We have all read stories about anti-vaxxers who pleaded for the vaccine on their deathbed. it turns out that there is a website that keeps track of anti-vaxxers who were hospitalized and/or died of COVID. At first, I thought the site was an exercise in schadenfreude—enjoying the suffering of others—but after I read many sad stories, I concluded that its purpose was to persuade anti-vaxxers to take the vaccine.
Open it. It’s worth reading, as it helps to explain the anti-vaxxer mindset.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Terrifying and sad
Thank you, Diane. The site has good info. My comment is “HOLY COW!”
Such a waste. Such a waste of seemly intelligent human beings who had so much to give to their families, their communities. It is sad that all the anti-vaxers still living are not willing to read, listen, learn, and that COVID-19 is very, very real and the vaccines are their major saving grace.
The families left behind will suffer for many years to come for the failure of their loved ones to recognize that there was a way to save their lives.
There are so many to blame for these needless illnesses and death but pointing the blame figure will not make them better or bring them back from the grave. This item should be shared with as many people as possible.
My heart goes out to those left behind.
Agreed. Such a terrible waste. I’m struck by the number of people in healthcare.
me too, teachert99. Not just on this website about anti-vaxxers– the stats show they’re considerably less-vaccinated than teachers, e.g., tho both are in helping professions, potentially exposing vulnerable populations daily in their jobs. I really don’t get it. & not illuminated by the website; the many in healthcare there don’t sound any different from their paranoid & uninformed peers.
There are countless articles in MSM explaining and/or quoting the anti-vax mindset. I’m tired of them. Where are the on-the-street interviews with people who have done the right thing and gotten vaccinated? Oh right, it doesn’t generate clicks for the media, so why bother.
It’s a dangerous trend to give a small but vocal, even violent, minority such a very loud voice in our society. Where will this lead us?
I don’t know about that. I read a ton of news daily. Coverage of the anti-vax mindset seems a small sideshow. That is, outside Fox/OAN, which presumably prattles on in an anti-vax vein daily [don’t know as I don’t read/ watch them]— if so, that’s dangerous. I’d like to see tons more from their competitors on those “MS”M companies’ vax mandates, the masking that goes on in the studios, the fact that anti-covid-protocol hacks like Carlson et al follow protocols IRL. But it’s clear from sorryantivaxxer.com website that hard-core anti-vax/ conspiracy nuts get all their input from their own ingrown media bubbles, not MSM.
Are you suggesting that the reason we see so much of this is the mainstream media providing a platform for this message i excess of its worth?
Eons ago I got the polio vaccine, but it wasn’t a jab, it was a swallow: quote – If you’re of a certain age [I am], you may remember as a child being given a sugar cube in a small paper cup. But what you may thought was a treat was in fact your immunization against polio.
It’s been 60 [this is an article from April 10, 2014] years since Dr. Jonas Salk personally inoculated 137 students at Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh, the first recipients of a new vaccine to prevent polio.
A newsreel at the time described the February 1954 vaccination clinic as a historic turning point. “The vaccine works! It is safe, effective and potent. The tests prove it is 90 per cent effective in preventing paralytic polio. And some day, says Dr. Salk, the vaccine may completely eradicate the menace of polio,” it trumpeted.
By April 1955 20,000 volunteers, 20,000 doctors, and 1.8 million school children were immunized, and a terrifying disease was on the run. True to Salk’s prediction, polio was eradicated — at least in the United States — by 1979. End quote
From whyy.org, sorry, my computer won’t allow me to copy and paste the URL address.
I don’t remember groups of crazies ranting against the polio vaccine; everyone was on board for the polio vaccine and there were no protests against it. People were thankful for this cure and I don’t remember any crossover cases in which vaccinated people got polio. But maybe it happened and I missed it. In any case, if there were crossover cases, it would have been a much milder case of polio with less lethal effects. In other words it would be very survivable with no lasting ill effects.
Why are we more likely today to believe nonsense than we were then?
I read up on those vaccines with interest recently. There are two polio vaccines: the one you took (OPV – Sabin) hasn’t been used here since 2000, but is still used occasionally (globally) to stop an outbreak in its tracks. The population eventually transits over to the IPV (Salk – I for inactivated) for longterm prevention. The Sabin is not preferred once herd immunity is reached, because occasional outbreaks will occur: it works with live virus that reproduces/ replicates—but also mutates—in the intestinal tract. Those protected by vaccine are shedding mutating virulence into sewage, which every now & then causes a small outbreak.
