In the Covid space I think many people are indeed intimidated into silence by the complexity of the scientific and medical claims at issue. But I notice in the gender realm, where we all understood the reality of human dimorphism until two minutes ago, people are pressured into silence or support through a call to “kindness” of the most shallow nature. We are offered a pretense of newly unearthed complexity there, but it is alarming and disheartening how craven our society is being revealed to be as we timidly cede reality and our health, physical and mental, to techno-capitalists and their avaricious pursuit of profits.
Excellent piece, thank you Heather. One reply I often hear/heard... "I'm not a doctor". Which, a year ago, would spin me up inside & make me feel guilty? stupid? ignorant? But deep down, I trusted myself. I couldn't explain that 'sense' I had to many people - I couldn't really explain it to myself! But these days I KNOW that I have an enormous amount of common sense, intuition and the capacity to sort through information to determine what works best for me. If anything, I feel a bit silly that I briefly 'forgot' that I CAN make reasonable decisions for myself, based on the information that I gather from multiple sources. And you are right, there are many others out there questioning, wondering and searching for the truth. Connecting with someone who is searching for the truth is a joy and fuels my determination to find more like-minded people!
As always...you write something that brings me back from a ledge of despair and heartache - however temporarily. "They" do want us on that ledge - and afraid. I try every day not to comply. Thank you Heather. Be well.
Beautifully and intelligently put, thank you. Myself and some of my friends need that reminder from another person who has your kind of clarity and fearlessness. Often in the stress of all of this, the pressure, the silence, the feeling of isolation we become numb. I have often done what you suggested and put my toe out there to test the waters of another person, often at my gym and happily find that we are on the same page. Thanks for your voice.
"I don't have time" is the retort I hear most. Spoken and implicit. I have been trying to share information about the dying Leviathan that is government, as I have worked inside it as a staffer or consultant for over 30 years. People find this information exceptionally hard to swallow. But I continue to try. https://www.lisafitzhugh.me/lisa-writing/gatheringagain
The idea that the institution we depend on the most, in many ways, could be faltering does not compute. It's especially disconcerting when you appear to offer no graspable solutions.
I also agree it's time to seek out new audiences, people who may be very inclined to explore the truth outside this impenetrable group mind. That's what I am trying to do up here in Seattle, part ways with the system, and instead turn my full attention to the humans fully capable of imagining their way out of this paper bag. Let's see what happens. Mostly, because I too really don't enjoy feeling so alone.
I feel this very much. But I have also started to feel alone from the people that agree with me as my situation changed.
Before, it was a conceptual thing, since I didn't actually have to make a choice that will affect my family. I work from home and the kids were homeschooled. I was outraged about the mandates, but it's an armchair outrage. The same way we drive past someone that has a flat tire at the side of the road in the middle of a snowstorm and feel intense sympathy for them for about 10 seconds before we go on with our lives.
Then the Federal government decided that my 10 yo healthy kid needs to get it for us to stay in the US. Now, I get responses like, "I would find a lawyer and sue" Really? Sue the US government as an immigrant? Seems likely to succeed. Or "I would go live in the hills, doesn't matter if he is illegal" Hmm. Okay. Or "I would just move to Canada" Yeah, and there we will be much more likely to face mandates for everyone, not just him.
Those of us that haven't actually faced the choice between getting it or losing your job don't get it. Especially if there's very little place for you to turn. If you are an accountant whose firm mandates, you can just move to the next firm. If you are a nurse and it's everywhere and you are the only one in your family working, what then? If you are someone that lives from hand to mouth and are simply trying to survive and feed your kids, what then?
You know that terror one feels when you turn around in the shop and you cannot see your child? I feel that many times a day. I am trying to navigate the system as best I can. But there's precious little maneuver room and no time to wait it out. It feels like playing poker with the Devil and Fate and Loki. Yes, I might make it out to the other side, and sometimes Fate comes out on your side and sometimes Loki seems more mischievous than evil. But odds are not looking good.
(Speaking colloquially of the "you" that don't get it. I know Heather gets it)
I find the most hurtful response is the "I don't have time". Grow your own food, get out in the sun, physical activity: "I WISH I HAD THE TIME!" It's amazing how we prioritize our time ... because apparently our physical and mental health ended up at the bottom of the pile. I do sometimes feel like the more people are squeezed, the less time they do have to focus on their health, and do research ... it is much easier to just be told what to do by the authority and follow.
Your second to last paragraph is probably one of the most important points that can be made during these times, and one I've lamented too often now. COVID did one thing that the science community has done a pretty damn good job at preventing, and that's providing unfettered access to science itself. This was a time when everyone from a Ph.D/M.D. to a homemaker who never went to college to have access to COVID studies as soon as they were made available. But not everyone has the ability to read science- science can either be too complex or, quite frankly, too full of itself to be easily read by laypeople. But that shouldn't preclude people from making an earnest attempt. No one who has their doctorate in science was born with their doctorate. It took years of learning and parsing of information to come to that point, but the biggest factor was that it took time and effort.
