Friday, September 10, 2021

Free-dumb

Today, I am staying off social media. Mostly. I'm pretty sure blogging counts as social media, but here I am, staying off social media. 

It's awful out there right now, at least in my area. Parents are lashing back at this mandatory masking in schools. There is one woman (who I actually know) who's taken this on in a big way. Every time that she sees a post about our duty, about our responsibility, she wades in to post her antimasking point of view. 

(Her reason for fighting? The masks give her daughter a headache and she doesn't like them. Sum total reason. Let it sink in.) 

Yesterday, a group of friends and I were having a discussion about what we feel our responsibilities are during this pandemic. Teachers were weighing in. People with immune disorders. A mother with two kids with asthma who is also the aunt of a severely handicapped little girl. 

The woman waded into this full bore and began to post things like: 'Masks don't work'. ' 'the vaccine obviously doesn't work since vaccinated are getting covid.' Finally, she said that the vaccinated are the carriers of covid, not the unvaccinated.' 

At this point, I said, "Where are you even getting your 'facts'?' 

She began the taunting, which is the way of these people. "My God, do you do any research at all or do you just live in your little bubble?'

Someone else challenged her to post her sources.

*crickets*

So I posted with my own sources: the CDC, the AMA, the AAP, the local hospital. I pointed out that unlike these sources were good because they updated as new information came in which allowed us to receive and process new data and to change our minds. I pointed out that the disease was mutating, and that another word for that was changing, which was why the information from medical experts was changing as well. As the disease changed, so does the treatment. The changes do not mean that the experts don't know what they are talking about.

She never responded, but I see that she's gone on to other posts, continuing her claims and rhetoric.

These people consider themselves to be patriots. Freedom fighters. It is bad in my little county and there are divisions in our family. 

It's not just here. I watched a boy address the school board on the subject of masks, and he spoke movingly of the death of his grandmother, a teacher. Grown adults mocked and laughed at him while holding signs that read 'Let them smile!' 

They all talk about how 'they' are coming to take our freedom away. They will not take this lying down, by God. They will fight. This message is, in some cases, coming from the pulpit, as these 'men of God' talk about 'demoncrats' and how their country is being destroyed

Yesterday, our president announced mandatory vaccinations or negative weekly covid tests. 

It's going to get ugly. 

Meanwhile, every school in our county has children sent home to quarantine with covid. William came home from school because his very best friend, Gabe, has covid and they sit together at lunch. His mother comforted him with the fact that they've all come in contact with covid, but no one has gotten it so far, that everything will be alright. 

Free-dumb. 



18 comments:

  1. Today under our lockdown we picked up a friend from hospital and took her home, perhaps illegally stopping off for coffee at a beach. Not sure about that. She is not an anti vaxxer but wants the vaccine brand of her choice. She is now at the back of the queue, behind kiddies and third dose booster shots.

    I would really struggle with what she is doing if I didn't know that she is not an anti vaxxer and she is suffering from cabin fever.

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  2. It's beyond me why so many people are afraid of masks. They don't mind doctors and nurses wearing them to prevent the spread of disease in ORs but claim they don't work in the community. You can't have it both ways. Shaking my head.

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  3. They don't have FACTS, they have FOX.

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  4. Good on you for staying off the more popular social media platforms. I'm convinced the bad outweighs the good.

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  5. I'm with Bob, I just don't attempt to argue a point on social media, especially the ones you are referring too, because it is impossible to logically debate every point that gets thrown out there in an attempt to see "what sticks." I will however do so in person.

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  6. Free-dumb indeed.
    One despairs.

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  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  8. Fortunately, the freedummies are less numerous here, but they do exist, and they are about as dumb as yours.

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  9. I’ve just come back from London
    Terrible copliehce with masks on the train
    I challenged one group and reminded them of the welsh rules
    They laughed

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  10. I have just read John's comment above - I didn't realise it was happening here as well - and yet figures are rising rapidly again.

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  11. I feel for you and your fellow countryfolk. Things are similar down under but nowhere near as vitriolic. (Unless I'm living under a rock which is always a possibility!). Freedumbers are everywhere and one just cannot argue with stupid.

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  12. I would have ignored the woman, but she completely hijacked the post and comments. I just got tired of her comments popping up one right after another.


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  13. When you're actually in the middle of this issue with sick people around you it's scary. It's reality. The anti-maskers are in foo foo land. Keep up the good work.

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  14. It's astonishing how much misinformation is out there. I read some of those right-wing sources just to see what they're saying, and your anti-masking parents is basically just parroting the party line. What blows my mind is that these people think they know better than TRAINED SCIENTISTS AND DOCTORS! I mean, how much self-assurance (or self-delusion) is required to get to that point?!

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  15. (That should be "parent," singular. :) )

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  16. Oh gosh, Debbie! This is just plain awful. Here in Hawaii a huge group of Christian ministers put out a full page letter to everyone to get their vaccinations.

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  17. The cruelty and intentional ignorance is the whole Point for the Anti-Mask Anti-Vaxxer ilk, they think they're making some kind of clever 'statement'. In reality the only 'statement' they're actually making is how much low information they run with and how truly selfish and mean they have become. I don't engage with them, not worth my time, you can't fix stupid and Natural Selection is certainly thinning their Herd, since Nature doesn't suffer Fools.

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