The anti-vaxxer increase doesn’t scare me so much for covid- it was politicized, they’re refusing for that reason, it’s just one disease.
What scares me is it seems to be migrating to “across the board”. They’re getting tons of converts who will now oppose all vaccines. We could undo 100 years of progress in 10.
Looking forward to schools and communities with huge outbreaks of preventible infectious disease. What a nightmare.
Politicizing public health supported by misinformation campaigns on social media and right wing news stations has been a disaster resulting in so much loss and tragic waste. I certainly hope this lunacy does not spread to other vaccines.
In other news, Trump, OF COURSE, took the occasion of Colin Powell’s death to go on and on about how awful Powell was and how much better he was, and how he thinks that he’s so great that when he dies, people won’t say the awful things that they are saying about Powell. I have been trying to come up with a portmanteau word that would properly capture this unique combination of utter insensitivity and lack of respect, pathological narcissism, and lack of any editor whatsoever. A challenge.
Portmanteau words
Lewis Carroll, of course, invented the words chortle, a blend of chuckle and snort; frumious, of fuming and furious; slithy, of lithe and slimy; galumph, of triumphant and gallop; and frabjous, of fabulous and joyous, and he described his creations as portmanteau words—each an example of two words stuck together in a single valise, or portmanteau. Blending is a fairly common method of word creation. See affluenza, Brexit, bromance, Bollywood, cosplay, mockumentary, Pokeman, and smog. Here are three of my own creation:
Kickle. v. A portmantau of tickled and killed, as when someone is laughing so hard for so long that he or she says, “You’re killing me” (e.g., “OMG, you kickle me, Krystal.”)
Quaxing. part. or ger. A portmanteau of quacking and exactly. Loudly saying exactly what you think, as in, “We were having a nice family dinner until Olivia started quaxing about her Mom nagging her to learn how to cook.” (This partially captures the Trump phenomenon. How about logorrhea?)
Foe pas. n. A portmantau of foe and faux pas, meaning, when you accidentally reveal the feelings you have REALLY been harboring about another person.
Quaxologorrhea? A technical term for the pathology?
Quaxoegologorrhea?
Thanks for this excellent commentary. I learned what portmanteau meant years ago but I keep forgetting and keep having to look it up. I so rarely use it or even think about the word, maybe your exposition will do the trick and I will remember its meaning, finally. As for Trump, I have a portmanteau for him but it’s a combination of various profanities. We are so blessed that he didn’t win in 2020, 4 more years of that garbage mouth (garbth?) would have been catastrophic.
It’s a combination of various profanities.
I understand this completely.
Thanks, Joe!
My friend the poet Brooke Baker Belk, having heard trump’s bloviating, said, so appropriately, that Roosevelt’s speech “Th Man in the Arena” comes to mind. Yes. Exactly. Colin Powell was the man in the arena,and Trump, in comparison, is a eunuch’s shadow.
This is really not so much off the topic. Words are everything. That is why conservative want a broad definition for CRT: so that almost everything that disturbs certain people can be named with a word that is generally negative.
By the way, I never saw Faux Pas anglicized. Nor have I seen that definition. My definition is that it is the opposite of a hind pas
LMAO!
“when he dies, people won’t say the awful things that they are saying about Powell. ”
You know what, if he promises to die soon, I am willing to keep my mouth shot. A small price to pay.
The Trump Administration will be remembered as the time when “piece of st” was used so often that the abbreviation POS became a thing. My mother never uses his name to refer to him, just a pile of st emoji.
Chortle.
This is the first sentence from this week’s edition of Harper’s Weekly: Former U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell—who helped cover up the My Lai massacre, armed and trained the Salvadoran military and the Nicaraguan Contras, and knowingly presented false claims about nuclear and biological weapons in Iraq before the United Nations—died from COVID-19.
I have conflicting opinions about him. One of the people I most respected in my life worked closely with Powell and considered him to be among the most decent, honorable people he had ever known. I also learned he had a cancer with I am more than familiar, as well as Parkinson’s, another disease with which I have had more than a passing interest. Yet I don’t disagree with the paragraph above. Hence the conflict.
