A little diplomacy goes a long way, but a lot does no good. A little diplomacy would be something like,“So nice you were all having a good time, I’m disappointed to see people so close, and without masks. This is a dangerous virus which can kill people like my mother. Please be more cautious.”
Too much diplomacy would be a mild suggestion or PM. A public comment might not stop this woman from huddling mask-less with her friends, but it might dissuade her from posting photos of it on social media. The more people see other people flouting the rules, the more normalized it becomes. It’s like the woman who got gored at Yellowstone who said she ignored the signs and got close to bison because so many others were doing so that she figured the signs were just liability CYA.
The one thing I’ve found even more annoying than practising social distancing is complaints about other people not practising social distancing. Sure, it’s disappointing that some people seem to have no regard for rules that have been put in place to protect the most vulnerable. No-one in my household is vulnerable, so there is a part of me that thinks 'why should I bother? I don’t care if I get it.". But that is strongly overridden by a desire to do the right thing and try to be ‘good’ in the hope that it will help us all return to some sort of normality more quickly. Having said that, as other posters have pointed out, publicly shaming others is unlikely to have the desired effect. And even a private message probably won’t either, in my view. As such, if a Facebook friend of mine posted such a photo, whether I liked them or not I don’t think I’d do more than raise my eyebrows slightly and move on with my life. They have made their choice and I don’t think there’s anything I can do other than think a bit less of them.
To be clear: a large part of social distancing is not to protect you (since you are not vulnerable and don’t care), nor the people in your household (you are also presumably not vulnerable), but for the event that you get the virus, are asymptomatic (you don’t even know you have it) and pass it on to somebody (at the supermarket, on the street, etc) who is vulnerable.
It is not clear in your post if that factors in for you, so apologies if it does.
It reminds me of things like abolishing slavery. Well, I’m not black so it doesn’t matter? Or women when they were getting the right to vote? I’m not a woman so I don’t care? Holocaust?
I’m not Jewish.
In practical terms, maybe this time the virus doesn’t impact your family. What about the next virus?
I like this story about the Irish, who didn’t forget:
Thanks, yes I’m aware and sorry that didn’t come across in my previous post. To be clear: I am (and have been since required by my government) fully practising social distancing even though my household does not itself contain any vulnerable people, for exactly this reason.
I’m not sure if this is directed at me, but hopefully I’ve clarified above.
Not directed at you personally, no. As you say, you want to do the right thing, which is what made me think of the examples. But also look at how the Irish repaid an old kindness.
It’s still in everyone’s best interest if only because it gets us back to normal sooner. That might be the argument that reaches some of them—“The longer you don’t go along with it, the longer we have to do it.”
People also need to keep in mind that the dose of virus you’re exposed to matters a great deal.
If you are talking to an infected person who is standing some distance away from you for a sustained period of time, there’s a high likelihood of you inhaling viral particles. But since you will probably only inhale a few, the infection will probably not take hold. And if it does, it will likely not overwhelm your system.
But if you are standing close enough to an infected person to be sprayed by their spittle, then you aren’t going to get exposed to just a few particles. You’ll likely get a dose that may overhelm your system and make you really really sick. Or dead.
So people who are cavalier about social distancing because I’M nOt vuLnerAbLe! really do need to wake the fuck up. I just don’t think the approach taken by the OP was the best one.
The other poster clarified they weren’t saying they didn’t care, which I got from their post to begin with. But even if the post was unclear I think your parallels are an example of the lack of perspective that’s common now in moralistic scolding on the internet. Slavery, the Holocaust, and…less than fully following COVID guidelines?
Those overwrought comparisons also actually miss the point that not following COVID guidelines can make the situation worse. Not caring about slavery didn’t make it any worse. And the remedy for US slavery had its own massive cost in lives (even if typical Union soldiers weren’t mainly motivated by ending slavery, it wouldn’t have ended just then without their huge sacrifice). Standing further apart than usual in a leisure activity costs almost nothing.
Again I think it’s reasonable to give a friend a leading question like ‘shouldn’t you guys really be keeping your distance more than in those photo’s’. If they have basic reading comprehension and pay attention to the news whatsoever they will know what you are saying and factor that into their future decisions as they may. In the end you don’t control them and making stronger and stronger to the point of extreme statements and comparisons isn’t ‘doing more’, practically. Even talking about how you don’t want your older relatives to die is over the top in that situation IMO, bringing up the Holocaust or slavery even indirectly is further over.
