Coronavirus: What Vintage Skills Can Help Prepare for a Potential Pandemic?

[tonyb]

As a recovering Libertarian, I resemble that statement!

I feel similarly toward stridency of all sorts. It becomes a religion, not subject to reason, immune to evidence. FWIW, I cringe when recalling some of the beliefs I once held dear.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

The best vintage skill I can think of is fire making. Build a nice big pyre & if anyone approaches looking slightly under the weather, throw them on it. The Coronavirus doesn't like heat apparently.

 

[Fading Fast]

With the people I deal with it's mostly an attitude of absolute personal entitlement. "I'm an old white woman. Nobody questions me." And if you do venture to question her, she lets you have it. A few here and there, I could buy the dementia excuse. But an extended pattern of behavior that's been consistent for the past fifteen years, exhibited by a large number of similar individuals, says to me that it's something cultural. Not political, not philosophical, but cultural. They don't have a problem with rules -- they just think the rules don't apply to people like them.

And those are the kind of people you're going to have trouble with in any kind of an attempt to enforce rules during a mass panic. If there really is a pandemic, what are you going to do with millions of people "demanding to speak to the manager" about being "inconvenienced?"

Americans have never really had to deal with a true mass crisis. We haven't really had to deal with invasions, or martial law, or mass disruptions of our food and water supply on a nationwide basis. We're a nation of people who pitch a fit when the cable TV goes out and call off school when there's half an inch of snow on the ground. And on top of that half the country absolutely hates the other half. So how can we expect a true mass medical crisis to be dealt with in any kind of a rational way? It's a frightening thing to really stop and think about. It's like setting fire to a room full of kindergarteners and then expecting them to rally together to put it out.

Right--there's always going to be somebody acting like an idiot. But the vast majority of people have an instinct for self-preservation, along with a tendency to follow the herd. Someone who doesn't wonder why downtown is roped off and deserted, and sense something is wrong, probably isn't mentally all there.

I can't help but wonder if you're dealing with people with some dementia rather than strident libertarians.

As someone with a strong libertarian lean, I see no issue with public safety laws in general (like everyone here, I have my preferences and arguments at the margin) and meaningfully stronger ones, like quarantines and closing of events, etc. in times of pandemics, crises, etc. And remember, while they make a great boggy-man for those who like to posture against them, libertarians make up well less than 5% of the population (they ain't driving elections and outcomes - most don't vote R or D). And if they decide to ignore the quarantines, etc., they'll be less of them (although, that behavior could take out some innocents as well and should be punished/arrested/etc.).

From my time in retail sales, the ugly behavior Lizzie so often describes does not seem to me to come from thoughtful practitioners of libertarian ideology, but simply obnoxious, bullying, entitled personal actions. I know many libertarians; overall, while they'll tell you all that is wrong in the world (like many here who aren't libertarians), I've not seen any proclivity toward being rude or obnoxious in their day-to-day intereactions. Most, like me, follow our laws and unwritten rules of civility just like most everyone else.

This from Lizzie - "...half the country absolutely hates the other half." could prove an issue if there is no ability to "pull together" even temporarily for imminent threats to our survival.

 

[tonyb]

With the people I deal with it's mostly an attitude of absolute personal entitlement. "I'm an old white woman. Nobody questions me." And if you do venture to question her, she lets you have it. A few here and there, I could buy the dementia excuse. But an extended pattern of behavior that's been consistent for the past fifteen years, exhibited by a large number of similar individuals, says to me that it's something cultural. Not political, not philosophical, but cultural. They don't have a problem with rules -- they just think the rules don't apply to people like them.

And those are the kind of people you're going to have trouble with in any kind of an attempt to enforce rules during a mass panic. If there really is a pandemic, what are you going to do with millions of people "demanding to speak to the manager" about being "inconvenienced?"

Americans have never really had to deal with a true mass crisis. We haven't really had to deal with invasions, or martial law, or mass disruptions of our food and water supply on a nationwide basis. We're a nation of people who pitch a fit when the cable TV goes out and call off school when there's half an inch of snow on the ground. And on top of that half the country absolutely hates the other half. So how can we expect a true mass medical crisis to be dealt with in any kind of a rational way? It's a frightening thing to really stop and think about. It's like setting fire to a room full of kindergarteners and then expecting them to rally together to put it out.

I wouldn’t so quickly dismiss a roomful of kindergarteners’ capacity to find a cooperative way of addressing an emergency. I have no less faith in the little buzzards (and perhaps more) than I would invest in the so-called grownups.

