Writing
I have been not paying attention to this. Basically, I had a writer's group to help edit the story. Two of the members of that group criticized me for not wanting to lie about how humans work in a way which is detrimental to people struggling with mental health concerns, and I just stopped working on the project. Since I have been in and out of struggling with life, I have been ignoring this process.
Status Update
So, I was sick for about a month early in the fall when our city decided to require masks within residential building common areas. There is an aspect where I needed more masks in order to comply, but couldn't easily obtain them. There is also the aspect that I will often be alone in those hallways. I don't want to go into the details, but it is yet another time in my life when people assume something is simple when it is not.
Things are a bit better now. I am still slow. I have been working on basic Covid modeling instead of physics. I have still been very slow with the being productive aspect, though. I have finally gotten some support put into place, so I will see if that helps in the next several weeks.
Election Response
I was unhappy with the election result in March, and actually perhaps earlier, when Joe Biden originally chose to run. I was very unhappy with both candidates, and while I may be slightly relieved that Joe Biden won, I am not quite sure that is actually true.
Covid-19: Trump has been downplaying the crisis, including trying to manipulate the data. Biden has promised a national lockdown and to remove Trump's dissident Covid advisors. Both options are horrendous, promising to make the crisis worse.
International Relations: Again we encounter the reality that both Democrats and Republicans (and whatever Trump is) have favored military action and predatory capitalism (or empire) over diplomacy and public health.
For Russia, while he originally promoted the arms reduction deals, Biden has become more and more anti-Russian since 2011 [ref] and Trump closed two Russian consulates and taken the US out of the remaining arms reduction treaties. Both also appear to be anti-China and fine with destroying the Middle East as well.
With trade, like Covid, they seem less in agreement and more in favor of presenting their own brand of horribleness, with Trump favoring crude tariffs and Biden favoring free-trade agreements.
Immigration: While Biden may appear to be gentler on immigration issues, we should not forget that Obama was nicknamed "the deporter in chief" for a reason.
Black Lives Matter: Biden's vice president has in the past been very active in promoting problematic policing, and Biden himself has stated that he is not in favor of defunding the police.
Health Care: Biden refuses to put a single payer system into place.
I don't want to analyze everything in depth, but I do want to highlight some basic things to draw attention to the fact that people should not put much hope in Biden to be much better than Trump. Trump just happens to have the advantage of being obviously horrendous because he is not good at playing politics.
Here are a few other people commenting on this situation: AA, BB. You don't need to read these points, but don't expect me to celebrate Biden winning the election.
Left vs Right News Analysis
This is a comparison of Russiagate (a Democrat conspiracy theory) vs Chinagate (a Republican conspiracy theory). I am sure that a lot of you believe the first one and either know the second as a conspiracy theory or have never heard of it. This journalist has a very emotional reaction to what is going on and the responses she has received to her analysis, but I still would like to show you the analysis as there are some direct comparisons.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/505077-trump-russiagate-biden-chinagate/
https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1320833227293028352
Covid-19 Response
I wanted to try to write some things to be clear about what my criticisms are as people don't seem to even understand what is going on.
-- Passive vs. Active Involvement: I know most people like to just donate to causes, then get on with ones life, but this is a big deal to me. For, say, WWII, countries shifted their economy to meet the needs of the war and encouraged people to actively help out, and not just by joining the military, although that was included as well. For me, just asking for donations or asking people to hide in their rooms while we are told to sit back and praise the "heroes on the front line" rather than joining them, is not actively helping out, and is therefore very isolating for me. I could describe this in more detail, but I will stop here.
I could also here mention that trying to get public comment on Covid-19 control measures may also help with compliance, as people are more likely to follow through if they know what is going on, feel a part of the process, and have consented to it.
-- Shaming and Fear vs. Compassion: I have previously described a personal experience with this type of behavior for a different illness. There are certainly reports of people who get sick with Covid-19 being blamed for getting sick, which has caused people to refuse to get tested, not tell people if they do test positive, and avoid any form of contact tracing, for fear of being exiled from society. Even the fact that people are told to quarantine (from family members) if they test positive rather than quarantining as a group and helping their friends or family who are sick may make the illness worse.
Much of this is magnified by public health messaging, with authorities blaming increased cases on people not following the rules (despite the fact that this is only one contributing factor and disobedience of policies often being caused by poorly designed policies). Many of these people, instead of having an honest discussion of herd immunity, refuse to even allow the term to be brought up, assuming people using it are denying that there is a crisis. There is also talk of penalizing people for not following Covid-19 ordinances, but very little about trying to stop the shaming (which as I pointed out could also increase compliance).
This is a major reason why I get annoyed when people complain about others not wearing their masks -- not because I don't think people should be required to wear masks, but because the emotion conveyed is fear and the mentality appears to come from the same place as the Covid shaming.
-- Crude Lockdowns and Blame-Shifting: I know that not every city is like this, but it is happening across the world, and people should remember to associate these policies with the ideas of "quarantine," "lockdowns" or "stay-at-home orders," because otherwise policy makers may get the idea that these actions are acceptable.
For the crude lockdown aspect, many places are restricting people's ability to leave there homes, restricting or recommending against meeting friends in person (including outside or in small, closed groups), or restricting access to health care. These are all very basic needs which allowing for doesn't substantially cause problems, but is necessary for people's health. This is what I would be referring to if I were to compare the lockdowns to house arrest -- not the inability to go to sporting events, large parties, bars, or even get ones hair cut, but the basic ability to leave one's house or choose one's associates and to have close contacts.
The whole blame-shifting aspect and how this ties together with the lockdown design is a whole other aspect. For instance, our university here has put unnecessarily harsh restrictions for being on campus, possibly so that if there is an outbreak, it does not happen on campus, and the university administration does not get blamed. This is not the only aspect, but there is a lot going around with trying to find someone to blame for Covid. (Which seems to not carry over in trying to blame people for the damages done by the "Covid management techniques," although if you were to blame someone for something, this makes more sense than blaming people for the spread of a asymptomatically spread, naturally occurring disease. I am not saying that people should be punished for taking reasonable steps to mitigate the spread which causes some damage, but once the steps become blatantly unreasonable ... if you panic in a crisis rather than manage it, maybe you shouldn't be put in charge of managing a crisis.)
-- Censorship and Dogmatic Thinking: So, I don't know how much people reading this have been exposed to this aspect, but it is happening, and it is a big problem. Dogmatic thinking issues I have brought up above and in previous posts, so I will talk about the censorship aspect. Basically people (researchers and others) have been told to be careful about what they are saying about Covid-19, to prevent the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. In addition, any dissident voice is censored by the big internet giants, again, "to prevent the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories."
One of the things people have forgotten, however, is that it is precisely these techniques which make people doubt what you are saying, thus encouraging disobedience and the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. It also makes having a rational conversation about what should or shouldn't be done very difficult.
-- Lack of Long Term Planning: I have previously described the mentality behind the whole ignore things, then shut down everything, but this should be obvious by now. The fact that people talk about the lockdowns or masks as a way to make this thing go away rather than just a way to reduce the spread and keep the hospitals open while we wait for herd immunity just emphasizes this. The fact that people keep on being surprised when cases rise at the times they had been predicted to continues to highlight this. Even things like not recruiting more staff and relying on lockdowns, not putting together field hospitals while cases are low, not making restrictions manageable long-term for people, etc. show this flaw in policy maker's mentalities.
