I've been coming around to the theory that progressive politics is driven by empathy for several years now. COVID has made me hypothesize that conservative politics is also - but that conservatives lack the abstraction necessary to see someone outside of their homogeneous socioeconomic strata as human.

I think it's a much easier sell for progressives to go "we're all in this together." I think it's a much easier sell for conservatives to go "it's a matter of personal responsibility." Unfortunately, there's a profound scientific bias to "all in this together" in virulent contagious diseases.

I remember when AIDS was GRID - "Gay-Related Immune Deficiency." It wasn't until we'd vilified a hemophiliac kid to death that Hollywood could even think of making Philadelphia.

My wife disagrees with me, but I saw a profound sea change in the Los Angeles anti-vaxxer community when Disneyland had a measles outbreak, and California mandated childhood vaccines in response. There were a lot of entitled white women firmly in the "herd immunity is what the little people owe me" camp but as soon as it became "and I'm going to have to home-school them and my friends at Whole Foods don't think I'm cool anymore" all the casuals got their kids poked. There were still anti-vaxers, they were just militant. They were unreachable. Nobody was on the fence anymore.

We're seeing that now. We lost a client yesterday because we told her that if she wanted to bring her 5-year-old with her to appointments, her 5-year-old was gonna have to wear a mask. We lost another long-time client because she decided she didn't want any vaxed people "shedding antibodies" around her while she was in labor.

I don't know if I have a point. Mother Earth News did a survey about six years ago to find out the political leanings of their readership and were stunned to discover that racist preppers will put up with the hippies if it means they can learn about windmills, and that granola-crunchies will totally stockpile AR-15s if it means they can ride out TEOTWAWKI. I think there used to be at least two axes in politics: "I do/don't care about my fellow human being" and "I do/don't trust my government as far as I can throw it." It kinda feels like COVID is bringing those axes to light again as the CrunchGranolas end up discovering they have more in common with the redhat libertarians than the BLM libtards.

I guess my point is the anti-vaxxers ain't the 18,000 little cheaters. They've opted out of our society but since they don't have anywhere else to go, they'll show their contempt for the one they're stuck in. That's why teenaged boys vandalize shit - they have no agency but they have a lot of anger.

The lady with the unmasked 5-year-old is an anti-vax protester who made the front page of the San Diego Union Tribune by like beating someone with a sign at a protest or some shit. We weren't sorry to see her go.

What about the 5-year-old tho