Has anyone else pulled back/ended friendships with unvaccinated friends?

[mowly77]

This feels right to me but I’m not sure how she’s going to take it, & wondered if anyone else had similar experiences? I’m fully vaccinated; but antibody test tells me I’ve had covid in last 6 months. I’m ill a lot - crappy immune system. Really sick this last week, rivers of snot, endless coughing. My DD is at nursery & had milder version first. I get everything she gets. Could be covid again; could not be. Either way I’m bloody ill & self employed so lost loads of money. Fed up of being ill all the time.

Recent friendship with someone & we’ve been working on my allotment together. She’s a bit lonely, single mum, now wants to be my BFF & invited me & DD to her DS birthday (big) party in a few weeks - indoors. She’s cheerfully told me she’s unvaccinated. Didn’t really sink in before. I’ve been in her car; she’s been round for a cuppa a few times.

Now I’m fretting; plus thinking how idiotically selfish she is. I’m going to tell her no more indoor stuff, no birthday party. Outdoor allotment socially distanced is fine.

This winter is going to be a car crash & I don’t have any more truck with it. I know I’m not BU but it still feels like a delicate line.

Altruism has nothing to do with a decision to have a vaccine or not.

I’ve literally just explained how benefit to others factors in decision making for many people, based on my experience. It’s not the totality of that decision, but it’s a factor.

If I was just thinking about myself and my family, would I have been vaccinated? Probably not, tbh. Pretty sure I already had it, low risks either way, haven’t been too bothered about avoiding becoming infected.

But the decision was more complex than that. I’m no angel, by any means, but I try to consider the impact on others in the choices I make. The societal impact of this one was a big one.

(Unless you are going down a philosophical rabbit hole on whether any action can ever be truly altruistic because we avoid a bad feeling or get a good one by doing so - but I assume not, as everyone you know is altruistic.)

You can explain away. It does not deviate from the fact that judging people for not having a vaccine is not selfish.

Meant to say selfish .

You can explain away. It does not deviate from the fact that judging people for not having a vaccine is not selfish.

Nothing I have said is about that.

Exactly.

People on here are judging, and it's getting boring.

You’ve been very keen to describe the motivations behind people’s decisions to be vaccinated.

You are violently against anyone doing the same for the decision not to be vaccinated.

You do not wish to have it pointed out that there are societal benefits, and even greater benefits to subsets of society, to higher levels of vaccination, and that it is understandable for people to want to see those benefits achieved, and it’s understandable for them to have feelings related to that, given that all of our choices in this space have an impact on others.

I’m sure that there are those who think that I’m hopelessly irresponsible and selfish because I’ve been on several UK holidays in the last year, or because I went to the pub back in May, or because I took my kids to museums and on the Tube last summer. That’s fine.

We are all making our decisions in this pandemic in a very complex, emotionally fraught situation, with many factors to consider - some selfish, and some not. We have to weigh those decisions and decide what’s right for us - and be ready for the opprobrium of others who feel our decisions were too much about self, and not enough about society.

People on here are judging, and it's getting boring.

Ok, but if you try engaging with those who are trying not to do that, based on what they’ve actually said, instead of shifting the goalposts, maybe you’ll find it less dull.

@Jessy

I thought that at first you were reasonable, until you said a few comments that were a little patronising. Hey ho though, I'm glad you went on holiday. I like to hear people are having a good time at the moment.

I thought that at first you were reasonable, until you said a few comments that were a little patronising.

I’m sorry you found them so - truly. Like all people, I get frustrated and react in ways I’m not particularly proud of. I’d love to know what they were.

My particular sources of frustration are vaccine misinformation, particularly when people repeat misinformation after it’s been pointed out to them that it’s factually incorrect. I also find hypocrisy really frustrating, as I’ve just mentioned.

You’ve been really rude to a lot of people on threads I’ve seen. I’ve still tried to engage with you in good faith, but at no point have you returned the favour. That’s frustrating, too.

Nope, not travelled outside the U.K. either. Nor have many friends and family. In my case a particular reason was that I am stuck on an island with one of the worst infection rates in the world. Some of the countries I would go to won’t let us in and why would I go to others who have been more successful in controlling infection but would be even harder hit if it got out of control. Responsibility to society does not end at your country’s borders.

I had had Covid too, without symptoms but I had antibodies. Though I saw that as lucky, not a foregone conclusion to my lifestyle. My lifestyle has always been healthy but it didn’t stop me getting Cancer with a 60% chance of survival so I learnt in my 40s that it is a mistake to ever think that shit won’t happen to you.

So the self interest was the no brainer that was getting that extra protection from a safe vaccination, added to which I would be less of a risk to my parents and able to see them more often.

