Anxiety over COVID not going away.

Some good points, Rose. We have them here too in Chile, although they seem to be a smaller percentage of the population. Someone I used to consider a friend has gone down the social media rabbit hole, sharing videos about how masks make you sick, 5G is causing Covid (we don't have 5G here yet) and Bill Gates wants to put a chip in you. And, yes, a lot of those people think they are so smart and anyone that takes Covid seriously is a sheep.

Wow rose. Very astute observation. The whole post is so on point. “Nothing to say except memorizing some talking points” points that they found online or overheard, didn’t fully understand but memorized and thought it sounded smart

The other day I was listening to BBC world special about conspiracies. They were talking about how to deal with this kind of stuff. They interviewed this one family that are all estranged from one family member who is into extreme obsessive conspiracies. So this family member was willing to lose the entire family over her conspiracies. Like ignorance and anger were more important than a family. Then they interviewed these specialists who work with conspiracies. This one guy said that although you could gently give them suggestions to examine their views, you can’t really stop them. Unless they want to make changes, we really can’t make them see the light. You can’t stop these people. Comn this woman lost her family over it and she still wouldn’t give up! So sad

I also find willfully ignorant to be completely illogical in their hate of education. I think they fear learning. Like you can accidentally learn that you were wrong the whole time? I like to find out that I was wrong about something because that’s how I learn! They hate knowledge.

Wish I had seen that BBC program. I'm kind of fascinated at this phenomenon of the wilfully ignorant who latch on to these cult-like trends and movements. I'ld love to know more about what makes them vulnerable to buy into the crap they espouse. I've mentioned loneliness and ignorance. But I have only a vague grasp of just how they get so sucked in.

A friend of mine mouths all the "talking points." ("We're being robbed of our freedoms." etc.) She attends a huge, "non-denominational" church, where right-wing stuff gets preached from the pulpit. (I've gone with her a number of times.) This church got cited by local authorities for not conforming to COVID restrictions on large assemblies. I respect that she is a person of deep faith and is very virtuous in many ways. But her politics are completely dictated by this church. For instance, she's worried that homosexuals are trying to take over the nation and ruin our lives. One-on-one, she would never be unkind or intolerant toward anyone because of orientation. But she parrots off "the points." She seems to believe the pastor at her church gets all his ideas direct from heaven. That is the authoritative voice she listens to that must not be questioned. These folk are favorably disposed toward authoritarianism. It makes them feel more emotionally secure, I guess. I wish I understood them better.

It was on a radio channel. It’s the best channel. I listen on the way to work in the car but they also have a podcast you can listen at home. Just BBC world. News and then all kind of interviews. Science. People stories. Health news. It’s the best. Unfortunately I don’t always hear every detail as I gotta watch the road and then I often stop in the middle of the interview because I arrived lol

I think part of these fascination with conspiracies is coming from mental disorders or just anxiety over the world and not always from ignorance. My dad periodically falls into some strange beliefs but he is certainly not ignorant or lazy to learn. I think it soothes some type of anxiety about the world and gives them sense of security. Funny thing he could completely switch his views in the blink of an eye. He is not militant about it though but there is no point to argue. He isn’t covid denier though lol he is weird about other stuff

“BBC world service” I meant

Thanks. I love talk radio. Where I am, it's pretty much all rightwing stuff on the radio. But I listen anyway, while doing housework. It's more extreme than what we hear on TV. The sowing of hatred they do is just sad. I'll have to learn how to get podcasts.

I think you're correct, divine, about these rightwing cult followers seeking a defence against some kind of deep seated anxiety. I see it on people's facebook postings too. Someone I follow responded to Jan. 6 by saying he had stocked up on bullets. He is constantly ranting against mainstream media. When he posts memes, I trace them to their facebook source. At the source facebook pages, I see some really vile stuff. These kind of facebook walls seem not to belong to real human beings. They post some bio information that seems fishy.

Texas will serve as an experiment in what happens when precautions are blown off. Time will tell how that works out. Houston is a major port; Dallas is an air travel hub. Those places could be portals for variant COVID strains to enter and gain a foothold . . . and then desseminate further afield. Texas could screw up the whole country. I went through Dallas last spring and noticed how mask wearing was not taken seriously there. This was at the airport. That's the worst place to ditch precautions.

