Well, I’ve lost track on how many Coronavirus blog posts I’ve dropped. I’m not sure I have anything new to say on the subject. I have been a little frustrated with the extreme opinions of most people on social media. I understand that it is the nature of “posting” things for someone else to read. When a person is typing something without any immediate feedback from someone right next to them, like one would have in a conversation, it lends to more extreme positions. There is no immediate countering response. Even if there is a dissenting opinion, and there always will be, you dont have to defend your position immediately. So humans just naturally say whatever comes to mind and these things generally tend to be more extreme because of this. Not tempered by natural concern of the others in the conversation; since they are neither present nor known usually by the person posting.
With respect to covid and social media, the extremes at this point are: “Everyone stay home. If you dont then you dont care about people and are okay with them dying.” …and… “Open up the economy. If you stay home you’re just scared.”
Both of these extremes are, in my opinion, just that … extreme. We have so much more info about this virus and infection now than we did at first. We are able to treat it somewhat, recognize it somewhat, test for it. We are aware of how to slow it somewhat, prevent it somewhat. We know who is higher risk. There’s still so much we dont know.
That said I am a big fan of a middle road approach. We need to manage social distance, wear masks as appropriate, no close contact when possible to avoid. Those at higher risk should be more cognizant of their efforts to protect from the spread. However, the risk of complete seclusion of our whole society is likely worse than the risk of the virus effect. So recovering from the past weeks and months of quarantine, social distancing, and isolation is what I believe is the right thing to do.
Most importantly is a positive attitude toward each other, both online and in person. Anger and frustration at a person who is less stringent about the protections than you may be is like being angry at someone because of their driving habits. These things are things you cannot control. So doing what we can to protect ourselves is the place we should each focus. I encourage each of you to approach the current pandemic with these concepts in mind. If not, the risk of the pandemic will just be exacerbated by the risk of your own psychological stress.
See you all next week. I hope to begin blogging about something else soon.
Dr D
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