Wishes don’t do anything. There is no functional difference between ‘actively wishing’ for someone’s death and ‘actively wishing’ for a slice of pie to appear in front of you. Yes, it is unseemly to wish that someone would die of their own bad behavior, but wishing doesn’t make it so, and doesn’t even begin to wiggle the needle towards it actually happening.
No, but the thing is, I can totally empathize with someone not wanting to get a vaccination because of fear or misinformation. It sucks that they’re misinformed, but I --personally – can’t judge them for it. Not being willing to have an outside entity inject a substance into your body – that seems pretty fucking normal to be weary of. So wishing death upon these people. Fuck that.
Maybe if you put it in these vague, disingenuous terms, it is. But in reality-land, it looks more like this: Not being willing to have a health professional inject a proven medical treatment that has been taken by 100s of millions of people across the globe and benefits both you and everyone around you into your body - that seems pretty fucking STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPID.
And yes, the rest of us are “weary” of it.
Oh, fuck off. I’m trying to imagine it from their point of view. I got my third shot yesterday. I’m fine with the science and all, and have been telling everyone to get their shot. But I can understand how people can be afraid.
Their point of view is reinforced because they choose to consume media that reinforces their point of view.
I don’t really feel sorry for them.
Good for you, I guess? I’m happy for you that you can empathize and are not able to judge. But your attempt to normalize - remember, you’re the one who said this was “normal” - the ignorant stance of these people is bullshit. They are not helpless rubes, they are ignorant people who could know the truth with the tiniest bit of knowledge-seeking. For example, they could:
- Talk to their doctor
- Go to the CDC website
- Watch any national news broadcast that is not Fox News
- Read a reputable local or national newspaper
- Take Donald Fucking Trump’s advice about getting it
Etc. etc. Any one of these things (except the last, I suppose) would tell them over and over again that this “substance” is medicine, is effective, is safe, and has nothing to do with “outside entities.”
Only if you frame it in the most vague and dystopian way possible, like you did, does their stance seem normal. And we shouldn’t be helping to normalize this behavior.
They are, as a group, actually, literally, directly killing other human beings with their choice to “protect themselves” from this vaccine, and get away with it judgement free.
The person who actually, literally, directly acts to prevent the deaths of other human beings, but expresses a completely impotent “wish” of harm, that person gets judged.
I think you are being quite charitable to these people. Sure I get that some people ought to have medical exemptions extended as a valid reason not to get the vaccine. I understand there are people who are reluctant to take the vaccine so soon and want to wait it out a bit longer while maintaining and respecting public health guidelines like mask wearing. These people were usually the ones who said they wanted FDA approval to feel confident.
However a lot of these people have constantly changed the goalposts because they are anti-vax period. They spread lies and disinformation for their agenda which is political and consume it too. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. They’re seeking out all sorts of alternate magic pills and have no issue putting horse dewormer in their bodies so the excuse about being worried of a vaccine is being kind to them.
Joe Rogan is one of the biggest platformers of contrarian bullshit out there about the vaccine and bragging about how natural immunity is better. And yet when he got Covid he didn’t simply trust his body to fight it out. He got the best healthcare service because he can afford it to inject him with a mix of drugs he had never even heard of. And his audience never heard of them until he told them. But the globally used vaccines which are free and have been rolled out to a point where now nearly half of the entire population of the world has received one dose is suspect.
I don’t think wishing for someone’s death is as big a deal as @Max_S does, but I can’t agree with that. Wishes are the first step in achieving goals. Wishing for something means that, if the opportunity arises with sufficiently low difficulty, risk, and consequences, you will be more likely to achieve that goal. Your pie example is perfect. Someone who wishes to eat a piece of pie will be more likely to take a piece if one is available.
I’d say the main reason that wishing for death is not so bad is that the opportunities to achieve it without downsides is quite rare. Still, I do think it’s useful to recognize that you are wishing for something that is wrong. It may not matter 99.999% of the time, but that one 0.001% chance, it would be good if there is some feeling you shouldn’t do it. Especially because those times are usually going to involve being extremely angry, and thus you won’t be thinking logically. Wishing death on people is just not a good habit to get into.
There’s a reason why such wishes are considered unseemly to state out loud. While the vast, vast majority of the time those wishes will never become reality, they definitely can. (And even if you aren’t the killer, you’ve just made yourself a suspect.)
That said, I do not think that all deaths are equal, and thus not all wishes for death are equal. I understand the desire for antivaxxers to die of the disease they refuse to acknowledge. You just would wish to have it happen at home, not wasting any additional medical resources, and not infecting anyone else. You’re wishing for something you cannot directly cause, and the wish mitigates the harm.
There’s just this inherent desire for justice of those who are causing all of these deaths. I don’t think anyone can look at those people who died who were virulently antivax/antimask and not feel some schadenfreude. We want to live in a world where the consequences for selfish, evil actions result in consequences for the person who perpetrates them.
Man, if they were just as concerned about the safety and FDA approval of the ink in that tattoo they got in Israel back in 1987 while in the military, as they are about a vaccine already injected into 3 billion people, that ‘rose’ on their bicep may not look like an old burn scar.