 

[3fingers]

This is bringing to light how much of what we buy here in the US is sourced from China. I didn't realize until now that most wedding dresses, for example are from there.

One of my stepsons is getting married in June. His wife to be had to deal with that a month or so ago. Her dress is not from China but unbeknownst to her the bridesmaids dresses were all coming from there. There is not a delivery date as of this time so the orders were cancelled and the bridesmaids will be wearing dresses of their own choosing in a style and color that makes them usable for other occasions. Makes more sense to me anyway.

 

[Paisley]

As someone with a strong libertarian lean, I see no issue with public safety laws in general (like everyone here, I have my preferences and arguments at the margin) and meaningfully stronger ones, like quarantines and closing of events, etc. in times of pandemics, crises, etc.

From my time in retail sales, the ugly behavior Lizzie so often describes does not seem to me to come from thoughtful practitioners of libertarian ideology, but simply obnoxious, bullying, entitled personal actions. I know many libertarians; overall, while they'll tell you all that is wrong in the world (like many here who aren't libertarians), I've not seen any proclivity toward being rude or obnoxious in their day-to-day intereactions. Most, like me, follow our laws and unwritten rules of civility just like most everyone else.

Agreed. I'd add that the worst mass famine in history--China's Great Leap Forward--was the result of a strongly enforced Grand Plan, not freedom.

When we were attacked on 9/11, people behaved pretty well--even heroically.

This from Lizzie - "...half the country absolutely hates the other half."

Living in pinkish-purple Indianapolis, I just don't see that anywhere but in the media.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
Controversy sells soap. Neighbors being neighborly doesn’t draw the ratings like neighbors shooting at each other.

 

[Paisley]

With the people I deal with it's mostly an attitude of absolute personal entitlement. "I'm an old white woman. Nobody questions me." And if you do venture to question her, she lets you have it. A few here and there, I could buy the dementia excuse. But an extended pattern of behavior that's been consistent for the past fifteen years, exhibited by a large number of similar individuals, says to me that it's something cultural. Not political, not philosophical, but cultural. They don't have a problem with rules -- they just think the rules don't apply to people like them.

It could be cultural, but I don't think it's nationwide. In Denver, where I'm from, it's common for people to have a standoffish, prickly attitude. Any semblance of courtesy goes out the window once people get in their car. But an attitude of entitlement? It wasn't something I noticed.

I don't have any complaints about people's behavior in Indianapolis--though granted, I don't work with the general public.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I see it a lot here, home of "The Way Life Should Be." There are a great many people around here who notice that I have good friends who don't agree with me politically, they look at me like I should be exhibited in a circus tent. For a great many people in the actual world there is Us and there is Them, and never the twain shall meet. The media feeds it, but it didn't create it -- I can remember people being this way when I was a little kid. "Don't talk to them, they've got a McGovern sticker/a Nixon sticker on their car."

The attitude of entitlement appears most common to me in married middle-class white women over 65. They're sweet as pie as long as you never tell them they can't do something. But soon as you tell them they can't tell a fellow patron to "get out of that seat, that's my seat" when the seats are not in fact reserved. Or when you ask them to use the restroom downstairs instead of the handicapped restroom because there's a person in a wheelchair who needs to use it. Or when you tell them there are no refunds after they sit thru two-thirds of the movie before deciding they didn't like it. As soon as you get in their way, on any little thing, the fangs will come out.

This isn't a few isolated cases, a few random bad apples here and there. I deal with hundreds of different people who behave this way, and I see them acting the same way in restaurants, grocery stores, anyplace they feel they can swing their weight around to get the "service they think they deserve."

There are, of course, exceptions, but it's been my experience and observation that the exceptions only prove the rule. Gawd help us all when these ladies show up at the emergency room when the virus hits. (I'm not letting their hubbies off the hook here, either -- but their wives take the prize.)

And also, let me stress, I don't think this kind of behavior has any ideological motivation -- I don't think most Americans have any kind of real ideology at all. The kind of people I'm talking about are motivated only by their own absolute self-absorption, and they are generally completely unaware of how obnoxious their behavior is. It's just the way they are because it's how they've always been, because they've never had to not be that way.

 

[Paisley]

^^^^^
Controversy sells soap. Neighbors being neighborly doesn’t draw the ratings like neighbors shooting at each other.

We have that here, but it's mostly people who know each other from their criminal activities.

 

[Grizzly Adams]

Hmmm... Well "vintage skills" was pretty much all the folks in 1918 had at their disposal, and we know how THAT turned out!

