Personally, I have a very hard time imagining a lasting peace or happiness as long as the world ignores Covid. Even in a micro sense, everyone just fucking does not care about a highly transmissible, permanently disabling disease that has not gone anywhere that will kill me and many others like me. I can of course find a fleeting happiness, some transient joy, in moments where I can live and exist safely among people who respect me and understand the existing conditions enough to acknowledge that, but the vast majority, even those who should know better, seem pleased to forget all of it, and they’re the same sort who will tell me and you to “make happiness where you can”. Whether the source of all that is benign, ignorant, or malicious my answer is the same: I try to be happy, and sometimes succeed, but it’s no thanks to any of them. I don’t know what that future looks like.
All of this is to say nothing of the ongoing macro threat of climate change, which both capital and myself truly have no answers for. If it’s all going to be fucked beyond anything I can do I might as well stick to the devil I know and try to survive as long as I can- if for no other reason than to see what happens- but there are actionable steps with immediate material benefits that we all can take for Covid that no one, not even comrades, will do, so I am significantly more upset and pessimistic about that, under capitalism or anything else.
I feel you… I don’t have any diagnosed condition that would put me at greater risk of viral infections etc, but I guess I do have a weaker immune system than the average person, getting ill more often and more severely than those around me despite keeping a fairly healthy lifestyle.
And it pisses me off to see how people treat covid, colds, flus - heck, hygiene in general. I can’t help but think we could actually eradicate these diseases for good, but it requires collective effort and drilling basic hygiene measures into people’s heads since they’re young.
Right now, all we can do is protect ourselves and maybe those immediately close to us. This of course helps reduce the spread of viruses etc for everyone else, but still, all it takes to ruin the effort of 10 hygiene-conscious people is just one indifferent person.
It’s so much avoidable damage that we have accepted as an inevitable part of life - the only solution many see is to put up with it and hope you become more resilient by getting exposed to a lot viruses… Unfortunately that’s not how it works, they mutate way too fast for you to build any meaningful resistance. And that’s for healthy people; this is simply disregarding those for which getting ill is not an option. It’s not too different from eugenics really. And so we submit to, at best, months of our lives wasted recovering and piling up tiny damages to our bodies, and, at worst, playing Russian roulette with our lives whenever going outside.
Sorry for the rant, it’s a topic that bothers me and the lack of awareness really annoys me sometimes. I hope you will continue to have people in your life who understand you and are considerate. If anything, the successes of some countries in their covid responses is a glimpse into what’s possible when it comes to fighting highly transmissible diseases on a societal level.
I’m sorry you’ve got that extra difficulty in dealing with covid. I live in the US and it bothers me greatly too the way people around me gave up on something as basic as wearing a mask so easily. I still do it, but I almost never see anyone else who does. Meanwhile, I write this while recovering from some kind of sickness, I suspect a variant of covid the way the symptoms and duration are different from a normal cold for me. Even with wearing a mask when I go out, I can’t make other people in my household do it and a mask only works effectively if enough people are wearing them to reduce the transmission, since the mask itself won’t keep it out.
It feels sometimes like I’m living in an upside down world. The people I’m closest to care about me and others, there’s no doubt in my mind about that, yet they gave up on masking like so many others when the system of authority stopped telling them to and the peer pressure flipped. It is an act of basic harm reduction, a test of a sense of collective responsibility and cooperation, and so many completely fail it.
This thing of people valuing their own convenience over the mortal risk of others and sometimes even themselves is so confusing to me and so destructive. It doesn’t even make consistent sense within the same person at times. One of the people I know, who was at least a longer holdout but eventually gave up on masking as well, is very much into prepping for disasters and just being prepared in general and anticipating the future. Yet they gave up on this, a current and ongoing threat that is only mitigated by vaccines and possible weakening of its strength through mutations, not even close to kept under control.
Personally, I have a very hard time imagining a lasting peace or happiness as long as the world ignores Covid. Even in a micro sense, everyone just fucking does not care about a highly transmissible, permanently disabling disease that has not gone anywhere that will kill me and many others like me. I can of course find a fleeting happiness, some transient joy, in moments where I can live and exist safely among people who respect me and understand the existing conditions enough to acknowledge that, but the vast majority, even those who should know better, seem pleased to forget all of it, and they’re the same sort who will tell me and you to “make happiness where you can”. Whether the source of all that is benign, ignorant, or malicious my answer is the same: I try to be happy, and sometimes succeed, but it’s no thanks to any of them. I don’t know what that future looks like.
All of this is to say nothing of the ongoing macro threat of climate change, which both capital and myself truly have no answers for. If it’s all going to be fucked beyond anything I can do I might as well stick to the devil I know and try to survive as long as I can- if for no other reason than to see what happens- but there are actionable steps with immediate material benefits that we all can take for Covid that no one, not even comrades, will do, so I am significantly more upset and pessimistic about that, under capitalism or anything else.
I feel you… I don’t have any diagnosed condition that would put me at greater risk of viral infections etc, but I guess I do have a weaker immune system than the average person, getting ill more often and more severely than those around me despite keeping a fairly healthy lifestyle.
And it pisses me off to see how people treat covid, colds, flus - heck, hygiene in general. I can’t help but think we could actually eradicate these diseases for good, but it requires collective effort and drilling basic hygiene measures into people’s heads since they’re young.
Right now, all we can do is protect ourselves and maybe those immediately close to us. This of course helps reduce the spread of viruses etc for everyone else, but still, all it takes to ruin the effort of 10 hygiene-conscious people is just one indifferent person.
It’s so much avoidable damage that we have accepted as an inevitable part of life - the only solution many see is to put up with it and hope you become more resilient by getting exposed to a lot viruses… Unfortunately that’s not how it works, they mutate way too fast for you to build any meaningful resistance. And that’s for healthy people; this is simply disregarding those for which getting ill is not an option. It’s not too different from eugenics really. And so we submit to, at best, months of our lives wasted recovering and piling up tiny damages to our bodies, and, at worst, playing Russian roulette with our lives whenever going outside.
Sorry for the rant, it’s a topic that bothers me and the lack of awareness really annoys me sometimes. I hope you will continue to have people in your life who understand you and are considerate. If anything, the successes of some countries in their covid responses is a glimpse into what’s possible when it comes to fighting highly transmissible diseases on a societal level.
I’m sorry you’ve got that extra difficulty in dealing with covid. I live in the US and it bothers me greatly too the way people around me gave up on something as basic as wearing a mask so easily. I still do it, but I almost never see anyone else who does. Meanwhile, I write this while recovering from some kind of sickness, I suspect a variant of covid the way the symptoms and duration are different from a normal cold for me. Even with wearing a mask when I go out, I can’t make other people in my household do it and a mask only works effectively if enough people are wearing them to reduce the transmission, since the mask itself won’t keep it out.
It feels sometimes like I’m living in an upside down world. The people I’m closest to care about me and others, there’s no doubt in my mind about that, yet they gave up on masking like so many others when the system of authority stopped telling them to and the peer pressure flipped. It is an act of basic harm reduction, a test of a sense of collective responsibility and cooperation, and so many completely fail it.
This thing of people valuing their own convenience over the mortal risk of others and sometimes even themselves is so confusing to me and so destructive. It doesn’t even make consistent sense within the same person at times. One of the people I know, who was at least a longer holdout but eventually gave up on masking as well, is very much into prepping for disasters and just being prepared in general and anticipating the future. Yet they gave up on this, a current and ongoing threat that is only mitigated by vaccines and possible weakening of its strength through mutations, not even close to kept under control.