Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Keeping Up With COVID Theatre to Be “Nice People”
I saw a patient today who I like very much – she is a little over 70-years-old but looks much younger. Very pleasant and cheerful. Her husband made a ton of money in petroleum engineering and retired at 52-years-old. She spent her life playing tennis and doing volunteer work, and she is a very happy person. She is also progressive, in a pleasant, non-confrontational way. She’s just a nice person. Impossible to dislike her.
She wore her mask into the exam room, as she’s supposed to (I think). She told me that she really appreciated our efforts at patient safety, with my secretary checking forehead temps on anyone who walked in the door. I thanked her for her kind words but pointed out that I’ve been checking forehead temps at the front desk for over a year now, and haven’t turned anyone away yet. A dentist friend of mine has turned away one patient, out of over 3,000 forehead temps. So I’m not sure how many lives we’ve saved with our heroic efforts. But whatever, we’re all nice people. It’s the thought that counts. Right?
I told her that since we’ve both been vaccinated, we don’t need to wear our masks and she told me that she felt better with a mask on. I pointed out that the whole point of getting a vaccine was to develop immunity to the virus; I haven’t seen COVID in months. And the data on masks is uncertain; they might help… alittle bit… maybe. I’m not sure. But she said that she felt better with a mask on, regardless. Good for her – she was cheerfully secure behind her mask. So I kept mine on, too. Which pleased her. We’re both nice people.
Whatever. We’re all nice people. It’s the thought that counts. Right?
I’m amazed at how comfortable Democrats are with risk. Open borders don’t bother them. Allowing the government to run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sounds reasonable. We can sign treaties with Russia and China and sleep well at night. Printing trillions of dollars of new money is sound monetary policy. Defunding police will reduce crime. We can shut down the economy with no consequences.
Whatever. We’re all nice people. It’s the thought that counts. Right?
Taking huge risks is ok. Democrats appear to be very comfortable with enormous risks.
I’ve taken risks in my life. But not like this. I need to sleep at night. How do they tolerate such uncertainty?
It’s amazing.
But it also amazes me how Democrats are so easily comforted by imaginary security. Imaginary temperature readings. Ineffective masks. Insane monetary policy. Treaties that aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Reducing crime by reducing law enforcement in high crime areas.
Things that scare me, comfort Democrats. I don’t understand.
But whatever. We’re all nice people. It’s the thought that counts. Right?
None of this makes any sense. But my Democrat friends feel better. I’m not sure why.
They fear white supremacist nationalist rednecks, without ever having met one. But they are comforted by obviously meaningless gestures, which they see everyday, with no basis in reality.
These are very nice people. Who mean well. And they’re easy to please – just wear your mask and check their temperature. That means you’re nice, too. It’s impossible to dislike these people. They’re nice people. Completely harmless. I want them to be harmless, and they intend to be harmless.
So they’re harmless. Whatever. We’re all nice people. It’s the thought that counts. Right?
But for some reason, I’m not sure that this is harmless. It should be. But maybe it’s not.
I wish it were. It’s impossible to dislike such nice people. Surely I’m being unreasonable. Right?
Whatever. We’re all nice people. It’s the thought that counts. Right?
Unless there’s more to it than that.
Eh, whatever. She’s so nice. And so am I. She’s impossible to dislike.
We had a lovely visit…
Published in General
And that is how the meaning of the word changed: Peasants were seen as entirely lacking in refined sensibilities, crude and boorish, even vicious. Gradually the “peasant” part was forgotten and the “crude and boorish” part remained.
I’m going to take issue with that. Certainly smallpox couldn’t have been eradicated without a coordinated international effort.
But we don’t go at all infectious diseases that intensely.
I got interested in malaria in the old Lake Erie lake bed (mostly in northwest Ohio) some years ago, because of my bicycling to places of settlement-era history of that region.
My impression is that the swamps were drained, not to eradicate mosquitos, but for agriculture. That region became the nation’s breadbasket before the grain-growing regions of the Great Plains got going. Getting rid of mosquitos was a side benefit, but mosquitos were never eradicated. It still tends to be a mosquito infested area where I hate to come to a stop when riding through. I’m sure mosquito populations are diminished, and that is part of what caused malaria to go away.
But another important factor was people spending more of their lives indoors in screened-in houses. All in all it was enough to reduce and eliminate the spread of malaria from people to mosquitos to people.
I don’t know that there was a coordinated program to eliminate the swamps. There was local coordination to drain the fields for agriculture, because farmer A can’t drain his land as much as he wants without cooperation from farmer B who lives down the drainage basin from him. It takes some local government and local enforcement to provide the necessary coordination. Here in Michigan there are county drain commissioners who enforce rules about drainage ditches and tiling.
Now there are some places where wetlands advocates are putting the swamp back. But those are not large-scale efforts, no matter the environmental extremists who say they’d like to put the whole Black Swamp back. Point being, it wasn’t necessary to drain all the swamps, so that level of coordination didn’t come into play.