Especially since it might be medium risk activity for all we know, a small group of people coming close for a photo perhaps only momentarily, also if outdoors. If it’s somebody participating in long weekly events in packed auditoriums that would be different. Like I said before, there’s a fairly bright line between ‘with the program’ on personal anti-COVID measures and not, but it’s fuzzier when it comes to quantitatively assessing actual risk of various guideline violations.
People who are posting pics of themselves flouting the social distancing rules know the rules/guidelines and know that they’re breaking them. They’re not going to be all “oh shit, we had no idea we shouldn’t be getting together right now, and if we do we should be wearing masks. Thanks for telling us, SlackerInc! We’ll stay home from now on!” Just the same as shaming someone for their weight isn’t going to have them come to the sudden realization that they’re fat and make positive life changes. They know. They don’t care.
I say let it go, keep doing your best to protect yourself and those around you that you actually have influence over, and do what you can to stay out of harm’s way by staying home. This is America 2020. Pushing the issue with people who don’t seem to “get it” most often pushes them further away from acting in the responsible way. If you keep trying to herd those cats you’re going to set yourself up for some serious heartache.
A lot of people seem to follow the thought process (which Dead Cat described) but stop there. It doesn’t impact me or my circle…I’ll do what I want (essentially). Dead Cat also said it was important to do the right thing, which I acknowledged in the following post, not wanting to blame the messenger.
I wasn’t trying to put the virus on the same scale as the other things I mentioned; I was trying to use it to contrast. Hmm…if I told you a guy stole a million dollars, would you be surprised to later learn that he also stole ten dollars? No, the million is enough to say that stealing ten was totally believable. Likewise, people in history have overlooked enormous things and they did so for decades on end. Given that, should we be surprised if people ignore this? A year ago, nobody had even heard of it, and it’s from the family with the common cold. “COVID-19? We’ve had Ebola and others…who is this puny Johnny-Come-Lately?” No, not surprising.
IMO ignoring a problem makes the situation worse in that if nothing else, it allows it to continue and possibly worsen. For instance slavery ended in the 1860s in the US but many years earlier would have been better. And starting the struggle against this virus earlier…a week, a month…how many might have been saved? We had the benefit of dire warnings from Italy, Spain, and more. Still, if people can ignore the above mentioned elephants in the room, they can certainly ignore what they perceive to be a mouse (and make fun of you for thinking it’s a big deal).
Masks and distancing are easy and reasonable, but I think ZipperJJ is probably right. You’re not going to change many minds, OP.
I’ll say it again: there’s value in speaking up even if doing so doesn’t change anyone’s social distancing behavior. It can impact their decision to post photos of it on social media, which in turn would mean less normalization of their disregard for the rules/lives of others.
Many people don’t change behavior the first time someone objects. It can take several instances with responses from different people before change occurs (if it does). Be part of that critical mass. Speak up.
Unfortunately there are people who get a small buzz when being ‘naughty’, haven’t you ever had that feeling yourself when you got away with something that you knew was wrong, but not really really bad.
So what happens is that these folk just have little appreciation of risk and the genuine seriousness of their actions - after all the sky didn’t fall right in so its just a little bit ‘naughty’ and just a little bit of a thrill for getting away with it.
Problem is that these folk are most unlikely to suffer the real consequences, unless they actually get it and by then it will be too late - the ones who suffer the most will be those to whom they pass it on because they are asymptomatic and will likely recover if it takes hold.
Such people haven’t really come to terms with delayed results - such as deferred pleasure or deferred consequences.
It’s really the small child inside, an immature attitude to public safety and collective responsibility. What they need to do is grow up - but is it likely? Children take time to grow up, immature adults probably won’t.
I could have perhaps better clarified: this woman is definitely not just oblivious or being shown at an unrepresentative moment. There’s no way IMO that they all just held their breath and leaned in for the photo before spreading out again. She is borderline obsessive about physical fitness, and in March when her gym closed, she complained about it bitterly and kept doing so into April. The rest of us argued with her about why it was important, but she completely scoffed. (She lives in the Florida Panhandle, aka “Lower Alabama”, FWIW.)
