Why Covid is good actually

[liv]

So we're living through a pandemic, so not surprisingly this sometimes affects my plans. Every time I happen to mention taking any sort of precaution, noting that the price of LFTs has gone up or that the clement weather made eating outside pleasant, a bunch of anons comment to tell me that actually I should be catching Covid more.

Does this happen to other people, and you're just quicker to screen / delete such comments? Or have I picked up several followers who are really invested in me personally getting Covid? It's very evident that people who post from established identities generally agree with me that Covid is bad. Of course, there are plenty of good reasons for being anonymous, anything from can't be bothered to create / log in to a DW account to being on a state level hitlist. And quite possibly people choose to comment anonymously on this topic because they don't want to face opprobrium from me and my friends who think infectious disease is a bad thing. But if I have no idea who you are, what your expertise is, what your relationship is to me, it's harder for me to take your arguments seriously.

I'm going to restate the anon commenting rule I have: if you want to comment anonymously, that's completely fine, but please sign your comment with some kind of identifying name even if it's just "anon1" or a single initial or another throwaway ident. That means I can at least tell which comments come from the same versus different people! I don't want to put anyone at risk, but totally unsigned comments make conversation a bit of a pain. I haven't been super strict about deleting them because I know people forget. But here's your reminder: anon comments need some kind of signature.

ETA People are ignoring this rule, so I've turned on anon comment screening. If you make an anon comment I will unscreen it only if it is signed in some way – nonsense idents are fine but there has to be something.

Anyway, I'm making a thread here where people can put those kinds of comments if you're so moved (either anon or identified, up to you). If you really want to persuade me I should be catching Covid and transmitting it to others, this is the place for your arguments. I note that calling me a scaredy-cat wasn't effective at making me do stupid things when I was eleven, so it's certainly not going to work now. If you want me to increase my exposure to Covid, you need to make a case for why it's actually good. I agree it probably won't kill me on a scale of weeks, but "not immediately deadly" doesn't make this infectious illness desirable.

Going forward, this post is the only place I will accept pro-Covid persuasion. Comments along those lines on any other posts will be deleted and copied to this thread.

Comments

[bugshaw]

That sounds very frustrating.

For what it's worth, I've not had any comments like that on DW; on other platforms I've had a few but the dynamic has been the other way around:
B: "I went to the shop (with a mask on)."
Audience:

B: "I went to the shop." (with a mask on but I didn't think I needed to mention that)
Audience: "I hope you had a mask on! Covid is still real!"

[liv]

Right, I have definitely had people get angry with me for not taking sufficient precautions. Sometimes justified, sometimes like you I just didn't happen to mention my mitigations. I find that somewhat more understandable; if I take precautions that someone else doesn't bother with, it doesn't really affect them, but if I am reckless, it makes life less safe for others around me. A lot of the time it isn't personal, people are angry and frustrated with the lack of safety in general and include me in sweeping generalizations about evil Covid spreaders.