Choke on it, ladies.

[Pixilated]

I am a grocery store cashier in Canada (born and raised here, except for about 5 years when we lived in Michigan). My younger sister lived in the U.S. for a few decades. She recently moved back to Canada. She went through the whole pandemic in the U.S. untouched.

Five months after she returned to Canada, she tested positive for COVID.

Welcome home, sis.

Anyway, I mentioned this irony to several of my customers the other day. Two responses (by two separate customers) stand out.

First customer (with a disdainful sniff): "So, is it 'COVID' or can we call it the flu like in the old days?"

Me: "Uh ... no, it's COVID."

Second customer: "Oh, there's no such thing. It's just the media trying to keep us scared." Continues on in this vein and concludes with the smug announcement that "they" were never able to "force" her to wear a mask.

*******
There will certainly be another pandemic, somewhere down the line. You can imagine my thoughts re: the next pandemic and idiots like these two.

[Ceir]

Paging Mr. Darwin, Mr. Darwin to the front checkout...

[RealUnimportant]

There will certainly be another pandemic

We're still in the same one. It's never gone away, and at this rate it never will. It's estimated more than 1% of the UK population is actively infected and spreading it right now. Numbers are surging everywhere. All we can do is look after ourselves...

[csquared]

The WHO declared that it was no longer a pandemic in May, 2023.

Still out there, but it is being treated more like the flu.

Unfortunately, the people who are acting that way have probably already reprodureproduced.

[Pixilated]

Paging Mr. Darwin, Mr. Darwin to the front checkout...

I love this! I wonder what would happen if I actually used it ....

Sis said that actually, more people have COVID now than had it during the actual pandemic. It's just that people are no longer dying by the thousands.

[Nunavut Pants]

So, basically, COVID is very much like the flu now. Wide-spread, constantly mutating, and deadly to smaller numbers of people than in the past, in large part due to easily available vaccines.

Once it started mutating into less-deadly forms, I figured it would get to this point...

[RealUnimportant]

Long Covid is still a major issue though and will be for decades, even if we managed to stop the spread tomorrow. So many newly-disabled folks...

[Food Lady]

I refuse to live my life in fear of "They".

[Ironclad Alibi]

Coming soon to an arena near you: "They" vs. "Them".

[dalesys]

I am 73. I feel like my generation of Americans, except those who have resided long term in third-world countries or long term war zones, is the last to have even second-hand awareness of what life in the "Good Old Days" was really like: Short, brutal and diseased.

My 3x great-grandfather Stillman Pond buried 8 children and his wife in less than a year (1846/7) from Nauvoo to Winter Quarters.

As a youth I would listen to my parents generation (1910-1930) talking with their cousins, parents (1890-1910), and grandparents (1870-1890) about their lives, and the casual mention of many friends, family, and neighbors who had died of injury, disease & infection for the lack of public sanitation, immunization, and antibiotics. My mother's 17 year old brother died of rheumatic heart failure when she was 10. (Strep throat, ya know). Her mother died at 55 when she was 18 of kidney failure. (Hypertension). Two oldest siblings died at birth 1918 & 1919. "Doctors" that were very little different than the butchers and barber-surgeons of the Civil War.

And now we have these idiots refusing vax and chlorination & etc. because "There's a non-zero risk!" Promoting "Raw Milk" and curative Yarbs from 1700s books...

Yaargh!

[Ironclad Alibi]

I am 73. I feel like my generation of Americans, except those who have resided long term in third-world countries or long term war zones, is the last to have even second-hand awareness of what life in the "Good Old Days" was really like: Short, brutal and diseased.

I am 3 years years older than you. I agree that today is far better than anything in the "Good Old Days." Except maybe some of the TV shows, which I can get on DVD or online. My father's twin died shortly after birth in 1918 from the Spanish flu. My grandfather didn't want to take him to the hospital.

It can truly be said that the idiots you mention do not know what they are missing. For their sake, I hope they don't find out.

[Pixilated]

AFAIK, it's now "ENdemic" rather than a "PANdemic" which means, yes, it's now here to stay. And constantly mutating.