What it comes down to, I guess, is that we’re all imperfect; we all have our demons, not just in the traditional sense of the phrase. I guess it’s how we come through the questionable times. Should one repent and strive to do better? Or is it more honorable to make a complete break with the past once it is personally understood what the consequences of those acts were, educate and advocate for what one knows to be effective and proper, and live an authentic life? The latter seems to me to be more acceptable but most unattainable. So how should we judge? I’m really conflicted.
Are you conflicted about Gates? Doesn’t he have similar records?
What does cancer have to do with the quality of a human being?
I am not conflicted about Gates, but regardless of how bad he has been for some things, one does have to give him credit for paying attention and putting money on global health issues. But I can balance that with other information to draw a conclusion.
I am conflicted by Powell because, whatever harm he may have done, I see no evidence that any were done with manipulative malice. There is no question he made wrong decisions in his life. But based on what I know from two people who worked closely with him, he always acted on the facts in front of him and without a personal or professional agenda. The fact is, people make mistakes, often when they have the best intentions. That is conflicting to me based on each individual circumstance.
And yes, disease in this case is an issue and it is very much political. As a black man, Powell’s risk of developing myeloma is almost three times that of whites. As a veteran of South Vietnam and basic training before that, the combination of his genetics and exposures to poisons had a direct impact on both his cancer and Parkinson’s. He paid a heavy price for his service to the nation–again, there is no arguing his service, although there might be on his acts–and untold tens of thousands of people like him who are black, in the military or work in industries around chemicals and other hazards to long-term health. And his death from complications to Covid happened despite probably having some of the best possibilities to isolate and stay safe as anyone. So yes, that is factored into my conflicted feelings about this.
He went to war in Iraq knowing well, there was no evidence of WMD. Where is the good intention? How many people died as a result? In fact, his opinion had a greater weight than other people’s exactly because of his “nice guy” reputation.
Vietnam? He served there twice. He didn’t go there accidentally, did he?
A loyal and unquestioning soldier, Powell didn’t hesitate to participate alongside the South Vietnamese when they torched enemy villages, killed livestock and burned fields, but he drew the line at corpse mutilation, writes Matthews, banning the practice of cutting off the enemy’s body parts as trophies.
Wow, nice guy. He didn’t mutilate.
I do not see how having cancer has any consequences in evaluating a person’s actions. You have cancer, hence you are a good guy? You have cancer, you are a bad guy? How about heart attack? Both Dick Cheney and Bernie Sanders had it. Which diseases contribute positively to one’s life achievements?
Yeah, Powell might have been a nice guy in his private life. That has no bearing on his professional actions. Yeah, he helped some Americans in Vietnam—but he was there, torching villages.
Gauss was a fantastic mathematician, but an ahole Euler was a fantastic mathematician at the level of Gauss, and was a nice guy. But both of them are judged by their formulas. The same needs to be applied to politicians, military people and other professionals.
There is a film on Netflix about the “WMD” claim before the Iraq war and of course Powell’s essential role in it. The title is Official secrets.
Colin Powell’s military/government career was built on one word — yes — repeated ad nauseam over a period of half a century
He didn’t ever say no. I don’t believe he even could have if he had wanted to.
Greg, yup, you aren’t perfect, but you come pretty darned close in my estimation. You are one of those who, like Diane Ravitch, are touchstones for me–people whom I admire and learn from. Thank you.
They shall be judged by their formulas
“Warmula”
The formula for war
Is “lie and shoot and lie”
And then “to lie some more”
“Until the foes all die”
Warmula makes me feel cozy and fuzzy about war. Where can I sign up for it?
Yes, like the baby formula, the warmula is warm and comforting for some folks.
Should probably be
The formula for war
“Is lie and shoot and lie”
“And then to shoot some more
Until your foes all die”
Yeah, the same people who feel dreamy about warmula may feel uncozy about CRT. We may soon have a movement for warmula freedom.
I truly hope the site helps convince many people
The sad thing is that the leadership of those who oppose vaccination is so effective. Why? Why does linguistic manure seem to be preferred to logic and discussion? this is an aspect of human behavior I have never understood. Why do silly ideas seem to displace reason? What is it about human beings that make the allure of silliness push away science as the arbiter of truth? Is the Enlightenment dead?
