Van Morrison Is Whining About Free Speech Because No One Likes His Anti-Lockdown Songs

[Oddish]

Along with the heroes we discovered during the pandemic, we also uncovered a seedy underbelly of people who, just like Van Morrison, don’t care one whit about anyone but themselves.

And another seedy underbelly of people who are happy to throw people under the bus when the media tells them to. I notice you mentioned me, but were careful to tiptoe around the people I mentioned in my previous post. I don't care if I matter to you or not, but I do think they should. Unlike me, they have done nothing to earn your dislike.

But... well, it might not occur to you that I wasn't looking for your sympathy, but rather explaining why I sympathize with other people who were harmed by the lockdown... no no no. I have to be EVIL and PATHETIC and SELFISH and HORRIBLE and ROTTEN because you can't handle that you don't have the market cornered on virtue, that the situation might have been a little more complex than you thought.

 

[cultcross]

Moderator hat on:
This isn't TNZ, please can we leave the Trump/Biden stuff out of a TV/Media discussion. We're also not engaging in personal attacks.


Moderator hat off:
If Van Morrison were singing heartfelt songs about the real impact of lockdowns on those who have lost a lot the past year, I'd have a lot of sympathy for his position. It's been tough, to understate it wildly. But instead we get conspiracy theory nonsense about the fascism of wearing masks and how it's all a hoax to enslave us. Pass.

 

[cooleddie74]

It's his right to whine about a COVID hoax and conspiracy and it's just as much our right to call him a bloviating, stupid twatburger for doing so.

 

[Relayer1]

I don't care one jot about him, his opinions or his shit music.

Not exactly a considered or enlightened take, but it's where I am this morning.

If this was TNZ I'd probably have added some instructions regarding direction and distance that I'd like him to travel...

 

[Rincewiend]

Damon Albarn made it work with the most recent Gorillaz project...

 

[The Wormhole]

Because I dared to hate the lockdown, and believe that many elements of it were unnecessary,

So what was the alternative, leave everything as it was and allow the virus to spread and get a higher death toll? Pretty sure that would still screw up everyone's mental health, but YMMV.

Homeless people who couldn't get food or shelter.

What are you even on about? Most major cities had special shelters set up for the homeless within 48 hours of the first Lockdown last spring. Indeed, a common criticism in response to this is why wasn't it being done all along? Why did it take a pandemic for us to suddenly care about making sure the homeless had guaranteed food and shelter? Which, to be fair is a very legitimate question.

 

[BillJ]

Because I dared to hate the lockdown, and believe that many elements of it were unnecessary, you've declared me to be selfish and hateful.

You dared? Holy shit, what a brave stance to take! I hated it too, I’m not sure I’ve met an actual person who liked any element of having their lives shutdown.

Think of the amount of disrespect heaped on healthcare workers because people simply didn’t give a shit about anything but their own lives and satisfaction? The amount of people they had to watch die, while endangering themselves...

So, yes, you hit it on the head. You are selfish and hateful.

 

[The Wormhole]

Seriously, we all experienced some manner of depression and mental health issues as a result of 2020. Did some have it worse than others? Definitely. But no one was having the time of their lives last year at all. And as bad as it got, it could have been a hell of a whole lot worse if there were no restrictions, lockdowns or quarantines.

 

[cultcross]

So, yes, you hit it on the head. You are selfish and hateful.

Not 6 posts above yours, I cautioned against engaging in personal attacks in this thread.

Infraction for flaming, comments to PM

All back on the topic (which is not Oddish) please. This is not the place for reflected TNZing.

 

[publiusr]

I thought Covid might bring us all together. The lack of personal contact…and all. I work and live alone mostly. Russian fatalism may be what is needed.

I don’t like the body English of folks having to point pistol grip thermometers at peoples heads.

It may not be woo to say that this was a Challenger moment for virology…maybe even down to the seals. In the future all needs be tested in space.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

No one said the lockdown wasn't tough on people. But, sometimes, you have to absorb the bad for the greater good.

Yep. Even among people who accept the necessity of lockdowns to save lives, it is generally accepted that the people subject to lockdowns have paid financial and emotional tolls, that they have had their life goals and plans set back, that the implementation of lockdowns has in many instances been imperfect or inconsistent, and that the burden of costs has in many instances been unfair. People who think lockdowns are necessary can also hate them.

