Holding the line comes with a cost. As much as we might wish not to comply, close relationships can challenge our convictions.
I would have preferred to not been vaxed at all. However, my first grandchild was born in May of 2021 and my daughter insisted that anyone who wished to spend time with that adorable little girl would need to be vaxed. Got the first course (two shots 30 day apart) never boostered. Will not. But, on balance, I took the risk, overlooked my daughter's Nanny State Fearmongering, and Held My Infant Granddaughter. Despite my misgivings about its safety and efficacy, I stand sturdily by My Choice.
"There are no solutions. Only tradeoffs."
- Thomas Sowell, another Really Smart Economy Think Stuff Guy like Bastiat
Hopefully we've managed to reconnect with some good friends lost and be thankful for those with whom we stayed connected despite our differences.
Your daughter was part of the "mass formation" Mattias Desmet has talked about. They are not the prime movers of totalitarianism, but they are certainly enablers. I count myself lucky that I was not faced with a choice such as yours, though I've been shunned by many former friends. I'd like to believe I would have made a principled choice and that they would now be reuniting with me.
My stance has definitely impacted some relationships, especially at work where my coworkers are mostly 30s and 40s liberals in tech/e-commerce.
But I had to make a different choice with my family because I'm was not so certain that we'd reuninte easily or in short order. I wasn't willing to make the sacrifice. I do not feel weak for it and stand by it.
As with masking, I'd prefer that everyone be left to make their own choice but, where a potentially ill, definitely smelly and weird-looking old man might be putting his face in the pretty little face of her firstborn infant child and exposing the vulnerable child at risk - while simultaneously being force-fed The Way of The Bien Pensant - I understand why she held that position, and willingly honored it.
Well you guys got your Efriends on Gato's Stack. Else some schools were Forcing returning students to mask up upon return from "Covy illness" (you know, positive fake test and all), and I asked the administrator if that reminded her of "The Scarlett Letter". Blank Stare. Don't other me Bro! (or my kids).
This is the pandemic of ironies. That the "educators" would be the least educated, and that healthcare professionals would continue to adopt the very policies that do not work. I could see an Applebees having lucite barriers indefinitely, but a doctor's office? And yet...good times everyone...this is the way things are.
I was not and do not judge you. As I wrote, "I'd like to believe...," but there's no telling what my choice would have been. Fortunately, no close relatives took that stand.
I hadn't thought so. Sorry for careless attention to phrasing.
I understood your "I'd like to believe" completely and my response was essentially affirmation of your statement: I, too, wish I could stand on principle, and I could easily and non-aggressively engage True Believers, and they'd make statues in my honor.
But, alas, I, like you, are mere Only Human. We're just carbon-based bipedal life forms descended from apes.
- sorta twisted Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide" quote
I wore masks in order to get hospitalized due to diabetic cellulitis. I've worn it since to get my prosthetic after losing a leg to diabetic cellulitis. I've worn masks on Uber rides, and in doctor's offices.
I have never been vaccinated, but would I if I had been gainfully employed? Would I have vaccinated if I had a wife and children? I don't know.
My penance is at least regretting the decisions that I made. Would they have thrown me out of the doctors office had I refused to wear a mask? If I didn't wear a mask in the hospital hallways would I have found myself carted away?
There are consequences though.
I think my immediate family knows of what I have done on twitter, though they don't mention it. After all, at least my sister has a twitter handle, and I bet my brother at least monitors it. He has early and often said that I should personalize and block all social media in order to get a job.
... do almost everything we did in public for a couple years. I was confident masks were useless by about April 2020 but just couldn't afford to have the "Let me show you the data *points to PowerPoint Slide Thirty-twelve*" when all I need from inside the Wegman's is some cilantro to make my Fish Tacos Salsa. I grumbled but it just wasn't worth it.
Maybe I should have pressed harder there but I pressed pretty hard in a lot of situations where thoughtful contemplation might have been more sensible. I don't think an iota less of you for it, especially owning it.
Ironically the two groups I hold most accountable are doctors and educators. If there are two segments of society that should not have been pushing the nonsense, it is those that should know better, shouldn't they?
My dad told me his dad stated the bottom 10% od any graduating class became bankers. I think nowadays, they become teachers. The ones who should be the vanguard of education actually know the least about masking and vaccines, and doctors are only marginally better.
