Will We Social Distance Forever?

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I rememeber seeing a comedian once who said something along the lines of; when you're in love and think this really might be The ONE, write down the 10 things you love most about them. Because, if you do marry them, those will become the things which annoy you the most.
And why do you think that is?



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You have to love yourself first before you can truly love anyone else. Otherwise, it’s just infatuation.

And true love is forgiveness. You don’t have to be with someone to love them and, sometimes, you need lots of distance and safety before you can love someone.

My dad is a horribly sexist/racist dude at times. I rarely saw him as a kid. He was on the road all the time, and then he cheated on my mom and left us all a week before Thanksgiving the year I turned 18. I have forgiven him for everything, and we’re closer now: That’s love.



And why do you think that is?
I don't know that it is. I just always thought it was funny.

I do think that it's odd that we (as a society) idealise love and its effects, even to the point of encouraging young love and thinking it's cute when children have their first relationship, when we all know the heart-wrenching pain when that love leaves/dies. It's a drug, and like all drugs withdrawal is an absolute bitch which will kick you like you never knew anything could. Never smoke a joint though, cos you'll become addicted and never be the same again.

Odd message to tell ourselves.
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In my country husbands used to (they still do, but not something institutionalized) beat their wife's because that's the thing you do or the neighbors will say you don't control her. Most wife's knew it, and they took it, most young women's now question how was that possible, how could they cooperate with that?
I don’t know a single country in the world in which domestic violence is absent. It’s not just Portugal. And it’s worse here right now since couples are self-isolated together.
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I think we will always have the plexiglass screens that are in place now in so many stores, etc. At least until they fall apart; not sure if they’ll be replaced then.



You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
I think we will always have the plexiglass screens that are in place now in so many stores, etc. At least until they fall apart; not sure if they’ll be replaced then.

The plexiglass screens just became a requirement at all stores (that are still open) here in NY, and they also just made face masks, (or face coverings like a bandana, etc.), a requirement to go into the stores too.

They also just announced that stores must limit the amount of customers in the store to 50% of their allowed capacity, and then customers must wait for someone to leave before the next person can enter the store.

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⬆️ CT hasn’t taken the step of mandatory face coverings yet, but no doubt it will.

Horrified (again) to visit Family Dollar where the cashiers have no masks or gloves. Just handling coins & bills alone could kill you.



⬆️ I’ve always hated people who, for some unknown reason, stand very close to me.



You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
We went to the supermarket to pick up some stuff for my in-laws, and there was a line to get in the store. When one guy walked right along the line to get to the back, he was only about a foot away from the people on the line. Most people just tried to lean away from the guy, but one customer in front of us on line yelled at him because he wasn't social distancing, and then called him an a-hole.

It wasn't very nice, but he wasn't wrong. Most of the other people on line praised the guy who yelled for speaking out about the idiot who wasn't social distancing.

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Nah. But it won't just go right back to the way it was, either. There'll be a lot of this even as restrictions ease, probably all the way through the summer and fall. My expectation is we'll feel like it's mostly over before the end of the year, though, and next spring is when maybe things will start to feel genuinely normal.

But yeah, the fact that there's no one big Day where it all ends is one of the many sad things about all this. It'd be more tolerable if we knew there'd be a definitive end, and we could look forward to a shared moment where everyone is safe and can go out and hug a stranger and do all the stuff they've wanted to do for months. But it won't be like that. It'll be gradual, and therefore, a lot less cathartic.

Overall this proved to be optimistic yet accurate...


I contracted COVID for the first time recently, i got the omicron variant, i don't know where i got it from but making a habit of not wearing a mask certainly helped...and yeah i understood the risk, i just overall feel that a little bit of lazyness and nihilism are okay survival strategies.


I tend to not like crowds anyways so that has kept me from getting sick up until about 3 or 4 days ago...that and my obsession with feeling good and being healthy...



It's been almost two years since I posted it, and my answer is still yes, for me. I make exceptions, but very, very rarely.
I say no... that it is mostly temporary for most.

I've even seen changes in people's behaviors as far as personal contact just since the vaccines came out (but that was possibly because the initial projections that vaccines would provide immunity and stop the spread were wrong).

During the Spanish Flu, most people knew enough then to socially distance to some extent (as well as to wear masks, utilize outdoor hospitals, etc.), yet as soon as the pandemic passed people went back to their old ways.

Some say the hedonism & debauchery of the "roaring 20's" was a direct result of the end of WWI, or a reaction to prohibition, but many say the end of the pandemic had just as much to do with people's behaviors and desires to reconnect with others in every way imaginable!



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I say no... that it is mostly temporary for most.

I've even seen changes in people's behaviors as far as personal contact just since the vaccines came out (but that was possibly because the initial projections that vaccines would provide immunity and stop the spread were wrong).

During the Spanish Flu, most people knew enough then to socially distance to some extent (as well as to wear masks, utilize outdoor hospitals, etc.), yet as soon as the pandemic passed people went back to their old ways.

Some say the hedonism & debauchery of the "roaring 20's" was a direct result of the end of WWI, or a reaction to prohibition, but many say the end of the pandemic had just as much to do with people's behaviors and desires to reconnect with others in every way imaginable!

Ah... So much suppression that people go nuts and go haywire?



I actually think both can be true. Let's say half the population believes that, and the other has a tendency to possibly continue the trend. Going so long a certain way that the habit becomes so regular that a change might make one uncomfortable.



Yeah, I think the prediction I had above did okay. The thing about improvement by year's end was somewhat right: that's when the vaccines appeared, though it took a few more months for them to become widely available.

It has definitely been slower than I expected, almost entirely because of the prevalence of the variants, but that can only go on so long. The variants are, of course, both weaker and more infectious, and that means we're at the beginning of the end. You could make a good case a super infectious, much much weaker strain that infects almost everybody was always going to be the way this ended.



CringeFest's Avatar
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Yeah, I think the prediction I had above did okay. The thing about improvement by year's end was somewhat right: that's when the vaccines appeared, though it took a few more months for them to become widely available.

It has definitely been slower than I expected, almost entirely because of the prevalence of the variants, but that can only go on so long. The variants are, of course, both weaker and more infectious, and that means we're at the beginning of the end. You could make a good case a super infectious, much much weaker strain that infects almost everybody was always going to be the way this ended.

i guess what could end up happening is there could be a version of COVID that kills 6% of infected instead of 3% like the most feared strain, and it would be just as infectious as the newer strains, however i want to point out that "more infectious" by itself obviously means "less dangerous", so hence it gets past the human perception of what should be feared.