There’s a lot of discussion these days about what to do about all the folks who can get vaccinated for COVID19 now, but who don’t want to get vaccinated. This runs along some predictable ideological lines, largely following the existing divisions here in the USA.
Shame, blame, guilt, and facts don’t work. If they did, they would have already. Pouring more facts or feelings over top of someone who has already developed an immunity to them is an exercise in frustration for both parties. There are mountains of behavioral science studies to back this up, and as far as I know, no credible dissenting voices in science are left in 2021.
Really wanna make a difference? Here’s how to do it.
We say “No one who supported Trump will continue to be allowed access to any of these vaccines”.
Shifts the conversation completely. We don’t have to mean it, we just have to say it to get the desired result. Because when we say this we allow people who already feel oppressed to be rebellious while making us all safer. The anti-vaxers already want rebellion, many think that ship has sailed already, and they are seeking to take personal a stand.
So let’em. So help’em! Everyone wins when we stop trying to make people wrong for what they believe, and focus on behavior instead.
Remember that no virus ever cares what we believe. They are only impacted by what we DO. Once we realize this, we can effectively end the pandemic in our country within a few weeks. Any other choice is actively choosing to extend it.
Got some comments on this one? Yeah, I bet you do. Click and comment away. Unlike many in the world today, I don’t attempt to delete those who disagree with me. Bring it!
Over the holiday weekend, in addition to earning some yardwork blisters, I dove deep into some longer-term life planning questions. The whole Plan ABCD thing that I’ve written about a little before and been practicing for years. After all that’s happened in the last year or so, it was time for revisiting each of these parallel plans.
As a reminder, those are:
Plan A = A is for AWESOME!!! This is if everything goes as beautifully as I can imagine. The fates align, my dreams come true, and the best possible outcomes occur. This is my upper bound.
Plan B = B is for BAD. This is if everything goes as badly as I believe it probably will. The structural flaws we humans have built into our interactions (governments, economies, technologies, cultures, etc) don’t fail all at once, but given enough time everything we know crumbles because it wasn’t really designed to be sustainable. We live in a finite world with natural laws, and we forgot to design to stay within those bounds.
Plan C = C is for CATASTROPHIC. This is Zombie Apocalypse territory, the complete breakdown of social order and human institutions. I don’t believe this will happen, this is simply my lower bound. It is the edge of what I see as possible in my lifetime: solar flare events fry all our electronics, pandemic when wasting disease jumps from deer to humans (the Zombie part), unfriendly alien visitors arrive, WWIII happens, Skynet-level AI forms, asteroid collision, etc. The specific trigger isn’t my focus, as it could come from all sorts of causes that you’d probably rather I didn’t go on about too much ;)
Plan D = D is for DEATH. This is the only thing I’m 100% sure will happen. Someday, I will die. I have no idea when or why or how, but that part doesn’t matter so much when my focus is making sure that it happens well. I’d like to ensure that those that I love can continue without me, and that I’m leaving the world as cleanly as possible.
From where I stand today, here on the long tail of the COVID19 pandemic, Plan A needed some serious updating. Plan B comes easy to my dark & creative mind, but I struggled with envisioning Awesome quite a bit. Though it took a day or two to get somewhere productive with it, because everything I’d leaned on in the past no longer made much sense, I still got there and feel much better for it :)
Plan C received some important real-world refinements as well. We didn’t go there in the last year — but by my reckoning we very nearly did a few times, and I learned a lot along the way. Finally, with Plan D I still have some logistical work to do to better align what I had set up with the financial & insurance options now offered to me by my employer. Good stuff, though.
Here are a couple of the notable takeaways to work toward that work across all the ABCD parallel paths (the ultimate goal):
These are some of the things for which there is no downside that I can find. No matter what happens (including zombie apocalypse), it helps to know how to speak Spanish, to have expressed myself in the field of my wok, and to be in good shape.
Only by going through this process did I get to the end. The things that work across every scenario, even if I got hit by a bus tomorrow or won the lottery. Not that I play the lottery or live in a place with buses, but you get my point.
Does any of this logic help you in any way? I’d love to know, either way. Comment it up here, peeples!
This is my Now page and here’s what’s up for me in June (as posted on 06/02/21)
All is fine for me these days. Still working too hard, but also really making the most of time spent in between. It’s early summer here, and my 100 Days of Health has me out and enjoying nature and great food as I’m getting back in shape. It’s so simple yet makes such a big difference in how I feel.
When I’m not in front of a computer, you can usually find me in the greenhouse or the kitchen or going for a walk around the lake. Usually while listening to music or an interesting audiobook. I’m not making much music these days, though I do play my knockoff-hang for a few minutes every evening or some other meditative percussion.
Over the holiday weekend, I spent a bit of time examining and updating my plans. I’ll write about that more soon. But for now, I’m surprisingly okay with being more isolated and more boring than ever before. Who’da thunk?
So that’s me for now! How about YOU? Hit me up or leave me a comment below. Hope all is well with you :)