On my second trip to the doctor following my amputation, the doctor tried to convince me to get the vaccine. When I said I hadn't gotten it, she asked me why. There was a moment there, I stood there and I think I said "personal reasons..." and then thought to myself "f it, she needs to know why." So I gave her a list.
• The vaccine is experimental. They had yet to rest for long term symptoms.
• I already had Covid twice...natural immunity.
• It doesn't stop the spread or infection
• It doesn't stay in the injection site.
I think I left out that Covid wasn't that dangerous anyway. Her response:
"It's ridiculous to think that a vaccine would stay in one place." Sh thought that assertion was ridiculous, but that is one of the very things the narrative pushed. She hem and hawed about it being experimental. She also tried to say that because I was diabetic it made me vulnerable. and my response was I already had it twice, so no I am not vulnerable."
I think she thought I was going to come at her with some MAGA hat wearing one syllable reason why I didn't want the vaccine. The next time I came after that. No mention of the vaccine at all, but still they pushed masking. Always with the masking.
About six weeks. She born on the 3rd, we met mid-June. (there were logistics involved in getting my then 79 year old mom out for an overnighter five hours away; also with my stepmom, I kid you not).
So you were considered "fully vaccinated." I was thinking I bet there are many people that all you had to do...was get vaxxed and the next day you could see the kid or elderly family member, depending on the part of the world you were in. Because of the arbitrary assertion of what "vaccinated" means it could be anything. You could be vaccinated yesterday (what I consider vaccinated) or for some it was fifteen days after the vaccine that one is considered vaccinated...and for some others I imagine that it is only after the second dose you are considered vaccinated.
Holding the line comes with a cost. As much as we might wish not to comply, close relationships can challenge our convictions.
I would have preferred to not been vaxed at all. However, my first grandchild was born in May of 2021 and my daughter insisted that anyone who wished to spend time with that adorable little girl would need to be vaxed. Got the first course (two shots 30 day apart) never boostered. Will not. But, on balance, I took the risk, overlooked my daughter's Nanny State Fearmongering, and Held My Infant Granddaughter. Despite my misgivings about its safety and efficacy, I stand sturdily by My Choice.
"There are no solutions. Only tradeoffs."
- Thomas Sowell, another Really Smart Economy Think Stuff Guy like Bastiat
Hopefully we've managed to reconnect with some good friends lost and be thankful for those with whom we stayed connected despite our differences.
Your daughter was part of the "mass formation" Mattias Desmet has talked about. They are not the prime movers of totalitarianism, but they are certainly enablers. I count myself lucky that I was not faced with a choice such as yours, though I've been shunned by many former friends. I'd like to believe I would have made a principled choice and that they would now be reuniting with me.
My stance has definitely impacted some relationships, especially at work where my coworkers are mostly 30s and 40s liberals in tech/e-commerce.
But I had to make a different choice with my family because I'm was not so certain that we'd reuninte easily or in short order. I wasn't willing to make the sacrifice. I do not feel weak for it and stand by it.
As with masking, I'd prefer that everyone be left to make their own choice but, where a potentially ill, definitely smelly and weird-looking old man might be putting his face in the pretty little face of her firstborn infant child and exposing the vulnerable child at risk - while simultaneously being force-fed The Way of The Bien Pensant - I understand why she held that position, and willingly honored it.
--
"You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't go for help, no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold"
- Zappa and The Mothers, "I'm the Slime"
As it ever was.
Well you guys got your Efriends on Gato's Stack. Else some schools were Forcing returning students to mask up upon return from "Covy illness" (you know, positive fake test and all), and I asked the administrator if that reminded her of "The Scarlett Letter". Blank Stare. Don't other me Bro! (or my kids).
-Edit- for typos
It hurts that an edumacator wouldn't get the Scarlett Letter reference.
It's the whole reason we make kids read the freaking book - to caution us against Witch Hunts.
This is the pandemic of ironies. That the "educators" would be the least educated, and that healthcare professionals would continue to adopt the very policies that do not work. I could see an Applebees having lucite barriers indefinitely, but a doctor's office? And yet...good times everyone...this is the way things are.
I was not and do not judge you. As I wrote, "I'd like to believe...," but there's no telling what my choice would have been. Fortunately, no close relatives took that stand.
