Bestie its over, no one has asked me for vaccination status in several years, youre right, we’ve moved on. The only people who care anymore are the crazies on one side who keep getting boosters for some reason, or the crazies on the otherside bravely speaking out against non existant vaccine mandates, like our friend @JP1 here, who I love to give shit because that is what I do when people are dumb on the internet.
The vaccines did their job good enough, and a lot of people dont understand that, but a lot of people also don’t understand how to use the self check out at Wal-Mart, and thats okay. A lot of people did die from covid, my family memebers included. It could have been worse. It also could have gone better. When you understand that on average the people making decisions were just trying to do the best with the information at hand. Everything turned out fine if you have any common sense and can think on your feet.
Lots of major crisis like the Cuban missle crisis, holes in the ozone layer, Y2K, all seem like nothingburgers in hindsight, but thats because folks in the backround (or foreground and it was just very boring) fixed it. You dont have to understand how it works, thats okay. Thats why society has expanded so much after we figured out farming, we could specialize once we didnt have to rely on ourselves for food.
… thinking for ourselves is over-rated in most cases. In most cases, for most of us, good science and pseudoscience, good history and pseudohistory are going to be equally convincing. Bayesian logic suggests that sticking with mainstream experts and consensus thinking is a safer bet than rolling the dice on the Galileo Gambit.
Getting back on track, this is the root of the problem.
The value that we bring to the operation is a long forgotten afterthought. It will make you weep to realize what you’re making now adjusted to what those were making in this industry “back in the day”.
They have to make it worth peoples effort, training, time away from home and loved ones. This seems to have been accepted and understood in the past. Possibly because a lot of management were ex mariners themselves.
Honestly though, the race to the bottom always has a finish line. We haven’t bottomed out yet, but it sure feels like it is fast approaching. Traditional economics would say that this is the time that wages should have been rising for quite some time. It’s just a brave new world of economics nowadays. And by that I mean dystopian.
“Back in the day” there were also the adventure of travelling, seeing other countries and experiencing other cultures. This attracted many to become seamen, at least for some years.
That has changed today. If you want to travel to foreign countries you just fly there and stay as long as your budget allows.
Ships don’t spend much time in port anymore and most port are far from city centres, so the “adventure” of seafaring is gone.
They’re getting boosters because they were told if they didn’t get vaccinated against Covid they were going to die.
Covid is still around. It had mutated to be more infectious and less severe long before you guys were advocating for firing and arresting people for not taking a medical treatment with no proven efficacy.
Nothing has changed but what you’ve been told to worry about. Absolutely nothing. You’re comfortable calling people who desperately get the next completely ineffective boosters crazy because it has become ok to ignore the people dying of Covid. They’re still dying. It’s still spreading.
Actually, more people are dying, especially young people, and no one knows why. But we all definitely know why not.
Several years ago they were told that they sould get vaccinated to reduce the impact of Covid, some people understood that as “youre going to die without the vaccine” and some people undersood that as “This is an impenetrable fortress to my immune system against covid, and if anyone who has the vaccine gets covid this js all a hoax” and as with most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. For some reason ($$$) this like many other random non partisan topics have become partisan issues, and to this day the vocal minorities exists in the fringes of each camp.
As ice cream sales increase, so does the homicide rate. There are a number of things that can/are killing folks more, fentanyl, orther drugs and alcohol, suicide is on the rise, pedestrian fatalities are increasing at an alarming rate since 2010. Sure, the vaccine could be tied to early deaths but so could high fructose corn syrup, red 40, unleaded gasoline, processed foods, car dependant infastructure, the internet, iphones, vape, saw dust, ect.
This isnt entirely true. Pfizer is still desperately trying to make you afraid of covid if you pay attention to their advertising campaigns. If it really was the conspiracy you think it is, it would still be widespread engineered panic, but when gobaly, people realizing that covid is mutating into a less deadly form, we’re back to normal and the pharma companies are like “hey guys remember when we all had to take vaccines? Wasnt that cool? Can we do that again?” You can think it was never deadly to begin with, but that is the basis of natural selection and evolution is based off, and thats okay.
But life moves on, and we just try to make sense of it, in a time where the media profits off of fear, and the lines between news and commentary are blury, and the general population has the short term memory of a dementia patient.
Wages tend to be “sticky.” They are slow to react to changing labor market conditions.
One of the reasons is that most employees become “institutionalized” at their employer and are reluctant to change employers. It’s no surprise that employers will continue to fleece these sheep as long as they can.
Some maritime employers prefer to tie up a boat or two for lack of crew, rather than raise wages fleet wide to attract and retain crew. This might make dollars and sense in the short term (next quarter’s financial results), but it’s a losing long term strategy.
As for Covid; it has been a killer of the old and infirm.
Less so now as most have received the vaccine and boosters against the new strains that develop as the SARSCOV 2 virus mutate.
Get your shots NOW.