But mainly it was that I and all friends and family, few of whom have been outside the U.K., were signed up to the norm that everyone should take that opportunity to protect themselves and others and contribute to the vaccination drive that would enable us to open up and reduce the pressure on the NHS.

It is fairly obvious from the boom in staycationing that 89% of the population have not travelled abroad anyway.

However from your evidence free analysis to the reasons that people have not got vaccinated which has been the subject of regular government surveys and is now hardening to a nub of people who do not believe they are at risk of Covid. The number doing it out of political principles has always been tiny so the moral high ground is not well populated. I am not surprised. I know it is pretty common to think it won’t happen to you whether it is Cancer or Covid especially if you are on a wellness mission but definitely a mistake especially when the science says to the contrary (as it does to Cancer as well as Covid.)

Blackbird2020 Vaccination and abortion are not two sides of the same coin unless you see the world as binary with the right to individual determination as a constant. It isn’t. There is another variable which is between individual rights and the interests of society.

Where a woman is making a choice whether to continue a pregnancy then, issues of religion and patriarchal control aside, the interests of society are neutral. It is very much an issue of what happens to her body will have huge implications for her health and her life and few implications for society (healthcare, other support needs, that pretty much cancel out whether it is in society’s interests or not.).

A safe vaccination on the other hand very very rarely has implications for individual health beyond the clear benefit of protecting you from the potential adverse effect of Covid /long Covid. It does however have clear benefits to society, so little personal cost but a big benefit for you and society.

That is why I find it so offensive that people have appropriated “my body, my choice”, a slogan given power by so many decades of women fighting hard on behalf of so many women who have died or had their health and lives damaged by the lack of access to the choice of an abortion. It is belittling to their justified struggle in promoting a opinion / decision based on emotion and politics not the scientific and social reality. It is your right to prioritise your opinions / individual division but trying to mobilise the power of the anti abortion campaigns just lessens my respect for you, and many other women )and men)

Where a woman is making a choice whether to continue a pregnancy then, issues of religion and patriarchal control aside, the interests of society are neutral

You think the interests of society are neutral on whether a woman has a child? It’s literally the reproduction of the human race that’s at stake. Have you read the handmaid’s Tale?

@Jessy

"You’ve been really rude to a lot of people on threads I’ve seen. I’ve still tried to engage with you in good faith, but at no point have you returned the favour. That’s frustrating, too"

Yes, I have because I feel frustration too. Obviously I'm not excusing my rude behaviour but mine comes from care too, whether people agree with me or not. I am very passionate about choice, I may not have returned the favour to you, yet, but I have to others.

Bizawit I certainly have read the Handmaid’s tale, it’s a cautionary tale about what could happen if the patriarchy gets control of women’s bodies! However we are not in a situation where society is facing a shortage of women who do choose to continue pregnancies, including many who previously chose not to, so if an individual does not want to risk her health and restrict her life choices by continuing a pregnancy at a particular stage in her life she is not going to be contributing to an issue for society. If she is forced to then actually she may well experience greater poverty and a drain on society’s resources that might just balance out any benefit in terms of population maintenance.

Of course we do face a temporary imbalance caused by the post war baby boom but I’ve yet to hear anyone suggest the answer is force women to have more babies for those reasons (I stand to be corrected though, there’s bound to be some ).

@Emilyontmoor

Bizawit I certainly have read the Handmaid’s tale, it’s a cautionary tale about what could happen if the patriarchy gets control of women’s bodies! However we are not in a situation where society is facing a shortage of women who do choose to continue pregnancies, including many who previously chose not to, so if an individual does not want to risk her health and restrict her life choices by continuing a pregnancy at a particular stage in her life she is not going to be contributing to an issue for society. If she is forced to then actually she may well experience greater poverty and a drain on society’s resources that might just balance out any benefit in terms of population maintenance.

Of course we do face a temporary imbalance caused by the post war baby boom but I’ve yet to hear anyone suggest the answer is force women to have more babies for those reasons (I stand to be corrected though, there’s bound to be some ).

Well we do have radically declining fertility rates, and an ageing population, and the situation is becoming increasingly unsustainable.

Yes, I have because I feel frustration too. Obviously I'm not excusing my rude behaviour but mine comes from care too, whether people agree with me or not. I am very passionate about choice, I may not have returned the favour to you, yet, but I have to others.

Ok, then by all means just keep up with the personal criticisms and unfounded assertions rather than engaging in honest debate, and continue to ignore when people point out that there’s no basis for them. But other people’s feelings also have validity, and simply labelling them ‘wrong’ doesn’t make them so.

Jassy, not Jessy, btw.

