Moving forward with COVID

I nearly called this post "Returning to church", except that implies things that are not the case for me. 

Don't get me wrong -- I have a far easier time skipping church than I should, especially now that we're on the early schedule -- but my not going for the last two months has been strictly a matter of not feeling safe. 

Before that, even though I was not going into the building, I was listening to the meetings on Zoom. 

Then, as I was expecting a spike in new cases following Christmas and New Year's, they announced that they were ending the Zoom meetings.

(I wrote about this here: https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2022/01/take-shelter.html)

In that announcement, it said if you did not feel comfortable meeting in person to set up an appointment with the bishop. I assume there were some exceptions possible, or maybe the meeting would just be to resolve concerns.

(If you write to Salt Lake, that's all the follow-up meetings with the stake president are about. Trust me: https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-letter.html)

I did not set up an appointment, because I really believed that after those two weeks things would settle down. Maybe there would be a third week for safety's sake, but that this was a temporary pause.

I underestimated the length of "temporary". 

I kept checking the numbers for how Washington County cases were doing. It kept being horrifying. 

I am sure part of this was Omicron, but I think part of it was also just the sheer amount of infected people. 

During the first lockdown, there were very few cases, and the spread was slowed. During that time period we were supposed to make personal protective equipment widely available and develop testing and contact tracing protocols... to do things to help us be safer. Unfortunately, the administration at the time didn't care about that, and many of its supporters made it a matter of religious devotion to fight those fighting the disease.

So instead of keeping the number of infections low, that number continued to grow. If there are 24 local cases versus 2400, the odds of my encountering someone infected (or someone infected by them who doesn't know it yet) go up.

The United States has now had 935,093 deaths. Even with cases starting to drop, we seem sure to hit a million.

But the cases are going down. 

I still think talk of easing up on mask mandates is too soon. I will continue masking in public. I will continue carefully choosing my activities.

Unfortunately, the people least likely to take precautions against catching COVID are also those least likely to try not to spread it, a big reason why the distancing is a stronger strategy than the masking.

But I do intent to be in church next week, masked.

I will also check the stats again before I do. Because after March 11th, I would not be surprised if there is another spike.

To whom do we listen?

I am going to give two pretty different examples on the overall issue of authority and having a platform. 

First, I am going to say that if you believe that the Crimea is mostly Russian people, and so it is perfectly reasonable that Russia wants to annex it, you are listening to propaganda straight from Putin.

That is more of an issue currently because given Trump's coziness with Putin, it has become a conservative talking point, and grounds for criticism of Biden.

(Let us also remember that many progressives use that same talking point, and then remember this photo of Green Party candidate Jill Stein at the same table as Vladimir Putin and Michael Flynn in Moscow in 2015: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/guess-who-came-dinner-flynn-putin-n742696. I mention it because some people find it weird when hardcore Berners go full Russian, but it's not a big leap.)

This is not about the issue of whether the United States should be taking a side. There are arguments about playing world cop, and arguments against letting Germany just take Poland and appeasement, and how you play a role if you must... there is a lot to that, and I don't have the answers.

What I feel very comfortable saying is that we should make those decisions based on accurate information, and not just because we believe the falsehoods delivered by people who are highly interested in the outcome. If we trust lies because we have chosen a team and assume everything that the other side does is wrong and worthy of scorn, that is not helpful.

Partisanship is a real problem in terms of getting out good information and then being able to make good decisions, but the other problem is that often there is a lot of ignorance. 

Even if you were good in school, how much did you learn about the rest of the world? Their history, politics, and how they got there can all be key information. I only recently learned that South Korea had some oppressive dictatorship issues during my lifetime. They weren't North Korea; North Korea is the bad one, right? But things are rarely that simple.

It isn't possible to teach everything about everyone and everywhere, but we could do better, and we can certainly do better at augmenting the information that is relevant to the issues of the day.

The partisanship issue does relate to dominator culture, and the desire to let might make right and be on the winning side, no matter the cost. It is not surprising, then, that this incorporates existing pathways along the hierarchy. Therefore, it is often easier to perceive more authority from someone white and male and American.

There might be a Black man who knows a lot about the topic, but he is not getting asked because he will also talk about colonialism, despite or because adding information on the influence of colonialism might really flesh out the issues.

https://twitter.com/Russian_Starr

There might be a highly qualified woman based in Kyiv who could give more information.

https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk 

If they say things we don't want to hear, will we listen? Truth generally can't be confirmed by something sounding good to us.

On a completely different note, this is an interesting thread on the topic of what would constitute  "profound" autism:

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1469302091516633096

I follow a lot of autistic people (this is why my skin crawls every time ABA is mentioned). There is a lot of good information out there. I make a special note of this thread because the person who is being listened to the most is also someone who is getting money and prestige along with the listening, even though his criteria falls apart pretty easily. Tania's arguments are sound. 

It is a common failing to not let people be the authorities on their own lives, no matter how much they have studied or how much sense they make.

Just some things to think about.