I’m usually not one to quote Vice but the intro to this article was emotionally on the nose.
A terrible truth about 2020: We can choose to do the right things, often at great personal cost, but other people—even people we care about, including our own relatives!—might be completely disinclined to make safe or wise choices. And when that happens, they aren’t just threatening themselves and others in the abstract sense; they are threatening people we know personally and feel a particular sense of duty to protect, and who we would feel like we failed if we didn’t do everything in our power to intervene.
You’re right that this isn’t an uncommon spot to be in this year, and I’m sad and angry for you and for everyone who has to both make the decision to not see elderly relatives for what could be their last holiday, and—as if that weren’t enough!!!—convince their family members that the coronavirus is indeed a real threat. I know we’ve been at this for months now, but I’m freshly furious thinking about how outrageous it is that at least 225,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19 complications, and there are still folks out here acting like it’s not that serious, or that flying to Mexico or going to a wedding right now or putting their own loved ones (and selves!!) at risk is a cool and fine thing to do.
To be quite honest, I was simply not prepared for the ways in which facts would cease to matter in my adult life. When I think about the ways so many people are denying the reality of this pandemic, or the fact that the core belief of the ever-growing and fully delusional QAnon cohort is that prominent Democrats are trafficking children in order to kill them and then drink their blood and there’s kind of no way to convince them otherwise, I want to cry.