Our Long Year of Being Mad at Each Other Online ⇥ gen.medium.com

Maya Kosoff, Gen:

Vaccine scolding is the perfect end to a year of policing from people who would rather judge people on an individual level than interrogate the systems and institutions that make the rules. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about why I dislike the phrase “pandemic wall.” By using this phrase we’re entertaining a fiction where it’s on individuals, and not a broader system, to fight a global public health crisis that is impossible to fight on an individual level. Left to our own devices, with no guidance from our officials who have been busy hiding the Covid-19 death toll at nursing homes and then taking a victory lap by writing a book about how to lead during a pandemic, we are left to judge for ourselves what is good and what is not, which has resulted in a year of getting mad at other people online, mostly.

We’re almost there — almost able to consider the most aggressive parts of what we think of as a “pandemic” behind us. Let us try to be nicer to each other as we wait our turn in the kind-of global lineup to get our vaccine.