When something is written so perfectly there is nothing else to say.
But comments with many replies seem to draw more attention so I will add to this:
I have taught in an area that is poor. The opioid epidemic piled on top of that poverty to ravage it further. Students came to school and would say they were going to their uncle's in the next town tonight. I would say oh that's nice, what will you do. They would say, take a shower. We don't have running water so we go there once a week.
Basic needs that anyone in the middle class like me take for granted become focal points every day for someone living in poverty.
Do I put $5 of gas in my car or buy food? My car broke down and I can't afford to fix it. My minimum wage job uses dynamic scheduling and they just said I have to come in. My friend who I texted to take me can't do it at this time. There's no public transportation. How do I get to work? And if I do, who is there when my kids get home from school?
It's an insidious cycle. You can't see 5 feet in front of you and the treadmill never stops running.
God, I hope people read your comment and the article.
Six months ago a poster here lamented that they were rejected by Google and Facebook. That it would take 2-3 years for them to make $250k. That everyone they see on IG is getting to go to Hawaii on offsites while their employer won't even pay to send them to a conference in Seattle.
It is the kind of thing I can understand. Everyone, at every income level has problems that are very real to them. At the same time, I look at their complaints in light of what someone in poverty deals with everyday and their complaints are pitiful.
I look at their complaints in light of what someone in poverty deals with everyday and their complaints are pitiful.
I agree with the need for perspective. The well off really need to know what the rest of the world is like, so they make decisions that take their effects on others into account. The disadvantaged really need to know what the path to being well off looks like, so they can apply their voices and efforts to the places that will make a difference. I've been in that place where a rise in the price of ramen or gasoline could make it impossible to pay rent. I've also been fortunate to find myself in a much better place.
However, we don't gain much by forbidding any displeasure for all but the worst sufferers. Failing to get a job at FAANG doesn't magically move that money into the hands of people who desperately need it. Being set back in one's own fortunate life still sucks.
We all need empathy at times, nobody should have a monopoly on empathy. Mutual empathy builds bridges, monopolized empathy builds resentment.
You have a good point about empathy. No one wants to feel unseen, or like their problems don't matter. The real thing that is required is that people have (most importantly imho) the willingness and also the imagination to think about the difficulties others must face. No one's life is completely pain free, and we could sidetrack into some Buddhist thought based on that. But, objective differences remain. Someone can drown in 6 inches of water as well as by falling off a boat in the middle of the ocean, and be just as dead, but it takes a lot more work to get out of the middle of the ocean.
I think that people need to feel a sense of agency, self control, and meaning. That sometimes means they feel the need to greatly downplay the role of good fortune in their current life circumstances, and play up the mistakes of others to explain others' situations. It's an extremely common cognitive distortion, and it causes a real sickness in society.
I really hope that your comment gets upvoted and seen by many HN readers.
I'll elaborate based on my own experiences. To me, this article is explaining an extremely common phenomenon where people who have "played the game" or "been on the conveyor belt" realize that the game is a lie. In the conveyor belt world, we're taught to get good grades, aim for a promotion, etc. And as long as we keep doing well in a structured environment, goodness will flow.
Those of us how are poor do not get to get on the conveyor belt without great luck or triple the work that it took our monied peers to do the same. Great disruptions to the conveyor belt show those who have never been off it what it is like to fend for oneself as all those who were not fortunate enough to get on had to.
The conveyor belt is not really being disrupted, the Fed refuses to let it be. Look at housing values, stock prices, etc. They are going to float asset prices so the monied don't have to crack a sweat about any kind of income inequality correction happening. Anyone who dollar cost averaged into stocks during the downturn made 100X what our 'essential workers' did checking groceries. I was naive and only took a small position but it's still a joke when I look at its gains today vs someone providing a real service for $12/hr.
Have you been poor and middle class? Because this description doesn't match my personal experience at all.
Most of my adult life I was poor. I had a wife and child. I worked as a customer service rep for a well-known cellular provider. I made just over ~20K and my wife didn't work. It would have been awesome to make more money, but I could leave my job at the office and my free time was 100% my own. I was carefree.
Later I decided I needed to keep up. I mean, I'd always been ambitious but I didn't know how to make myself actually do stuff. I figured that out, became a developer.
