Covid testing trauma

[Bobby Henderson]

In the case of the hostess at the restaurant in NYC being assaulted, I don't see how the situation could be the fault of the business. IIRC, they're having to comply with NYC rules. The only bad guys I see in that incident are the assholes who assaulted the hostess.

There is a case of a restaurant in the DFW suburb of Rowlett that has sparked a bit of a shit storm. A married couple visited the restaurant wearing surgical masks. The owner didn't like that. He made a server go to their table and tell them take off the masks or leave. The couple said they were wearing the masks because they have an immuno-compromised child at home and wanted to reduce the risk of passing any bugs (like COVID) to their child. The couple was told to leave. There has been quite a bit of backlash against the restaurant, but the owner is doubling down on his anti-mask stance.

I think I mentioned "coughing Karen" already: she followed a mother and 13-year old daughter around a grocery store in Lincoln Nebraska, calling them "sheep" for wearing masks and even coughing on them. Video of the incident was posted to Reddit. It didn't take long for people online to ID "Coughing Karen." The lady ended up getting fired from her job.

One of the common refrains of the anti-mask and anti-vaccine crowd is they're protecting freedom. Incidents like the two I mentioned are 100% contradictory to that. It's one thing for a person to decide he won't get vaccinated or wear a mask in public. When he insists other people shouldn't wear masks (or get vaccinated) he has zero right to use the word "freedom" in anything. It's bold-face hypocrisy.

[Frank Cox]

I think people are losing their minds

I was walking down the street this afternoon when a guy that I don't really know at all (no idea what his name is or anything but I've seen him before and he's said hello when he goes by) pulled over in his truck and said, "I see that you're carrying a mask."

Well, yes I am.

"Do you believe in all of that crap? It's a communist plot!" And on from there.

Insanity.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I don't know why, but that old, but still famous Rolling Stones song came to mind: Paint it Black... Maybe that song is incomplete... or just written from a single perspective, but people tend to paint stuff black and white. We're probably all guilty to some extend but there are always those people with the whitest white and blackest black.

Maybe the thing "they" say is true, maybe our brains can make only so many decisions a day. That number will vary between people, probably even between days. In order for your brain not to get gridlocked, stuff that's somehow important for us needs to get qualified: Is it good or bad? Is it left or right? Do I agree with that or not? Often, those decisions are short-circuited and not based on any sane, logical analysis. Once something has been qualified, it's pretty difficult to re-qualify the same thing, even if new information puts that very same thing into a new light...

Maybe this whole thing goes back from where we came from. From when we were still hunters and gatherers. Back then, there often was no time for thorough analysis of every situation and a split-second decision could decide between whether you had lunch or you were the lunch yourself.

[Bobby Henderson]

I think far too many Americans take pleasure in being pissed off. They enjoy indulging in anger and outrage. Rapidly casting judgment on other people can generate an emotional rush. It's a cornerstone of the news-as-entertainment business and an element to other forms of entertainment, such as so-called "reality TV" shows. This has always been part of American culture. But in recent years, with the rise of 24-hour news networks, reality TV and then social media, the problem has greatly intensified. In decades long past it could take weeks for a media frenzy to gel. Now it happens in hours or even in real time. It's possible for non-celebrity regular people to get spun up in it, either creating the frenzy or becoming a casualty to it.

Prejudice, in the most basic sense of the word (aka jumping to conclusions) is, I think, a constantly present part of human nature. It takes deliberate effort to fight against those tendencies. It's frustrating to stop and take a few moments to think rather than just letting an immediate reaction or judgment run wild and free.

The act of over-simplifying an issue into a black and white thing is another way how people indulge in their senses of outrage and judgment. There's no emotional pay-dirt in seeing "truth" as many complicated levels of gray.

People taking offense at the sight of someone wearing a surgical mask is one of these stupid, black and white problems. Not everyone who wears a mask in public is some pinko commie liberal. I personally have friends who are staunchly conservative in their politics yet are fully vaccinated and do mask up in public places. One such civic club friend runs a mobile X-ray business. He has a lot of clients who are elderly or have other high-risk conditions. So he masks up all the time. If someone ever reacted to his mask by accusing him of being a Democrat my friend might knock out a few of that accuser's teeth. Not kidding.

[Mike Blakesley]

I kinda miss the days when your politics was something you sort of kept close to the vest, if you wanted to. My parents raised me to believe that your vote was private and nobody else's business. I once asked my mom how she had voted for President and she gave me that lesson. She died last year, and to this day I don't know she voted in any election. (Same with my dad, and all of my grandparents.) The only person I have ever told how I voted is my wife, mainly because we talk about who/what we're going to vote for before elections.

It sort of floors me the way we keep seeing incidents of people just getting in others' faces and giving them crap about wearing masks, not wearing masks or whatever. Around here we just don't really see that kind of behavior. People might say something to you, like 'You believe in that nonsense?" and if you want to argue you can, or you can say yeah, that's just my feeling on it and the other person will just shrug and leave you alone. But more likely, they just won't bring it up. I have friends who are anti-vax and pro-vax, across the political spectrum, and we all get along just fine. I think it might stem from the fact that it's a small town and almost everybody knows almost everybody else. Of course there are some combinations of people who don't get along, but overall we are a pretty easy-going bunch. We don't see the types of prejudice, racism, etc. that you keep hearing about in the cities, or at least people don't "act out" on their prejudices. Some people may have certain "feelings" but they are still civil to one another. I had an employee a few years ago who is gay (he was well out of the closet), and he told me he never experienced any form of prejudice regarding his sexuality until he went off to college.

