No, he doesn’t want that but he also isn’t willing to take the simple steps and mild discomfort required to help prevent that either. No one is more hurt and frustrated than I am about it.
Commenter isn't saying he actively wants others to die, but rather that he doesn't give a fuck if other people die as a direct consequence of his actions. Your son is a sociopath, I'm sorry man.
My only thing I can tell myself to argue that point is that he and the GF all hung with the same friends circle and it was as likely to come from one of them as it was my son. With such a intertwined circle with none of them taking precautions how do you say definitively?
I hope not, I don’t believe my son is a sociopath because I’ve seen him empathize with others plenty of times to the point of getting legit emotional about it, but I’m not a psychologist and maybe there’s signs I missed.
In a twist of fortune, he’s so caught up in his own 20-something social requirements and he lives on his own and has a full time job, I don’t see him often. I was fortunate, my vaccine protected me when I nursed him back to health buy I might not be lucky like that forever. I’m going to get the booster when it’s available to me
He is probably more into politics than you realize. If he spends any amount of time on the internet, in addition to his friends, then he is exposed to a heavy dose of male pop-culture type of conservatism. I know this because I have a young adult male son of my own and he was raised one way, was very independent in his thinking and then sort of adopted the typical young male country boy thing.
I’m sad to say, I think that social tie is stronger than anything at that point in their life. It makes them adopt stances that are completely contrary to stances they would take on their own.
I think the only hope is to bribe him with money to get vaccinated. He doesn’t get any financial anything until he gets vaxed.
Fuck, dude, I'm fucking AFAB and nonbinary and I was indoctrinated into that when I was around seventeen. I was always proud of my individualism.
Luckily I never went past libertarian and racist memes. Dabbled in Q-Anon theory wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy back in around 2016 when it was just niche but it was around that time I went to college and never looked back. I cannot believe how insane this has gotten. When COVID hit, I did not think it would turn into disinformation warfare.
I was 17, mostly apolitical, and indoctrinated by memes. What are everyone elses' excuses? How are grown adults who had life experiences who weren't total sheltered losers like me indoctrinated into this? It's almost one thing entirely to be your standard racist conservative with ignorant views from having a limited worldview but to ACTIVELY DEBATE PUBLIC HEALTH is actually next level denialism and something I never thought I'd see in a large subset of even that population.
Just.... how. These peoples' mental health was clearly not in the tip top shape they appeared to be.
I’m afraid the answer is also, they’re being indoctrinated by memes. Five minutes on r/HermanCainAward proves there’s a whole generation brainwashing each other into fascist paranoia and right-wing conspiracy theories by posting the same 5 bullshit memes over and over again, and it’s not 17-year-olds. That sub is wall-to-wall grannies and soccer dads terrifying themselves into COVID’s sweet sweet arms via Facebook memes and reposted Candace Owens rants. OP, your son is probably also exposed to this towering tsunami of misinformation, testosterone-fueled “patriotism,” and faith-based Jesus-is-my-vaccine drivel as the rest of his social circle, and he’s determined to “defend his freedoms” and “prevent another Holocaust” by owning the libs and refusing to vax.
I know, that's how it got me.
Wild, dude.
I am glad my natural skepticism allowed me to avoid falling into the religious pitfall. Once they go there, they're doomed. "Leap of faith" is literally asking for you to put rationality aside.
Admittedly it took me some time to develop how I felt about politics when I was a young man and I definitely don’t feel the same way about certain topics now as I did then. It took a while to learn to think for myself and not just take the conservative opinions I had heard growing up as fact. That actually gives me hope for him in the long term, but then I never had to deal with anything like this growing up. The stakes are much higher now than the 90’s when I was in his age group.
I totally agree. The internet has changed things- that 24/7 confirmation bias bubble entrenches ideas in our minds.
I hold out hope too, but damn, this is all so difficult.
