One of the doctors I worked with bought into the craziness and was arguing with the hospital about vaccines and masks even as our ICU was about to burst. Then his wife caught it and ended up in the ICU as a patient. He still did not change his mind despite her being in the hospital, and this was a physician.

I guess what I’m saying is they still probably wouldn’t have learned. I don’t mean to be so pessimistic but propaganda is so powerful.

Found out a few coworkers thought it was a hoax and casually brought up how it not only almost killed me, the guy I caught it from (a vocal antivaxxer!) DID die. I know dozens of people hospitalized and dozens more who suffered. I had jobs canceled because the client died.

They both worked office (then WFH) jobs during COVID. I worked 55+ hours a week in people's homes and businesses. Who do you think has a better idea of the reality of the situation?

well, an aunt in-law got it, so did her husband, she was in a coma for like 3 months, he died, she can't use one arm anymore and has a litany of other complications stemming from the ordeal (and the grief). Do you think she learned her lesson? I'll let you guess

tbf, she can't learn her lesson without realizing / accepting that her (and dead husband's) actions are the reason for all her suffering, for him being dead, they are responsible for their misery, that she played a hand at getting her husband to the grave.

This is everything I wanted to say. Everything. Right down to the John Connor quote.

Sorry brother, guess it's par for the course.

It takes money to be batman.

Just speaking for myself (as someone who tends to go online and speak in all caps) I think that is perhaps a better way to deal with my rage at the world than taking it out on other people in the real world, or picking up a gun and shooting at other people in the real world.

It might annoy the people at whom I am speaking in all caps, but on the other hand at least no innocent bystanders end up with bullet wounds in them.

It doesn't even require empathy. It requires an appreciation for basic cause and effect slightly above that of a toddler. Covid denialism is an ego thing. These people made a decision and are so fragile that they would rather deny basic observable reality before admitting they are wrong. "Don't look up" fucking nailed it.

require having empathy and caring about other people

Sure, but they also require that you believe what you're seeing on the news.

I have empathy and care about other people. But, my mom is a conspiracy nut. She goes on rants about chemtrails, or the dangers of fluoride, or 5G, or nanoparticles. I want what's best for her, and I sympathize with her, but I don't believe any of these things are true. So, if she tells me I should change my behaviour because of these conspiracies, I'm not going to do it. The fact I continue to use WiFi doesn't mean I lack empathy or don't care about other people, it means that I don't think her conspiracy theories are correct.

My mother is (more or less) a person who cares about other people, but she wouldn't put on a mask during COVID because she didn't believe that it was a real disease, and didn't believe that masks worked, and she also did believe conspiracies that masks were dangerous to wear.

My mother thinks that the mainstream press can't be trusted about anything. Unfortunately, the people she believes are telling the truth are essentially anonymous accounts on some conspiracy forum. Many of them get their news from Newsmax or Infowars or the KGB.

I think the mainstream press can be trusted about many things, but that they're also in bed with big business and will often uncritically just report what a lot of big companies say without challenging it.

So, when the mainstream press says there's a pandemic and that we need to adopt certain behaviours to avoid it spreading, I believe it and want to do those things, my mother doesn't. But, when the press says that OpenAI has a new model that's on the verge of being sentient, that broke out of its containment and hacked another site, I think that's an absolute bullshit way of framing what happened.

It really comes down to how the US has slowly allowed the rich to take control and to warp everything to benefit themselves. Schools are not funded properly, and kids graduate without critical thinking skills. Media is captive to the wealthy interests, and at best is sensationalist and shallow, with talking heads yelling at each-other, or showing helicopter-shots of car chases. At worst, it's outright lies and propaganda favouring one party or one special interest group. And, because the US is such a big force in the world, and such a big source of media, this affects the whole world.

If people can't agree on a shared set of facts about the world, they can't make rational decisions. So, someone not wearing a mask might mean they lack empathy, or it might mean that they don't believe the news about COVID, or it might mean that they think the story of a major CHEMTRAIL attack that was leaked on the conspiracy forum wasn't actually real.

I had a lot of fun when people would hassle me about the mask. Id say it was to hide my face from the HillaryObamaSoros facial recognition cameras, and that they were free to give their face away if they wanted.