Well we do have radically declining fertility rates, and an ageing population, and the situation is becoming increasingly unsustainable.

Only from a parochial point of view. As a species we’re doing just fine.

As a nation, we may need to get over our distaste for the most cost-effective way of dealing with an ageing population that doesn’t make it a permanent cycle - ie immigration from nearby countries.

Of course we do face a temporary imbalance caused by the post war baby boom but I’ve yet to hear anyone suggest the answer is force women to have more babies for those reasons (I stand to be corrected though, there’s bound to be some **).

When I was - much younger woman in Australia there was a particularly odious member of the government who suggested that women had a duty to have ‘one for the mother, one for the father and one for the nation.’

It was greeted with appropriate derision.

what could happen if the patriarchy gets control of women’s bodies Actually change that to what has happened when the patriarchy gets control of women’s bodies, since both Atwood and the writers of the TV series based it in actual events, not all in one place, or at the same time, but nether the less it has all already happened. I can certainly vouch that in Qing era China (pre 1912) women were commodified as bearers of sons, household labourers and sold into prostitution and slavery. For those who had not born a son, and especially widows, women had more status if they committed suicide, than if they endured the misery of abuse they endured as wives and daughters in law within the household, worse beyond. . If they committed suicide an arch would be raised to celebrate that act of Confucian virtue, resumed chastity. They can still be seen today. As a result the rate of female suicide amongst young women was in reverse of practically everywhere else in the world, much higher than amongst men.

That just emphasises why a slogan used in campaigning for women’s rights should not be appropriated by people who are trying to elevate their decision not to have a safe vaccination to protect themselves and others as some sort of act of virtue. It really does not wash.

@JassyRadlett

Apologies on the name. I have not made any personal criticisms, as I do not know these people at all, so it's not a personal criticism if I'm slightly rude about comments they make. I have been rude about their opinions, not them personally.

Sorry, that doesn't wash. We are all people. Not knowing us in person doesn't make us more or less human.

When you say (paraphrasing) 'I thought you were reasonable, but then you said some patronising things', you are talking about me as a person. You are saying that you think I'm unreasonable. Fine for you to say that, but let's not pretend that you're not making comments about the person, rather than the argument.

If you think my argument isn't reasonable, great. If you think my comments are patronising, fine, let's talk about those things, when they happen.

But you're choosing not to do that. Instead, you meet an argument based on the issues with a comment that is about the person.

Well we do have radically declining fertility rates, and an ageing population, and the situation is becoming increasingly unsustainable.

Who does? The world has an increasing fertility rate and a population that is getting younger right across the continents beyond Europe. Large areas of those lands that sustains a lot of the world’s population is, or will become, unable to sustain communities or marginally so as temperatures increase to 50c. It has already been a factor in the instability in Syria, so large numbers of people will be on the move.

Hence Merkel’s immigration policy

Is what you are getting at that the wrong sort of women are choosing (or in many cases not having much choice) to reproduce

i.e not white Europeans?

The fact is that whatever the ethnicity when you give women fertility choices and access to equal opportunities in education and work fertility rates decline to maintenance levels.

So what is your answer? It sounds as if you are offering up the Handmaid’s tale as a model not a lesson 😡

@Emilyontmoor

Well we do have radically declining fertility rates, and an ageing population, and the situation is becoming increasingly unsustainable.

Who does? The world has an increasing fertility rate and a population that is getting younger right across the continents beyond Europe. Large areas of those lands that sustains a lot of the world’s population is, or will become, unable to sustain communities or marginally so as temperatures increase to 50c. It has already been a factor in the instability in Syria, so large numbers of people will be on the move.

Hence Merkel’s immigration policy

Is what you are getting at that the wrong sort of women are choosing (or in many cases not having much choice) to reproduce

i.e not white Europeans?

The fact is that whatever the ethnicity when you give women fertility choices and access to equal opportunities in education and work fertility rates decline to maintenance levels.

So what is your answer? It sounds as if you are offering up the Handmaid’s tale as a model not a lesson 😡

Don’t be ridiculous. All I was trying to do was challenge the idea that society doesn’t have an interest in a woman’s reproductive choices. Of course it does, that’s why it has been one of the most controlled/ regulated human practices of all time. The distinction that was drawn- that society has an interest in vaccines (hence it’s ok to override the principle of bodily autonomy in this case), but not reproduction was a grossly false and misleading one.

I am 100% pro choice, and I have zero desire to control/ police who has babies and who doesn’t. I am also anti vaccine mandates, although I am double vaccinated myself.

See this article for instance.
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2021/05/26/what-are-the-long-term-consequences-of-our-aging-population-its-all-guesswork/amp/