Now, I make by far the most I've ever made, well over 100K. And I can't leave my work at home. And my company is constantly struggling to make ends meet and I'm a critical piece in making sure that happens from payroll to payroll so people don't lose their jobs and so I don't lose my job. And that's why I get paid what I do. But the stress is incredible. I often wonder what the point is. I work >8 hours every day, because I can work from home.
And people say, you should be happy you have a job! I remember being happy not having a job. A bunch of people I know don't have jobs but have been making a really nice income off unemployment and get to do whatever they want all day. A family member I know who tells me this is on disability (the outcome of lifestyle decisions very much under her control) and owns a house and goes on vacations every month or two. She must be a wizard with money, but still.
Figuring out how to force myself to produce, every day, all day, didn't make me happier. The reason I wasn't producing is because I do not want to produce all day, every day. It sucks. The machine incentivizes me to. The machine requires it.
If you want to be middle class, you have to do what the machine tells you. For a very large fraction of the population, I'm guessing doing what the machine tells you doesn't make them happy so they never quite get the hang of it and stay poor.
The happiest and most stress free times in my life were being poor. Of course, it'd be nice to have more money too. But you only get that from bowing to the machine or making other people who are bowing to the machine give it to you, which is an extra layer of evil.
These two statements are inconsistent. As someone who's lived a few years at earning ~20K, I can say that when 70% of your income goes to rent/mortgage, and 30% split between automotive/basic necessities, you are never carefree. Your always one mistake, one mishap, one unlucky event away from being homeless and destitute. When you can't celebrate any event, any birthday, any Christmas or holiday, can't engage in any activity that costs any amount money, and can't save anything? Every moment you spend planning and worrying to try to keep your head above water. Not sure how you can be carefree while you're constantly at the edge of losing everything you have and the ability to get it back.
I don't understand that point of view. Being homeless is awful; it will kill you, after years of suffering from hunger, sores, achy joints, dysentery, loneliness, etc. And once you are homeless, it takes a huge stroke of luck, and a massive amount of work to capitalize on that luck, to pull yourself out of homeless, and back onto the brink of being homeless again. Where you'll most likely stay, because you haven't built up wealth or savings, and haven't been developing yourself along a career path that will be profitable to do so.
ellyagg's post makes no sense even in this context. Not worried about not being able to feed one's family when making $20k per year, but worried about your employer and colleague's when making $100k per year?
There is nowhere in the US where $20k per year will give you security of any type (food, water, shelter, healthcare, schooling, etc) to provide for your family, not to mention a $20k per year job is likelier to have no ability to move up in any significant way.
They didn't say what year it was, nor where, nor before vs after tax. $20k/yr is definitely enough for some lifestyles in some places, especially in the past. I've lived on less.
The claim was one could live a worry free life with a spouse and child to support. Pre tax or post tax, that hasn’t been true for decades (unless you just choose worrying about things most people worry about such as healthcare and education).
I'm not sure why we're all policing someone else's definition of worry here. My experience growing up in a rural area around people who are just content to be content leads me to take the OP at their word.
I also don't understand how one can be in a carefree state of mind while being poor (choosing not to worry about loosing everything), but not be able to attain that mental state while being wealthy (choosing not to worry about losing a negligible amount).
Is the relationship such that the more there is to lose, the easier it is to be unaffected by worry?
I have been increasingly disinterested in daily tasks, etc as this pandemic has marched on. I have even been going out, accepting there are risks, but still I'm not able to shake the sort of melancholy. The first few months of the pandemic were incredibly stressful at my job due to a vendor going under due to COVID, and I still have not recovered.
Since then I've been seeing more and more of my friends or former coworkers being laid off from their jobs, the growing social unrest around the US, all while some of the richest people I know are doing better than ever. I think for me, the feeling is brought on wondering if this pandemic has put me further behind, after I've already been effected by the 2007-2008 crisis. It really does feel, maybe for the first time (for me,) that the divide between those that can take advantage of this situation and those that cannot has grown into an insurmountable chasm.
I'm not even doing terribly but feel very far from my goals...which now feel even more in jeopardy, so I can't even imagine how other people are feeling.