It helps if you can figure out how to get through the propoganda to talk to people. Directly pointing out how fucking stupid they are won't work. But making it look silly to their eyes does work. I've recently been able to convince some people in my red state that solar panels are a way to make power that is independent of oil, coal, amd nuclear. That if they get solar panels they will cheat the power company out of their money.

The best part is pointing out that I can't make a gallon of gasoline, but I can make a kilowatt-hour of electricity with things I have lying around my house and charge my car.

require having empathy and caring about other people

Sure, but they also require that you believe what you're seeing on the news.

I have empathy and care about other people. But, my mom is a conspiracy nut. She goes on rants about chemtrails, or the dangers of fluoride, or 5G, or nanoparticles. I want what's best for her, and I sympathize with her, but I don't believe any of these things are true. So, if she tells me I should change my behaviour because of these conspiracies, I'm not going to do it. The fact I continue to use WiFi doesn't mean I lack empathy or don't care about other people, it means that I don't think her conspiracy theories are correct.

My mother is (more or less) a person who cares about other people, but she wouldn't put on a mask during COVID because she didn't believe that it was a real disease, and didn't believe that masks worked, and she also did believe conspiracies that masks were dangerous to wear.

My mother thinks that the mainstream press can't be trusted about anything. Unfortunately, the people she believes are telling the truth are essentially anonymous accounts on some conspiracy forum. Many of them get their news from Newsmax or Infowars or the KGB.

I think the mainstream press can be trusted about many things, but that they're also in bed with big business and will often uncritically just report what a lot of big companies say without challenging it.

So, when the mainstream press says there's a pandemic and that we need to adopt certain behaviours to avoid it spreading, I believe it and want to do those things, my mother doesn't. But, when the press says that OpenAI has a new model that's on the verge of being sentient, that broke out of its containment and hacked another site, I think that's an absolute bullshit way of framing what happened.

It really comes down to how the US has slowly allowed the rich to take control and to warp everything to benefit themselves. Schools are not funded properly, and kids graduate without critical thinking skills. Media is captive to the wealthy interests, and at best is sensationalist and shallow, with talking heads yelling at each-other, or showing helicopter-shots of car chases. At worst, it's outright lies and propaganda favouring one party or one special interest group. And, because the US is such a big force in the world, and such a big source of media, this affects the whole world.

If people can't agree on a shared set of facts about the world, they can't make rational decisions. So, someone not wearing a mask might mean they lack empathy, or it might mean that they don't believe the news about COVID, or it might mean that they think the story of a major CHEMTRAIL attack that was leaked on the conspiracy forum wasn't actually real.

I'm really not sure. He has had covid. I do know that his children have both mentally browbeat him to either get him to accept reality, or shut the fuck up.

Yes, and from your comment history I'm quite sure you haven't, but you've absorbed some US State Department propaganda and mistaken it for research, so you have that going for you.

"it was just some old people..."

This experience has permanently damaged my patience for alleged "human beings". I'm with you on this, on how much it sucked, because my dad was once if those old people. This fucking plague killed him when he could've had at least a decade more to enjoy in life... My mother had just had a stroke and she needed him more than ever right when he got taken away. Now, every time I ever hear about someone dying, the math happens automatically in the back of my mind before I even get to recognize that it's happening:

Was the person who died at least as good a person as my father?

Because if not, fuck em.

I have no patience for the continued existence of anyone who isn't at least as kind, patient, generous, or warm as him. Which means VERY NEARLY every single fucking Republican. If they all died i would feel NOTHING. not even relief. But especially not grief. THEY DID THIS. I have nothing for them but revulsion. There is now a stark cutoff in my perception beyond which absolutely NOTHING matters. Only things that are better than that threshold are worth while. Literally everything else is beneath my attention.

Anything that is not at least going well enough, beneficially enough, to exist above that threshold, i have no time for. No room for in my perceptual horizon. I am one bad week from writing off all of existence and going out with maximal sabotage.

You're so negative is what I constantly got from my ex wife. Yeah, the world is fucked, and I feel the need to talk about it.

So am I but I still force myself do it because I don't want everyone to think I'm an asshole.