined up for boosters and don’t wear masks, are people who’s jobs and lives come with actual risk of injury or death.
Roughnecks, miners, machinists, petroleum workers, etc, the people who could get an arm ripped off or killed by machinery they work with every day simply don’t give a fuck about a cough.
Even within organizations, this is evident.
It’s a simple corollary: the more PPE an employee is required wear on the job the less likely they are willing to be masked or vaccinated and vice versa.
HR and admin are in masks, the rig-hand has never had the jab.
Children have had the lowest rates and virus transmission of any demographic. It’s teachers who work with children and just had two weeks off for Christmas break who are on strike demanding remote learning.
Truckers risk death every day on our highways. Most are unvaccinated.
Writers and pundits who do 100% of their jobs online from a home office with a VPN and a webcam are demanding another two weeks to slow the spread.
Absolutely the lowest risk job workers are demanding thr highest levels of COVID safety.
Even the military is like this. The military personnel pushing COVID compliance are AG officers and uniformed bureaucrats who command through PowerPoint. Combat arms personnel would rather discharge than vaccinate.
COVID compliance has been tyranny of the softest people with the easiest lives over those who do real and dangerous work for a living.
I keep saying I don’t want to return to normal and I want a reckoning.
This is why.
The people who live soft lives and have no idea how to process personal risk should not be the ones who get to decide how society operates.
Thats is how we end up where we are now, a neurotic society paralyzed by fear of a cough.
Ditto cops & firefighters, staff nurses & docs, and street medics.
Do the job, do not obsess over it.
Just like forever.
Same in law enforcement. The guys who work the street may or may not be vaxxed, but they generally don’t care who is or isn’t (I live in a sane state). Most only wear masks when required. Those in admin, who have colonoscopies more often than they apply handcuffs, have largely either lost their fucking minds or they are virtue signaling to those that have.
I don’t often talk about work because negative social media can come back and bite you in the ass at work. Back in 2021, someone screwed up. Two young men were killed by being engulfed in boiling acid. Over 30 more ended up in the hospital from exposure, many of them in serious condition. I don’t work in that unit, but hearing how it happened I was livid. I would have never signed off on the work permit as written. It wasn’t safe and anyone with chemical plant experience should have known that. I’ve been involved in process safety in chemical processes since the 1980’s. I know what I know. And where I work you are always in a position of risk.
But I have to deal daily with HR and corporate emails about masks, vaccines, covid lies and propaganda. It’s all lies. I actually deal with real scientists. PhD types. I’m just a bachelors degree engineer, but many times I make the PhD’s go hmmm, back to the drawing board. I know how to research, how to test, how to read results, and how to spot bullshit. And the Covid panic is pure bullshit.
Yes. Soft people. HR. Corporate. Spoiled millennials. People who’ve never been in an “immediately threatening to life” environment. People who’ve never had to process a confined space entry permit. Or figure how to clear a pyrophoric line plug (fire is fun). People who’ve never stood on the 11th level of a structure and helped coordinate a crane lift over critical equipment (including a 1100 psi ethylene header).
I’ve had delta. 2 days of mild discomfort and back to work. I just dealt with it, like any other illness. No real issue. But holy shit the panic porn that corporate is turning out.
Sorry for ranting. But you are absolutely right. These people never drank out of a water hose. They never swam in a creek with alligators and water moccasins. They never crashed a dirt bike into a mass of weesatche and cactus. They never ate canned beanie weenies heated on the radiator while camping in the freezing rain and being shit-faced drunk. They are nothing. Get the vax, don’t get the vax, that’s your choice. But leave me the F alone.
My apologies for the french language.
Hear, hear!
And, I hope one day we happen to meet, you sound like an interesting person with whom to share an adult beverage. (1st round on me.)
Mr Don Sir. You are right on the money. I work for one of the big box stores- I am in and out of 12-16 different stores 5 days a week. We being grunts in a giant corporate world have seen it all. Wear a mask, dont wear a mask, wear a mask… a gallon bottle of “santizer “ shows up bout 2 times a month( anyone need any??) . Thru it all I only wore a mask when it became job sensitive.. now i put something around my neck and pull it up as i walk thru the door. If it falls off it falls off. I gate the equipment off and take the neck sweat generator off.Many employees are wearing them on thier chin like a drool diaper. Its gone on wwaayy to F’in long. All thru it I did not change my habits except when FORCED to wear a mask(1% effective btw). I watched this old guy walk in, step to the free mask n sanitizer table, fumble around in the mask box with greasy nose pickers and drag a mask out and put it on. How “sanitary “ is THAT?? The blue collar workin stiffs are over it and have been for a year an a half.
