Dice

 

Academic Art / Jean-Leon Gerome/ The Colossus of Memnon

I have 26 weeks left.  I have 25.5 sick days that I must burn up.  A lovely coincidence.

So I am at home today.  Gonna hang out with the fam and eat some sushi on Uncle's dime.

I guess what I am wanting to talk about today is certainty.  I really don’t have any so I am wanting to discuss something that other people think/say with no personal reference.

I have been noticing that a lot of folks lately are certain of things that will solve the problems that we face.  They pursue this certainty with a dogged determination.  But I am suspicious of this certainty.

I spoke with a co-worker the other day who had gotten into an argument with a neighbor about the vaccine.  The co-worker was out doing missionary work for the vaccine, telling the unwashed and unlettered neighbor about the need for vaccines.  The neighbor told her he didn’t think that he needed it.  Since I know this co-worker, I am reasonably certain that she pushed the guy, that is what nurses do.  So an argument ensued.

Now, the nurse is fully vaccinated, she is fanatic about social distancing and wears an N-95 everywhere she goes.  She has gone a little stir crazy because she leaves her house as infrequently as possible.  So she is making every conceivable effort to not get infected.  

But she has a belief that if everyone just got vaccinated, she could break out of the private hell she has painted herself into.  That is her belief.  But try as I might, I can’t see that the data is telling me that.  

The trouble with the pro-vaccine folks is that they tend toward being missionaries.  They know the truth, even when the truth is ambiguous.  They can’t seem to stand the idea that uncertainty is the name of the game.

I think that the arguments in this interlude a long time ago have more territory than the narrow field where it was held