I have XM radio. It has everything you want. I have it with the car but apparently I can listen it on home devices, I just don’t. It’s not that expensive. Look up Sirius XM.

SiriusXM - Stream or Listen to Music, Entertainment, Sports & More

One of my stepdaughters lives in Dallas, we travel there quite a bit and she comes here but we haven’t seen each other since lock down . Texas is like a foreign country. She is safe because she works from home and literally goes no where but her aunt’s house few streets over, she is a home body thankfully. It’s so crazy and unsafe out there.

I’m very glad to have moved from Texas the year before everything broke. Between the virus and the snow that broke water pipes and zapped power I wouldn’t have had a good time being single and poor. The Texas infrastructure is a huge mess owned by 1% corporate bigwigs. Even the main highyways are a mess cause they mismanagement of the federal monies they get for them. I always left at 2-3 am to be in Oklahoma before traffic got bad.

Texas is like a country within a country. It's huge. I guess there's just shy of 30 million people there. I'm surprised that the state is as poorly run as that power outage tells me is the case. So they just don't keep up with infrastructure. Sounds like the state can't be trusted to run itself. I would have thought Texas was big and rich enough to have it's act more together. Apparently not.

This, so much! The internet was supposed to make us smarter by giving us immediate access to information and the ability to share knowledge. We didn't worry about the downsides of people segmenting and associating only with those who think like they do.

Internet is a huge source of information if you know what you are looking at! There are people who believe everything on there. And then there are those who think you can learn everything from just reading and watching on the internet and know as much or more than those who are actually experts in the field. They have “google degree”. Then they spread misinformation to other gullible folks. Scary stuff

Agree! Internet is like an amplified of the good or the bad that exists.
Don’t take me bad. I’m very happy to have internet and any possible technology advance that can help us is welcome. But, let’s say that in the net, the typical gossips and bull$hit of neighbourhood are huge in the internet.

There are many possibilities and freedom to expose your ideas but it’s like TV in older times. All what was broadcasted on TV was considered truth. And there is how we are manipulated.

Luckily, things are changing, little by little, the main goal in Education is to give people freedom to choose and freedom to think. I wonder why people in the power the first state that wants to put their hands on is Education (ironic).

A friend of mind used to say that they attended and get their PhD in the University of Google. lol

Thanks for the interesting discussion above about the effect of the Internet on people's thinking. I agree. It enables me to be much more able to understand what's going on in the world. I'm naturally skeptical, and I try to diversify my sources of information. I keep in mind that everyone has an axe to grind. Lot's of people seem to just hop on a band wagon and engage in "group think." Some of my relatives whom I follow on Facebook seem to get all their opinions from politically biased sources. Once you know their bias, you can predict their opinions on everything. They perpetuate the "memes" they see on very biased Facebook sources. The Internet has amplified the divisions in our society, as discussed above.

In some ways, modern computer based media has become a tool of the Devil. Besides fueling the polarization of society, it seduces us into spending too much time "online" at the expense of attending properly to our responsibilities and opportunities IRL. I'm astonished at how common it has become for PC members to describe being in love with persons they have hardly spent any time with IRL, but have mainly communicated with online. More and more, people are living "virtual" lives. Instead of leaving the house to encounter our fellow humans, we stay home and "let our fingers do the walking," as the jingle in the old phone book ad put it. I'll admit that I'm on my "digital device" for hours every day and even take it to bed with me. COVID has exacerbated this habit of mine by making me more reluctant to leave the house. I've recently gotten into a depressed mood. My main idea regarding how to deal with that is to watch Youtube videos about depression. It would probably be smarter to put down my "device" and get out of the house, but the Internet keeps beckoning to me. Part of why I give in to that is because of the anxiety I described at the start of this thread. Yesterday, while I was at Walmart, I got an attack of chest pain from anxiety. I couldn't wait to get back home.

I feel like I've got to get out more. I live alone and feel like I'm not having enough contact with other humans, but my COVID anxiety has me fearful that such contact carries the risk of ruining my health.

I'm still waiting to get vaccinated. I wonder if getting those shots will make me feel less afraid? I'ld be interested in how others feel about getting vaccinated. Will it let you go back to normal living, or not quite?