To what end? Is your empathy going to change their behaviour? If not, then it’s just about making yourself feel superior for not being judgmental.
Me, I’m judging the fuck out of antivaxxers, and feel no remorse for doing so.
Honestly, I don’t have the stomach for engaging in disputes like this anymore. I just wanted to let you know that you’re not alone.
You’re right. Of course you’re right. There’s not even really an argument on the other side, just recreational outrage.
Unfortunately, recreational outrage is just as popular on the SDMB as it is everywhere else on the internet. And just as toxic and addictive. Trying to interject even a modicum of nuance or empathy to short circuit the feedback loop just provokes further spasms of recreational outrage.
As I stated, I’ve lost my stomach for dealing with it here. Especially since the BBQ Pit is explicitly intended for giving free vent to recreational outrage. A part of me is still hopeful, though, that pushing back against it may do some good. Even if it doesn’t give pause to the participants, maybe it will give a lurker a different perspective.
Oh fuck off, they’re killing people - full stop.
How’s the weather up there on the cross?
Edit - meant for gdave and pulykamell, not asahi.
To clarify, I’ve qualified that “wish” by saying that I wish they’d just get the damn vaccine and wear a mask - that way, nobody has to die.
But absent of that, with the reality being that their conscious decision is putting people in real, not imagined, jeopardy of permanent disability and death, yeah, if watching other unvaccinated idiots around them drop dead like flies is what it takes to actually correct their behavior, then so be it.
It’s not simply a matter of ignorance; it’s willful ignorance and a willful defiance to be a good citizen. God damn right I judge 'em. Don’t give a drop of rat’s piss if I get judged in the process.
I’d really rather that they didn’t consume finite medical resources in the process.
On my part, my outrage isn’t recreational. It’s plain old rage. COVID affected me and every member of my family and my friends very badly during the first wave, whether it was lost jobs or the death of a husband. The shitty thing was there was nothing we could do about it at that point but hide at home and hope we wouldn’t catch it and guess what I did everything right and got it anyway.
Now we have something we can do about it. The vaccines are safe, available everywhere, and free. There is no excuse, none at all, for healthy people not to get the vaccine. Not only to save their own lives, but the lives of children and other people who can’t get it because of health reasons.
Instead people who should know better are acting like whiny toddlers who don’t want to put on pants. BUT I DON’T WANNA! YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME! WHAAAAAAH FREEDOM!!! or worse yet acting like idiots because their presidential candidate lost.
If they were just killing themselves I’d say let them get on with it, but by spreading misinformation and jamming up the healthcare system and most of all by putting kids, elderly, and sick people at risk they are causing real harm to people who are vulnerable.
They are making their own beds and they can lie in them.
But yet we’re supposed to see their side and not judge them when they refuse to consider our side which has real science and statistics, and the moralizers have no problem judging us. Fuck that.
I understand Pulykamel’s position and God I wish I could join him/her, but for God’s sake, these anti-vaxxers are literally rejecting civilized values so they may kill those who are civilized.
It is a conscious decision made every moment to kill, harm, maim, and hate.
These aren’t people who have been misinformed, @pulykamell - Every damned last one of them can recite the Golden Rule. Every damned last one of them are vaccinated for other diseases. Every last one of them daily ingests food products of which the manufacture of, and ingredients contained, they are completely unaware.
Every damned last one of them understand the consequences of their actions. Both when they get non-FDA approved ink in their arms or refuse to take a vaccine for a disease which has already killed 700,000 fellow citizens.
These people are uncivilized. As my mother would say, they are unfit for polite society.
Something I wrote elsewhere (edited):
You know what? That’s a fair point. I get very prickly when I think someone is lecturing me about my own emotions, and here I am doing exactly that, dismissing the anger being expressed in this thread as mere “recreational outrage.” For that, I apologize.
What I won’t apologize for, or back down from, though, is that I don’t wish death on people who are afraid of the vaccine and think mask mandates are part of some sort of plot. They make me alternately frustrated, exasperated, depressed, and, yes, outraged. But they’re still human beings, so I still try to maintain some empathy for them. And on an purely intellectual level, I’m fascinated by thought processes that are so different from my own. And on a purely practical level, I try to understand their thought processes in the perhaps misplaced hope that it may yield insights on how to get through to them. Simply raging at them seems vanishingly unlikely to actually be of any use in getting them to change their behavior.
Beyond that, and again, I share a lot of the anger and frustration being expressed here, I really do think this sort of outrage thread does more harm than good. It leads to the sort of feedback loop that results in someone actively wishing for the death of large numbers of people, and that being normalized. And anyone who objects to that is dismissed as sanctimonious, and any expressions of empathy are derided as being disingenuous self-serving expressions of moral superiority.
But, again, I really do apologize for dismissing your justifiable anger, and the justifiable anger of others being expressed in this thread, as mere “recreational outrage.”
Again, I’d rather they get the fucking shot and wear a mask – then we wouldn’t have threads like this, eh? But it’s not rational to expect people to suppress their outrage – fuck that. I’m done doing that. Was done a long time ago. I’m honestly fed up after putting up with a lifetime of reactionary, racist, know-nothing, pseudo-pious, hypocritical “conservatism”.