I think now there are many on both sides who may be either too intimated or too busy to read the science for themselves, and instead want quick short takes telling them what they should be told. This leads people to repeat things rather than to think for themselves about the information that is being presented and whether the information makes sense or if they may be a few problems.
I'm trying to figure out how to correct for this, but I think at the end of the day it really comes down to encouraging people to make an honest attempt to understand scientific principles and not the glossy, sugarcoated image of science that is presented by those in the media and Facebook groups such as "I Fucking Love Science!"
As an aside, I have a good friend who got sick with COVID and had a relatively mild bout. She later had to get vaccinated for her job, and when she would tell people of her mild infection with COVID she would constantly get a response of, "thank goodness you got the vaccine, otherwise it would have been much worse!" Of course, she has to correct them and tell them that she had COVID BEFORE the vaccines came about, and I think that doesn't sit well with people to learn that there are people who did fairly well with the virus sans any vaccines.
It’s becoming cliche but once again for being a light in the darkness. I waffled back and forth early on, grappling with what felt true and the “truth” I was being beat down with. You and Brett (some others) have really been a compass for me since the summer of 2020 as I tried to navigate this madness.
As a Canadian I’ve watched my country slide into some weird, fearful, virtue signaling, authoritarian welcoming hypnosis. The town I live in (a small tourist town) has been bizarrely lock step with the narrative. Our own town council wanted to be the first to mandate outdoor mask wearing for the downtown core in 2020. Just to be the first, as one councilor phrased it.
The bizarre national reaction to the trucker convoy only furthered my concerns. Close friends and family assured me this was some sort of white supremacy movement hell bent on some sort of coup in the making.
Never mind the travel restrictions still in effect for certain Canadians. The unvaccinated couldn’t travel (by air or rail) domestically or internationally until June 2022.
Our government and legacy media made a big show of opening up travel (both domestic and international) yet failed to point out the return home restrictions that remain in place for the unvaccinated.
To return home from international travel an unvaccinated person must do a pre flight test, a 72 hour and 8 day test and also quarantine for 14 days. The “fully vaccinated” can travel freely but may be subject to a random test. I won’t even go into the ArriveCan app that is mandatory.
The double standard of nonsense continues in this country. It seems most people either aren’t aware or don’t care. I’m not sure which is worse. I appreciate your optimism, I hope some rubs off.
Thanks for this post. I work as a truck driver and don't have any living family so I oftentimes feel incredibly alone and that feeling intensified during the pandemic because I didn't agree with what was going on to address it. It's nice to try and meet like minded people. Enjoy your work and Blackhorse. Thanks.
Another excellent article, Heather! How lonely we can feel, especially when our dear friends turn on us. I have made it my mission to talk with people, just get a sense of where they are at, and it is quite amazing and reassuring to find that if you just scratch the surface a little, you find that people at the train station or the taxi driver or the sales lady in the baby clothes store feel just the same as you do. Many are not juiced. When they discover that you are on their page, they are delighted to be able to talk freely.
And, upon the painful re-entry into the "post-covid" or so it is said, world, the weirdness is even more distorted. After having reconnected with a handful of those who are still willing to topically and briefly interact with me, one of them told me, "I'll do what I'm told to do when I'm told to do it." This was his response to my asking him if he knew that Canada may begin requiring a booster every nine months in order to be considered "up to date". It should be noted that he and his wife had recently returned from a trip to Canada where they had to present proof of vaccination upon entry, and that he was unaware of what I had just told him; he also did not know about the farmer's protest in Denmark. I was surprised at my numb reaction and nonresponse. It seems I no longer have a, for lack of a better word, fight left in me to even attempt to sound the alarm. I am witnessing fellow humans, hopefully not all, go on about things as if we were back to normal(?). And forgive me for using the words, "us/we" and "them/they", but I am now beginning to wonder if the the harvested algorithmes have helped perfect the information that we are able to access that they are not seeing. I suppose the trick now for those of us who may find themselves in the "small fringe" is to, "Consider instead those whom you do not yet know—the clerks and baristas, the customer service representatives and delivery people, your new neighbors down the street, or the guy sitting next to you at the bar." and "open up to them, just a little, and see what happens." Do we now need to consider creating some kind of hand signal or grouping of words to help us identify one another? God, creator, source, let's pray/hope/meditate on that our basic, innate humanity will shine through and that that will be all it takes. Amen.
