I can't get over the fact that the CDC just got around to admitting that COVID is airborne, while some folks are out here mocking and complaining about people who haven't immediately accepted their new (confusing and murky) guidance as the gospel. Of course people are anxious.
They've been lied to and given inaccurate and incomplete information repeatedly, including by a government that insisted we didn't need masks in the beginning. Some of y'all love to pretend that part didn't happen, but I remember.
I also remember the part where nurses like my sister were begging for cloth masks and some people knowingly insisted they should not be provided with them. There has been a lot of BS spouted off quite arrogantly throughout this crisis.
Given that we've experienced a mass death event that's still playing out globally, it's not even a little surprising that some people, who've been lied to in the past about that's safe, are proceeding with caution. Stigmatizing them is bullshit and it's cruel.
And blaming people who are still being cautious for vaccine hesitancy is baseless, dishonest and irresponsible. No one who is hesitant is basing their decision around whether or not I'm comfortable dining out. There's an entire misinformation machine guiding many of them.
Others are grappling with concerns about side effects, missing work, what they're being told by loved ones, and other things that have nothing to do with whether some people still wear masks. If you want to influence them, you need to address their actual concerns.
I personally think, based on my reading of the science, that lifting outdoor mask mandates makes sense. There's a lot of data ppl could point to in order to make that case. But instead, some are determined to attack people who are understandably concerned about taking any risk.
I find that despicable. It also does nothing to persuade anyone. It's a weird kind of elitism that serves nothing.
And btw the whole notion that masks are about clinging to political identity, as opposed to being traumatized, frightened, ineligible for vaccination, or protective of those who are, is harmful. So pls drop that shit.
People have every reason to be skeptical of the "back to normal" chorus.
There's a failure to reckon with trauma in this discourse that I just find unbearable. Over half a million people are dead in the U.S. Over 3 million are dead globally. Also, we know those are gross undercounts.
Those incomplete numbers also only reflect COVID specifically, when we know many more people, and a great deal else, has been lost due to the nature of our situation. People are WOUNDED.
If you look at history, and any mass trauma that people have endured, some folks transitioning more slowly, when it comes to abandoning precautions, or just resuming more normal routines, was sociologically inevitable.
Let's try to meet each other with compassion and understanding. This is not a moment in history that people are just going to get over and "move on" from, no matter how much some people might want that.
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