Items
topic_interest is exactly
opinion
-
2022-05-26
From COVID-19 to shootings: Is mass death now tolerated in America?
This is a news story from The Associated Press. Just recently, there have been over one million COVID deaths recorded in the United States. The author of this piece asks if Americans have just begun to tolerate mass death. Racial and social inequalities are also cited, where the author claims that those of certain backgrounds are more likely to die sooner or more violently. The COVID deaths are then related to the recent shooting deaths, such as in Buffalo and in Texas. While the gun violence deaths are lower than the COVID deaths, the author uses this to show that little is being done for either to help lessen the amount of deaths. I don't agree with the author completely on this due to dying from COVID being very different from dying from a mass shooter. With COVID, people could pass it along unknowingly and get someone infected, as it is an asymptomatic spread. With a mass shooter, it is much less predictable and far more sudden. From what I have seen on my social media, I did not see anyone I follow really mark the 1,000,000 COVID death milestone, but many have expressed outrage over both the Buffalo and Texas shootings. I don't think the question should be whether Americans accept mass death or not, but of methods of prevention. Obviously, gun ownership won't solve all problems. The police that had guns were waiting outside the school as the shooter was slaughtering kids and adults. Though, one man with a gun, a border patrol agent, is who finally shot the mass shooter and killed him. This is more of a question of character, as well as how competent police forces are in these scenarios. I do not think the author made a fair comparison because protecting yourself from COVID to prevent death would be an entirely different process than protecting yourself from a mass shooter. While the goal of preserving life is the same, the methods differ. Outrage isn't an issue because I have seen people upset over death from COVID and mass shootings. The main problem I see is that people have trouble coming together on a solution. -
2022-05-11
Fact Checkers
This is an Instagram post by covid_antivax. This post is in criticism of social media removing posts deemed "misinformation" about COVID and the vaccine. The tags from this user, like #depopulation, suggest that the goal of COVID and the vaccines is to reduce the population size. The censoring of information regarding the virus and the vaccine has been troublesome for myself. I do not think it is the right of social media to dictate what can and cannot be said, barring anything illegal, like death threats. I think it is a dangerous trajectory when these multinational companies start deciding what governing bodies and people should think. It brings into question people's actual rights to speech. People should have the right to voice their opinion on subjects like this. If people are prevented from speaking out as much on social media, they will get driven to more niche websites and forums to discuss things, which in turn help create more echo chambers. The great thing about free speech is the ability to bounce ideas off with other people and be given the opportunity to decide for myself what is right with more information available. Taking this away will make it harder to really test ideas and make them more refined. This is more my criticism of social media in general, but the talk on the virus and the vaccines has noticeably made it worse for any side to reconcile. -
2021-12
The “Vaccine Passport” Agenda
This is information on vaccine passports by Swiss Policy Research. The overall message is that there is a correlation between totalitarianism and panic over the virus. This panic, in turn, has translated into governments around the world bringing up the possibility of vaccine passports. The vaccine passports may be used for more than vaccines, as they would be a way for the government to identify movement of individuals easier. The groups uses a number of ways to sway the audience, using information on what different organizations have funded, in addition to bringing up what other governments have said about the vaccine passports. Vaccine passports, according to this publication, really got traction from the digital identity lobby group ID2020 in February 2021, which has funding from both the Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. The research foundation cites pushback against the vaccine passports too. Places like Ontario, Canada have had to take away the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, as they would potentially lose many workers in the process. In Spain, they have been called "ineffective and unconstitutional." The publication ends by calling the pandemic a "plandemic," saying that it was likely lab-created for the purpose of controlling the populations more. I think given the information available, this is persuasive. There are links to where the claims come from, such as what Bill Gates says himself, as well as information on the Good Health Pass, which is a collaboration between many different organizations and their implementation of vaccine passports. In my own opinion, I find vaccine passports unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy. A vaccine passport makes it so you are forced to disclose personal health information