In the Covid space I think many people are indeed intimidated into silence by the complexity of the scientific and medical claims at issue. But I notice in the gender realm, where we all understood the reality of human dimorphism until two minutes ago, people are pressured into silence or support through a call to “kindness” of the most shallow nature. We are offered a pretense of newly unearthed complexity there, but it is alarming and disheartening how craven our society is being revealed to be as we timidly cede reality and our health, physical and mental, to techno-capitalists and their avaricious pursuit of profits.
Excellent piece, thank you Heather. One reply I often hear/heard... "I'm not a doctor". Which, a year ago, would spin me up inside & make me feel guilty? stupid? ignorant? But deep down, I trusted myself. I couldn't explain that 'sense' I had to many people - I couldn't really explain it to myself! But these days I KNOW that I have an enormous amount of common sense, intuition and the capacity to sort through information to determine what works best for me. If anything, I feel a bit silly that I briefly 'forgot' that I CAN make reasonable decisions for myself, based on the information that I gather from multiple sources. And you are right, there are many others out there questioning, wondering and searching for the truth. Connecting with someone who is searching for the truth is a joy and fuels my determination to find more like-minded people!
As always...you write something that brings me back from a ledge of despair and heartache - however temporarily. "They" do want us on that ledge - and afraid. I try every day not to comply. Thank you Heather. Be well.
Beautifully and intelligently put, thank you. Myself and some of my friends need that reminder from another person who has your kind of clarity and fearlessness. Often in the stress of all of this, the pressure, the silence, the feeling of isolation we become numb. I have often done what you suggested and put my toe out there to test the waters of another person, often at my gym and happily find that we are on the same page. Thanks for your voice.
"I don't have time" is the retort I hear most. Spoken and implicit. I have been trying to share information about the dying Leviathan that is government, as I have worked inside it as a staffer or consultant for over 30 years. People find this information exceptionally hard to swallow. But I continue to try. https://www.lisafitzhugh.me/lisa-writing/gatheringagain
The idea that the institution we depend on the most, in many ways, could be faltering does not compute. It's especially disconcerting when you appear to offer no graspable solutions.
I also agree it's time to seek out new audiences, people who may be very inclined to explore the truth outside this impenetrable group mind. That's what I am trying to do up here in Seattle, part ways with the system, and instead turn my full attention to the humans fully capable of imagining their way out of this paper bag. Let's see what happens. Mostly, because I too really don't enjoy feeling so alone.
I feel this very much. But I have also started to feel alone from the people that agree with me as my situation changed.
Before, it was a conceptual thing, since I didn't actually have to make a choice that will affect my family. I work from home and the kids were homeschooled. I was outraged about the mandates, but it's an armchair outrage. The same way we drive past someone that has a flat tire at the side of the road in the middle of a snowstorm and feel intense sympathy for them for about 10 seconds before we go on with our lives.
Then the Federal government decided that my 10 yo healthy kid needs to get it for us to stay in the US. Now, I get responses like, "I would find a lawyer and sue" Really? Sue the US government as an immigrant? Seems likely to succeed. Or "I would go live in the hills, doesn't matter if he is illegal" Hmm. Okay. Or "I would just move to Canada" Yeah, and there we will be much more likely to face mandates for everyone, not just him.
Those of us that haven't actually faced the choice between getting it or losing your job don't get it. Especially if there's very little place for you to turn. If you are an accountant whose firm mandates, you can just move to the next firm. If you are a nurse and it's everywhere and you are the only one in your family working, what then? If you are someone that lives from hand to mouth and are simply trying to survive and feed your kids, what then?
You know that terror one feels when you turn around in the shop and you cannot see your child? I feel that many times a day. I am trying to navigate the system as best I can. But there's precious little maneuver room and no time to wait it out. It feels like playing poker with the Devil and Fate and Loki. Yes, I might make it out to the other side, and sometimes Fate comes out on your side and sometimes Loki seems more mischievous than evil. But odds are not looking good.
(Speaking colloquially of the "you" that don't get it. I know Heather gets it)
I find the most hurtful response is the "I don't have time". Grow your own food, get out in the sun, physical activity: "I WISH I HAD THE TIME!" It's amazing how we prioritize our time ... because apparently our physical and mental health ended up at the bottom of the pile. I do sometimes feel like the more people are squeezed, the less time they do have to focus on their health, and do research ... it is much easier to just be told what to do by the authority and follow.
Your second to last paragraph is probably one of the most important points that can be made during these times, and one I've lamented too often now. COVID did one thing that the science community has done a pretty damn good job at preventing, and that's providing unfettered access to science itself. This was a time when everyone from a Ph.D/M.D. to a homemaker who never went to college to have access to COVID studies as soon as they were made available. But not everyone has the ability to read science- science can either be too complex or, quite frankly, too full of itself to be easily read by laypeople. But that shouldn't preclude people from making an earnest attempt. No one who has their doctorate in science was born with their doctorate. It took years of learning and parsing of information to come to that point, but the biggest factor was that it took time and effort.
