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I don't know if it's the way I look but whenever someone has started to go off about masks and so on, I've simply stated in a very flat voice: "They don't work the way you think."

19 out of 20 looks at me as if I was trying to sell pork in mosque or something.

The True Believer, especially it they are the kind of person who treats others as were they an audience, generally launches into a hectoring diatribe about the virtue of, well summarised "it everyone just did what they were told there wouldn't be any problems".

And then they stare at you, triumphantly. Now, the play can unfold one of two ways: you either challenge them with facts which they react to by screeching, calling your sources ignorant (without you having named your sources, no less) and going off on tangential rants about taxes, climate change, racism, the slovenly youth of today and whatnot. (As a raconteur ranter by nature, I can sympathise with the impulse but decorum must come first, yes?)

Or, you simply say: "I'm not telling you that you're not allowed to wear a mask (or whatever), I'm telling you that you have no right at all do demand others do it, or that others isolate themselves when they aren't sick, or that people are forced or pressured to accept to be injected with an unknown experimental substance."

The above is condensed and (s)lightly dramatised of course; real conversation is never so neat as it is presented in "And the I said xxx, and she said yyyy, and don't you know the next week she got sick!"-anecdotes. Ahhh, the beauty of narrative discourse theory in action!

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I use the following statement. Its quite effective . " Its better to keep quiet and let people think they are talking to an idiot than to open your mouth and prove it" They immediately swing to the thought you are talking about yourself when the opposite applys. Generally ends the conversation right there.

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author

Oh wow, that's a great idea. Thank you for sharing.

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"My husband is in a high-risk group, and I must ask you to leave."

The appropriate response is, "So why aren't you encouraging him to supplement with vitamin D?

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author

Good point.

I simply rattled off data from the public health (sic[k]) authorities, but I stopped short of retorting 'well, stay at-home, then' or the like (although my wife was so pissed at my courtesies when I told her afterwards that I'm now unhappy with my decision.

Such is life under the 'new normal'.

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People have been lied to by authorities they grew up trusting into. Because of 'fear' of death they've lost sigh of reality and humanity. Very sad story! Not much we can do but continue to speak up so that the mass formation psychosis is eventually broken and people are able to exit hypnosis.

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Feb 7, 2022·edited Feb 7, 2022

One particularly pathetic aspect of our contemporary culture is that it doesn't prepare people for death (their own or that of other people). That would be fine if death could somehow be avoided, but alas... The amount of cruelty that we end up inflicting on ourselves and others due to this unprocessed fear is rather staggering, and nothing illustrates it better than the past two years.

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author

Spot-on, Irena, it's basically all about this one precious life (i.e., materialism, in its crudest and crassest manifestation).

I concur wholeheartedly, and I'd add: we tried to banish 'death' from our lives, as evidenced by the many 'palliative care' (sic) wards in hospitals. This is like a death ward, but it surely sounds 'nicer'. Death is part of life, but in esp. 'rich' countries, the self-deception is even worse than anything imaginable.

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Actually, if you get to palliative care, you can count yourself lucky. Usually, people die hooked up to machines that are supposed to "save their lives."

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This is also something my wife and I discussing frequently: who in his or her right mind would wish for being kept alive *like that*? Also, while the marvels of medical science are obvious, what kind of life will that be after one eventually leaves the ICU?

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Sometimes you have no choice... in November 2021, the "Verein Sterbehilfe" (an organization in Germany offering assisted suicide) announced that its services would henceforth only be provided to vaccinated people.

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I take it that would be a completely un-ironic statement, much like the Buchenwald exhibit on 'exclusion' that only allowed 'vaccinated' and 'recovered' visitors onto the premises.

It gets curiouser and curiouser each day.

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It‘s so crazy that those people don’t see what they are doing here. Humanity has to grow up finally in order to create a better (more humane) future but that‘s obviously not so easy, it seems. Especially in German speaking EU countries 😆.

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This whole thing has made me fascinated with the idea of fear and how it has been used to manipulate people. Good article from 2015: https://academyofideas.com/2015/11/fear-and-social-control/

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The closest I had was this in the second half of 2021. It occurred on a footpath along a main road.

They were a somewhat frail couple in their late 70s - in good physical shape, though.

They were walking behind me.

Man: Wear a mask!

Me: Why?

Man: Because it is the law!

Me: You wanna bet?