> It really does feel, maybe for the first time (for me,) that the divide between those that can take advantage of this situation and those that cannot has grown into an insurmountable chasm.
I 100% feel this.
One of the most acutely tragic aspects of this pandemic is that it dramatically amplifies the inequalities already present. Other natural disasters—wars, hurricanes, etc.—destroy physical objects. That effectively increases equality because it is most harmful to those that have the most capital.
This pandemic leaves everyone's possessions and wealth alone and cuts off your ability to work. The people most likely to get it are those who don't have the wealth and power to insulate themselves from risk. And they are the ones least likely to have the healthcare required to survive.
It is a horrible, horrible tragedy.
At the same time, I try not to think of this as insurmountable. Everything good about our current society was created by people living in a world less just than the one we have today. It was the people living in a United States where Blacks were enslaved who emancipated them. It was men who legally had all the power that finally granted women suffrage.
There will be many casualties and many people who don't get to experience better days. But at the national level, I have faith that we can overcome this and end up better than we are today.
> This pandemic leaves everyone's possessions and wealth alone and cuts off your ability to work. The people most likely to get it are those who don't have the wealth and power to insulate themselves from risk. And they are the ones least likely to have the healthcare required to survive.
This is the most astute articulation of the problem I’ve seen. Well done internet person!
A tragedy is something no one could have prevented. This is outright cruelty, bordering on genocide (particularly given the ways predominantly-black and native communities have been treated during the pandemic).
This was foreseeable and preventable, and the group that is to blame for it is glaringly obvious.
The pandemic is a tragedy. The US federal government's response is a crime.
It's very much like Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane didn't kill thousands of New Orleanians. Almost all of them were alive after the hurricane had passed. It was the local and larger government's failure to handle it that led to such a widespread disaster.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. This makes me think of the concept of "learned helplessness" [1.], it is useful phenomenon to be aware of when considered the influence on one's life due to systems and events that are outside of your influence and control. Martin Seligman, the psychology professor who initiated research on the topic, also developed the field of "positive psychology" [2.]. Concepts from positive psychology have helped me to understand and to cope and to come to terms with a state of mind similar to what your post insinuates -- a state of mind heavily influenced by the outside world and my perspective at the time.
Completely agree — from my vantage point it seems like there’s three camps: those who can ride this wild market, those who can’t but would if they could, and those who don’t understand how to and/or err on the side of meme-based market analysis. My parents fall into the later category (both for different reasons) and it’s sad/frustrating.
The historic gap was already near-or-at unsustainable. Add in the pandemic market and now we’re setting daily records for previously unseen inequality.
If you take PEW at their word: the share of economic wealth taken by the ultra wealthy surpassed the middle class in 2018. Their 2020/2021 report will be...a lot.
Keep in mind that when you take these calculated risks, there are actually several types of risks involved.
There's personal risk: What are the chances that I will suffer direct personal harm from this encounter?
There's direct social risk: What are the chances that others involved in the encounter will suffer direct personal harm?
There's direct propagation risk: What are the chances that the infectious virus further propagates because of this encounter, where it has the potential to cause substantially more harm to others outside of the encounter?
And then there are indirect personal, social, and propagation risks: What are the chances that because of this encounter, the pandemic grows more severe or goes on longer than it otherwise would have, extending the length of time before we can truly return to normal life?
I'm not saying that you, personally, don't factor all of these risks into your decision. But I think many people are only considering direct personal risk.
> There's direct social risk: What are the chances that others involved in the encounter will suffer direct personal harm?
Why do people always assume that if someone is anti-mask or anti-lockdown that they didn't think about others before they made their decision? That they are selfish and dumb?
Stop making that assumption.
People do think it over. They do consider all points. And just because they come to a different conclusion than you doesn't make their conclusion invalid.
> What are the chances that because of this encounter, the pandemic grows more severe or goes on longer than it otherwise would have, extending the length of time before we can truly return to normal life?
ICUs are still fine. It is killing the elderly and those with co-morbidities. Any "spike" is barely a blip. The economy continues to crumble as days of social restrictions and lockdowns build up.
You think we don't consider the lives of others with our decision. We do.
You simply put too much weight on the perceived danger of this almost-at-this-point-not-a-pandemic-anymore. We simply don't agree on how dangerous it is.
