Disaster struck yesterday; the air fryer stopped working. The instructions said to leave it unplugged when not in use. I plugged it in, and the power light stayed off. I am addicted to my air fryer. How bad is it? I didn’t make the chicken I planned for last night and just had peanut butter for dinner. I couldn’t face cooking it in the oven, let alone the potatoes. It doubles as our toaster, good thing we still had the old toaster oven. I need to find the crumb tray and broiling rack for it. I’m going to blame the fact that I’ve been totally unproductive on that. I should have recorded Gord’s Gold yesterday and instead I haven’t even started on it. I also have to work on my holiday show and best of 2020 show. Most importantly I have to not let that trigger my anxiety. Too late the anxiety is triggered. I have to overcome it. Once I get started I’ll be better off. Nobody is going to die from my actions. Once I jump into the radio pool I’ll be fine. I also haven’t blogged in two days. This is me jumping in the blogging pool.
I’ve been thinking about when I get the COVID-19 vaccine. I take an immunosuppressant so as someone at high risk I can get in line early. I never feel at high risk and part of me feels like that would be cheating. My doctors consider me at high risk and if I remember that my susceptibility puts others at risk I might be able to manage to take it without feeling guilty. When it comes to me taking a medical risk versus others I generally do it myself as I’m less anxious about it than most people. I have much more anxiety than most people, but it’s triggered by different things. I’m not afraid of COVID-19, medical procedures, or speaking in public. Filling out forms and using an ATM are scary.
I just stopped writing to watch Val Vigoda do a live show. The Facebook event didn’t work for me. This is the second time that’s happened, so Val sent me the link and gave me the date and time. I went to the Carlsbad City Library page at 7 PM and it wasn’t streaming. It says right on the page that it starts at 7 PM. So, what gives? Val lives in California, the library is in California, it’s Pacific time. Facebook automatically adjust to your time zone so it wouldn’t have been an issue if I could see the Facebook Event. I’m not calling this an Idiot Story, this is within the realm of normal screw up.
As many people died of COVID-19 yesterday as died at the World Trade Center. We are having a 9/11 every day, but people react very differently. We accepted all sorts of invasions of our privacy and civil rights after 9/11 but millions won’t even wear a mask now. This isn’t because people are idiots. I reserve that term for myself. It’s because people are terrible at risk assessment. Our forebrain and amygdala don’t confer. Even if we know one thing rationally we don’t internalize it. So, people are more afraid of sharks than they are of riptides even though far more people die from the latter. Hippos kill far more people than lions, but tourists fear the lions. Ebola scared people more than COVID-19. People have almost no fear of influenza and that kills tens of thousands. People say, “COVID-19 is no worse than the flu,” when they should at least be saying. “Oh my god, COVID-19 is as bad as the flu.”
People try and justify their fears and their lack of fear. People who will in general accept science will at times look for any loophole that will give them an excuse to not believe inconvenient truths. While this type of thinking is much more prominent on the right it happens on the left too. Any danger from nuclear reactors is felt to be huge. People were worried about radiation from the other side of the Pacific. These were not stupid people. They weren’t even ignorant people. They were people whose amygdala wasn’t even letting the forebrain into the conversation. I suspect that also explains much of the vote for Trump. He gets people scared or takes advantage of pre-existing fears and then their forebrains stop listening.
OK. I better make dinner. I’m watching Val Vigoda in an hour. I’d like to have eaten by then.
Wise Madness 