Roy– I’m not sure there’s much “leadership” involved, it seems more of a peer-group/ peer-pressure kind of thing. Regardless, to your question so colorfully [odorously?] expressed: Why does linguistic manure seem to be preferred to logic and discussion? It’s tempting to say it’s about lack of education or intelligence, but I’m not so sure. I maintain it’s about an individual’s reaction to fear. That seems to reach back behind education/ intelligence to how one was raised. There are a surprising number of people of all stripes whose reaction to fear (especially near-term death threat over which one seems to have minimal control) is denial. Once one is in denial, all manner of linguistic manure will appeal. The subject seeks any & all input that substantiates denial: it must not be true, therefore blablabla must be happening.
I’m guessing the individual’s position hinges on his innate sense of control/ agency. Those who have always felt deep down like a helpless pawn to (or battered by) the whims of fate/ society [govt, economics, whatever] have always needed denial [and close-knit peer-groups feeling same] just to plow forward in life. Embittered but persevering. Even those who succeed in society/ economically still harbor the feeling.
Schadenfreude? Or karma?
The overwhelming whiteness of the gallery is inescapable. Another I’ve noticed is that they generally fall into three categories (four if you include whiteness): old, stupid and fat. You might survive if you have one. But if you hit the trifecta, see ya!
I am all three, so I guess it’s a miracle I am a 3-time vaccinated.
Whatever other faults or characteristics you may have, you’re definitely not stupid!
Mate Wierdl is one of way the heck off the other end of the spectrum from stupid. LMAO. I so look forward to his comments here!
Greg and Mate, when I grow up, I want to be like you guys.
Like the esteemed host of this blog, Colin Powell was capable of that difficult and rare thing: unthinking a previous position. This deserves our deepest respect.
“Sterilizing immunity” is the expectation that trips up anti-vaxxers. They interpret transmission by the vaccinated– the possibility of breakthrough infections– the need to wear masks in the presence of a much-more-highly-transmissible variant like delta– as evidence that the vaccine doesn’t work. There are very few vaccines that confer this complete wipeout of the virus from the body & prevent it from taking hold thereafter. Smallpox, measles, meningitis and malaria. The rest of them confer a degree of immunity from transmission/ symptoms/ serious disease along a spectrum. Today’s immunologists are proving that post-vaccine mini-infections actually do occur even among the big four, so “sterilizing immunity” is more an ideal concept than a reality.
People need to be taught that science is inductive. It looks at phenomena and draws warranted generalizations, and it’s in the nature of it, that it’s open to falsification–sometimes complete falsification (e.g., the theory of the existence of the aether), and more often, exceptions that prove the rule. It’s the absolutist types–the fascists and religious crazies–who think that some exceptions necessarily falsify the entire thing. There’s a lesson to be learned, her, to inform our science instruction.
That instruction in probabilities shouldn’t be limited to math class.
Ya better put that in country yokel voice. I had to read it twice. 🙂
I know I saw commentary lately supporting the position that people learn/ change their minds/ adjust their thinking through lived experience and anecdotes about people they can relate to. I’m not saying this well, but the point is that scientific data just doesn’t sink in as well. Plus, too many people are getting their “news” from social media.
LOL, Speduktr. Thanks for reading! Yeah, nothing much to be done by those who get their vaccination advice like this: “Well, my cousin over at Meineke Muffler says that vaccinations are the real killers.”
Yeah, personal info and experiences replace statistics. Like “I had covid and I didn’t even miss a day of work. The whole thing is not a biggie.”
I admit that my own bout with this disease colors my concern about it. This made it vividly real to me.
You know, I think it’s more simple than that. I know I’m repetitive, but it’s all about an understanding of the scientific method. I often come back to and read Carl Sagan’s last published words that linked an understanding of the importance of individual rights (in this case, the Bill of Rights) in a society, decency, and the scientific method (and why it is so significant). I think they should alway belong in the same sentence. If that’s all my kids internalized after 12 years of schooling, I’d be a happy parent.
Bob: This is a really interesting point. there is a mode of thinking among the fundamentalists that rejects a thing on the basis of its failure to achieve the perfection of pure mathematics. It is interesting to note that many mathematicians I know are capable of holding to strict religious beliefs due to the idea of total acceptance. In math, it is easy to understand that the set of primes consist of numbers that have exactly two factors. There are no exceptions. God is like that to them. No exceptions.
A friend I had once viewed political thought through this prism. The United States was a creed to be adhered to. Suggest a change and the whole thing comes tumbling down. Anything that alters the perception is evil.