PS: If you want to talk direct social risk and safety then it's time to ban alcohol for the greater safety of society.
> Why do people always assume that if someone is anti-mask or anti-lockdown that they didn't think about others before they made their decision? That they are selfish and dumb?
At least for me, the kind of people I know directly (in meatspace) with this attitude are the kind of people who decided the middle of the pandemic is the best time to make social visits to the elderly (for little other reason than being bored with the lockdown). And I know these people don't secretly want to murder their elders. After seeing plenty of that first and second-hand, it's kind of hard to not suspect motivated reasoning when someone goes out and says "sure I've considered the risks, there's no harm in 50-ish me dropping by my 80 years old mother on my way back from the private health clinic I work in" (real example I know, and that same clinic is staffed with people who consider the pandemic overblown and do the absolute minimum to protect themselves and their patients from it).
> PS: If you want to talk direct social risk and safety then it's time to ban alcohol for the greater safety of society.
It's been tried and decided against, but in this comparison, it's worth noting that harms caused by alcohol don't grow exponentially.
> It's been tried and decided against, but in this comparison, it's worth noting that harms caused by alcohol don't grow exponentially.
Yeah, we also have tried it with other drugs, we've been spending several decades ramping up regulations on automobiles to try to make them safer, and we have an emerging national debate about prescription painkillers as well.
There are important lessons in the cases you've mentioned. Prohibition and the war on drugs both conclusively prove that banning them outright is a disastrously idiotic idea with devastating social consequences, far exceeding the harm caused by the substances. The same is sometimes argued against pandemic mitigation measures, but I find that these arguments usually don't appreciate the exponential growth aspect of the virus.
I think the automobile (and building codes, for that matter) one are interesting too in that they've mainly had cost impacts instead of enjoyment impacts, and have encountered much less resistance - although the cumulative impact of those costs are pretty high, economically.
I think whoever is planning for future pandemic responses should take that into account - the more normal, enjoyable things we can find ways to provide safely, the better.
I would argue that safety and emissions regulations have impacted the enjoyment of cars (at least for enthusiasts), through weight increases and the move to low-displacement turbocharged engines, respectively. they haven't encountered much resistance simply because the majority of drivers don't really expect driving to be fun.
It nets out as a win for enthusiasts in the end. Electric cars have better torque, and engineers shine when faced with constraints. Safer cars are also safer to drive "fun". I'm really really glad we aren't all still driving 8mpg 500ci 14 foot long boats.
I think the world ultimately was caught completely unprepared for this pandemic. I'm hoping that by the time the next one comes, we'll have given due considerations to psychological and emotional needs of everyone, so that even if we need to step into a cage for a while again, at least the cage will be a nice place to stay in.
> It is killing the elderly and those with co-morbidities. Any "spike" is barely a blip.
I’ve been seeing this ageist and eugenics-like language coming up quite a lot lately and it’s really disturbing to me.
Why is it OK that hundreds of thousands of people are dying because they are mostly older? Should we amend our laws so it’s OK to murder anyone above a certain age, because they’re elderly so who cares?
Why is it OK that people with pre-existing health conditions are dying because they have these conditions? Should we never provide any health care services to people with any comorbidities because their lives don’t matter?
You may think you’re being rational by deciding these people have little to no societal value—survival of the fittest! they’re maximised their contribution to society!—but this seems like a maladaptive coping mechanism: minimisation[0] in order to avoid confronting the fact that, yes, this is actually a big problem and no, it’s not really OK that hundreds of thousands of people are dying needlessly due to a communicable disease. (Nor is it OK that government has failed to step in to protect those whose lives and livelihoods have been disrupted.)
These are human beings. They have families. Their deaths cause needless suffering, and that suffering goes far beyond just one old person dying from a preventable contagious disease. Humans do not live in vacuums.
It’s also a tragedy that other people—who are statistically unlikely to suffer any direct long-term consequence of infection—are suffering as a result of restrictions set on movements and activities to try to save lives. That people lose their livelihoods and have to go hungry, though, is a failure of government.
> Why is it OK that hundreds of thousands of people are dying because they are mostly older? Should we amend our laws so it’s OK to murder anyone above a certain age, because they’re elderly so who cares?