As a side note: I spent many years living in "Bush" Alaska. I knew an elderly Eskimo gent who used to drop by, drink tea, and tell me tales of his youth. He lived through the pandemic of 1918. He and another youngster never got sick, but they watched most of the adults in the village die of the flu. He and his friend would go from house to house each morning and bring the dead out. I remember him saying, "It was very quiet..."

 

[PrettySquareGal]

Hmmm... Well "vintage skills" was pretty much all the folks in 1918 had at their disposal, and we know how THAT turned out!

I'm not referring to vintage medicine...but we don't have a vaccine for this one either so in that sense it's not like we're that far advanced. I'm just so curious about how people dealt with the fear and risk management, sanitation at home and such. Also, were there dedicated pandemic radio shows? (Lizzie?)

 

[LizzieMaine]

There were actually several special radio programs distributed via recording warning about syphilis, which was rampant in 1940s America. Not exactly 1918-flu levels of prevalence, but it was extremely common, and most people were painfully ignorant about how to deal with it. And the big polio epidemic of the early 1950s generated similar recorded educational broadcasts advising prevention rather than panic.

There were also plenty of educational film shorts. For example...

 

[tonyb]

I hope I am capable of taking a detached enough view of my own experience not to conflate it with a more widely held perspective, nor to draw from it any conclusions about the overall state of the world.

Hell, another person might witness the same things on a day-to-day basis and come to a significantly differing understanding.

 

[tonyb]

There were actually several special radio programs distributed via recording warning about syphilis, which was rampant in 1940s America. Not exactly 1918-flu levels of prevalence, but it was extremely common, and most people were painfully ignorant about how to deal with it. And the big polio epidemic of the early 1950s generated similar recorded educational broadcasts advising prevention rather than panic.

There were also plenty of educational film shorts. For example...

I am not quite old enough to have lived in abject fear of polio (think you, Jonas Salk), but people just a few years older certainly are. Talk of the vaccine was common when I was a kid. It was regarded almost reverentially.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think just about everyone over fifty or so must have at least one relative or family acquaintance they knew or still know who'd had polio. I can think of several people I've known over the years who showed the effects of the disease, including one of my great-aunts. It might be ancient history to some, but it's a lot closer than they think.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Hell, another person might witness the same things on a day-to-day basis and come to a significantly differing understanding.

Sure. I've even heard some of them say "all I want is what I'm entitled to" when they're demanding a refund on a ticket that says NO TICKETS REFUNDED on it. Or "WHAT IS MY RECOURSE?" after you explain to them that there is, in fact, no recourse. Or best of all, one heard just last weekend, "Isn't there something you can do about these long lines at the ladies' room? They can't *all* need to use it." (I advised her to try the public toilet two blocks up the street, where the line in February is guaranteed to be short.)

And these aren't even the worst such instances. Earn the confidence of any waitress or store clerk or ER receptionist, and you'll hear stories that make these sound like mild annoyances.

 

[GHT]

Survey: 38% of beer-drinking Americans won’t buy Corona beer amid Coronavirus outbreak
There’s also been an uptick in searches for ‘corona beer virus’ and ‘beer coronavirus,' per 5WPR
https://www.click2houston.com/news/...nt-buy-corona-beer-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/
Best give up Corona Beer, can't be too careful.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm glad my portable typewriter is an Underwood instead of a....

 

[tonyb]

Sure. I've even heard some of them say "all I want is what I'm entitled to" when they're demanding a refund on a ticket that says NO TICKETS REFUNDED on it. Or "WHAT IS MY RECOURSE?" after you explain to them that there is, in fact, no recourse. Or best of all, one heard just last weekend, "Isn't there something you can do about these long lines at the ladies' room? They can't *all* need to use it." (I advised her to try the public toilet two blocks up the street, where the line in February is guaranteed to be short.)

And these aren't even the worst such instances. Earn the confidence of any waitress or store clerk or ER receptionist, and you'll hear stories that make these sound like mild annoyances.

I have worked in “service” jobs. I know that people can be more than a bit difficult. My having been on the receiving end of that difficulty, alas, hasn’t immunized me against dishing out some of that difficulty myself.

And people can be strikingly generous and kind. Sometimes those are the same people who might be difficult under other circumstances.

I try, not always successfully, to avoid expecting people to be better than I am willing to be myself. I try, not always successfully, not to respond in kind to abusive treatment. And I try, not always successfully, not to attribute that shoddy behavior to a person’s age or gender or ethnicity. You can’t blame it on blue hair.