That is interesting in that it runs counter to the only mathematician I know well, my husband. His field is electrical engrg, Electricity moves like water, and is likewise subject to immutable principles, which are all figured out with pure math. But perhaps an engineer becomes more of a scientist through the process of applying immutable principles to real-life construction? Scientists look for evidence/ proof, but also understand that those things are ever-evolving. [BTW, he also believes in God, but certainly does not adhere to ‘strict religious beliefs’ – more an intuitive spirituality; maybe it emanates from the purity of mathematics…]
Well, pure mathematics is not perfect. Interestingly, it can be proved that it’s not. This is what mathematicians in the beginning of the 20th century realized, and they (like Turing) were occupied with describing in what sense it’s not so perfect, not so all encompassing.
So whenever I hear that somebody is driven to faith because of pure math, I cringe because I know that person has missed math’s last 100 years.
Let’s leave religion out of science,that is, out of the real world. If for nothing else, but for religion’s sake, since religion has always lost when it tried to say something in matters it is not equipped to deal with.
Amen to that, Mate!
Good observation, Mate’ and one quickly above my understanding. I left off understanding mathematics when my old college roommate, Euclid, graduated and started writing those books.
Well, even Euclid knew that we never ever tell in math what a point or a line are. We just describe their properties in basic statements we accept to be true without proof, like “Two points determine a unique line”. Again, we don’t know what a line or point is.
These basic statements are called axioms. Every statement in math (like the Pythagorean theorem) is supposed to be derived from the axioms. The collection of axioms plays the same role in math as the Constitution plays in law. We accept the Constitution as the collection of statements which are accepted as truth and all other laws are supposed to be derived from these basic laws.
So to claim that math is perfect, we just need to make sure that the axioms are perfect. The same way, if we want to make sure our laws are good, we need to make sure the Constitution is good. This means, as a minimum, that we shouldn’t be able to derive a law which is contradictory, that is, in some situation it could be used to say that somebody is guilty but also not guilty for the same action.
Well, in the 20th century some smart mathematicians (Gödel and Turing are the main characters) showed two things:
1) Given set of axioms (which conceivably includes the Constitution), it’s impossible to tell if it will lead to contradictions.
2) There are statements that can neither be proved or disproved from the axioms.
For the Constitution, 2) means, there will be cases for which the Constitution won’t be applicable.
The Supreme Court is supposed to be the guardian of the Constitution, and if the Constitution was good enough, the Supreme Court should not be able to derive contradictory laws. But apparently, the constitution fails this basic test even without invoking modern logic, since the judges regularly derive contradictory statements, often corresponding to their political views.
Maté, I could easily create semester long course and still not have enough time to address all the issues you do quite admirably above. But I do have two points–and the second is truly a quibble.
You write, “We accept the Constitution as the collection of statements which are accepted as truth and all other laws are supposed to be derived from these basic laws.” In the times we live in, “accept” and “accepted” no longer have any meaning. They do to people who make decisions based on empirical facts, experience, and what they actually see. But they don’t to entire political party any more. They accept nothing. They have an ideology to and for which they will do anything to shape public policy. Even the concept of judicial review is being attempted to be overridden by legislative fiat in Texas which, like their textbooks, is a foreboding of what will happen in other states. And a Republican-led Congress will only be held back by the final two years of a Biden administration.
I also take issue with, “The Supreme Court is supposed to be the guardian of the Constitution.” To that I would respond: No! The three branches of American federal government are “supposed to be the guardian(s) of the Constitution.” When one branch abdicates that responsibility, it is a crisis. When two do, it is a existential catastrophe. When three do–as they may well do soon–fuggetaboutit. By putting so much stock into the Supreme Court to be “guardian(s),” we let the other two branches off their constitutional hooks.
Yeah, guardian was a badly chosen word. Interpreters would have been better. But in my opinion, a good constitution is formulated in such a way that there is no need (or room) for human interpretation. If you can read the constitution in different ways (especially if in contradictory ways), then it needs to be discarded or at least modified. But we regularly have contradictory opinions by judges on the same matter and we move on, as if this was OK. No, being able to conclude contradictory statements is against the rules of logic.
As for your first remark, you are talking about a complete failure of lawmaking. Laws should be made in such a way that they are precisely checked for consistency with the constitution. Instead, they are voted on. Do we vote on the acceptability of 1+1=2?
