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Jun. 14th, 2020 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[cw: illness, poison, venting, (mild) death]
everybody talks about the mental-health damage of quarantining, but almost nobody talks about the mental-health damage of *not* quarantining.
it eats away at me, hour after hour, day after day. I started feeling the dread two or three days in advance this week. this one'll probably be something like fifteen hours out of the house when all's said and done, between work and groceries.
I see some people saying that recent preponderance of evidence is that COVID-19 spreads mostly through the breath, with relatively little fomite spread. they say this like it is good news, which is absolutely mind-boggling. it is *terrible* news.
fomites can be *fixed*! you can simply use the training-not-to-touch-your-face-in-public you should have anyway, be careful of what you come into contact with, decontaminate when you get home, leave your groceries to sit for four days before you eat them.
but breath cannot be fixed unilaterally, at least not well: you must convince everyone around you to fix it, and they will not.
I'm still doing decon: ~nobody thinks it's 100% non-fomite-based, plus infection isn't binary and every virus counts. but the first viruses count more, and I can't scrub out my lungs. fifteen hours, with just two layers of my cloth and two metres between me and their filth.
you don't come to our restaurant at a time like this if you are fully capable of the basic emotion of disgust. I feel what they cannot, carry damn near the whole weight of the place on my own shoulders. I feel the horror they *should* have at other customers facing them and talking loudly from a mere six feet away (in addition to my own horror, standing not *that* much further away), the revulsion of touching their faces. I feel *so much* revulsion, at nearly every aspect of their presence.
and hour after hour, long after *they* have gotten the hell out, I breathe their air. and I can't scrub out my lungs.
---
(a person we've known for a while--who I have long since grown tired of calling "friend", who once spent several hours at Walmart with suspected COVID-19, confessed *that* to us over insecure email, but then evaded telling us what the test results were (some fig leaf? that's not how the law works, let alone how morality works, but perhaps she doesn't know that)--told Mom yesterday her family got takeout a few evenings ago and got food poisoning. god knows I've spent enough time wishing that people who force takeout employees to come to work during a plague would get what they deserve, and it seems some of them have.
but, she says, they're feeling much better now! so would we like to come over and hang out?
I said we should tell her to go fuck herself. Mom refuses to swear at her, no matter how much she earns it. Mom will ~*politely*~ refuse.)
---
is this how coal miners feel? the painful awareness, the knowing in your heart that your job should not exist. that the thing you are getting paid for is to poison yourself in the process of enabling people to poison the world.
once upon a time I took pride in my work, but those days are gone. now...
poison saturates our air and our land. do not live here, lest you die; do not eat the food here, lest you sicken; do not even visit here, lest you bring the poison back with you and cause your whole community to suffer.
...it is only the slightest twist of the original meaning, a very nearly central example, to say that this is not a place of honour.
---
Brother's workplace has re-opened. he comes home with his mask pulled down, in the universal signal for "I don't actually give a shit and wear this only when forced". I'm lucky if he washes his hands.
(he's not customer-facing, but some of his co-workers are (plus, when it comes to life in general he is probably the *least* reckless person working there: god knows what they're getting up to in their spare time these days). and he, too, went to Walmart.)
I can't keep the world safe by myself, can't even keep *myself* safe by myself. but who else is there?
everybody talks about the mental-health damage of quarantining, but almost nobody talks about the mental-health damage of *not* quarantining.
it eats away at me, hour after hour, day after day. I started feeling the dread two or three days in advance this week. this one'll probably be something like fifteen hours out of the house when all's said and done, between work and groceries.
I see some people saying that recent preponderance of evidence is that COVID-19 spreads mostly through the breath, with relatively little fomite spread. they say this like it is good news, which is absolutely mind-boggling. it is *terrible* news.
fomites can be *fixed*! you can simply use the training-not-to-touch-your-face-in-public you should have anyway, be careful of what you come into contact with, decontaminate when you get home, leave your groceries to sit for four days before you eat them.
but breath cannot be fixed unilaterally, at least not well: you must convince everyone around you to fix it, and they will not.
I'm still doing decon: ~nobody thinks it's 100% non-fomite-based, plus infection isn't binary and every virus counts. but the first viruses count more, and I can't scrub out my lungs. fifteen hours, with just two layers of my cloth and two metres between me and their filth.
you don't come to our restaurant at a time like this if you are fully capable of the basic emotion of disgust. I feel what they cannot, carry damn near the whole weight of the place on my own shoulders. I feel the horror they *should* have at other customers facing them and talking loudly from a mere six feet away (in addition to my own horror, standing not *that* much further away), the revulsion of touching their faces. I feel *so much* revulsion, at nearly every aspect of their presence.
and hour after hour, long after *they* have gotten the hell out, I breathe their air. and I can't scrub out my lungs.
---
(a person we've known for a while--who I have long since grown tired of calling "friend", who once spent several hours at Walmart with suspected COVID-19, confessed *that* to us over insecure email, but then evaded telling us what the test results were (some fig leaf? that's not how the law works, let alone how morality works, but perhaps she doesn't know that)--told Mom yesterday her family got takeout a few evenings ago and got food poisoning. god knows I've spent enough time wishing that people who force takeout employees to come to work during a plague would get what they deserve, and it seems some of them have.
but, she says, they're feeling much better now! so would we like to come over and hang out?
I said we should tell her to go fuck herself. Mom refuses to swear at her, no matter how much she earns it. Mom will ~*politely*~ refuse.)
---
is this how coal miners feel? the painful awareness, the knowing in your heart that your job should not exist. that the thing you are getting paid for is to poison yourself in the process of enabling people to poison the world.
once upon a time I took pride in my work, but those days are gone. now...
poison saturates our air and our land. do not live here, lest you die; do not eat the food here, lest you sicken; do not even visit here, lest you bring the poison back with you and cause your whole community to suffer.
...it is only the slightest twist of the original meaning, a very nearly central example, to say that this is not a place of honour.
---
Brother's workplace has re-opened. he comes home with his mask pulled down, in the universal signal for "I don't actually give a shit and wear this only when forced". I'm lucky if he washes his hands.
(he's not customer-facing, but some of his co-workers are (plus, when it comes to life in general he is probably the *least* reckless person working there: god knows what they're getting up to in their spare time these days). and he, too, went to Walmart.)
I can't keep the world safe by myself, can't even keep *myself* safe by myself. but who else is there?