I am living a different reality from most. I have said before that our country bought us the least effective vaccine. I am still debating if I even should get it or wait for supposed arrivals of better options since I am low priority. My husband got the Chinese vaccine and is still following the same precautions. If I decide to get it (I may qualify next month), I don't anticipate my behavior changing much. If I manage to get a better vaccine in a few months, I´ll probably feel safer.

I get my first dose tomorrow and mum her 2nd Thursday but we’re not changing much except that we’ll be able to see my daughter and her kids. Other than that still plan to follow the same precautions until most people are vaccinated.

Being vaccinated didn’t change my life. I think I might be safer but other than that nothing about my life changed. I have to use the same precautions at work as before vaccination. And I do same things as before. I admit I didn’t particularly isolate as long as it’s within state guidelines. My husband says he might feel safer to go to gym now as he hasn’t gone since they opened up. He didn’t feel safe there, he thinks it safer because we are vaccinated. But I don’t go because I am lazy. I’ll admit I use covid threat as a bit of an excuse

Got the Pfizer shot. No side effects

I hope you won’t have any but it kicks in next day sometimes. First dose kicked in two days later for me, second hit me in the evening of the day of the vaccine, about 8-9 hours later

Someone at my grandmother's nursing home tested positive even though they were vaccinated two months ago. I am hoping it is a false positive test result.


My husband is at a breaking point and wants to go on a road trip right now but I have no idea where we could go that would be safe and fun. I don't really like wearing a mask for too long and I don't want to eat inside a restaurant. Most things are closed or restricted. It's too early to camp around here. What's the point? Anywhere we go will have higher case counts, too. Ugh, so tired of this.

@rechu if you get the lesser vaccine now, will you still be able to get a 'good' one later? I am going to hold out for the one I want.

@hvert - That is exactly what I want to know and have not been able to find an answer. I could understand why they could prefer to vaccinate people that haven't been vaccinated at all over those that supposedly have some protection once we start to get more vaccines, so it seems possible. We are a relatively small country with a centralized government. They take down your information when you go for a vaccine and enter it into a database, so they would know if I had been vaccinated previously.

Another expat I know here who is pretty skeptical of the vaccine being given here told me he actually did get his yesterday. However he and his wife live on a plot of land with several houses where extended family lives. His mother in law who lives next door is elderly, diabetic and on dialysis. She was able to get her first dose of Pfizer at her dialysis center, but they want everyone to at least have some protection as soon as possible, because she is such high risk and there is still some risk even once she is fully vaccinated. However, in my case I don't have close contact with any at-risk people. I work from home and order many things online. I've been taking precautions all this time and would still have to do so even if I got the vaccine, precisely because it's not very effective. If it comes down to waiting a few months more to get a "real" vaccine, I just might.

I want to be able to take a trip to Portugal that I had to cancel, in the mid-term. I was reading today that the EU is preparing a vaccine passport system and they will NOT accept the vaccine being used here as a valid vaccine. So, I need a better option for that too.

I hope they accept what we got here as I hope I am traveling to Europe in August. We are screwed otherwise.

@divine1966 - From what I read it's the Chinese and Russian vaccines that are likely to be an issue. Those are mainly approved for emergency use in developing countries like ours because that was all we could get our hands on. The vaccines being used in the US are acceptable as far as I have read. Our government has orders in for others like Pfizer and AstraZeneca. Supposedly they are in negotiations with J&J too, but last I heard they are stalled. To date, the only other vaccine that has arrived here is Pfizer and that was just a few crumbs they threw us - fewer than 500,000 doses.

I am very curious about the logistics of these vaccine passports. I recently sent my regular passport out for renewal and wonder if I should have waited. The EU vaccine passport seems to only be available to EU countries and a couple of other closely affiliated countries, like Norway. I just read that China will for now only allow foreign visitors who have received a Chinese made vaccine. I wonder if that is a response to the EU or incentive for other countries to approve their vaccines?

@rechu I could see waiting in your shoes, especially if the EU is not accepting the vaccine that's currently on offer where you are. You aren't putting anyone else at risk and can easily minimize your own risk of exposure.

@divine1966 I hope things get better in Europe (and everywhere) before your trip and that you got refundable reservations in case they don't!