It was maybe 18-20 years ago that I was last reading about this, so more research has probably been done since then. If you think I need to seek it out and do more reading, I’ll do so.
But in the case of covid-19, the lack of a nationally coordinated response isn’t going to keep state and local officials from adopting measures that will do a lot of good, locally. And we aren’t going to pass on the chance to take national measures just because some countries are acting independently and refusing to coordinate with us.
Not impossible to take blood samples and verify the antibodies and t-cell response, but as far as I know that is done only for research studies and hasn’t become a part of medical practice. Might not be practical. For myself, I go with the odds and don’t try to eliminate the possibility of every worst-case scenario.
Maybe now would be a good time for us conservatives to reach across the aisle and work with the environmentalists to return Washington DC to its original wetland glories. :-)
I think I have finally trained my wife out of a certain pattern that has to do with “nice” people.
We will be talking about a certain person and I might have a somewhat negative comment, or we will be talking about who to invite to a get-together, and she will say, but she (or he) is “nice”. I say, everyone’s nice. You’re supposed to be nice. What does that have to do with anything?
By the way, most really ‘nice’ people vote for Democrats ( because they are nice, of course) and they really, really don’t have nice thoughts or conceptions about Republicans.
It can be sold as an anti-Trump initiative. He wanted to drain the swamp. We’ll show him!
We’ve been told for the last year that masks prevent others from being infected by whatever filthy virus stew you are emitting; they do nothing to protect the wearer from others.
Even if I lied (I did not) she said she was vaccinated. If she, as a physician, has no confidence in that, we are doomed to masks in perpetuity. Not acceptable to me.
End of discussion? No. That’s like saying “settled science”.
I think that a part of it (and I think it’s actually a big part of it) is that some folks perceive an intrinsic virtue in sacrificing for an epic collective good. Sacrifice guns, sacrifice fossil fuels, sacrifice personal liberty to work and travel and breathe freely — because all represent an effort, they believe, to ward off a great evil.
Most of us probably feel that way, as evidenced by patriotic responses in time of war and personal sacrifice during natural disasters. What makes it odd with the left is which things they perceive as threats to the public good. It would be interesting to list the left’s great perceived dangers and see what they have in common. What is it about ecological disaster, an armed populace (or armed police, for that matter), and the Chinabug that make these loom large in their minds, despite considerable evidence to the contrary?
Or perhaps it’s something to do with the kind of deprivation demanded in response, the kind of sacrifice required. They don’t like guns; maybe they don’t like motor culture and something they see as crude consumerism. I don’t know.
I like Douglas Murray’s explanation of this phenomenon, which he calls “St. George in Retirement Syndrome.” Having garnered such glory by slaying the dragon, St. George wanders around the land slaying smaller and smaller dragons, until he is eventually found slashing his sword at thin air.
Murray did not invent this saying, and he gives proper attribution, but I don’t recall the name of the originator. I got it from Murray.
A nice post (yes, I’ve read all the comments, and even before I did, I might have been aware of a certain–shall we say–irony there?)
But.
I live in God’s country. Whiskey Rebellion country. The southwest corner of PA, in which the closest town is Claysville, known as “Little Richmond” during the Civil War, for its support of the South. It’s just down the road from West Alexander, known for its unflinching support of the Republic, and which was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Families and friends share and co-habit the approximately four-mile stretch of state highway (Route 40–the National Road) in between the two. It was ever thus.
We’re a bit–as the Brits say–“stroppy” in these parts. Freethinkers, you might say. And I like it that way. I don’t think a single person has taken down his “TRUMP 2020” signs. None of them that I can see has been damaged. Neither have the BLM signs that I observe from time to time. The Southern Cross (flag, not the constellation or the Brazilian order of chivalry) is displayed on houses, in fields, and on vehicles. As is the star-spangled banner. Neither is defaced or removed.
The madness that is the current political climate, which is too dysfunctional to unpack here, has largely bypassed my world.
Masks are something which, to this point, we’ve donned at the entrance to crowded places, and removed the moment we leave them. We don’t wear them in parking lots, in our cars, or outdoors at all. None of the deliverers, contractors, suppliers or even health care vendors (home health nurses and aides to take care of Mr. She last summer) has made a meal out of masking up. Nor did the couple who came from the funeral home to take his body away. God bless them. We hugged. A transgressive act in July 2020, but we did it anyway.
We’ve had a blast, over the last week, laughing in the Giant Eagle which has (finally) removed the “WRONG WAY” floor stickers every other aisle, in what has always been a futile attempt to get the local population to follow unnatural traffic patterns in certain parts of the store. “What? COVID doesn’t transmit in the dog-food aisle, so no such stickers are necessary in that one? Grow up, please!”
And yet.
