Friday
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I don’t have a lot of compassion for people who are only JUST NOW being rational about spreading their germs around.
<grin> :sneaky: But I’ve got a helluva lotta gratitude for how much easier life is with other people practicing what used to be considered common courtesy!
I don’t usually give a shit about whatever pop-illness is in the news. My first quarter of Microbiology cured me of that. Duhn-duhn-daaaa 12 people dead of SARS! :eek: But we don’t blink at 50,000 dead annually (in the US alone) of the cold/flu? Pfft. Okaaaaaaay
Sometimes the DOOM DEATH DESTRUCTION DEMISE of the
Because I AM one of those “high risk” peeps. For almost a decade now, we’ve had the flu vaccine almost a full 6 months ahead of most Americans, because we had contact with people in the Middle East during their flu season, and a medically fragile child. And because callous uncaring f*cktards take their “it’s just the cold/flu” to work/school/etc. And their “it’s just being miserable for a few days” is OUR inpatient hospital stay in the ICU/PICU, tens of thousands to millions in medical debt, & months off school/work.
To be fair?
Callous disregard of illness is a first-world luxury-problem, to be sure. We have so many vaccines, and so much medicine, and such outstanding healthcare, and this huge buffer of herd immunity for most things (for most people)... that most people simply don’t stay home when they’re sick. Because there’s no public condemnation for coughing and sneezing all over people, dragging their illnesses out in public, infecting other people.
Which follows there’s also no recourse/compassion FOR sick people. No one brings groceries over, or puts delays on bills, because someone stayed home from work for a week. If someone is ill? They still have bills to pay, and food to buy, and work to go to. The public dismissive contempt for illness -in general- has gotten so bad that even SCHOOLS have limits on numbers of sick days (in my district, 9 days per year), before students are expelled. This is compared to unlimited days in early elementary, and 30 days per year in upper grades that was common a generation ago... and even longer periods of time easily allowed for in even earlier generations.
So... at least what I’ve noticed... is that the people being completely dismissive of this new pop-illness? Are largely the high risk peeps who live, day in and day out, with sick people blithely threatening their lives and not giving a damn... actually, it might be less dismissive, and more relieved, as other people are staying home, and covering their cough (Even looking guilty for coughing/sneezing in public to begin with, as opposed to WTF is your problem??? As they cough all over you.).
Because other people behaving with common decency? Is making high risk people’s own lives easier. Same threat to them, regardless of what the virus is. Meanwhile the people freaking out are mainly those who have never had to take other people being sick around them seriously. Because it’s never been any kind of threat to themselves, their lives, livelihoods, etc. Universal precautions are new to them, and the world is no longer set up to make allowances for people being sick, so they’re staring down the barrel of their kids being expelled from school, losing their jobs, being unable to pay bills... creating a hard conflict. “I go to work no matter how sick I am” previously a mark of pride, to scrambling trying to figure out how to stay away from those people & what to do if they can’t, or their kids can’t, or, or, or.