This is the worst possible interpretation of that statement, and not at all the argument they're going for.
The argument is that lockdown policy is being made over what's turned out to be barely noticeable in the larger picture, and those policies are causing a lot more suffering than necessary.
In other places where I see this argument, they often also say that lockdown-style measures should be enacted for the vulnerable, leaving the world business-as-usual for everyone else so that they can support the vulnerable.
> Why do people always assume that if someone is anti-mask or anti-lockdown that they didn't think about others before they made their decision? That they are selfish and dumb?
Well... Yeah. If you considered the implications of harming others, then examined the data at hand, and concluded that not wearing a mask and not limiting your activities was what you wanted to do... Then yeah, that is selfish and "dumb" behavior.
This isn't a subjective thing. We have decently solid data now showing what the transmission rates are (we know certainly the lowest observed transmission rate), what the death rate is; we can objectively say that >180,000 in the US have died since March. So with all that being known, if you decide not to take the most basic steps to limit spreading it, you're either being incredibly selfish, or you're incapable of understanding that your actions have consequences. This is a definition, not an argument.
This is why we have laws against drunk driving; we know it kills people. It's bad for society. At least people who drive drunk have the plausible deniability that they were too impaired to make the rational decision to not drive while drunk. If unimpaired, you make that decision, there's no way to justify your actions.
* You're assuming death is the major potential consequence, and that there aren't potentially problems we haven't identified yet, and ignoring those we have[1]
* You're assuming the economy is crumbling because of social restrictions and lockdowns. It isn't. We could lift all restrictions today, and things would not return back to normal until PEOPLE STOP GETTING INFECTED AND DYING IN THIS STILL-VERY-MUCH-A-PANDEMIC.
> People do think it over. They do consider all points. And just because they come to a different conclusion than you doesn't make their conclusion invalid.
...
> You simply put too much weight on the perceived danger of this almost-at-this-point-not-a-pandemic-anymore. We simply don't agree on how dangerous it is.
Something to reflect on here is that (a) the person you're replying to didn't accuse anyone of not taking others into account and (b) you invalidate their conclusions in the same way you believe they invalidated yours.
In my area, there were two points where ICUs got dangerously full. At the start, and then shortly after initial restrictions had been loosened. Fortunately, the spikes in case counts had been seen before, and restrictions were ramped up in response both times, and the hospitalization numbers flattened and then dropped. It certainly looks like a case of those restrictions being massively helpful, which you're discounting out of hand.
Things have gotten riskier, but you have increased your exposure. There are certainly other factors involved: we know more about those risks and how to mitigate them, for instance. But, things have gotten riskier, not safer.
From the discussions I have had with people around me , justifying the same 'calculated risks', it's clear that they aren't actually making rational decisions as much as rationalizing their decisions; bargaining with their emotions and then sliding into complacency.
> Because one does not reach the same conclusion as you does not make their conclusion automatically irrational.
I didn't, initially, fault their conclusion. However, I noted that their conclusions consistently and increasingly favoured their immediate self-interest, regardless of what else was happening.
Another thing I noticed, in the same people and the same situations, is a difficulty noticing any nuance regarding the issue. When I presented them with something, instead of addressing it, they would react to the threat they perceive.
To me, this also suggests that they are arguing from their thesis, rather than the situation.
bingo! I fear that people are encouraging and instilling agoraphobia.
There’s unmeasurable effects of all this hysteria and confinement. And if the over-cautious lockdown side is going to assume worst-case scenarios of covid, let’s assume worst-case scenarios for the cost and side-effects lockdown - the true worst-case is that the benefit is marginal and we suffer every drawback.
It's not clear that the current economic situation would be better if we let everyone out and suffered all the death and negative long term health outcomes that may still lurk in apparently benign cases.
Which people, which mark, have been wrong? What's happening (excepting the stock market) all seems to be pretty in line with the expectations I had around April.
I also don't agree that the experts have been unhelpful, and strongly disagree that they have been worse than no advice. They have been fought at every turn by people who don't understand epidemiology.