Hard times create strong men;
Strong men create good times;
Good times create weak men; and,
Weak men create hard times.
– G. Michael Hopf
Yes, I spent a good deal of my working life in engineering offices behind a computer screen. However, I also went into the plants and labs, occasionally having to wear a mask. No, not a Brandon cloth mask, but a real no shit HEPA filter respirator (think military style gas mask). I’ve also been in a position of assessing hazards and specifying protective equipment for working in a potentially hazardous environment. I got the two shot jab back in early 2021 when I believed the propaganda that it was like a real vaccine, not sure I’d do that now. Have not and will not get a booster. As for masks, not only no, but hell no.
Concur with the above. Will add this. Have a buddy that’s the active duty XO for a reserve combat arms unit. He’s processing ADSEPs for 15% of his battalion as they’re refusing the jab. These are weekend warriors, mind you.
I’m a mid-level. Work in a walk in and Covid clinic. Been working continuously in face-to-face patient care since like 1980 plus or minus.
I wear a “KN-95”. (I joke that that means “knot an N-95”) every moment I am out of my office.
I am rarely in my office.
Took initial jab because I cannot, yet, afford to tell Jhiao Bribem to….worship at the temple of the Patron Saint of Fertility.
I’m one of like 4 folks in my clinic who have NOT contracted Da Rona. Only like one of us is presently not “vaccinated”.
So, for me, with an Da City Fire Department compliant haircut and mustache, the filter masks we are using work effectively, so far.
Similarly, vax, no vax, meh. Stifle your cough/sneeze, wash your bigger hooks, and ROWYBS. Live long and prosper.
A few years ago, I had some of my colon removed because of a tumor. I was talking to the surgeon a few months after the surgery and he told me that he much preferred to do surgery on veterans, cops, and athletes because they were all used to dealing with pain and uncomfortable physical conditions. Routinely, he would come in the day after surgery and ask “How you doing?” He’d get the reply “I’ve had worse.”
In contrast, he always had problems with upper middle class professionals who grew up in affluent homes and had done nothing but white collar work all their lives. Their surgery would be the single most painful and stressful thing they ever had to deal with. These were the patients who required the most pain medication, complained the most about their treatment and their hospital care, and who had the most problems working through rehab.
Wait, fp145, do you srrrriously! mean to tell me these poor, poor post op souls had to (give me strength!) w@rk! like in physical rehab?!?!?
Oh, the horrors!
One guy, when I was a street medic, told me that he did not want me to hurt him, splinting his broken femur and transporting him to ED.
Told him I’d be as gentle as I could, but it likely would hurt.
He said, “I don’t want you to hurt me”
I replied, “Sir, I swear to you that I will be as gentle as I can, but it will hurt. Your alternative, is to lay here until you die. I do not like that alternative, but you make the call.”
He went to ED, and to surgery.
Just ask your average NYer.
Boy… they have it TOUGH! in that city… Having to walk almost 500 feet to a grocery store, waiting all of five minutes for a delivery. Weakest humans alive, frankly, but dammit, they are TOUGH, and you want to live in that very city with them.
Grabbing a few lines from a popular song…
It’s survival in the city
When you live from day to day
City streets don’t have much pity
When you’re down, that’s where you’ll stay
In the city, oh, oh.
In the city
I was born here in the city
With my back against the wall
Yet, your average downstate NYer (A0C, I am looking your way) will not hesitate to tell you how you are doing it all wrong, and they have to save you from yourself.
This panicdemic is driven by people who just do not have to do anything. Remember Ellen Degeneres saying her luxury Malibu home was like a prison? Yeah, not being able to go for FourBucks coffee every morning is tough…
The real, old New Yawk tough guy and gals died a long time ago.
Now it’s those snooty and pretentious wannabe writers of littatchure you knew from high school who thought they’d make it big if they moved to the Big Apple.
They’re now mostly writing clickbait listacles between receiving rejection letters for their manuscript based on their life as a writer of littatchure who moved to the Big Apple.