We Are So F%$#ed

🧵In a former job, a colleague & I used to teach BLS (CPR) twice a month. When we’d bring out the infant manikin, most people would look at it & say “awwww.” Every single class.

The manikin wasn’t even realistic looking… (1/5)

— 🐀 (@Guiness_Pig) June 4, 2024

…but what it represented was enough to evoke an emotional reaction from people of all ages, genders, work roles, & backgrounds. People would lower their voices & hold the baby tenderly. Many would verbalize the hope that they’d never have to do CPR on a baby in real life. (2/5)

— 🐀 (@Guiness_Pig) June 4, 2024

The “awww” reaction was so common, so predictable, it became our inside joke. We’d both say “awww” in unison every time we touched the infant manikins - pulling them out of storage, sanitizing them in diluted bleach, putting them away… so many “awwws” kept us laughing. (3/5)

— 🐀 (@Guiness_Pig) June 4, 2024

When I spoke to him the other day, I said “I really miss doing BLS classes with you & our little bleach-baptized baby. Awww!”

What he said next floored me.

“People don’t do that very much anymore. They don’t act like it’s a real baby. Must be a generational thing.” (4/5)

— 🐀 (@Guiness_Pig) June 4, 2024

It wasn’t a generational thing before.

Maybe something has happened to us at a population level that harmed the part of the brain responsible for empathy.

I don’t know.

I just know people have changed in a way that holds consequences for the most vulnerable among us. (5/5)

— 🐀 (@Guiness_Pig) June 4, 2024

I have occasionally used movie metaphores to describe, specifically The Andromeda Strain, to describe Covid 19, because both diseases attacked the linings of the blood vessels and the central nervous system.

I'm concerned, terrified actually, that I got the wrong movie.

This may instead be the 1971 version of The Omega Man, where those who had the disease but were not killed by it were transformed into insane savage mutants.

I've seen this on my daily commutes, and in a myriad of small ways throughout society.

The loss of empathy, the loss of impulse control, etc. is remarkable, and it makes it that much more difficult to take effective measures against the disease.

This will not end well.