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I don’t think any sort of PSA is likely to work. My mom’s hometown in western Kansas population 1200 has surging case numbers. 67 confirmed infections and little testing. And is shipping everyone who needs a hospital hundreds of miles away by helicopter. They had a death this week and the church funeral will be tomorrow, open to anyone.
And anyway who is more free now: a citizen of New Zealand where they have no covid, or a citizen of the most lenient state in the U.S. whatever that is, maybe a Dakota, where masks were never mandated nor any shutdowns enforced. It's obvious. The citizen of New Zealand is going about NORMAL life without care with all the infinite freedom that implies. And the sensible citizen of whatever state where cases are likely exploding is probably haunted by caution, even whatever risks they decide might be worth taking, they are never unaware there is a risk, even if they are in a lower risk group, for most it's still probably best not to get covid than to get it, and then visiting with anyone in a higher risk group is a bad idea. So their freedom is inevitably curtailed to at least some degree by sensible precaution. Meanwhile the citizen of New Zealand is in actuality free to go about life.Quote:
I keep thinking of Londoners during the war turning all their lights on because "You can't tell me what to do!" What a bunch of entitled brats we are.
That's what a serious plan, decent government, serious social cooperation, serious but limited shutdown etc. could achieve. But it entails a limited period of being told what you can and can't do (the definition of freedom of a 12 year old), as opposed to infinite amount of time being constrained by an endless virus. Mind you I don't think it's the fault of U.S. citizens we don't have that, yea sure some of them suck and will beat up an employee requiring a mask, yea some suck, but this actually requires good government not just good citizens, and we certainly didn't have it under Trump, and it's hard to come by in most of the west it seems. Our governments have failed us.
There have been stories on the news about people losing family members. Especially heartbreaking when they are young and healthy.
Well said, ApatheticNoMore.
And what about the poor health care workers, who are basically sitting ducks, reusing masks and knee-deep in infection, day after day.
The latest is that staff is so decimated, hospitals are drafting employees infected with COVID to work with COVID patients. theoretically, those infected would be immune to further infection. But do we know that for sure? (Can you imagine dragging your exhausted self to work every day as a nurse?) And all because we have a spoiled child president and a percentage of citizenry that believes that this is either a hoax or overblown and the 240,000+ deaths are explainable as something else.
IL is a Democratic stronghold. Masks have been mandated for months now. The good little Democrats keep having private gatherings and the plague keeps spreading.Quote:
Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore
PSAs are just more media blathering.Quote:
Originally Posted by jp1
Either you take your health seriously enough to take precautions, or you dont.
Arguably PSAs and warnings on cigarette packages had some impact on smoking.
Look, I get it that all media outlets need to be used to spread whatever message must be spread.But we didn’t get anti smoking 24/7 on news although certainly we got that message often.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
But if there are those who have not heard of
corona virus and its implications by now, a PSA on someone’s tv or radio station won’t help them.
I suspect part of the problem is that a sizeable portion of the population prefers media outlets that lead them to believe this is all some sort of authoritarian hoax.Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
I don't think states much less cities can solve this. Local messaging to the extent it exists here has been *bad* though.
I kind of get how everyone now is caught in a truly impossible situation. My mental health is terrible for various reasons including the life I'm living under covid (hopefully that's not TOO obvious :cool: ,I mostly mean depressed).
So at a certain point people are just screw it, as the prevention is almost worse than the disease. Only the disease is not good. I say that but the only person I have seen inside since March is my bf, eh and the doctor, and the store. I realize how badly I need to just go over to my mom's house and chill sometimes just to feel like myself again (mom won't live forever, but she is plenty alive now, but @#$# covid and I can't hang indoors or close, moms a happy person since she's long done with caretaking). So it becomes how much more of this can I even take. Working from home since March, they were going to bring us back to the office some days a week, so being that I'm totally resigned to covid ever going away at this point, I dutifully went wearing a mask all day (cloth as lets be real, I can do an hour in an N95 but not all day) for a few days. But that plan has been put on hold, so back to work from home.