As you see, in both cases, the problem is that democracy (voting by judges or legislators) is used where logic needs to be used to decide what is true or acceptable.
The human factor in law making comes in when the constitution is made, when basic truths (ie “rights”) are declared. Then laws need to be made using logic alone. Human decision making comes in again when they need to decide which law is relevant in a specific case, like murder or some family dispute.
I find the observation “a good constitution is formulated in such a way that there is no need (or room) for human interpretation” to be very, very troubling. The very idea of any constitution is a summation of a society’s human interpretations. And the idea that mathematical precision of words can be exercised unconditionally in governing a society of fallible human beings scares the hell out of me. Would it also apply to the arts? Yikes!
What I mean by human interpretation is that once the constitution is agreed upon (by humans), it’s so clearly written that it needs no translation by wise people with large experience and high education. Also, once the constitution is applied to derive a new law, every reasonably competent person (like a lawyer) can understand the reasoning, and there is no room for a different conclusion, which contradicts the previous one used to derive the law.
If this requirement on the constitution and derived laws troubles anybody, think about the recent opinions of the Supreme court about abortion. If Roe v Wade was clearly worded, would conform to science, there could be only one possibility to judge the Texas law proposal: correct or incorrect.
That the system of laws need to satisfy a logical structure described above is a basic requirement, and can be established with today’s knowledge and technology.
As I said, the human factor can come in again when it comes to applying the laws to specific circumstances, like murder or divorce.
I am not claiming anything for art. Science has a role to play in law, arts, etc, but by no means we want to claim that law or the arts belong to science.
Someone that thinks like Traitor Trump allegedly enjoys the suffering of others.
I do not enjoy the suffering of others, but … this list that kept scrolling endlessly, after I visited the site and started reading, may clear up what “survival of the fittest” means.
“Darwin wrote ‘survival of the fit’ to imply that those who were fit would live long enough to pass on their genes. Spencer wrote ‘survival of the fittest,’ implying those who were most fit would survive the social world due to some biological mechanism that made them superior.”
Does that mean physically fit, mentally fit, or both? My theory is that antivaccers and anti maskers have severe mental disorders.
“People with severe mental disorders on average tend to die earlier than the general population. This is referred to as premature mortality. There is a 10-25 year life expectancy reduction in patients with severe mental disorders.”
Click to access info_sheet.pdf
I am with you 1000% on that, Lloyd. Having seen Bipolar I up close & personal, I am very familiar with the sort of paranoia brought on by mania, & paranoia is a symptom of several mental illnesses. Bipolar is perhaps the most common of them [1 in 70, worldwide], and all these illnesses have a spectrum: even the mildest forms can result in some degree of paranoiac symptoms. Paranoia is expressed in conspiracy theories, which represent a departure from reality. Many of the anti-vaxxers at this site were clearly suffering from that symptom. Such folks are often intelligent and articulate, easily drawing fence-sitters, uninformed & lower intelligent into their delusions.
Lloyd, “fit” in Darwin’s interpretation meant “best fit the environment”. It may sometime mean strong sometimes not. Darwin explictly criticizes “social Darwinism” for claiming, the strongest needs to be freely do what they want since this is best for society. Darwin says that actually empathy seems to be more important for long term survival.
Here, he calls it sympathy
With mankind, selfishness, experience, and imitation, probably add, as Mr. Bain has shewn, to the power of sympathy; for we are led by the hope of receiving good in return to perform acts of sympathetic kindness to others; and sympathy is much strengthened by habit. In however complex a manner this feeling may have originated, as it is one of high importance to all those animals which aid and defend one another, it will have been increased through natural selection; for those communities, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.
When trying to allay the unreasonable fears of anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, no matter how sensitive one is to their fears and how gently facts are presented, in my recent experience, their reaction is that of furious anger. They will seek vengeance. There is no limit to how far they will take it. I’m done talking to them. I’m done beating my head against a wall only to be the subject of dangerously childish retaliation. They will harm themselves. They will harm others. They are sociopaths. They are incorrigible.
I agree, all one can do is stick a toe in the water, being ultra-reasonable & soliciting their opinion & offering another opinion: if they react as you describe, move on to the next one. Who knows, you may encounter one of the many [statistically] who are simply low-info fence-sitters willing to hear different input.
I think that what really works in the long term is negative social sanction AND in the short term laws and policies (no, you can’t enter without a mask; no, you can’t be seated without showing proof of vaccination).