the pandemic erasure campaign¶

This is the cornerstone of the pandemic erasure campaign. They couldn't completely convince people not to give a shit about themselves or others, but they managed to shift the "calculation" in favor of business-as-usual by repeating the total fabrication of "COVID is mild now." https://t.co/7mQb0Vvfog https://t.co/gpJEG8Szv2 Other factors:

Economic enforcement of this attitude. In many cases, it's not that people are terminally selfish, it's that they're financially punished for being conscientious. Lack of legally-mandated paid sick leave means every potential sick day is a risk calculation. Even if you are fortunate enough to have sick leave, it's rare to have unlimited sick leave, and it's certainly never the case that taking a lot of time off has no impact on your career: being seen as "lazy" puts the bosses' eyes on you. So you need to calculate. If you have 8 sick days per year (national average in the US), you can easily use up all of it on staying home out of caution for "mild illness"... and then get really sick or injured and have no time left, putting your livelihood in jeopardy. And yes, people are being selfish when they decide to ignore a "mild illness" to avoid cancelling a trip they spent a lot of time and money planning. No one is entitled to a fancy getaway. But would they make that same calculation if they knew how dangerous COVID really was? We are dealing with a deliberately engineered mindset, fed into by mythmaking over the nature of disease itself, feeling entitled to historically-anomalous luxury, eugenics and feelings of ability being a static state, economic coercion, and so on, all to nudge that calculation. It's easy to call it "selfish" -- because it is! But it's important to understand how that selfishness is socially constructed, and how to deconstruct it. Information about disease severity can only penetrate so deeply. Even generous leave policies only go so far. But they help. Appealing to people's empathy is also only a half-measure; you are a single force, pushing back against a wall of radical individualism, bolstered by CENTURIES of capitalist culture-crafting. Rejection of the norm is a revolutionary transformation, and it doesn't come easily. That's why it's so critical to build a new norm. Communists work in organizations for a reason. We build communities, pulling them together when they have been carefully fragmented by a hegemonic rule that demands our alienation. Our job is not just to educate, but to model. Commit to making your organization a radically pro-health cornerstone. Do your good work, your education, your organizing, and do it under the banner of health. When your community thinks of you, make them think of people who care and help, and who demand others care and help. The same strategy applies to matters such as combatting chauvinism, collaborationism, passivity, nihilism, colonialism, etc. Be a bulwark against liberalism, be omnipresent in your community, be deliberate in your organization, be unabashed in your revolutionary aims and methods. I won't apologize for how this thread expanded so far beyond the original point. I'm sick of people feeling like we're all just permanently screwed, because "people are too selfish." People are constructed by their society: be that society.