I hadn't thought so. Sorry for careless attention to phrasing.
I understood your "I'd like to believe" completely and my response was essentially affirmation of your statement: I, too, wish I could stand on principle, and I could easily and non-aggressively engage True Believers, and they'd make statues in my honor.
But, alas, I, like you, are mere Only Human. We're just carbon-based bipedal life forms descended from apes.
- sorta twisted Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide" quote
Energy science research can get you into trouble....
Please read, i feel endangered.:
https://arcanus.substack.com/p/the-suppression-of-energy-science
https://arcanus.substack.com/p/the-christ-psyop
Energy science research can get you into trouble....
Please read, i feel endangered.:
https://arcanus.substack.com/p/the-suppression-of-energy-science
https://arcanus.substack.com/p/the-christ-psyop
I don't stand by my decisions, but I do own them.
I wore masks in order to get hospitalized due to diabetic cellulitis. I've worn it since to get my prosthetic after losing a leg to diabetic cellulitis. I've worn masks on Uber rides, and in doctor's offices.
I have never been vaccinated, but would I if I had been gainfully employed? Would I have vaccinated if I had a wife and children? I don't know.
My penance is at least regretting the decisions that I made. Would they have thrown me out of the doctors office had I refused to wear a mask? If I didn't wear a mask in the hospital hallways would I have found myself carted away?
There are consequences though.
I think my immediate family knows of what I have done on twitter, though they don't mention it. After all, at least my sister has a twitter handle, and I bet my brother at least monitors it. He has early and often said that I should personalize and block all social media in order to get a job.
"I wore masks in order to"
... do almost everything we did in public for a couple years. I was confident masks were useless by about April 2020 but just couldn't afford to have the "Let me show you the data *points to PowerPoint Slide Thirty-twelve*" when all I need from inside the Wegman's is some cilantro to make my Fish Tacos Salsa. I grumbled but it just wasn't worth it.
Maybe I should have pressed harder there but I pressed pretty hard in a lot of situations where thoughtful contemplation might have been more sensible. I don't think an iota less of you for it, especially owning it.
Ironically the two groups I hold most accountable are doctors and educators. If there are two segments of society that should not have been pushing the nonsense, it is those that should know better, shouldn't they?
My dad told me his dad stated the bottom 10% od any graduating class became bankers. I think nowadays, they become teachers. The ones who should be the vanguard of education actually know the least about masking and vaccines, and doctors are only marginally better.
On my second trip to the doctor following my amputation, the doctor tried to convince me to get the vaccine. When I said I hadn't gotten it, she asked me why. There was a moment there, I stood there and I think I said "personal reasons..." and then thought to myself "f it, she needs to know why." So I gave her a list.
• The vaccine is experimental. They had yet to rest for long term symptoms.
• I already had Covid twice...natural immunity.
• It doesn't stop the spread or infection
• It doesn't stay in the injection site.
I think I left out that Covid wasn't that dangerous anyway. Her response:
"It's ridiculous to think that a vaccine would stay in one place." Sh thought that assertion was ridiculous, but that is one of the very things the narrative pushed. She hem and hawed about it being experimental. She also tried to say that because I was diabetic it made me vulnerable. and my response was I already had it twice, so no I am not vulnerable."
I think she thought I was going to come at her with some MAGA hat wearing one syllable reason why I didn't want the vaccine. The next time I came after that. No mention of the vaccine at all, but still they pushed masking. Always with the masking.
About six weeks. She born on the 3rd, we met mid-June. (there were logistics involved in getting my then 79 year old mom out for an overnighter five hours away; also with my stepmom, I kid you not).
Wow, that must have been interesting.
The older you get, the more logistics are required.
"Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics."
- Gen. Robert H. Barrow
So you were considered "fully vaccinated." I was thinking I bet there are many people that all you had to do...was get vaxxed and the next day you could see the kid or elderly family member, depending on the part of the world you were in. Because of the arbitrary assertion of what "vaccinated" means it could be anything. You could be vaccinated yesterday (what I consider vaccinated) or for some it was fifteen days after the vaccine that one is considered vaccinated...and for some others I imagine that it is only after the second dose you are considered vaccinated.
Yes, full vaxed was her requirement. At that time hardly anyone had had a booster, many were just cycling thru first doses.