to strangers in order to do things like grocery shopping, which I consider to be a potential HIPAA violation. It is also breech of the Fourth Amendment in the Constitution. If people feel inclined to get vaccinated, they should, but forcing people to do so through vaccine passports creates more overall distrust in the government. I have known people that would have otherwise have gotten the vaccine if it wasn't so forced. Even though vaccine passports were never mandated where I live, there have been people that have lost their livelihoods over not wanting to get vaccinated. I myself was very hesitant to get the vaccine for a while due to the way the government was handling it. Trying to implement vaccine passports and mandates has made it so society becomes more segregated, where unvaccinated would be forced to shop at different places, work at different places, and many other things. I am glad that the overall effort to actually do this has failed, but that is only because of many groups of people throughout the United States exercising their rights. I am pro-choice too, and I extend that reasoning to vaccine passports. People need bodily autonomy and vaccine mandates remove some of that. -
2022-02-18
Covid Has Made Me Hate People
This is a news story from Scary Mommy by Samm Burnham Davidson. This is a story written from the point-of-view of someone who has experienced some of the negative social effects of COVID. She says that before the pandemic, social media posts that annoyed her would only be mildly so, but with COVID and lockdowns, she started to feel senses of inadequacy compared to other parents. She thought that she needed to overhaul her entire wardrobe, her son should get ice skates, and that her four-year-old needs to learn to ride a two-wheeler bike. She has three young kids, and a 2020 baby. She describes feeling very isolated and the exposure to social media made her feel like she had to measure up to some imaginary standard of parenting, like trying to forgo all plastic toys for Christmas to help the environment. This is a good story for the perspective of mothers with many kids to take care of, resulting in even more isolation than what would happen for adults with no kids, as kids caused her to stay home more even before COVID. -
2022-03-15
Passionate and (mostly) respectful recent debate in the waning pandemic
While the all-encompassing strength of the COVID-19 Pandemic is waning, it still persists and lingers. This is a critical time where countries can either dreamily and abruptly attempt to return to idealized pre-pandemic existence or continue to return to their visions of normalcy through steps found in scientific methodology. Debates that focused on safety, health, and personal freedoms (especially about masks and vaccines) were constantly in the news the last two years, with some deteriorating into disheartening and embarrassing public displays. Surely, these debates will continue indefinitely, and all perspectives will be important to history. While browsing this archive, many of the stories are of those who subscribe to the reality of the pandemic, who trust and listen to science, and who have highlighted the way their lives have changed during the pandemic. I am from Arizona, born and raised. I often find myself to be the lone liberal or democrat, particularly at work, in a state formerly known as a red state, now perhaps purple. While Arizona is well represented in this archive regarding life during a pandemic, it has many people living in it who dispute the pandemic's origin, virulence, and the government's attempt to control personal freedoms, as much as I personally disagree. The attached YouTube video shows a meeting of the Kyrene School District Governing Board from January 25th, 2022. The relevant background is that before the 2021 Winter Holiday break this district emailed parents that masks would no longer be mandatory after the new year. By the end of the break, Omicron infections had increased, and the district regressed back to mandatory masks after the holidays. Please watch, specifically from minutes 20:35 through 38:28. To me, a person who reads a diverse group of news sites daily, this clip has brought me hope. Of all the ugly comments I have read on far right or left news sites, debate like the one in this video is instead mostly constructive, passionate, and respectful. I may not agree with everything discussed in this sample, but I respect people's right to debate their beliefs. I believe studying other perspectives is useful for future generations. Historians one hundred years from now may wonder why certain people thought masks were useless in schools. Hopefully, between this J.O.T.P.Y. archive and the articles that exist on the internet, a thoughtful sample of diverse perspectives can be researched. Additionally, I hope this video adds to material in this archive that demonstrates the anti-mask perspective to historians who could research and educate future generations on state and federal authority during health crises to hopefully prevent conflicts as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic. This video is owned and uploaded by the Kyrene School District to YouTube. -
2021-09-10
The debate on the nature of coronavirus
