By David Futrelle
We like to think we can defeat almost any national trauma by remembering to “Keep Calm and Carry On,” as the popular poster declares.
It’s no accident that the poster, originally produced (if not widely deployed) in pre-war Britain in 1939 had a second and much bigger life in the US in the wake of 9/11, when we were routinely exhorted to keep going to restaurants and bars and theaters lest our social cowardice prove that “the terrorists have won.” (And there was some logic to this argument: the point of terrorism is to terrorize, so by resisting our fears and “carrying on” as normally as we could we lessened the impact of the attacks.)
But we now live in a world where this comforting fantasy no longer applies, where the health of our older and immunocompromised citizens depends on us changing our habitual behavior radically. Social Distancing is hard both practically and psychologically, especially in the US, where it challenges Americans raised on an ideology of rugged individualism to adapt a lifestyle that seems decidedly unheroic – and, for those who are young and healthy, to do it for the sake of others rather than for themselves.
So it’s not surprising that there are still people out there who still think the bravest response to the coronavirus is to refuse to change at all. Think of those who filled the bars and restaurants this past weekend – in Chicago there were long lines of St Patrick’s Day revelers outside the bars in Wrigleyville. Think of Devin Nunes, tut-tutting those too “scared” to go out and suggesting that visiting the local pub was the best thing people could do for our economy.
“I’m not afraid to go out and do what I want,” wrote a Twitterer called Lucky Tony.
In my world, it is … a necessity to go out and have a good time at my local bar and not be stuck at home cause of some ‘virus’ that scares you.
Now that bars and restaurants in many locales have been forced to close their doors to customers by decree – in part because of the terrible decisions people like Tony made over the last weekend – there are some calling for some sort of “resistance” to the closures. “It is now evident that this is an orchestrated attempt to destroy CAPITALISM,” tweeted the cowboy-hatted former sherriff and MAGA ideologue David A Clarke Jr.
First sports then schools and finally commercial businesses. Time to RISE UP and push back. Bars and restaurants should defy the order. Let people decide if they want to go out.
Or stay home and get delivery until the crisis passes. Is that really too much to bear?
Going out won’t help us defeat this enemy; it will enable the virus to do more damage. Hitting the bars isn’t an act of courage; it’s an act of selfishness that puts more vulnerable others at risk. Keeping calm is well and good, but carrying on as normal, well, that’s just what the virus wants us to do.
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@Moon Custafer
I can believe that. I think all this self isolation would be a lot worst with out the internet to at least kept people in touch virtually .
A lot of libraries aren’t shutting down digital services and are now allowing people to sign up for a library card digitally. If you don’t have one, now would be an excellent time to get one. Having an unlimited supply of ebooks and eaudiobooks is bound to help alleviate boredom.
Also, many libraries have tons of online databases including things like language learning databases, genealogy research databases, and databases that work sort of like MOOCS. Some databases like Kanopy and Hoopla also have streaming video for free. A lot of it is documentaries but there are also TV shows and movies. They will also have content for kids to help them stay entertained and learning out of school.
If you live in even a mid-size city, your library almost certainly has stuff to keep you with projects and recreation for months if not years.
I hoard library cards from all the neighboring towns like candy so I’m reasonably well prepared for bunker mode.
If you don’t have one, take it from an ex-librarian: get one.
@Weird Eddie
Smallpox is probably responsible for more deaths than anything else in human history. There may be a reason that most anti vaxxers are from developed countries and are too young to remember smallpox.
There’s a lot of survivorship bias* from the “measles isn’t even that bad” crowd. “I had the measles when I was a kid, and it was no big deal.” Well, yeah. It would have to have been no big deal for you to be able to discuss it today. The kids for whom it was a big deal aren’t able to talk about that experience as adults because they didn’t make it to adulthood.
*I think I’m using this term correctly…
This pandemic is really highlighting the failures of global populism. There’s no coordinated response among leaders. It’s just every country for themselves (and none more so than Trumpland).
