Claus AranhaMorning of #alife2023 - "oh, someone was attending the conference with Covid yesterday. We put some masks at the reception feel free to use them if you want, but 'personal choice'".
No one in the audience even stirs 🙃
People suck.
Andrei Kucharavy@caranha
Was kinda surprised by that at #GECCO too. I am not necessarily vulnerable, but I am also not a big fan of catching diseases, so in the big sessions with poor ventilation I tend to wear an FFP2. I think that besides me I have seen maybe 5 other people wearing one - almost all with Asian universities affiliations.
Was kinda surprised by that at #GECCO too. I am not necessarily vulnerable, but I am also not a big fan of catching diseases, so in the big sessions with poor ventilation I tend to wear an FFP2. I think that besides me I have seen maybe 5 other people wearing one - almost all with Asian universities affiliations.
@andrei_chiffa Yeah, even after they announced that someone actually had covid at the conference, behaviors didn't change very much, which surprised me.
I didn't expect American and Europeans (the majority here) to be so desensitized...
Dave Ackley@caranha @andrei_chiffa The sensitive ones ain't there.
I think it's more an illusion of immortality and invulnerability.
Which tbh has a lot to do with the political choice of cutting down on communicating about LongCOVID and the fact that the pandemic is very much ongoing.
That and a effed-up view of immunity as a magical thingy that keeps you healthy if you behave right instead of a stack of evolutionary tradeoffs to keep the pathogens at bay, even if it means sometimes all but actually killing you.
@livcomp @andrei_chiffa True, true.