This is a sticker I saw on the street that says 'imagine having a virus so deadly you have to be tested to even know if you have it.' It appears as though someone has attempted to peel it off. I think this image reflects rather well the differing opinions and theories about the origins and seriousness of the virus. That someone has attempted to remove it signals the rather heated and emotional nature of the debate, as those who question what we have been told about the virus are regularly labeled 'conspiracy theorists.' In my view, that there is differing opinions on the virus, no matter how controversial, is part of the free speech that makes this country so great, and that we can debate these issues somewhat freely should not be taken for granted. -
2020-10-07
COVID-19 Exhaustion
I chose to submit a few tweets that go along with the exhaustive perspective I’ve had on the pandemic since we first were asked to quarantine back in March. As someone who works in customer service and interacts with people all day, I was immediately on board with social distancing, mask wearing, and limiting being in public spaces. However, it became very clear that this was not everyone’s opinion of COVID-19. Seeing how large majorities of people are so against measures put in place to protect us has been quite frustrating to witness. The lack of empathy toward those who have been negatively affected by the pandemic (such as family deaths, irreversible health issues, loss of jobs, etc.) has done nothing but increased, as people on one side continue to believe all of it is a hoax and being blow out of proportion. How is it dramatic when 200,000 people, and counting, have died? How is it a hoax when it’s still running rampant through our country but other countries managed to get it under control by actually taking steps to do so? Hearing the excuses that we shouldn’t let ourselves be dominated by the virus is incredibly irritating, when we shouldn’t resign ourselves to living with something that could be of great harm to us or others in our lives. We should be trying to eradicate it as much as possible. Alas, my efforts are fruitless. On top of that, seeing the dichotomy of the pandemic with the protests for BLM and such side by side has been an interesting spectacle. BLM protestors have made sure to protest safely and because of it, they have yet to turn into super-spreader events. In addition, the hypocritical outlook on police brutality is puzzling. They say the black and brown men killed by police should have just complied or else they wouldn’t have been killed, yet these are the same people refusing to wear masks because it is their right? It was those men’s rights to just exist and you think they deserved to die because of it? The privilege of it all is absolutely baffling. Those who don’t want to wear masks believe it is their right to protest it, then turn around and scream profanities and spew hate at those protesting with Black Lives Matter. You can’t demand justice for your minor inconvenience yet hope to tear down the efforts of those fighting for a real cause. Your rights are the same rights as others. Overall, the past six months have been eye-opening to say the least. Our country has never been more divided: socially, politically, economically, or financially. The fact that we aren’t all on the same page about taking care of each other, having empathy, and wanting everyone to thrive and live is so mind-boggling when these things are basic human decency. My heart hurts reading every news story that comes out each day, knowing that we continue to push farther and farther away from one another, when really we should be striving for a better goal. I can only hope that 2021 holds better times for us, but things appear bleaker than ever. For now, I continue to point out the hypocrisy and indecency of it all so others may understand. -
2020-06-15
How we can protest for justice without spreading COVID-19
Excerpt from article: The question I am asking myself is: How do I best serve humanity when social distancing and protesting seem at odds with one another, yet are both so necessary? Is there a way to reconcile the two and face both tragedies at once? -
2020-05-21
How i think about Stay Home Law
in my opinion, the first method in the face of the outbreak is the most effective, the most secure for people's lives. First of all, pneumonia with the new coronavirus infection can be transmitted through respiratory droplets and exposure. Spread by respiratory droplets, such as patient sneezing, coughing, talking droplets, exhaling gas close contact, can lead to the continuous spread of the disease, or the patient sneezing, coughing, talking droplets mixed in the air, the formation of aerosols, inhaled by others can also lead to infection; Therefore, only the implementation of home order, everyone wearing a mask, increase the intensity of testing, is the most effective approach. Many people feel that the home order violates human rights. I think it is selfish of those who pursue so-called freedom in this outbreak, because at a time when countless health care workers are saving lives on the front lines of the epidemic, and these so-called freedoms are demonstrating in the streets, not only for themselves, but for the health of others. So I think Method One is not only not a violation of human rights, but rather a responsibility to the lives of the inhabitants. And the implementation of the home order is not only an inhuman decree, but every person who abides by the home order is contributing to society.