I’m pretty introverted, but I also need social contact and variety. Homeschooling elementary-age kids while trying to telecommute full time and keep the house from falling apart is taking a toll on me. I can’t focus and don’t have any solitude, so I’m not going to be learning piano or reading “War and Peace”. There’s no upside to this for me.
Although our cat is thrilled to have us all home, so there’s that.
@Naglfar:
When I read David’s previous post about incels rejoicing that Chads and Stacies can’t hook up and make out in public anymore, I thought “wait till incels figure out what people are doing behind closed doors during this pandemic”.
Just to show how stupid that is unfun fact: The estimated death toll for all the wars and genocides in the 20th century is about 200 million people. The estimated death toll for measles in the 20th century is also 200 million people.
But hundreds of millions of deaths is a small price to pay if it stops autistic people from existing.
Sharing something delightful: stop-motion animation using wool (roving, yarn, felted objects, etc.):
https://twitter.com/eliistender10/status/1239109201085042688
I had a court hearing this morning; but we conducted it by telephone. That had been arranged before this virus thing; but the powers that be are introducing rule changes to make more use of remote attendance possible. There’s all sorts of things going on to try to keep the legal system functioning.
As for generally, I’m trying to utilise the slow down to catch up on some writing tasks. I’ve also been going on some lovely long walks. I do that anyway; I get a bit twitchy if I don’t walk a lot. I’m also still going down the gym. I think on balance it’s probably better to keep the fitness up; and I go late at night when there’s only a smaller gang of us; and we are keeping a bit of distance.
The local approach down here does seem to very much be ‘head down the pub until the whole thing blows over’ though. That’s very much in contrast to London. A lot of friends back there are having to function as before for practical reasons; but the virus seems a lot more in the public consciousness.
@An Autistic Giraffe
Then factor in deaths from smallpox (300-500 million), mumps, rubella, tuberculosis, diphtheria, pertussis, hepatitis, hpv-linked cancers, flu, yellow fever, polio, tetanus, and so on. Still better than us existing in the world! /s
@ Vicky P
Oh my word; that must have taken forever; and that’s before you factor in that they had to make all those props!
@Naglfar
There won’t be. Long-term contraception is a very popular thing these days.
I’m an introverted person, but I am not coping well at all with the current lockdown in Germany. I and my husband have to work at home with a 2 year old, because all the kindergartens are closed, and my beloved 2 year old copes with parental distraction by shrieking and tantrums, so we are working employment and childcare shifts with a tiny amount for essential cleaning and provisioning. We can’t go to playgrounds, the library, the pool, play café, toddler and parent groups or playdates. Merkel is expected to call for people to stay inside except for essential needs from tonight, so I won’t even be able to take him for walks. I love reading, crafts and all the online stuff people are doing sounds fun, but this comment is the one thing I’ll do today that isn’t work or childcare and it’s already annoyed my husband because the stress is getting to him too. I dread another 7 weeks, but if it’s necessary, that’s what we’ll do.
@Naglfar
belated thanks. *HUGS*
@Dalillama : I would not be so sure, since for smaller events in developped country they have been significant baby uptick. Like the big storm in France in 1999.
Bird flu in Germany. It’s the N8 variant though which is considered less dangerous to humans than the N1 version. Similar symptoms as coronavirus. Hopefully that won’t confuse the issue. Probably won’t get a chance to spread anyway because of all the coronavirus precautions. (I wonder what effect lockdowns like this have on public health generally? Do other illnesses also go down?)
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/germany-confirms-case-of-h5n8-bird-flu-in-poultry-farm-2020-03-16
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants : I don’t see the current crisis as “every nation for itself”. After all, most of the world *did* send supplies to China initially, and China is returning the favor right now. (I don’t have the number, so I suppose about 100 or 200 folds ; not trying to say both efforts were equal). There’s also a ton of coordinations between non-USA nations, exchanges on how to battle the disease, etc.
What however is highlighted big time is how a lot of political leaders are incompetent. Trump and Boris Jonhson are the worse looking one, but really, about only South Korea did thing correctly and in time. A lot of them, once again led by Trump and Boris Jonhson, have had most of the responses made by low level officials, private entities, or spontaneous organization.
