Hysterically scared. Acting as if something worse than Ebola is airborne and as infectious as the common cold. Plus, I find when you take a devils advocate line of questioning with these people. There is a delusion in the back of their minds that if we just hunkered down for a bit longer, there would have been a day where COVID magically disappears into a fart in the breeze - we just need to wait for that day, then open. And if this doesn't happen, why can't we stay closed to the rest of the world forever? After all we were doing fine (I do like to point out to them, yes, doing fine living off redistribution of Commonwealth revenues).
My wife and I aren't let it rip, anti-vaxxers by any stretch. We are vaxxed and the kids have had their first dose and we obviously don't go out of our way to catch it. But there is a big difference between practical caution and being crippled with fear and hysteria that consumes your every thought and action. We just shake our heads at the absurd levels of hysteria we see among some of the populace in Tasmania. A colleague of hers was even abused by a bloke for failing to wear a mask while she was driving in the shopping mall car park (the colleague was in her own private vehicle.....by herself). Mrs PT works in communications and partly blames governments for dropping the ball on communication and not steering an evolution of the collective psychological mindset. As she said to me,"You feed someone baby food for long enough, all they will continue to want is baby food because they don't know anything else."
This was an interesting read that reminded me of what I observe around me in TAS.
Leigh Sales’ brutally honest Covid-19 message
The ABC’s Leigh Sales has shared an article calling for the end to “fear and panic” as Omicron continues to spread and experts increasing acknowledge the variant can’t be contained.
www.news.com.au
Mrs PT has been watching and monitoring a FB site for work reasons. It's a group of people who are disillusioned with borders reopening and contract tracing not actively being done by govt anymore. It's called "Hobart exposure sites and COVID support group". There are some real nutters on there. It's become like a religion for them to follow. Or they are just addicted to the 'doom porn' they have become accustomed to. And can't deal with specific sites not being reported anymore from contract tracing data (as it is pointless when the virus is everywhere). It’s like they need their daily fix of ‘doom porn’ that they’re no longer getting with the winding down of information overload.
They also have their share of conspiracy theories as to how many additional, unpublished people are in ICU in hospital (I assume it got back to them from a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend who knows a bloke who works washing dishes at the hospital cafeteria) with Omnicron, but the Govt is covering it up. Plus just stupid neurotic questions. "Is it true that pets can catch COVID from us? I don't actually have any pets, but just need to know." Christ, get a grip people.
The hypochondriac brigade are as nuts as the Trump flag waving anti-vaxx protestors, but the other way around. And both groups seem to have pretty big voices with the virtual megaphone of social media. As the article suggested, the pandemic has been the perfect cocktail to push us further down the road of deteriorating social cohesion and polarisation.
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