The Sick Society
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The Sick Society
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Re: The Sick Society
#2Re: The Sick Society
#3> But they counter the pushback by essentially denying disease, both as an epidemiological reality and as a social reality too. Increasingly by the 1850s, you see people saying, well, yellow fever is not that big of a problem. It’s not that serious of an illness, and anybody who’s temperate and well-mannered and courageous and manly will survive. It only kills the immoral, the drunk, the unfortunate. Your cousin in Philadelphia or your niece in Sligo who thinks of New Orleans as a “necropolis,” they don’t know what they’re talking about, these northern critiques of New Orleans’s health situation are a proxy for abolitionists attacking slavery
Re: The Sick Society
#4Jack London helped me see how those in control (here the New Orleans owners of enslaved people, the merchants, and/or the politicians—author says many were all 3) would likely respond to an event (including disease) so as to preserve their own position and then claim that as moral and scientific:
In The Iron Heel, referring to owners of northern factories with child labor and other ghastly working conditions, Jack London wrote,
“When they want to do a thing, in business of course, they must wait till there arises in their brains, somehow, a religious, or ethical, or scientific, or philosophic, concept that the thing is right. And then they go ahead and do it, unwitting that one of the weaknesses of the human mind is that the wish is parent to the thought.“
I try to stay personally vigilant in remembering how my mind can trick me this way. The trick works in so very many contexts.
Re: The Sick Society
#5Re: The Sick Society
#6That’s pretty dark. Immunocapitalism is a new word for me but we have a much longer history of using disease in North America… at least all the way back to the first Europeans coming across the ocean. Even with all of our technology and knowledge, our species is still easily recognized as the same thing that existed 1000s of years ago. True change is hard.
Re: The Sick Society
#7In case of endemic disease the question is "Do I want to live under martial law till the rest of my life?"
Re: The Sick Society
#8Re: The Sick Society
#9Regarding Trump and his immunocapitalist behavior: I understand the position of the "Great Barrington Declaration" would be to make a majority of the population "acclimated" as soon as possible. Only lock down the vulnerable population. This could be effective because covid is not as deadly as yellow fever and not dangerous to a significant portion of the population. Setting aside all the Fauci political piss matchin…
Hindsight 2020 (pun intended)
> I do wonder what might have happened with that approach.
2022 would have happened in 2020: we would have saved 2 years.
Right now in 2022, as most people have stopped caring, don't wear mask etc, I'd say the majority of the population has acclimated, while a minority is trying to hold back and use FUD for favor their preferences.
Re: The Sick Society
#10Regarding Trump and his immunocapitalist behavior: I understand the position of the "Great Barrington Declaration" would be to make a majority of the population "acclimated" as soon as possible. Only lock down the vulnerable population. This could be effective because covid is not as deadly as yellow fever and not dangerous to a significant portion of the population. Setting aside all the Fauci political piss matchin…