Why pick one of his most innocuous posts? If I were someone trying to defend the guy, I couldn’t do better trying to inoculate him–picking something that sounds perfectly fine without context.
He has said much more horrible things. I see MrDibble has linked the thread that made me think so poorly of him, so I won’t do so myself. But I will quote the posts therein, to show how bad they are.
Here he is perpetuating the myth that this is just at the level of a flu, asking a rhetorical question without realizing the answer is “yes” if it was one of the bad ones, and perpetuating the myth that is it is about the individual’s assessment of risk, ignoring that they will put other people at high risk by spreading it.
This was so uncharacteristic of his usual thoughtful posts that people assumed he was joking to make make sense that a moderator on a board about fighting ignorance would post something so ignorant and seemingly troll-like.
But he eventually came back in, and doubled down.
You have the first paragraph where the answer was YES, and that anyone following the virus knew that. The recommendations were to limit gatherings. And it applied in all the places where there were beaches. People were even specifically told not to go to them on spring break.
Then you have the second paragraph where he’s once again trying to argue that it’s up to individuals to determine their risk, once again ignoring the risk they impact others.
When people pointed out that both of his statements were wrong, here is what he said:
This sounds okay in isolation, but remember that the thread was about people going to beaches on spring break, and his responses were about those who went to beaches, and that this was the thing that was too restrictive. Furthermore, he ignored more facts: at the time, most people were still allowed to go to work at their jobs. And those losing their jobs would get paid unemployment right away. He talks of people dying from not going to work for a month.
As I said at the time, this combination of posts were the worst thing I’d ever seen a mod say, and the most dangerous thing I’d seen any poster advocate without moderation admonistion. I reported Chronos, with the proviso that I didn’t think he’d be moderated (because y’all don’t mod mods) but at least that the mods should talk to him. However, I got no indication that such happened, and at no point did Chronos apologize for his misinformation.
The only reason I didn’t make an ATMB thread is that I got sick soon after, and by the time I was well enough, it seemed that nobody cared. Even though he still popped into Pit threads and would lecture people about COVID-19, I seemed to be the only poster pushing back.
I decided that I would bring it up in ATMB only if I saw him say something as bad again (admittedly, he hasn’t, though he’s gotten close), or another poster finally brought this up.
Now that they have, I hope their choice of something far less bad doesn’t tank this thread. This is a problem. If it’s bad enough that two posters got their threads closed and wound up banned, then it should be bad enough that a mod should not be doing it.
And, frankly, do we want the SDMB to be about letting people with the appearance of being an authority (being a mod, being unable to be moderated) spreading the lies that not only would but ACTUALLY DID get people killed? Shouldn’t we have a responsibility both our motto and our fellow humans to not have mod-endorsed spread of ignorance that kills?