I’ll be 67 a bit later this year. So, on the cusp of “vulnerability.” Otherwise, I dare the bloody virus to attack me and do its worst. I don’t think I have any comorbidities or other medical problems that would give it an inroad. And I think, if I fell victim to it, that my chances of overcoming and surviving it are very good. So I’ve just never been all that worried about it.
Still. My two best friends are a bit older than I am. One is on her second round of chemo for breast cancer. She’s a doctor, and very rational. My other, and probably dearest, best friend of more than 40 years standing has survived lung cancer, several other medical calamities, and (currently) a concern about her kidney function going forward. She’s a dear lady, bright, with two lovely, scared, Lefty daughters, and a tendency to fuss about things that don’t bother me all that much. She’s been terrified of COVID, and hasn’t left her house since March of 2020 as a result.
So I’ve been vaccinated. Not so much for me, as to reassure them. Because, for me, at my age, and because I value my friends, it’s worth it.
And on Monday this week, my dear friend Andy drove down to my farm for a visit. I think it’s the first time she’s been to another’s house in fifteen months.
Totally worth it.
We really can’t do anything about the lunatics on either the far Left or the far Right. All we can do is try to take care of each other, when the task seems overwhelming, and in the words of Mother Teresa, “one at a time.”
Midnight the Cat was right!
I see what you did there.
I like this. It’s sort of like all these caring people who give nothing, or hardly anything, to charity (one of my pet peeves). I’m looking at you Obamas, Bidens, and probably AOC and B Sanders.
EDIT: Paul Stinchfielded!
I hadn’t realized you were that far north. I somehow had pictured it to be a little further south. You’re not too far south of where I take it that Alexander Wells had his whiskey distillery on Cross Creek in the 1790s. I don’t think he was one of the whiskey rebels, though. I wish he had been, because it would make a great story. His son and especially his grandson are part of Michigan history, including the history of the 1832 Black Hawk war. There is also a Kenyon College connection, and an important connection to Michigan State University. If I knew more exactly where Grandpa Wells’ whiskey distillery had been located, and if it was along a public road, I’d want to make a bicycle excursion there sometime, even though that hilly country is harder work than I prefer.
Re the bold: reminds me of the left’s ongoing search for white supremacists and racists, the supply of whom falls far short of the demand.
This is just sad. I feel sorry and will pray for this lady and all those like her.
You can always count on me going for the cheap and easy joke!
Give it some time.
Yeah, here I am. And yet, if you find your way down here, within striking distance, let me know, and I’ll find a way to find you out. K? Meanwhile, if I find out anything germane, I’ll pass it along.
Sounds good. Thanks!
It’s the 4 and 5 year old kids I worry about. Masks over their faces all the time during the part of their lives when they are developing their individuality. Masks inhibit that process. There will be psychiatric syndromes we don’t even have names for now.
What about blind or visually-disabled children? Do they develop psychiatric syndromes? (I’ve never before wondered about it.)
My parents are in their 80’s. They feel like the last years of their lives are being stolen. Your sweet little old lady patient is contributing to stealing the last years of my parents’ lives. I don’t think that is nice. Not at all.
My daughter is 14. Her school for the past year and a half has been a complete joke and waste of time. I feel like the first years of her most important schooling are being stolen from her. I don’t think that is nice. Not at all.
Evil often has a pleasant face.
Good question. I’m not sure the two scenarios are directly comparable though.
I see what you did there. I think it’s not that you don’t understand, but that Democrats don’t understand logic, irony, consistency, or unintended consequences, among other things. But, that has never stopped them from embarking on the nice/easy solution. Virtue signaling is inexpensive at first. And when it gets more expensive, there is always other peoples money. Because we’re in this together.
Any two things in the universe are comparable. However, depending on the question being asked, not all comparisons are informative.
Though we vaccinate children for diseases that are dangerous to children (polio, etc.), they shouldn’t be vaccinated against diseases with low, or no, risk. In Michigan, of 1.18 million children 0-9, Zero have died from or with Covid-19. Yet children as young as 2 are expected to wear a mask. Of 1.25 million children 10-19, out of approximately 900 deaths in this age cohort since March 2020, eleven have died from(?) or with Covid-19. In a typical year, more will die from the flu, but we don’t expect children to get a flu vaccine. Democrats are so intent on limiting risk, Covid vaccines have been approved for ’emergency’ use for children as young as 12. Children who are at limited risk of getting the virus, dying from it, and of transmitting it.
From the CDC’s Adverse Events website, there are, “4,434 reports of death (0.0017%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine…A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines.” It also have not ruled out a causal link. And now the FDA is looking to approve them for as young as 6 months. In the Michigan 0-19 cohort, this could translate to 40 deaths from the vaccines. Almost 4 times the number of deaths from Covid-19 so far. But those still alive will be safer(?).
First we must do something. There will be plenty of time later to review the level of harm.
Things that comfort Democrats, scare me. I don’t understand.
I see what you did there…