As the title says, I’m currently arguing with someone who thinks that every single person who is currently not taking precautions/not masking is an irredeemable piece of shit, and that at best, they deserve no sympathy if they get sick or die, or at worst, they deserve death. And that if they are unwilling to change now, they will never have the capacity to change. And the implication is that trying to convince people or doing any kind of activism isn’t all that useful because all these people are immutably selfish and ableist, and the only thing that will get every single one of these people to change their mind is if they get disabled/become directly affected in a bad way. And they keep talking about how the only way things are going to change is if we reach a tipping point with so much death and disability that the ruling class will have no choice but to bring back protections to mitigate/eliminate COVID. Because there won’t be enough people to work to keep society functioning basically.
Am I wrong to think that this is very defeatist and frankly grotesque? Because to me, the implication is that they’re hoping for the amount of disability and death to become so acute and staggering that the ruling class will have no choice but to intervene I guess? This is without considering the development of next-gen vaccines that can severely reduce or eliminate COVID transmission and/or the development of therapeutics that can prevent long COVID. But if the vaccines failed and the therapeutics got nowhere, who’s to say that this so-called tipping point they’re waiting for won’t take decades? Why would you wait for things to get that awful in lieu of doing COVID activism/organizing in the meantime?
I also really don’t think the ruling class is ignorant to the sheer level of death and disability that COVID is going to continue to wreak if left unchecked. There are a myriad of examples of the ruling class still taking precautions for themselves (e.g. everyone has to test still before they can be around Biden), and even some of their authoritative outlets like the WHO have said that 1 in 10 infections results in long COVID and that we can expect hundreds of millions of people to need long-term care in the future, if this current trajectory continues. I understand that COVID is pretty unique for our lifetime, in terms of the massive death and disability it has already brought, and is still dangerous in large part because it is so infectious and there is no long-term lasting immunity. But, post-viral illnesses are not new. Social murder is not new. If we reach this so-called tipping point with so many people dead and disabled that there aren’t enough people left to work to keep society functioning, what is stopping the ruling class from getting rid of child labor laws, dipping into labor from abroad, etc. to mitigate this?
On one hand, I get the urge to be misanthropic toward people like that. Everyone who is walking around unmasked in public has the potential to give someone a disabling or deadly case of COVID, including to us. Obviously that’s especially bad for anybody who is already medically vulnerable. And for people who are especially vulnerable, I think the vitriol toward people not masking especially makes sense. And I understand that American culture is especially toxic and individualist and bigoted. But like, just because you do activism doesn’t mean you have to like these people or be their friends or even treat them with kid gloves, lol (like I know shaming can work for some people and different tactics can work on different people and different contexts).
But like, I completely disagree with the notion that people can’t have their minds changed. Like hasn’t like literally every single social justice movement for a certain issue with any kind of success started with support from a minority of people, and activism led to a majority of people to eventually adopt that same viewpoint, and eventually that public pressure led to the government being slightly less shitty and alleviating some suffering? For the COVID pandemic, aren’t their literally parallels with the AIDS epidemic, as far with it largely being ignored (I know COVID wasn’t initially, but it’s effectively at that point now), and that things only started changing for the better once groups like ACT UP started getting involved?
And I still think the overwhelming majority of blame has to lie with the ruling class and all the people carrying water for them who have repeatedly bombarded the public with messages expressing COVID is over for the last 2-plus fucking years and that you don’t have to worry if you’re vaccinated and that bad outcomes only happen to people who are already medically vulnerable. Many people, for example, stopped masking and never looked back once Biden and the CDC said people didn’t have to mask any longer if they were vaccinated, way back in 2021. Same shit with mask mandates being lifted, many people stopped masking as a result. Propaganda works and is an insidious beast if used to perpetuate harmful behavior. And I think it would be wrong to to not consider that factor in the choices that people are currently making.
Is ableism an exception to the notion that people are amendable, and they actually cannot change their (ableist) ways?
I don’t understand their viewpoint at all, can someone explain? I’m not sure if I’m wrong either because I’m able-bodied and almost certainly still have some ignorance about disability.