My mother had asthma as an infant. At that time, Canada didn't have anything remotely resembling universal health care. From the stories I heard, my grandfather used to walk her up and down the street at night in an attempt to help her breath (Grandma didn't walk her at night because woman ... walking at night ... even though it was not at all a dangerous area).

I am 73. I feel like my generation of Americans, except those who have resided long term in third-world countries or long term war zones, is the last to have even second-hand awareness of what life in the "Good Old Days" was really like: Short, brutal and diseased.

My 3x great-grandfather Stillman Pond buried 8 children and his wife in less than a year (1846/7) from Nauvoo to Winter Quarters.

As a youth I would listen to my parents generation (1910-1930) talking with their cousins, parents (1890-1910), and grandparents (1870-1890) about their lives, and the casual mention of many friends, family, and neighbors who had died of injury, disease & infection for the lack of public sanitation, immunization, and antibiotics. My mother's 17 year old brother died of rheumatic heart failure when she was 10. (Strep throat, ya know). Her mother died at 55 when she was 18 of kidney failure. (Hypertension). Two oldest siblings died at birth 1918 & 1919. "Doctors" that were very little different than the butchers and barber-surgeons of the Civil War.

And now we have these idiots refusing vax and chlorination & etc. because "There's a non-zero risk!" Promoting "Raw Milk" and curative Yarbs from 1700s books...

Yaargh!

"Short, brutal and diseased." You put that so very well. We take medicine and medical care so much for granted that we have no idea what it was like when none of this was available. You could indeed die of an infection from a simple scratch or cut. I have some knowledge of my ancestry but nothing in terms of what they died of ... that would be interesting to know.

I've seen people posting that "Hey, even the Black Death wore itself out!" Well, yeah ... after it killed between 23 million and 50 million people in Eurasia and North Africa between 1346 and 1353. Entire villages were wiped out. But that was, what, a minor inconvenience, right??

I had a friend (now downgraded to casual acquaintance) who claimed to have a science degree, but who once posted a meme saying that wearing a mask to protect others from your germs was like wearing a diaper to protect others from your diarrhea. I'm now extremely skeptical of her "science degree." Either that or she wasted a LOT of money.

I am 3 years years older than you. I agree that today is far better than anything in the "Good Old Days." Except maybe some of the TV shows, which I can get on DVD or online. My father's twin died shortly after birth in 1918 from the Spanish flu. My grandfather didn't want to take him to the hospital.

It can truly be said that the idiots you mention do not know what they are missing. For their sake, I hope they don't find out.

You are kinder than I. I certainly wish the best for their children and grandchildren but the adults? I have no interest at all in whether they find out the hard way how stupid they've been.

Agree about the TV shows. I'm in the process of collecting the first five Star Trek series on DVD. (Also the movies.)

[EricKei]

My grandmother was one of thirteen siblings who were born in the 19-aughties and teens. At least three of them did not live to see age ten, and this was considered perfectly normal in their day; hence the large families. We had a family reunion a couple of years ago where we honored all of them, with posters on the fence showing which lines of the family came from which sibling. She didn't talk about those days when she was around; nobody really did.

[RealUnimportant]

I had a friend (now downgraded to casual acquaintance) who claimed to have a science degree, but who once posted a meme saying that wearing a mask to protect others from your germs was like wearing a diaper to protect others from your diarrhea. I'm now extremely skeptical of her "science degree." Either that or she wasted a LOT of money.

I mean, technically she's not wrong; that is entirely the idea, because without that diaper you're gonna make a whole lot more mess than with it. But I doubt that's what she meant by it!

[Pixilated]

I mean, technically she's not wrong; that is entirely the idea, because without that diaper you're gonna make a whole lot more mess than with it. But I doubt that's what she meant by it!

Ugh, yeah, you WOULD make a mess.

But you're right, no, that's not what she meant. She was one of the rabidly anti-maskers. I once commented that a cat bite (from my pet cat who was indoors-only) was starting to show red lines from the puncture marks ... clear signs of an infection ... and her response was that I was a wuss for doing so; she'd been bitten by cats and had always treated them at home. THERE'S a good reason for me to do the same.