Veganism & vaccines
Here’s what might seem like wild speculation. Speaking of how a thought can pull out like a plague, an avalanche, for good or bad, impossible to stop, once it is on a roll.
After the weekend, Kentucky Fried Chicken in the U.S. will start selling deep-fried vegetarian “chicken” pieces. Even classic temple of meat must now be able to offer vegetarian options (and push a little extra for them in their advertising) so as not to seem completely passé, uninformed, irresponsible, unintelligent, evil.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/food/2022/01/05/kfc-beyond-fried-chicken/9091297002/
It reminds me of how everyone now has to jump on the “vaccine train”. Authorities, states, journalists. And then I still think both trends are basically well-intentioned, but I recoil at the “mass formation” about it.
There are so many levels of scepticism one can harbor about how the pandemic is handled by society. Personally, I do not believe in any supranational, over-state orchestrated conspiracy, behind the fact that, among other things, the vaccine strategies look the way they do. Of course, there are companies where managers are rubbing their hands right now, over increased sales, and virologists who otherwise work in the quiet, unnoticed, but now get to experience themselves as heroes and sought after.
But there’s something exaggerated about it, isn’t it? Everything just “rolls on” and no authority or state dares to be less restrictive than the others.
Is it more like a perfect storm? Where the fuel is a mix of xenophobia, refugee flows across all borders that over the past decade have been perceived to threaten life as one enjoy it and want it to continue to be, and even the zoombie concept that is so cherished in pop culture. Along with globalization & the internet that makes everything so easy to stage and just be swept away by? That all of that became like fuel?
When I think about it, there must also be an element of “displacement” in it all, how we focus on and invest so much to deal with the pandemic. Maybe there are other things that are at least as urgent, but where you are more confused about how to cope with it. Something that is more worrying, something that arouses even more anxiety.
So then the pandemic, unwittingly understood, has offered an opportunity to escape the tension for a while. What could the other things be? The climate? The world economy? (And as a consequence of them both the refugee flows.)
But I don’t think this is something that our leaders are doing deliberately, to shuffle away the cards for us citizens and voters. I think it is so that they can maintain a sense of action, determination, competence, and to have a goal to work toward, themselves.
I myself realize that there is a real challenge with covid. But that it feels like there is something “psychological” behind the handling becoming so resolute, all or nothing, as well. “We know how to do it, follow us!” Sort of.
As a result, there is also a blaiming of “the others”, those who hesitate to follow restrictions and guidlines. Those who shout about how the emperor is at least carelessly dressed. Not naked, anyway, that’s not my own opinion.
(I’ve made an appointment to receive my third vaccine dose next week, just to let you know.)