Wife: Oh, you have an exemption.

Me: Do you want to see it?

Wife: No. We are high risk.

I've experienced a few people who either avoided me or pulled up their masks as we approached outdoors. I had one mother pushing her pram who walked on the road to avoid me when she was about 50 metres in front of me, and continued until she was about 50m behind me before she got back on the footpath.

Fear of health and ignorance can make people act differently.

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author

Oh wow, I've only once 'enjoyed' such a stupid comment, also outdoor, but at least here where I am right now (Scandinavia), less and less people continue wearing these face diapers outside (many still do inside).

What a crazy world.

Also, re-reading your above dialogue, these illogical statements echo strongly with my own experiences.

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How many people have been hit by cars when they behaved like this?

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We on a wide quiet road.

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author

Haha, I almost fell off my chair reading this one. Thank you, it made my day.

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Unfortunately, in these divisive times, you just have to present them with the information and then walk away. Nothing is achieved through fighting.

https://nakedemperor.substack.com/

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author

Exactly.

Also, thanks for sharing that account on your 'stack, which prompted me to write up this above anecdote (although my wife also suggested doing so).

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Feb 8, 2022·edited Feb 8, 2022

My husband’s aunt, a retired nurse, pressured him into getting the jab as a condition of being allowed to visit his dying uncle at their home. My husband thought this would appease her, and that after his uncle had passed, she probably wouldn’t care whether either of us was jabbed or not. After all, her adult son (who lives with her) never got the shot, which didn’t seem to be an issue for her.

But that wasn’t the end of it. After my husband’s uncle passed away, his aunt would not allow me (unjabbed) to attend the memorial service, unless I agreed to stand in the corner for the duration, double-masked and far away from any other person. She said she was worried about all of the elderly people who would be in attendance (all jabbed), and even if I felt perfectly well, she worried that I’d somehow either infect them, or they would infect me. Her unjabbed son, however, would not have to mask up at the memorial (the excuse being that he reportedly hardly ever leaves home and rarely interacts with others). My husband’s aunt waited until after we had spent time and money to travel from out of state to attend this memorial to inform us of her conditions for me. We suspected the delay may have been intentional, perhaps a way to get us to more readily acquiesce. Infuriated, we both refused to attend and took the next available flight home.

My husband was very close to his aunt and uncle growing up, so he has since let this whole thing go. However, he has decided that he will not get boosted. He still talks to his aunt on the phone weekly. She remains obsessed about COVID and is constantly worried over whatever current variant is in the news. Her vaxxed daughter (a doctor) and vaxxed grandsons have all gotten COVID during the Omicron wave, and from what she has said, they all got pretty sick. She sees them all regularly, and her son who lives with her is still unjabbed, but she’s still too scared for us to come visit, even though she’s vaxxed and boosted, and my husband and I are now both recovered from COVID. Prior to the pandemic, she was such a pleasure to spend time with. It’s so sad to think that we may never get to see her again, because of her irrational fears that no amount of reason or sense of proportion seems to be able to dispel.

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author

I'm so sorry for your losses, but re-reading your post I'm unsure whether I'm just 'sad' or 'sad and angry' about it.

I wish you well!

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I am really sorry to hear this, I thought that people in Northern European countries were more rational. But it seems that fear eats brain, no matter where you live.

I am having difficulties in finding a new job as a pariah, as most of the bigger companies have an informal „no jab, no job“ rule. That‘s totally in line with the law and that‘s so creepy. But well, I guess that‘s the new normal which will be in a lot of minds for a long time. Even when the measures are de-installed, the traumatized people (thus, nearly everybody) cannot go back to the „old normal“ again that easily. That‘s very sad.

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Reply: "And now, you have asked."

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Incidentally, I'm not sure that you have to be in the same room with a symptomatic person for several hours in order to catch the bug. I don't think I was ever in the same room with the same person for that long any time in the couple of weeks leading up to my COVID episode back in October. (An hour with the same person? Yes, with quite a few people - though none of them seemed symptomatic - and I probably caught it from one of them. 2-3 hours? Nope, I don't think so.) And I had real COVID, not just a positive test (though that, too). High fever, loss of smell...

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author

I think I heard that 2-3 hour timeframe by McCullough, but he also added a caveat: it's more about ventilation of a room and the like, but still: if you're susceptible and meet with a symptomatic person, your odds are quite high, I suppose.

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