Is it too much to hope that one positive outcome in the coming months and years

I've been reading a lot of books about WW2 over the last few years a bit of an addiction! and I've been thinking, nobody would give a ff in an apocalyptic situation, and almost wishing we'd have some huge disaster to make people realise that whatever "identity" you have in your head, it doesn't matter, or it matters only to you! And now we have that disaster.

Unfortunately I think it’s unlikely, when deaths become big numbers it generally dehumanises... and I’m sick of people saying things like “I’m not worried, it only kills old people” or complaining that the football is cancelled... never mind the loo roll greed confused

I saw an English ex-pat person complaining about all the gay bars in the Berlin night scene have to close! "What will I doooooo? Where will I gooooooo?"

The BBC has obviously decided to put the adults at work with the reporting of the CV-19 updates, thankfully.

There is going to be no money to pay for anything remotely self indulgent. Fancy a new pair of tits?

The whining has already started on that. I saw a whole collection of tweets this week about HOW UNFAIR life is now, because stretched medical resources will mean no cosmetic boob jobs or genital surgery on tap. The exaggeration and drama about it was very real. These idiots don't even know they're born.

No it’ll be dog eat dog out there.

Not only are hundreds and thousands of people (globally) going to die from this but the world is going to sharply enter a deep, long depression.

There is going to be no money to pay for anything remotely self indulgent. Fancy a new pair of tits? Well pay for them yourself because the western world will be utterly skint.

I've been rolling around The Screwtape Letters in my head. For those that don't know, it's a fictional set of letters from a senior devil, Screwtape, to a junior one, Wormwood, talking about tempting, and eventually bringing to hell, a human subject.

In one letter, Screwtape is angry because Wormwood has been using trivial pleasures that don't really satisfy, to distract the man from virtuous things, and has accidentally let the man experience a real pleasure and lost the control of him.

Screwtape explains;

The characteristic of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality. Thus if you had been trying to damn your man by the Romantic method…you would try to protect him at all costs from any real pain; because, of course, five minutes’ genuine toothache would reveal the romantic sorrows for the nonsense they were and unmask your whole stratagem

This is what I suspect may begin to happen now, on a society level. All the endless bellyaching about 'microaggressions' will probably continue, but there will be a much reduced appetite to take it seriously, given the serious nature of what people are actually facing.

I think if health services (in the western world) are pushed to breaking point over the coming months people are going to seriously start questioning the morality of unnecessary, vanity led surgeries and hormones that are not meant for a perfectly healthy body.

And inspired by another thread, I hope that medics, working in desperate circumstances, having to make impossible choices about who lives and who dies, and putting their own lives at risk will perhaps gain perspective and will be more willing to tell narcissistic fuckers to bugger off with their self-centred demands.

I agree with Langbanned. I think that if people experience a period of genuine hardship they will become less tolerant of those who continually cry wolf.

The suicide claims and poor-little-meedom will seem way more ridiculous and will receive short shrift.

That’s my hope anyway.

It'll blend into the background I think - just like the saying "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic"

And we all know which (male) death will be emblazoned across every media outlet as the worst, most oppressed, most tragic death ever.

Whilst I agree with pp, I do think that when biology has come around and punched you in the face, there will be far fewer people willing to pretend. All those people who're pretending TWAW because they're afraid of other people's reactions or of their job security - I think a lot more people are going to stop giving a fuck and be a lot less willing to lie. More people will speak the truth - sex is immutable.

Because, really, who gives a shit about what pronouns someone wants to force you to use in a pandemic?

That’s a chilling image isn’t it

Yes I think it is. People from those groups die in their tens of thousands every winter, from poverty, from the cold, and there hasn't been an effective outcry or opposition.
Labour - the party that are supposed to be on the side of the disadvantaged - are too busy with neoliberal gender politics to bother with us.
www.e3g.org/news/media-room/17000-people-in-the-uk-died-last-winter-due-to-cold-housing

A cynic might say that healthy bodied narcs will benefit if vast numbers of the poor, elderly, disabled and ill to die off. Its the fast way to achieve near zero carbon emissions and to be able to maintain a comfortable lifestyle.

Unfortunately I think it’s unlikely, when deaths become big numbers it generally dehumanises... and I’m sick of people saying things like “I’m not worried, it only kills old people” or complaining that the football is cancelled... never mind the loo roll greed