Excuse me while I go knock wood in hopes that things don't change for the worse here.

[Steve Guttag]

Prejudice, in the most basic sense of the word (aka jumping to conclusions) is, I think, a constantly present part of human nature. It takes deliberate effort to fight against those tendencies. It's frustrating to stop and take a few moments to think rather than just letting an immediate reaction or judgment run wild and free

I'm sure there have been many a Masters and PhD papers written on this subject alone. The word that I think applies here is "Tribalism." You look in the mirror and and those that don't look like you (color, hair, physical features...etc.) are either "art" and something to be interested in or "not like me" and to be avoided or suspected.

You also have societal aspects of it. If I grew up at financial level "C, " my view of people of financial levels above an below how I grew up will form my opinion of people in those class based on what we could/could not afford or even do. You may observe what your parents went through to attain the financial level and begrudge levels above and below since if your parents worked hard then obviously anyone above had it given to them and anyone below must be lazy or stupid. And then you put pieces together like you always see people of a certain appearance tend to be at lower and upper levels and so it goes and one gets into prejudice that the reason for something must be due to this collection of traits...be it skin color, religious background and so on.

People have a hard time with time. Their attention spans are short and their memories are also short. They like to judge things as they see them in the moment and never look at the history that lead to that moment. Changing financial classes can take generations and generations. if you start with nothing, for the most part, you ability to improve is a slow one. If you start with a lot (winning the gene pool, as some would say), you can do very little to keep your lot in life though no help of your own. You can certainly blow it real quick. Religions/belief systems tend to move very slowly. Outward appearance also tends to move much more slowly, for obvious reasons.

One of the observations I've made in life is if you are on the lower-end of the financial scale, say a "D" level, you tend to dislike those in the "E" level as a threat since that person will, to improve their lot, will work more for less and, in effect, pose a threat to what "little you have" at the "D" level. That person also tends to dislike the group at the "C" level as people that have what they want and clearly don't have to work for what they have. It is a class system.

[Frank Cox]

This could be interesting. The Saskatchewan government released a verifier app for the vaccine certificate qr codes that's supposed to work like this:

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Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work well. I've been trying to scan my own qr code on my Samsung S8 phone using this app and it only manages to capture the qr code about one time in ten tries. Even putting the paper flat on the table under a really strong light doesn't seem to help much.

So I don't know what's going to happen when proof of vaccination is required for admission to the theatre. I was expecting to see something that worked like a price scanners at the grocery store where it's just zip - bing - next. But this will take several minutes and several tries per qr code if it works at all, based on my testing just now.

I think their qr code is so complex that it's hard for the camera to read. The elements are really small.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Yeah, those QR codes are pretty frustrating experiences when they need to be checked in bulk... Not that I expected anything else... A similar regulation is also in effect in the Netherlands and the QR code scanning is taking up a lot of time, so some cities have reverted to a wristband system, which at least reduces the scanning to a single time.

The first day it went live it was a complete mess, people weren't able to download their QR codes as the system was down. According to the government the system suffered from a DDoS, later the statement was that it was completely overloaded... I guess what they saw as a DDoS was like a few million people logging into their system at about the same time...

Looking at that piece of paper, it sure looks like that QR code is way to complex to be scanned by any oddball mobile phone, let alone from another phone screen. The picture alone is laughable, are you really going to scan everybody with your tablet with keyboard attachment like that? And look how that guest brought this unfolded, pristine piece of paper with him...

But hey, if you want to have a cryptographic securely signed QR code, it's going to be pretty complex, the only other solution is doing an on-line check... you know, with apps that phone back home...

[Frank Cox]

http://melvilletheatre.com/vaccine.html

Just finished writing this up, so it might lead to an interesting few days.

I've pointed out that the scannable qr code is pretty much useless, but I suspect there's going to be some people who show up with just that on their phone and nothing else.

[Mike Blakesley]

You might want to add a couple of qualifiers to your "no exceptions" rule because not everybody CAN have the vaccine. Kids under 12 for example. (Or maybe the rules are different in the great white north?)

[Frank Cox]

It says 12 and over in the first sentence.

[Marcel Birgelen]

What are you going to do with people that got their vaccination abroad? Not that I'm very likely to show up in your theater, but I've only got "EU compliant" paperwork to show.

[Frank Cox]

I'll deal with that on a case by case basis. I just took that list off of the official regulations that require me to start checking the vaccine status of the customers.

I don't particularly want to put anything about that on the website or I'll have someone come in and tell me that he has a special exemption signed by President Snerd of Lower Slobovia. So I'll just deal with it as it comes up and try to take a reasonable approach that won't get me in trouble with the health inspectors.

Not that I'm very likely to show up in your theater, but I've only got "EU compliant" paperwork to show.

If you do, introduce yourself. I'll be the guy at the door.

[Mike Blakesley]

It says 12 and over in the first sentence

Ah. So it does. I must have gotten interrupted in the middle of reading that paragraph. Well, be sure to let us know how the whole procedure goes!

[Leo Enticknap]

I don't particularly want to put anything about that on the website or I'll have someone come in and tell me that he has a special exemption signed by President Snerd of Lower Slobovia.

Someone could have fun writing a remake of Passport to Pimlico (which was inspired by an event in Canada), in which a new nation is created for the purpose of evading vaccine requirements.

More seriously, though, Melville looks to me to be about 100 miles from the US border, so I'm guessing that in normal times, there may be a small but significant flow of foreign nationals through the city. But as I understand it, the USA is still restricting nonessential overland entry from Canada: if so, times are not yet back to normal. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but my guess would be that the only regular visitors from further afield would be visiting relatives of residents.