The state of the world is super scary but that of my mind, too.
I have reached a point where i wonder whether the whole concept of #ConspiracyTheory was invented to discredit people’s attempts to question the status quo. Or rather, whether actual (crazy) conspiracy theories are constantly put out deliberately in order to make independent investigations that ARE raising legitimate concerns look crazy too.
I fully realise this is NOT a good frame of mind!
@Hellybootwader @pvonhellermannn
It is mind-boggling to me the level of misinformation and misapprehension about covid. I know you were talking about its effects, but it seems to me that even the basic "how not to catch it if you don't want to" is niche subculture knowledge.
Something I keep seeing: people who are quite happy to put on a mask if asked, yet _don't_ have the cognitive framework to evaluate the risks themself.
• They don't know that the virus comes out on the breath, no need for a cough.
• They don't know that you can be infectious while feeling fine.
• They don't know that it hangs in the air like smoke when no-one's there.
Even if you tell someone the facts, they haven't necessarily thought through the practical _consequences_ of it being like that: for example, they forget to take into account that air can move.
And this leads to faulty assumptions, like for example "it's okay to have a mask break in the corridor to eat my snack, no-one else was around".
So if you want to stay safe, e.g. with dentists or plumbers, you have to think ahead all the time to how a well-meaning person might accidentally infect you, because their own cognitive framework for it may have gaps. The level of necessary vigilance and negotiation is exhausting.
And I do blame the WHO and the UK government. They actively misled people, and then when they were proven wrong, they still never followed up "hey, everyone, we got this really wrong, please update your infection control policies as a matter of urgency".
It's like when newspapers print an untrue thing as their big headline on the front page, and then the correction weeks later is a tiny paragraph at the bottom of page 17!
From time to time, I still see old posters advocating handwashing as the main covid protection, not even mentioning air quality: a marker of where the info has never reached. And as far as I can tell, the NHS is basically not bothering any more with covid infection control - though maybe that could change somewhat from the Covid Inquiry conclusions?
Thinking about the perilous information landscape often reminds me of a friend of mine. There are quite a few things they believe that I don't believe (e.g. that the covid vax was some kind of nefarious plot), and those differences can be hard to navigate sometimes - but we find common ground in both having no trust in the government :-/
@unchartedworlds @Hellybootwader @pvonhellermannn thank you so much for your thoughts on this.
I am an information sponge and I have learned and continue to learn everything I possibly can about Covid because it's part of the responsibilities of my job (to protect mt clients and myself), but it's also something I don't ever want to catch.
I forget that most people don't understand how it's transmitted, how it can hang around in the air, and thus, they just don't think about the risks that they're taking just walking around breathing in places where other people have been breathing.
To the uninformed, I sound like an absolute nut even though everything I say when I'm talking about Covid is absolutely based in research -- real research, not YouTube forays into the fringes.
I wouldn't call myself an expert; I'm in a healthcare-adjacent field, but I am not a doctor or researcher. But in a way, I am an expert on my own protection and an example of how, these last six long years, someone could go about not ever contracting it.
Since everyone was sold down the river regarding its harmlessness, I believe that we're going to see the repercussions of this pop up pretty extremely within the next 10 to 15 years. People are going to be sicker, more immune-compromised, unable to fight off basic infections that a healthy immune system would be able to ward off… We are in a world of hurt right now, even, and it's just going to get worse.
But nobody listens to the Cassandras.
@pvonhellermannn have you listed to Things Fell Apart? A lot of that is delving into conspiracy theories, it gives other angles to view things from.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/things-fell-apart/id1592984136
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