No IRL meetings

[bill_schubert]

For the past three or more years I've had a monthly meeting first Thursday of the month with three very successful entrepreneurs.  When we started I still had my company and after I no longer worked they keep me on as a mascot.  It has always been a breakfast meeting where we discussed the ins and outs of their companies.  It was dubbed the Brain Trust as we solved some pretty big problems for each of their companies over the years in an entirely NDA environment.

 A year ago we went virtual but kept them up.  The virtual is really not nearly as interesting and we were all looking forward to June when we might be able to meet in person.  But yesterday as we were comparing vaccine status it came up that one of the group has no plans to be vaccinated.   Her stated reasoning is thin and she claims to not be antivax.  Her kids have all the other vaccines and she always gets a flu shot.  So is it fear?  Or political?  Her husband is a pretty heavily right leaning gun toting Texan who would never get a vaccine of any kind.  They are, of course, now going to travel.  They are going to Houston soon and to Las Vegas for a conference.  

She is a huge part of the problem we have in the US.  She's a smart woman who is being negatively influenced, I think, by her husband.  Which means her two daughters are not going to be vaccinated either.  I think she has read some hype about how this vaccine has not been tested thoroughly while hearing her husband talk about how Covid is not as bad as the fake media say it is.  The vaccine has not had years of testing.  Neither had the polio one.  Busy saving the world here.  Hundreds of thousands STILL dying every day.

So we will likely never meet again in person with our group and I'll likely never even see her again in real life.  I have no reason to do business with her company and won't be around her husband regardless and now no longer around her.

Brave new world.  The divide yawns ever wider.

Comments

[susandennis]

I'm so sorry. Sorry about all those people like her and sorry about your face to face Brain Trust meetings. Very sad and disappointing.

[amw.livejournal.com]

It's not just the US, people here in Canada are the same. Mostly right-wingers, because of course vaccination is now a partisan issue, but there are also plenty of "contrarian" or "heterodox" liberals who think they're smarter than the professionals, and "can't trust the government" anarchist-y types who are opting not to take it. Personally i wouldn't shun people who choose not to get the vaccine (especially after i get it), but i do think they're being willfully ignorant and not showing much respect for the community.

The ones that are completely baffling to me are the people who will get a yellow fever vaccination to go to Africa, or a rabies vaccine to go to South America, or whatever, but now they're all up in arms about the idea of covid vaccination requirements on travel in North America or Europe. Like... this isn't some brand new policy pulled out of thin air, it's been around for most of the 20th century. Surely everyone alive today remembers getting vaccinated for one thing or another, and maybe they had grandparents who talked about people in their childhood dying of diseases that we now stamped out. Diseases are shit, even ones that have a relatively low mortality rate. Nobody wants a new disease to carve its way through human society and then establish itself as yet another seasonal pest. Why wouldn't we try to reduce the impact, if we have such a simple way to do it?

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Yeah, lack of respect for the community. They (certainly she doesn't) don't see it that way of course.

My problem with seeing IRL is that I'm near 68 years old and what doesn't kill me may sap enough of what I got left. Last time I was sick I could feel the difference from being sick at 65 (at the time) and being sick when I was younger. The margin was too thin for my liking. Not worth a maskless breakfast with someone who travels and refuses to get the vaccine.

[amw.livejournal.com]

This is a sensible precaution. Like, just because i got the rabies vaccine, doesn't mean i'm going to sit back and let a wild dog bite me.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

At least don't sit down to breakfast with one.

:-)

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

Would you be interested in meeting with the others without her? It may sound harsh, but I believe those people who are not vaccinated should be shunned.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

The three of us might meet and loop her in virtually. I think the three of us who are vaccinated feel the same so we'll see.

[igorota75.livejournal.com]

I find that most reasonable people have very thin unsubstantiated fears of ______ (Name your issue).
They are literally the reason I wish that working from home was feasible till my retirement.
Animal owners seem to have no issues with vaccinating their pets: Why — because it's the right thing to do.
Except when it comes to human lives I guess.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Once again in my life I'm lucky. I finished my last people interaction job in the summer of 2019 and have ridden this whole thing out with a lot more ease than most.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

Wow. Yeah.

It’s hard to tally up the rifts that haven’t even happened yet, but I feel this too. I just hadn’t quite...looked at it this directly yet.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Sociologists and anthropologists and psychologists and all the other ologists will have fodder for decades, grist for the mill. Sorry I'll miss the writeups.

[taz-39.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the book Seveneves.
Why do people always need to make things political?
If you (impersonal pronoun) are deciding what you put in your body based on politics...you're gonna have a bad time.

[anais-pf.livejournal.com]

On the off chance it might help, send her this article? https://www.smerconish.com/exclusive-content/why-i-am-no-longer-vaccine-hesitant?

You know, I have never gotten a flu vaccine, but I got the Covid vaccine as soon as it was reasonably feasible to do so. Now I am pondering why I never got a flu vaccine. I guess part of it has to do with only having come down with a bad case of the flu once in my life that I can remember. Hmmm. Will continue to ponder.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

That is an interesting article. As a Naval Officer I received a flu vaccine every year (among all the others) so I've been vaccinated annually since 1980. Who knows whether it mattered, whether it saved my life or was a waste of time. That is the problem with viewing statics from the analogue viewpoint of ones life. And the reason why people still play golf when lightening is around them and tilt vending machines to get their candy. Two very different realities that are hard to reconcile.

Good article, though. I may send it to her. I need to repair a little bit of a bridge having kind of scoffed at the idea of not getting one.

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

I wonder if people's minds will change if and when they find they're social pariahs. I guess it will depend on how much unvaccinated company they find they have. If most of their friends are having fun without them (plus other inconveniences like not being able to fly) that might be the push they need.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is going to be in the news for a while. And on social media. I don't have enough friends to have a survey. I don't know if they will be able to force a ban on flying for people that aren't vaccinated. At least domestically. Obviously travel outside the country will force it so that will mean that any refusnik will be constrained to our shores. That will make a difference.

[texasts.livejournal.com]

JFC. What the hell is wrong with these people.

So did the group break up or did you just bounce her out. Public health should not be political. Hell, health care shouldn’t be political... But it. Is. Here.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

For the moment we're just meeting virtually still. The other two have business dealings with her. She runs an outstanding bookkeeping company. So for now nothing will change. People have gotten so insular, so small minded about this. When 150 million people in the US have been vaccinated and 4000 people are dying each day in just one country that did not get vaccinated you'd think that they would see safety when what they listen to is people who spew the idiocy of face diapers.

It is quite the social experiment.

[texasts.livejournal.com]

Yes. And it's one we are failing as a society.