Various Ramblings

Someone commented on one of my facebook posts, and I realized yet again what a terrible medium most social media is for sharing ideas. 

I mean, I still do. Sometimes. But if the fox and the hedgehog analogy is true, I am most definitely a fox. And it's hard to go into the nuances, details, and all the grey areas in a forum where people want a quick little meme and articles or videos that take 5 minutes or less.

I've come up with my own rules of thumb for what I post, and they're far too complicated to explain in detail. (Plus I used 'rules of thumb' because I'm making them up as I go along, and can't guarantee every post follows them.)

It has been hard, lately. I've been following covid the way I have for the last year... and it's getting ugly. But the vast majority of the public doesn't want to hear it.

Which I get. It's been over a year now and we're all tired of it. I am very glad that I visited my family shortly after getting vaccinated, and did a whole bunch of other things... because now it's time to tighten back up again. My county positivity rate, as just one example, hit 12% the other day. I don't think it rose above 8% the entire year prior, though don't quote me. And this is in a college town in Illinois, where many people actually have been masking and taking precautions. 

I've seen some of the reports from hospitals in Florida. Texas. Alabama. And the pediatric wards. But opinions have grown entrenched, and the ones who most need to hear it... won't. (At least some of them are family.)

But I don't want to trod that well worn path right now. 

What does bother me are the larger systemic forces. Some of whom I've referred to as 'bad faith actors'. I haven't formally been researching this sort of thing, so you'd have to refer to the various articles out there - they do exist - to get the facts and figures. But I have noticed things.

For example, I've been running a twitter search on Florida covid for almost a year now, and it's rather noticeable when one day multiple accounts will start pushing the exact. same. line.

To me, that tends to indicate some level of coordination. A determined push. And yes, many of them are common names with a string of random numbers (often a sign of a bot or troll account.)

I saw that happen right before DeSantis made his speech alleging that Florida's horrendous growth in covid cases was because of illegal immigrants.(I've also seen a number of such accounts trying to reframe the entire past year and a half, and make it sound like Trump was the one who took covid seriously.)

It would be laughable, if the anti-vax and anti-mask movement didn't offer concrete proof of how harmful it can be.

Which brings us back to one of the more common questions of the day. "What do we do when around a third of the population falls for deliberate misinformation campaigns?"

I am not looking forward to the next couple of months. Oh, perhaps we'll see a precipitous decline (like South Dakota in November). I've been trying to keep an eye out for that... Missouri has shown a little bit of a decline, but I would like to see it continue over the next week or two before I'll consider it a real trend. And vaccination rates are going up, which is promising. 

But despite what's going on in the hospitals, people are reluctant to take precautions... and schools are just starting. (Some have been open a week or two already, and had to go remote almost as soon as they started. But here school started just Friday. At least, the high school my Little attends.)

There's a part of me that is deeply angry about all this. About the unnecessary losses. About the people who deliberately encouraged others not to get vaccinated, not to mask up, not to take precautions. 

And more, that the system continues to overlook and ignore it. That there's a coordinated effort to convince people not to take the vaccine (and to take a stupid de-worming pill instead!) and it's getting people killed... and hardly anything is being done.

The forces behind this have proven to be nefarious. They're pretty much everything I've said indicates they shouldn't even come close to holding power, because they're willing to encourage mass death and suffering in order to get whatever the hell it is they're trying to do. "The ends justifies the means" is the way villains think, and that's pretty much the logic here.

I think part of what's so maddening is that it feels like they're getting away with it. Or worse, might actually succeed. I don't know exactly what I would do if that seemed likely, but I can assure you that it wouldn't be nothing. 

I dislike black and white thinking on principle, and have to hold myself back from using the same sort of language these people are using... but they need to be defeated. Soundly. Thoroughly. 

They're a threat to everything we hold dear. (Which is also why it's so maddening that so many people don't seem to see it.)

Perhaps I need to do a better job of communicating just how and why that is? I mean, it seems so blatantly obvious that it's hard to find the words. I'm more stunned others don't see it, tbh.

Then again, the same holds true for the shrinking of the middle class, climate change, and other things. Boggles my mind that 'Very Serious People' who are supposed to be able to see the big picture don't see the problem. Or have too many incentives for preserving the status quo.