And I have been a moderate on these kinds of issues. In a late March thread, a lot of people gave Manda Jo grief for saying she really missed her mom and was considering spending time talking to her outside from 25 feet away. I was the only one who really rose to her defense:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22222668&postcount=502
So I don’t think it’s reasonable to berate someone for hanging out even with an elderly person if they’re outside 25 feet apart. But I think it’s an entirely different matter when it’s a group of people zero feet apart. (Or maybe she would object that they were like one foot apart, measuring from mouth to mouth?)
There are two potentially separate but overlapping issues. One is whether a person is ‘with the program’. Wearing a mask outdoors with social distancing for example is almost surely superfluous/useless, but it can be a social signal, ‘I’m with you on this, you can trust me’. Some posts in various threads have been by people who realize this, as opposed to ones who’d want to have an argument about my third sentence (‘you can’t be 100% sure a mask outside with distancing is superfluous/useless so we must assume it’s actually very important’).
But social signalling depends on people sharing world views. The US is a very diverse plus very socio-politically polarized country (two things which also have some relationship but are not the same thing). Lots of people won’t agree on what ‘everybody should do’. Some people will disagree just because of who it is they see promoting a particular view (if they are saying it, it must be wrong’).
But I see your point, your clarification that these people you know on social media are acting in some obviously COVID-risky way, not just refusing to strictly follow some instruction as a demonstration of their social conformity. Also in case of adult kid visiting elderly parent and talking outside at 25’, the danger (if any) is probably mainly to the parent rather than assuming that parent would be in contact with lots of other people in vulnerable groups. That parent is the person mainly being protected, and has a right to weigh in. In case of groups of younger people congregating, the idea is that they are mainly endangering unknown members of vulnerable groups further along the chain who have no say in it.
Again though if you just look at internet/media now you do see some pretty overwrought reactions to stuff not unlike the 25’ outdoor case. They are trying to enforce social conformity in particular cases where the scientific/medical risk of refusing to might be nearly zero. But in fairness to them social norms have often evolved to avoid case by case decision making and dispute by saying ‘let’s everyone just do this’.
I do wonder if people are shifting in their positioning even here, compared to that Manda Jo pile-on I referred to. I don’t know if anything has really changed on the merits, but I think it is like the phenomenon when you are waiting at a stop sign to cross a major thoroughfare whose traffic does not have to stop. In the first minute or two you are stopped, you may pass up some borderline opportunities to cross in favor of waiting for a clearer gap in traffic. But after it’s been three or four minutes, you floor it and fly through a little gap that you would have seen as unacceptably risky two minutes prior. The only thing that has actually changed is your own impatience.
I don’t know if I ever mentioned it, but the woman I’m talking about here is from the Florida Panhandle. A lot of the people who were sort of semi-defending her originally (saying I was right, but that I was too harsh) are getting pretty fed up with her, as she keeps spouting nonsense right wing propaganda about how masks are supposedly unhealthy (CO2 blah blah blah) and now of course Florida is blowing up just like we warned due to irresponsible behavior like hers.
I personally have long said that each person has to make their own decision as to what they feel is or isn’t safe. In large part, the only thing each of us ought to do is decide whom we wish to interact with where. I consider it an unfortunate aspect of this pandemic, that many folk have chosen to assume the role of social enforcers. People like to criticize other peoples’ choices and actions. Early on I tired of people saying I was a “bad person” and endangering society, simply because I questioned certain official pronouncements.
We engage in relatively limited social activities. Always have. When we perceive that one person has engaged in behavior we consider unnecessarily risky, we figure out a way to avoid socializing w/ them - certainly indoors.
That would only work if the person deciding were the only one at risk. But they are not. They are putting the people they are in contact with at risk, and anyone that person ever is in contact with. It’s not up to anyone else to decide my risk or the risk to my family.
I can’t know your specific situation. If all you were doing was asking questions, in good faith, then, yeah, the social enforcers were wrong in that case. But I can’t say they’re wrong in general. And, frankly, I’d rather then overcorrect than undercorrect.
I’m 100% for people making it socially taboo to not wear a mask or socially distance, for example. It’s something that absolutely needs to happen to prevent deaths. If they’re too selfish (or stupid) to do it, then I’m all for nearly anything that would force the issue.
We’re in for a world of hurt if we can’t get mask and social distancing compliance back up. The US is seeing the curve going back up right now. And the governments seem to be doing little to help.
Even when it is the law, people refuse to comply. If the law can’t force the issue, someone needs to.