I read the whole thing.

My brother isn't really an essential worker - he just lives in a society that failed to support him staying home, though he wanted to. Some industries just aren't conducive to working from home, and those people are well and truly fucked if they don't work. Nobody's going to save them. The threat of poverty is more real and scary for them than the threat of covid. (my brother is youngish and in shape - the probability that covid will hurt him is much lower than the poverty screaming in his face)

If you were risking financial ruin, you might be taking some of those risks, too. I don't think covid is mostly being spread by assholes in supermarkets who refuse to wear masks. They're in the minority. The people who are out there not necessarily by choice are probably doing a lot more to spread it.

And I have read some of your other writing, and appreciated it. But this piece - you are stoking the flames of righteous indignation, helping people justify and glorify their hate. It's not good - it's making the problem worse. I see the same thing on the other side, and it's not good there, either.

At the risk of getting into a discussion about human nature and whether free will does or does not exist, I submit that if you were exposed to all of the influence that anti-maskers have been exposed to, you'd be one of them. So much of who we are and what we do is a function of our place in society.

I love my ridiculous anti-mask mom, and uncle and my aunts who refuse to admit that my Grandma died of covid (just...I can't even talk about it right now) and they love me, and THAT is the only way to make inroads into the "other side." THAT'S how I got my mom to wear a fucking mask. I tried to see what made her think what she thought, I had some degree of compassion, and I talked to her as if she is an intelligent human being - because she is. She's just been exposed to a whole lot of bullshit and buying into that bullshit helps her fit in to her social group, just as buying in to a whole lot of non bullshit (and probably a little bullshit) helps you fit into yours. The threat of social exclusion from her right-wing friends is scarier to my mom than covid. I'm sorry I'm not expressing this terribly well but I hope you'll understand what I'm saying - people like her read stuff like what you've written here, and they dig the fuck in, because you've othered them. It's not helpful, and it's not courageous - you're speaking to your echo chamber and they're all loving it, but it's not solving the problem you pretend to be outraged by.