I think it's pretty clear that if we had actually listened to the public health experts, we (in the US) would be in much better shape. Trump (who you brought up) bears some of this responsibility for doing something so stupid as to politicize masks. He bears more blame because he appears to interfere with and try to adjust the science messaging to fit his narrative, which serves to confuse people.
So no - the experts haven't been wrong. We've just not spent much time listening to them.
> They have been fought at every turn by people who don't understand epidemiology.
Didn't Fauci discourage mask usage at the worst time to discourage mask usage?
Weren't the experts continuously downplaying the danger while Trump was shutting down flights?
Wasn't Pelosi, de Blasio and crew telling us to "hug asians" and jump on the subway?
I'm not claiming there's anyone who was right in this mess, but there's very little ground to say anyone managed this correctly or would have been better equipped.
The supposed Democratic utopias in this country (NJ and NYC) killed off the elderly. And people want Cuomo to run for president...
Your framing is interesting, as depending on the personality type you're talking to, you'll get the exact same words, but with the intent going in the opposite direction. There's the "right" and "rational" way (our way of thinking, naturally), and then the people who are emotional and rationalizing.
Yes, but there’s some asymmetry in this case because one side of the spectrum is reaching conclusions that are exceptionally inconvenient for them while the other end of the spectrum is reaching conclusions that justify as little personal sacrifice as possible. It proves nothing but there’s reason to be suspicious of people who always seem to reach a “rational” conclusion that directly benefits them.
The way I understand it, it's pretty much every person's brain all the time. We all, always, emotionally decide then rationalize. We can build systems that protect us from this inherent flaw, but that's different than not experiencing it.
Smart people are more susceptible to high impact biases though, which is maybe what you meant? Lower IQ people are experience this less?
It's not general intelligence per se. Self-awareness and objective decision making are skills: a result of environment as well as individual capability.
I know lots of very intelligent people who seemingly can't apply that intelligence any time they have strong emotions about an outcome. We also know that children can be inculcated with difficulties distinguishing fiction from fact (1).
IMHO, as you mention, it's a spectrum, perhaps the equivalent of the Autistic spectrum for Emotional Reactivity Disorder. Though unlike autism or borderline personality disorder, I believe that it's a skill deficit rather than an inherent disorder of personality.
I also believe that more than half this country is suffering much more profoundly from it than we are aware.
I hope you're not thinking about that weird study trying to prove the "decide subconsciously, then backfill rationalizations" hypothesis by "demonstrating" it with fMRI; AFAIR that made about as much sense as saying that a CPU isn't actually working, but measuring potential on output pins and backfilling "computation" because you can measure voltage on the pins faster than you can measure temperature increase in the CPU...
I agree completely. Our local authority said that successful distancing means cutting interactions that can spread the virus by 90%. My wife and I decided we would be happy cutting back 95% personally, and that was easy to accomplish by the basic changes: no movies, no live events (plays, concerts, sports,) no parties, no bars, no restaurants (we've had a couple, literally two, patio meals,) groceries mostly delivered, precautions in public spaces (masks, distancing.)
With all those changes, we meet the target pretty handily, so we don't worry much about our interactions with close friends. We default to seeing people outside with decent distance, but we don't sweat it if a friend comes over without a mask and asks to come in, or if they sit a little closer than expected. It's not like a competition where grinding out the hard last few percent is going to make the difference between winning and losing. It's more important to stay sane and help our friends stay sane so we can keep this up as long as necessary.
Yeah, it's important to balance the risk of catching COVID with the benefit of living a little more "normally" such as going into a store every now and then rather than doing pickup literally 100% of the time.
I have an issue with this. I hear a lot of this argument, that we should "accept a certain risk of catching COVID". But that risk is not what keeps me from going out, I'm personally willing to catch it. What keeps me home is the risk that I might be unwittingly spreading the disease. It seems really irresponsible of me (and of other people) to go out just because I'm feeling bad and seeing friends will make feel less bad. I still do it, but I feel guilty about it and I feel really judgemental of other people doing it. And I don't like being judgy, so I bottle it up with people I'm not extremely close to, but that's not conducive to great conversations.
Risk is best thought of in terms of expected value rather than probability alone.
There's a non-zero but low probability of you spreading a virus you don't know you have as long as you're following good practices, and the severity of doing so seems relatively minor (99% of people you infect will have minor symptoms. Not to say that's ok, but it is normal for people to get sick occasionally). A low probability multiplied with a relatively minor severity gives you a very small number.
