Entry 612: 10,000 Minutes of Solitude

My week in quarantine is over -- yay! I tried to test out after four days, but, despite feeling totally normal, I was still positive. So, I took a test every morning thereafter and finally got a negative result on day seven. It's good to be back upstairs; the basement was getting lonely. And it reconfirmed for me that although Covid is still out there, and we should be aware of that, we absolutely cannot go into anything close to a shutdown again. The isolation is worse than the disease, by a wide margin. I started to go a little stir crazy, and I have a family I could talk to through the door (admittedly not easy when you have 6- and 9-year-olds). I can't imagine the emotional and psychological toll a person who lives by themself must endure in quarantine. It must be so much worse than having a sore throat and feeling a little logy for a night or two.

I think most people get that, but it's still not really the "correct" position to hold in polite society, which is why we are seeing think pieces with tones of admonishment about how Americans are making "little effort to contain a still-raging pandemic" and how "experts urge caution ahead of Memorial Day." The latter article contains the following quote:

"That is the hard thing to reconcile,” said Gabe Kelen, chair of the emergency medicine department at Johns Hopkins University. “I get it that people are willing to take a personal risk, but it is not a personal risk. There are a lot of people who are older, who are immunocompromised who can’t fully participate in society” because others “are not willing to do the right thing.”

The country has moved so far to, ‘I’m only concerned about me,’” he added.

Pretty judgy, no? I'm seeing more and more of this type of thing -- impugning people's motives who don't see eye-to-eye with you. Like, you can't merely disagree and say why; you have to denigrate the character of those on the opposite side of the issue. In this case, what is the "right thing" that people should do so that elderly folks and immumocompromised people can fully participate in society? Because I don't think such a thing exists. At this point, the only way to stop the spread of Covid is to lock down again, and, as I mentioned above, that merely shifts the problem from one of physical health to one of mental health. Also, if we lock down, there isn't much of a society for anybody to participate in.

Seriously, what are we supposed to do? It's always the same three things: vaccinate, wear a mask, and socially distance. One is already done; two has its own problems; and three isn't always realistic. I discussed mask wearing in a previous entry. I personally don't have a problem with it, but masks do have some downsides, and you can't wear them all the time in all activities. That's the main problem with them, and that's also the problem with social distancing. You can't, say, take martial arts class while wearing a mask and social distancing. You can't really play contact sports at all. You can't drink at a club. You can't eat school lunch. You can't meet a friend for coffee. You can't sing at church. You can't really have much of a life and only do activities in which you can wear a mask and socially distance. So, what are we talking about here? Telling people to wear a mask and socially distance is, in effect, telling people to go into a quasi lock down. I mean, do you really think requiring people to wear a mask from the front door to the table of a restaurant is going to make dining out safe for vulnerable people?

There's no right answer to this disease. But treating it like the flu, which it basically is for the vast majority of vaccinated people (actually probably even less severe), is a reasonable way to proceed. If you disagree, that's fine. I will hear you out -- I've been hearing you out -- but let's stop it with the moralizing. It's not selfish, given what we know at this moment in time, to think we are better off as a society to accept the risk of Covid for the reward of a return to relative normality.

Speaking of moralizing, I watched Ricky Gervais' Netflix comedy special SuperNature. I've never really been a huge fan of his standup (nor his emceeing), but the original The Office is absolutely brilliant, and his conversations with Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington (The Ricky Gervais Show) are among the funniest things I've ever heard. So, when I heard he had a new special out, and it was "controversial" I decided to see what all the din was about. Meh... I give it a B- grade for the comedy, and rate it a 6 out of 10 on the offense scale.

I didn't think the jokes were all that offensive. This is definitely a case of something's profile being increased drastically by its critics. If all the usual suspects didn't write a think piece about awful it is, it probably would not have crossed my radar. That's why I have trouble taking people seriously when they argue that it goes beyond jokes and that a comedian's words actually do real tangible harm to certain people. If they really thought this, then they wouldn't be amplifying these words by tweeting about them and writing articles about them. It's called the Streisand Effect, and it's a well-known phenomenon, especially by people who work in media. I mean, you know who has a new comedy special out that isn't at all offensive? I don't because there aren't scathing headlines about it blowing up my news feed.

If you don't want to watch somebody tell offensive jokes then don't watch it. I sometimes want to watch this. It's not because I'm a secret racist or transphobe or misogynist. It's because I just don't get offended easily, and I think twisted shit is funny. Often that's why it's funny. Some people need this type of dark, offensive humor to deal with the ruthlessness of reality. If you don't get it, I probably can't explain it to you. It's the same reason I like Todd Solodnz and Quentin Tarantino movies.

Alright, I've run out gas, and I need to go to bed.

Until next time...