I think now there are many on both sides who may be either too intimated or too busy to read the science for themselves, and instead want quick short takes telling them what they should be told. This leads people to repeat things rather than to think for themselves about the information that is being presented and whether the information makes sense or if they may be a few problems.
I'm trying to figure out how to correct for this, but I think at the end of the day it really comes down to encouraging people to make an honest attempt to understand scientific principles and not the glossy, sugarcoated image of science that is presented by those in the media and Facebook groups such as "I Fucking Love Science!"
As an aside, I have a good friend who got sick with COVID and had a relatively mild bout. She later had to get vaccinated for her job, and when she would tell people of her mild infection with COVID she would constantly get a response of, "thank goodness you got the vaccine, otherwise it would have been much worse!" Of course, she has to correct them and tell them that she had COVID BEFORE the vaccines came about, and I think that doesn't sit well with people to learn that there are people who did fairly well with the virus sans any vaccines.
Bless you two for all you do
First time caller, long time listener here.
It’s becoming cliche but once again for being a light in the darkness. I waffled back and forth early on, grappling with what felt true and the “truth” I was being beat down with. You and Brett (some others) have really been a compass for me since the summer of 2020 as I tried to navigate this madness.
As a Canadian I’ve watched my country slide into some weird, fearful, virtue signaling, authoritarian welcoming hypnosis. The town I live in (a small tourist town) has been bizarrely lock step with the narrative. Our own town council wanted to be the first to mandate outdoor mask wearing for the downtown core in 2020. Just to be the first, as one councilor phrased it.
The bizarre national reaction to the trucker convoy only furthered my concerns. Close friends and family assured me this was some sort of white supremacy movement hell bent on some sort of coup in the making.
Never mind the travel restrictions still in effect for certain Canadians. The unvaccinated couldn’t travel (by air or rail) domestically or internationally until June 2022.
Our government and legacy media made a big show of opening up travel (both domestic and international) yet failed to point out the return home restrictions that remain in place for the unvaccinated.
To return home from international travel an unvaccinated person must do a pre flight test, a 72 hour and 8 day test and also quarantine for 14 days. The “fully vaccinated” can travel freely but may be subject to a random test. I won’t even go into the ArriveCan app that is mandatory.
The double standard of nonsense continues in this country. It seems most people either aren’t aware or don’t care. I’m not sure which is worse. I appreciate your optimism, I hope some rubs off.
Succint and eloquently stated.
We're not alone.
Thanks for this post. I work as a truck driver and don't have any living family so I oftentimes feel incredibly alone and that feeling intensified during the pandemic because I didn't agree with what was going on to address it. It's nice to try and meet like minded people. Enjoy your work and Blackhorse. Thanks.
Yes, exactly.
Another excellent article, Heather! How lonely we can feel, especially when our dear friends turn on us. I have made it my mission to talk with people, just get a sense of where they are at, and it is quite amazing and reassuring to find that if you just scratch the surface a little, you find that people at the train station or the taxi driver or the sales lady in the baby clothes store feel just the same as you do. Many are not juiced. When they discover that you are on their page, they are delighted to be able to talk freely.
And, upon the painful re-entry into the "post-covid" or so it is said, world, the weirdness is even more distorted. After having reconnected with a handful of those who are still willing to topically and briefly interact with me, one of them told me, "I'll do what I'm told to do when I'm told to do it." This was his response to my asking him if he knew that Canada may begin requiring a booster every nine months in order to be considered "up to date". It should be noted that he and his wife had recently returned from a trip to Canada where they had to present proof of vaccination upon entry, and that he was unaware of what I had just told him; he also did not know about the farmer's protest in Denmark. I was surprised at my numb reaction and nonresponse. It seems I no longer have a, for lack of a better word, fight left in me to even attempt to sound the alarm. I am witnessing fellow humans, hopefully not all, go on about things as if we were back to normal(?). And forgive me for using the words, "us/we" and "them/they", but I am now beginning to wonder if the the harvested algorithmes have helped perfect the information that we are able to access that they are not seeing. I suppose the trick now for those of us who may find themselves in the "small fringe" is to, "Consider instead those whom you do not yet know—the clerks and baristas, the customer service representatives and delivery people, your new neighbors down the street, or the guy sitting next to you at the bar." and "open up to them, just a little, and see what happens." Do we now need to consider creating some kind of hand signal or grouping of words to help us identify one another? God, creator, source, let's pray/hope/meditate on that our basic, innate humanity will shine through and that that will be all it takes. Amen.
You are so right. It's clear and obvious when you say it. Instead of trying to knock the walls down, try to find the cracks. For now...
Thankful for you Heather Heying