On the other hand, if you're already finding yourself socially deprived, the probability of suffering severe effects from it is high, perhaps even approaching 1. The severity for some people could also be very bad: declining health, ruined relationships, perhaps even suicide. A high probability multiplied with a high severity gives you a very large number.
It's hard to quantify and everyone is different. The point is, it's better for someone to go socialize when they need to rather than go insane, and it can be a perfectly reasonable decision.
Yes, this is more or less exactly what I tell myself. I think it's a rational and logical way to look at this.
I still feel very uneasy about it though. We don't know the long term effects of COVID. I worry that I could be contributing to something terrible. It's not just the direct chance of me getting someone sick, there's also the fact that each person that goes out sends the message that going out is fine. Which maybe it is? But it seem that if everyone did small sacrifices could help a lot, so it would be wrong not to personally do these sacrifices.
In the prisoners' dilemma that we all find ourselves in, I really don't want to be the defector. And it bothers me that so many people are willing to be. I think it goes against my internal belief of what being a good person is.
But it seem that if everyone did small sacrifices could help a lot
Wearing a mask in a grocery store is a small sacrifice. Eliminating all physical proximity with other humans for months or years is very much not.
I think it goes against my internal belief of what being a good person is.
Those friends you're sometimes visiting, after which you beat yourself up for being selfish? Probably many of them are suffering quietly, and seeing you gives them the strength to get through the day.
> Eliminating all physical proximity with other humans for months or years is very much not.
Agreed. That is excessive and is not what I'm doing. I meet with friends roughly two out of three weekends, and I see my girlfriend every weekend (can't really see her more than that, she's working 15 hours per day during the week). But I'm not going to boardgaming meetups, to museums, to the gym, out to eat or to the cinema, which are things I would do three to five times per week on normal circumstances. I'm basically avoiding all activities where I would be in contact with strangers for more than a few minutes.
> Those friends you're sometimes visiting, after which you beat yourself up for being selfish? Probably many of them are suffering quietly, and seeing you gives them the strength to get through the day.
It seems really irresponsible of me (and of other people) to go out just because I'm feeling bad and seeing friends will make feel less bad.
Before the pandemic, you and everyone else were constantly doing "unnecessary" things that put other people at risk. Every time you see other people you could be spreading any number of diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. Every time you take a car trip you're increasing the risk of a fatal accident to other drivers and pedestrians.
COVID makes some activities more risky, and will shift some of them from "acceptable" to "unacceptable". But it doesn't mean that you're a bad person if you put more than zero weight on your mental health.
I work in the family business, and my mom is older and absolutely crucial to the business (and therefore to the financial health of both her and our households), so most of our decisions are based around preventing her from getting sick, though my wife and I are personally not particularly worried about us or our kids catching it.
My wife has had multiple friends with similarly aged children try to convince her that it's not dangerous for her or the kids when she refuses play-dates, and no matter how many times we tell them that it's not us we're worried about, they still frame it in those terms.
If we cannot get our government to help us tackle the pandemic in an effective fashion, we are increasingly forced to contemplate questions like, "well, if this goes on forever, how do we adapt to preserve the other important things in life?"
This epidemic can still be won, but it takes effective and coordinated leadership to do so. When our government's response mirrors the reality of the situation, rather than proclaiming that we are doing a sufficient job, and nurtures a united approach to mitigation, we will start winning. Case rates are falling slowly -- we are on the cusp of improving the situation substantially if we can get our act together further.
When we start to win, winning gets easier. Such is the nature of confronting an exponential adversary.
Absolutely agreed. The fact that our country is failing is our responsibility.
There are multiple timescales involved to effect change. No matter how hard we push, the government we have three minutes from now will be almost the same as the one we have at this moment.
At present, I have largely given up hope that the present administration or the present configuration of Congress will take responsibilities seriously. Thus, the minimum timescale for meaningful change is months. Working within that framework, one can imagine an environment in which our federal government cannot provide an improved mitigation strategy until January at the earliest.
I've noticed those with a stronger craving for social interaction having a much harder time coping during this pandemic. They tend to do like you and rationalize exceptions and reprieves toward more normal behavior.
