I had a conversation with a friend today in a covid hot spot (I feel like I'm about to go all David Brooks and my blue collar friend with an Italian sandwich but I am not).

Anyway, we were talking about the difference in like her experience of a hotspot and my experience /1
And the biggest difference is that when the numbers became untenable - NYC shut down. There was this proportionality between the number of deaths and the disruption in daily life even if you were healthy and lucky to have a job. The lack of... motion meant you heard the sirens /2
But where she is everything is open. So she's managing these risks atop this false feeling of normalcy. She has to push back against this fake normality that ignores mass death. She has to stay vigilant as the weirdo in a mask in a place where people aren't wearing masks etc. /3
It's also like a combo of geography and the work I do, I just know so many people who have had "mild" covid. And their experiences terrify me.

She does not. It's still an abstraction for her against a backdrop where the culture is telling her to do the wrong thing. /4
And I think about her because she's incredibly educated. She keeps atop the research. She's trying to do the right thing and has the knowledge to at least attempt it, but everything is systemically arrayed against her. /5
But most people have only a fraction of her education and access. Even if you assume best intentions, on most people's part the information landscape is so fragmented that at this point, the lack of clear, consistent, and public explanatory messaging on Covid is akin to murder.
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