Life on another planet. None of that bullshit happened here, and what few token measures there were (like closing the bank lobby, or making everybody pay their water bill at the town office through a slot) only lasted a few weeks, months ago now, and everybody knew it was just through-the-motions nonsense to get some insurance carrier to STFU or whatever. Schools are open, sports are on, nobody but nobody wears a goddamn mask and for the most part never did. Even the couple of chain retailers who 'require' them according to a mandatory sign on the door, don't, and never really did. Even the staffers at the dollar store and the truck stop go without the stupid things by now. I meet with people in their homes for work continually and the term 'pandemic' never even gets mentioned (one of those things like public farting and discussing others' sex lives, that well-brought-up ladies and gentlemen at any age just don't do), which is no real surprise, because folks raised to have the sense God gave geese know that the one useful countermeasure against any airborne contagion (not coughing and sneezing on one's fellows) is a thing we all learned by about age three....
All this idiotic exercise of the past year I have been reading about (but not experiencing firsthand in the least) informs me of, is that people who live in big cities suffer not from learned helplessness so much as oblivious and habitual mass stupidity.
Present company not meant to take offense, but the only conclusion I could ever draw from the very existence of cities larger than two or three thousand souls is that people must not mind having to spend their entire lives behaving stupidly, and so imprinted with the stupidness of urban life they no longer realize there is any other way to exist (there is, out here beyond The Last Exit where real civilization is, and has been all along...) I personally could not endure more than a few hours in one of those godawful places even before 'covid'; now I would not enter one of those hell zones if you paid me a thousand bucks an hour to. Cities really are just the most bottomlessly stupid idea the human race ever came up with, other than maybe religion, nationhood, or jet travel. I want nothing to do with any of them and never did.
I wish the positive effects of vaccination were being given more play in the media. Much more. I also understand that the CDC must thread a conservative line, just in case some new variant or other unforseen event sets us back. It's also true that Biden's public approach seems to be underpromise & overdeliver and I get that, especially since he knows it's important to dial back the bombast of the previous administration. Add to that that most people, especially in the NY area, we're only a few degrees of separation from someone who died or was, at the least, seriously ill. As recently as 2 weeks ago, my son-in-law's cousin (age 34) died of Covid.
Again, I'd like to see more about the progress being made but the lingering hesitation to throw caution aside is easily understood.
Life on another planet. None of that bullshit happened here, and what few token measures there were (like closing the bank lobby, or making everybody pay their water bill at the town office through a slot) only lasted a few weeks, months ago now, and everybody knew it was just through-the-motions nonsense to get some insurance carrier to STFU or whatever. Schools are open, sports are on, nobody but nobody wears a goddamn mask and for the most part never did. Even the couple of chain retailers who 'require' them according to a mandatory sign on the door, don't, and never really did. Even the staffers at the dollar store and the truck stop go without the stupid things by now. I meet with people in their homes for work continually and the term 'pandemic' never even gets mentioned (one of those things like public farting and discussing others' sex lives, that well-brought-up ladies and gentlemen at any age just don't do), which is no real surprise, because folks raised to have the sense God gave geese know that the one useful countermeasure against any airborne contagion (not coughing and sneezing on one's fellows) is a thing we all learned by about age three....
All this idiotic exercise of the past year I have been reading about (but not experiencing firsthand in the least) informs me of, is that people who live in big cities suffer not from learned helplessness so much as oblivious and habitual mass stupidity.
Present company not meant to take offense, but the only conclusion I could ever draw from the very existence of cities larger than two or three thousand souls is that people must not mind having to spend their entire lives behaving stupidly, and so imprinted with the stupidness of urban life they no longer realize there is any other way to exist (there is, out here beyond The Last Exit where real civilization is, and has been all along...) I personally could not endure more than a few hours in one of those godawful places even before 'covid'; now I would not enter one of those hell zones if you paid me a thousand bucks an hour to. Cities really are just the most bottomlessly stupid idea the human race ever came up with, other than maybe religion, nationhood, or jet travel. I want nothing to do with any of them and never did.
I wish the positive effects of vaccination were being given more play in the media. Much more. I also understand that the CDC must thread a conservative line, just in case some new variant or other unforseen event sets us back. It's also true that Biden's public approach seems to be underpromise & overdeliver and I get that, especially since he knows it's important to dial back the bombast of the previous administration. Add to that that most people, especially in the NY area, we're only a few degrees of separation from someone who died or was, at the least, seriously ill. As recently as 2 weeks ago, my son-in-law's cousin (age 34) died of Covid.
Again, I'd like to see more about the progress being made but the lingering hesitation to throw caution aside is easily understood.