 

[cooleddie74]

I wouldn't enjoy lifesaving open heart surgery but if it saved my very life I'd be a helluva lot more tolerant of it and be glad it happened to stave off worse complications down the road.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I wouldn't enjoy lifesaving open heart surgery but if it saved my very life I'd be a helluva lot more tolerant of it and be glad it happened to stave off worse complications down the road.

Yeah.

And while all analogies are imperfect on some level, if I had to, I'd rather change my diet and live than keep eating what's killing me and die.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I don’t like the body English of folks having to point pistol grip thermometers at peoples heads.

Before this thing went down, I had no idea thermometers like that existed. I thought it was really weird that you can take somebody's temperature by shining a laser beam at their head! Still don't know how that actually works.

 

[cardinal biggles]

I'm not even sure it works that well, but it avoids contact with the person's body, which means you don't have to clean it after every use, so it's good especially in non-medical settings.

 

[Oddish]

I wouldn't enjoy lifesaving open heart surgery but if it saved my very life I'd be a helluva lot more tolerant of it and be glad it happened to stave off worse complications down the road.

A valid point. But, if the same life-saving end could be managed with a less invasive procedure that was easier to recover from, I would certainly prefer that.

 

[cooleddie74]

Well that wasn't going to happen with a dangerous pandemic that landed the way it did.

 

[J.T.B.]

But... well, it might not occur to you that I wasn't looking for your sympathy, but rather explaining why I sympathize with other people who were harmed by the lockdown... no no no. I have to be EVIL and PATHETIC and SELFISH and HORRIBLE and ROTTEN because you can't handle that you don't have the market cornered on virtue, that the situation might have been a little more complex than you thought.

From what I've seen, advocates of restrictive public health measures have frequently acknowledged the complexity and the undesirable consequences of social isolation during the pandemic. The CDC has published a number of articles about it, for instance. The most simplistic takes, OTOH, are those that simply amount to "The government's not going to tell me what to do!"

The way you have framed it, the impact of the disease is minimized, as if life would have proceeded more or less normally without lockdowns. There is no reason to believe that. What has been shown to happen is that if the infection rate gets bad enough, people in an area will self-isolate even without government intervention, and, historically, not necessarily in an orderly way. And while I have great sympathy for those whose personal difficulties and losses were exacerbated by pandemic restrictions (and I am one of them), I also have great sympathy for the medical personnel, care providers, first responders and other essential workers who had to roll the dice every day they went to work in areas where infection rates were rampant. What about their stress levels and peace of mind and mental health, while they were doing their jobs to help the rest of us?

Like it or not, social restrictions were one of the most effective tools to slow the spread in the early months of the pandemic. Sometimes there are no easy answers, you just have to do your best and get through it. Almost universally, those who implemented restrictions were doing the best they could with the information and experience they had.



"Ranking the effectiveness of worldwide COVID-19 government interventions"
Nature Human Behavior
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0

 

[The Wormhole]

I don’t like the body English of folks having to point pistol grip thermometers at peoples heads.

Those thermometers have been the silliest bit of theatre to come out of the pandemic. Their purpose is to gauge the surrounding temperature of an object, not to take the temperature of a particular object. At the grocery store I work in, we use them to monitor the temperatures within our fridges and freezers, and they are perfect for that purpose. But using them on a person will not get reliable results, since the temperature you get will depend on the temperature of the surrounding area. Before the pandemic, we would often goof around at work using the thermometers to take our own temperatures or each others temperatures and laugh at the results we'd get depending on where we were in the store or what the weather outside was. Then when the pandemic started, it truly was one of the greatest WTF moments in my life when I saw images in the news of actual doctors using the very same thermometers to determine is someone had a healthy temperature or not.

 

[Oddish]

From what I understand, thermometer accuracy is, from worst to best...

5. Forehead scanning/contact strips
4. Tympanic (eardrum)
3. Axillary (armpit, we did this with kids a lot)
2. Oral (adult/older child)
1. Rectal (dead accurate, but... urghhh!)