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| They're not ALL like this, but enough are |
First, you’re right.
I knew well in advance that I would change exactly ZERO hearts and minds. Nothing was altered, no one was moved, no animals
were harmed in the making of my posts.
But it’s like potato chips; you can’t just stop at one, and once I’m engaged
with a poster, the gloves are off.
Secondly, despite the accusations that I am a bully and I
want to FORCE people to mask up and get vaccinated, the truth is that I don’t. Sure, I think that any rational and sane
individual should get vaccinated, if at all possible, the sooner the better. Yes, everyone, vaccinated or not, should wear
a mask as recommended by the CDC and in some cases mandated by either local
government and/or private businesses. But FORCE someone to do that? I’m actually kinda libertarian in that
respect (don’t tell my friends).
Of course, if you suffer the consequences for your foolish
actions, don’t look to me or the government to bail your silly ass out.
But the real reason I spent so much time online arguing was
that I cannot stand people who LIE about what’s happening with this virus. Check that; I can’t stand people who LIE
about anything. But it’s particularly galling
to see the flow coming from an eruption from Bullshit Mountain regarding mask effectiveness,
vaccine effectiveness, etc., etc. I try
to counter with facts, truth, links, and what do I get for my efforts?
More bullshit.
I can tell you confidently that NO, Bill Gates has NOT been
arrested (yet), and NO, the majority of doctors and nurses HAVE been vaccinated
(the last thing I read reported doctors at 97%, and that was a while
back). But I was equally confident in
thinking another claim was bogus, though I had nothing but my own experience to
explain why, so I didn’t respond. But
that’s the subject of today’s post.
Amid all the BS and nonsense (and the responses who tried,
like me, to inject some reality into the discussion), one poster bragged that “No one I know has contracted the disease, and no one I know
has been vaxxed, and no one wears a mask, either.” I merely responded “Well,
in that case, good luck,” and let it go, but let me explain why I think
she was in error.
I learned long ago (before marketing research), that
everyone is different, but we tend to think that people like us are like us
about damn near everything. We tend to hang
around with people who think like us, dress like us, eat the types of food we
do, believe what we believe, and so on.
Up to a point. We may agree about
a lot of things, but…except for identical twins, no two people are exactly
alike. Everyone has some idiosyncrasy
that makes them just a wee bit distinct from everyone else.
Now, it’s certainly possible that the poster does not know
anyone who has had COVID. We’re a small
county, population 53,000 and change, with a total as of today of 2,182 cases –
just 4% of the population. If everyone
they know lives around here, then yeah, chances are slight they know anyone
with COVID. Truth is, I only know of
four who have had the disease, and none of them live in this county, or in
Oregon for that matter. Of those four,
two are dead, so those percentages aren’t so good.
As far as no one she knows being vaccinated, that’s also possible
– as a county, we’re still batting under .500 despite the total percentage in
Oregon being just under 70%. Possible,
but…I know for a fact that not everyone “brags about it” either online or in-person
for that matter. I only found out about
a neighbor being vaccinated by luck. He’s
conservative, so I assumed he’d be resistant to getting the poke, and he’s not
one to talk much about anything, let alone anything personal, but I happened to
run into him at the grocery store as he was coming out of the pharmacy, and he
admitted he was there to get his second shot.
So, she could have friends like that, too.
And as for everyone not wearing a mask…many businesses have
been following the CDC guidelines, saying that vaccinated shoppers are welcome
to come in without a mask, but non-vaxxed folks should mask up. So not sure where her friends are shopping,
and now many of those businesses are revising their mask policies to require
everyone, vaccinated or not, to wear a mask, so…
Yeah, it’s probably bullshit.
But that’s not why I think she’s probably wrong. Like I said earlier, it’s because we always
assume that everyone’s just like us. Exactly
like us. And that’s a fallacy that I
love to expose by telling this story…
It was damn near 30 years ago when I was general manager of
a brand-new public radio station in Monroe, LA, an area that was (back then) one
of the largest parts of the country without such a station. We set up the “standard three-legged stool”
of programming – NPR news in drive-time, classical during the day, and jazz and
eclectic programming on nights and weekends.
Folks were happy to have us on the air, but of course, newshounds wanted
more news, jazz fiends wanted more jazz programs, and of course, the classical
crowd wanted more classical music, especially at night. Still, most everyone was glad we finally made
it on-air after a lengthy fundraising campaign and construction on the
university’s campus (and on their dime, too).
We’d been on the air for about six months, so the honeymoon
was about to be over. Still, on this night
I was basking in some leftover triumphs as I attended the first concert of the Monroe
Symphony Orchestra’s 1991-2 season.
After the performance, I met many of the symphony supporters at the reception
where in no uncertain terms everyone told me that everyone wanted
more classical music, and all their friends and neighbors and everyone
else they knew felt that way, too.
At one point, several surrounded me, voices rising as one…
“And we want more classical music, especially at night!”
“YEAH!”
“And get rid of that jazz and new age crap.”
“YEAH!”
“And play more opera!”
“Yeah…maybe….”
“And get rid of that darn Car Talk program!”
“HEY – I LIKE CLICK & CLACK. They’re a hoot!”
And just that like, a donnybrook ensued. The circle suddenly opened like the Dead Sea
for Moses, although I didn’t escape right away.
I moved to the side to watch, amused, as bosom buddies and best mates suddenly
pointed fingers not at me but at each other over Mountain Stage and Fresh
Air and “maybe we’ve got enough opera in the Metropolitan Opera and
we could use more from the baroque period…” and “I don’t see why we have to
turn down our noses at 20th Century composers; after all…” and so on. After a few minutes, no one noticed I had quietly
left the building.
OK, it wasn’t all that quiet. I laughed loud and long.
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