If there is a time where the world leaders have shown that they only get in the way of the people that get shit done, it’s now.
@ Naglfar:
The horrible thing for the few remaining iron-lung users is that the manufacturer got bought out by another company decades ago and stopped making replacement parts. An article a year or so back noted that the post-polio patients who need them and are still alive tend to be ones with friends or family who are talented and inventive mechanics.
@ Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie:
The eradication of smallpox is one of humanity’s great accomplishments, and it took a long time and a lot of international cooperation. (Sometimes when I feel like getting choked up I think about how there was a smallpox outbreak in 1947 New York City—the public health officials managed to locate and quarantine those who’d been exposed, but to be safe they decided to vaccinate/re-vaccinate the city’s entire population, which in those days was about six million people. They managed to do it in a few weeks. In the end the outbreak was contained to a dozen patients, of whom ten recovered.)
@ An Autistic Giraffe:
Also once they began vaccinating for measles, deaths from *all* viral diseases began to drop. It turns out measles resets your immune system, leaving you vulnerable again to stuff you’d already lived through.
@Moon Custafer
Measles is also extremely easily transmitted. IIRC it stays in air for hours so if someone infected was in a room then a few hours later an unvaccinated person walked through they would have a 90% chance of getting it.
@Alan, I think this is relevant to your interests:
https://twitter.com/Schwarzenegger/status/1239383795205169152
@Alan Robertshaw
Fiber artists. We get the job done.
*goes back to the potholder she’s currently knitting for stress relief*
When I was a kid measles was always portrayed in a comedic way. With the stereotypical red dots on the face; see for example just about any comic of the time.
I wonder if that’s because vaccination was beginning to make a difference so the illness was less scary maybe? Or perhaps it’s that thing of playing scary things for laughs; as a coping mechanism?
I also wonder though if that’s a factor in anti-vaxxers. What’s the median age of that group?
Be interesting to compare portrayals of illnesses in the media over time against the real world science.
Mumps was another serious disease played for laughs. The victim would alway be portrayed with a big hanky tied round their jaw.
Is it perhaps because this was media aimed at kids and the juvenile versions of the illnesses are supposedly less serious than catching as an adult?
There was also that thing in (British) comics of portraying every wealthy person as having gout; with the big bandage on their foot.
Guess that was the Beano subtly preparing us for the class war.
@Alan Robertshaw
I’m not certain, but from casual observation it seems like the majority are millennials or other people who became parents after 1998 (when the fraudulent Wakefield study was published). So, probably median age would be 30s, which would make them too young to remember measles in most developed countries.
@ Vicky P
You certainly do!
You may like the work of Tonico Lemos Auad. He does some really good art with fabrics and stuff. One year for the Becks Futures he made some teeny weeny sculptures from carpet fluff. They were amazing; although you had to be very carful not to sneeze.
https://www.stephenfriedman.com/artists/tonico-lemos-auad/
@Alan
I’m not sure. The Anti-vax movement has been around for a long time. Back when Jenner first invented the smallpox vaccine and started advocating the mass vaccination could end the disease there was plenty of opposition from angry conservatives saying it violated their religious beliefs to have part of an animal injected into the body (although they didn’t seem to have a problem with eating beef) and that paying to have everyone vaccinated would make taxes on rich people too high. “But it will give children autism” is just a modern twist on something that’s always been around.
@ naglfar
Of course; that’s a much more likely catalyst.
Wakefield has so much to answer for.
I know anti-vaxxers aren’t exactly swayed by evidence; but just in case anyone needs any material, here’s the GMC judgement striking him off the register…
https://web.archive.org/web/20110809092833/http://www.gmc-uk.org/Wakefield_SPM_and_SANCTION.pdf_32595267.pdf
and the defamation judgement from when he tried to silence his critics…
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2005/2410.html
Both pretty damning.
In summary: He set up a company to try to patent a type of single jab vaccine. He was unsuccessful. He then started marketing multiple jab vaccines. He did that ‘study’ to show single jab vaccines weren’t safe. There were 12 subjects; including the kid of his business partner.