Will You Get a Booster Shot?

[Yppej]

I saw on the news tonight 40% of those hospitalized with breakthrough infections are immune compromised although those make up less than 3% of those who have received vaccines. If I were in that demographic I would definitely get a booster.

[Simone]

BAE, sorry about the family's loss and your niece's illness. How terrible!

[Yppej]

An acquaintance of an acquaintance just died of Covid. They were in their late 40s. But unvaxed. But were they overweight or other unforgivable sin? I don't know. They were definitely going to die anyway, in like 30 or 40 years, probably, given average lifespans. They were a Trump supporter and hence no vax because it goes against the teachings of that cult.

How do you know if the individual had underlying medical conditions? You don't even know what the person looks like or, given your choice of pronouns, it would appear "their" gender. That's a plural pronoun, so it's unclear how many people you're even talking about. This is classic third, fourth, or more hand information and anecdotal rather than scientific.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I don't tend to gender people when writing about them often, even if I know a gender and sex perfectly well (although I don't claim to know everyone's preferred gender pronoun). I haven't for like decades. People might think "wow so before your time". But it wasn't prompted by trans rights (not that I'm anti trans rights), but it's more a personal quirk that I've done this for other reasons, because women are often treated like @#$# on the internet, so if I'm on the internet most places I don't come out as female, and because I've had a a fair amount of male platonic friends in the past, and people would assume something romantic was going on because OMG you hang with males, when nothing of the sort was at all. So somewhere along the line in a gender and sex obsessed world (even though I'm just your run-of-the-mill cis female and have no great gender struggle, except you know, patriarchy), I just defaulted to non-gendered language when writing as a matter of strongly ingrained habit.

It seems there were preexisting medical conditions but not the type that could be prevented (really is anyone naive enough to think all medical conditions can be prevented?). And not of the type that would have led to early death absent covid + no vaccine, but that were at high risk of covid when unvaccinated.

This is classic third, fourth, or more hand information and anecdotal rather than scientific.

Oh the irony.

[bae]

or, given your choice of pronouns, it would appear "their" gender. That's a plural pronoun, ...

Nope. Not always.

Check your OED.

[bae]

Nope. Not always.

Check your OED.

Oh look, they even wrote up a handy article about it:

https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-...singular-they/

I'm presuming Yppej doesn't understand Old Norse, Old or Middle English, but it started Way Back When...

(I am blessed with an intelligent daughter who is just finishing up her Ph.D. in Anglo Saxon, Norse, and Celtic Studies. I think her college at Cambridge was built in the 1300s during the transition from Old English to Middle English...)

[Yppej]

I remember using they as a trendy nongendered singular pronoun in the 80's for people since I didn't want to use the impersonal it, losing points on my English GRE test, and not getting into Rutgers despite being magna cum laude and well recommendeded with various extracurriculars and jobs. That killed my desire for politically correct grammar. I landed up going to graduate school in Canada where they don't require standardized tests.

I did okay on the test, and was accepted by SUNY and UNH, but I always felt the reason I fell short with Riutgers was those few grammar questions I chose to answer in a nonconventional manner. So you can go through life not following the rules including the rules of grammar but don't be surprised by how people respond based on your communication style.

[happystuff]

Thanks for the link, bae. Very useful article as I know several individuals who have chosen "they" as their pronoun. I think having this background now makes it a little easier for me to transition to its use.

[jp1]

I saw on the news tonight 40% of those hospitalized with breakthrough infections are immune compromised although those make up less than 3% of those who have received vaccines. If I were in that demographic I would definitely get a booster.

So if they were immune compromised they were going to die of something anyway. Just like old people they are disposable to you?

[Yppej]

So if they were immune compromised they were going to die of something anyway. Just like old people they are disposable to you?

We all die of something anyways. Some of us just get there sooner because of underlying conditions.