Edit: I also think a not-insignificant number of people who are no longer taking precaution in public actually still have a concern about COVID deep down inside, but they are so inundated with being surrounded with other people no longer taking precaution, that they’re basically just going along with the crowd and maybe don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb or perhaps they are concerned with being harassed by rabid anti-maskers. All of this is to say, I think there is a genuine psychological factor going on in the choice of whether to mask or not, too.
you’re right. there is no point to a kind of activism that is unable to approach people complying with social coercion because they’re all personally morally bad.
to be honest we just -lost- covid, and this reads like the last guerillas in the hills after the Spanish Civil War unwilling to pivot tactics expecting some miracle military victory if they keep to the campaign. and that guerilla campaign is definitely not going to go anywhere if you assume every person who laid down their gun is a fascist now.
obviously not so extreme in the COVID example, but the evil-nonmaskers are in some proportion people forced and coerced to remove them for employment. i’m not sympathetic to the implication this was an individualistic choice freely made by empathyless ghouls.
i’m not saying people still masking & taking precautions should stop to approach other parts of the population, but a pre-emptive unwillingness to work with people currently unmasked betrays a fundamental ignorance of and lack of confidence in the people. everyone’s fucking interested workplace and public safety, but we can’t expect everyone to behave perfectly until we have secured the rights for everyone to be able to
Honestly, this resonated with me a lot (and several other comments in this thread), thank you so much.
I’ve been very depressed the last two years (I’m depressed for other reasons and trying to get help for that, but COVID stuff is a big part of the depression, but I digress), as I’ve watched all the communal protections get hollowed out over time, and simultaneously, many people around me went back to normal, including friends and family. It is very disappointing and also very atomizing, but sometimes it’s also not hard to feel like it’s a betrayal. And maybe framing it as a betrayal is wrong to begin with, because I think I’m giving credence to this notion I so often see in COVID-cautious communities that every single person who is not masking or decides to drop masking is a huge piece of shit who is completely irredeemable and who will not, under any circumstance, ever change their behavior for the better. And I don’t know, accepting that framing, i.e. people can’t change and that our family and friends are deliberately trying to hurt us by no longer masking, is very depressing to me. Because if that is some incontrovertible fact with all things in the world, then what the fuck is the point of advocating for anything?
But the truth is, we live in a world–and not just my own country
–that is profoundly ableist. Capitalism is ableist, our institutions are ableist, our politicians are ableist, and white-majority countries and their individualistic cultures are especially ableist. Like even people with visible disabilities are treated like shit and not respected. And many ignorant people think that disabilities are only visible. I don’t think a lot of people even realize that chronic illness is a thing, and that it’s not a pathological thing that people make up to leech off the government and not work. Most people aren’t even aware that able-bodiedness is only temporary and that can be stripped from a person at any time, without warning. And our world consistently barrages us with all this harmful shit that perpetuates ableism from the day we are born. The more I look at it, trying to get the world to change on COVID and ableism was always going to be a massive uphill battle. But just because things look very dismal right now doesn’t mean that it always has to be like this. But if we want the world to become more equitable (and take COVID more seriously and not be ableist more broadly), I don’t see what choice we have but to fight for it. 
Edit: I believe you’re also right about reasons for not masking can be very complex and vary person to person. Some people might be shitheads and nothing will convince them ever, fuck those people, they don’t matter. But I think many people don’t know any better, or they trust our institutions that tell them that COVID is over and no big deal (propaganda works and anyone can be susceptible to it, even us). Or they’re coerced at work by their shithead bosses to not mask. Or they don’t want to mask because no one else is around them and they’re worried about drawing attention to themselves, maybe worried about getting harassed or assaulted by ardent anti-maskers. Like I think we’d be remiss to deny that there is a social/psychological element in all of this, too. I personally still feel weird sometimes being the only one in a setting who is masking, even though I know I’m in the right.
Yeah while I do think a more confrontational praxis is needed, I do think it is possible to get many people to mask again. I think however that the praxis will have to cause a culture shift aimed toward tackling ableism. Its primarily a culture battle and a battle against ableism in my opinion.
I will say that even if that shift happens, which I am hoping for, this mass ableist violence has inflicted trauma on me that I will probably never recover from. And I will probably never view people the same again.