I'm not criticizing; I'm sympathetic and agree with you that we're all human and need to maintain some empathy for how tough this is.
I'm just fascinated by the contrast. For my partner and I it hasn't been a big deal. I expect some of that is down to circumstance. We don't have kids, and already worked from home. While we still interact with people, it's far less than before and we maintain our distance. As volunteer firefighters / first responders we're particularly sensitive to the medical risks. We wear masks to go shopping and wash it all before it comes in the house (which is surely overkill, but not so onerous once you get used to it). We're fortunate that we adopted a dog a few months before this began and have a ton of great hiking terrain at our doorstep to go decompress. Of course we certainly haven't been unscathed - she was in finance and lost her job pretty early on when the market crash and pandemic-driven panic forced the company to downsize - but we're managing.
I have some very social friends (same walk of life, no kids, etc) who keep trying to get in our face, and while I love them to bits it gets annoying at times.
I can't say I envy the health authorities tasked with issuing guidance to the public and recommendations to legislators - they have to balance the need for containment - which can change rapidly depending on conditions on the ground - against the economic and social consequences (which as you alluded can leave some people feeling a sense of imprisonment).
If you get a chance to speak with people who landed in intensive care for Covid or lost loved ones to the disease, it really drives home the cogency of the risk you're dealing with - just as does hearing from those countless numbers who've been impacted in non-medical yet severe ways from society's countermeasures.
This is one of the biggest reasons that I follow our governments recommendations on travel, working from home, masks and so on. There is people that have it as a full time job to calculate these risks and produce recommendations for the rest of us.
I agree that trying to balance that every single day would be tiring, but broadly deciding "Our kids can play with the neighbors" is a one-time choice. As are the rest.
I think it's also important to have empathy and understand that people will have different risk estimations, based on their own personal experience. Too often our default is to judge everyone who is more conservative than ourselves as overly paranoid and everyone less conservative than ourselves as overly cavalier.
In my case, I actually like my job (a rarity for most, including myself), but my productivity has been driven down when it is reliant on concentration (like a technical task). Interestingly, it's a bit higher in social stuff like meetings.
I know a few people who are actually MORE productive. These are the perpetual-workaholic-anyway types. They've adapted by launching their consciousness into action. I admire those people, because my friends like this are actually very very successful (before and during this). Joe Rogan even says sometimes, he escapes the pain of consciousness by keeping himself busy.
As a counterexample, I felt awful in March and April and feel much better now. Very little has changed about my day to day routine. I think different people handle these things differently. I don't seem to have experienced this "surge capacity" phenomenon.
I think it's because I'm a naturally very private, introverted person, and have a lot of practice with isolation already. So now that the initial fears and anxieties have subsided, I've settled into a comfortable routine.
It's not ideal, and I miss having the option to see people or go to events. But for me, things are more manageable now than they were early on, where I was filled with constant dread and anxiety.
We actually had sort of a sweet spot the the late spring / early summer where the worst case scenario had obviously not happened, but people were still not going back to seeing their regular friends / family.
During that time, we got to hang out with our neighbors almost daily. It was great.
Now everyone is back to work / family / etc.
Same neighborhood, same people, just they don't come out to play anymore.
For a long time during this pandemic, I felt what I can only describe as Weltschmerz [1], the same sense of melancholy brought about by the idea that the bad has overtaken the good, and we are trapped into the final death throes as a species.
Normally I get annoyed by these kinds of off topic comments but what the fuck, this is what the article looked like for 5 seconds on a hardwired 80mbps connection
Block cookies on medium.com. You'll never have to deal with login/payment prompts again. (In the past, it has responses though, but the sidebar still works now.)
EDIT: I block cookies on many news sites as well. It bypasses paywalls on many sites (but not FT).
For me, it loads instantly over Wifi-N. That's with JavaScript disabled, though, as per default.
With JavaScript enabled, it still loads near-instantaneously, with the exception of the big image at the top. I heard my CPU fan spin up for a second or two, then the image eventually appeared. Nice.
I think this will be a new normal. Now that we've seen the kind of surge capacity people are capable of we can push them to greater capacity than before and yield greater productivity.
