quote:

A Florida man who thought the coronavirus was "a fake crisis" has changed his mind after he and his wife contracted COVID-19.

Brian Hitchens, a rideshare driver who lives in Jupiter, downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus in Facebook posts in March and April.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u...ntracted-it-n1209246

The guy's FB post:

https://www.facebook.com/brian...sts/3241584752540091

On a somewhat related note...I stopped to chat with a couple of neighbors yesterday. One is a nurse, and she said seeing people with COVID-19 is a pretty devastating experience.

The other neighbor's sister is in the hospital with the virus. Said it's really scary. Her sister is too sick to text or talk on the phone.

I seem to remember this story from a week or so ago.

I'm thinking that the capacity to imagine and the ability to feel genuine empathy are related to what one thinks of this disease. People who have difficulty imagining the reality of someone suffering the end stages of Covid-driven lung and organ failure are less likely to worry about the disease and more likely to dismiss policies designed to lessen the pandemic's social impact.

Oh, I don't know about that.

It is possible to support the policies designed to lessen the pandemic's social impact, feel empathy, and understand the challenge while at the same time not being particularly worried about contracting it or dying from it.

It depends to a very large extent on how much you worry in general AND your personal circumstances. I feel like my risk is quite low for many reasons, not least among them the privilege I enjoy (e.g. being able to work from home with others who work from home, not having risk factors one can avoid by being privileged). I do support the curve-flattening measures and stimulus, etc.; I just think the reality of them was that they were never going to be something that could last as many people would want.

Then again, some people don't understand the pandemic because they get their news from certain places. There's no fixing that.