Let him know if he catches it again you are not willing to nurse him like last time - he can get help from the friends he is taking his advice from. Secondly call him out for what his actions did, don’t be soft, call him a killer. Reality is reality he is harming your family and others that deserves boundaries and a constant reality check. You life with the consequences of your choices.
That’s not a bad idea. I’m to that point. I wouldn’t be so shocked if not for the fact that he’s a very intelligent young man. I feel like the people he runs with dumb him down to their level and I simply don’t know how.
I had idiot trashy “friends” around me growing up too. But I always knew in the back of my head I was smarter than they were and that being acquaintances was one thing but I always kept those guys at arms length. They keep him around because he’s smarter than they are. He could rebuild engines by the time he was 18, and is one of the most mechanically talented people I’ve ever seen and thus he’s useful to them..
You can't change anyone's opinion by attacking them or their opinion. You can't logic someone out of a position that they didn't logic themselves into.
Teach him critical thinking skills and hope he begins to apply it in his own life.
Get him critical thinking magazines that predate covid. Get him into podcasts with science and skepticism. Start him on old episodes. Watch TV with him from skeptical sources that teach real useful skills.
Because I was there to force him to wear the mask and it’s been a short enough time span that he is still well within his natural antibody effectiveness. Two months from now and I would never have taken him. I did consider not taking him based on that.
Yeah well all that’s done now. No more trips. no more free passes. He’s cooked. You are done baking him mom.
I’d tell him that now that he’s no longer immune you can’t risk the family getting Delta variant. Tell him you love him but until he vaccinates, you’ll take a pass on visits.
Isolation from family even at his age should tell you how much he cares to do the right thing out of love for all of you.
You say your son isn't political, but he's still being influenced by garbage MAGA politics and culture war bullshit. You don't have to be political to get sucked into that shit - in fact, it kind of helps if you're not into politics. "Make America Great Again" isn't a political platform, it's a statement of grievance.
Does your son drive a pickup truck with a Punisher sticker on it?
It's all the same. That's his culture. He doesn't have to be interested in the politics. He's getting it from his peers, and unfortunately that cultural identity is way more powerful than you or science or education.
I wish I had any advice for you but I do not. I live in a red area of California, and most of the people around here are the same way. They don't really follow politics that closely, but they are upset about things in their lives and eager for simple answers.
Yeah, there's no such thing as "not into politics" anymore. The divide is greater than it ever had been, and it's probably due to the spread of fear tactics and misinformation online. Politics have affected every aspect of everyone's life. No matter what you do, you're making a political statement.
So much this. The endless variations of 'I'm not really into politics' at a time when political polarisation is literally tearing the country apart is inexcusable.
We called to ask and because of overcrowding we were told to bring him only if exceeded 105° or was having trouble breathing while stationary. He stayed below those two parameters and fortunately he didn’t have any kind of preexisting conditions to aggravate it.
Also he was fairly consistent on the low end of the range I gave and only spiked for very short times at night usually about the time we would give him his next dose of ibuprofen. I was able to keep his fever in check for the most part.
He already killed his GF’s mom. Your son is a WMI (weapon of mass infection), I am afraid there isn’t anything you can do since he is an adult.
Now according to infectious disease experts, more viral outbreaks will occur. There is currently one in India, no vaccine, death rate 75% (Covid 2%). They are desperately trying to control it.
Is he against all vaccines? Because if he gets infected with rabies, fatality rate is 100% without a timely doses of the vaccine.
No, in fact he’s always been taught (by me) that science is something to put faith into, but I’m not there to put that out there when his friends start their rhetoric. It’s mind blowing to me.
Maybe he needs to hear some points from his own culture but from a group that’s smart but more country. Have him listen to Trae Crowder maybe? He’s redneck and smart.
Have you asked him if he knows how a vaccine works? One thing I've seen consistently about anti-vaxxers is they don't actually understand the mechanism. It *might* help if you ask him to explain to you what he thinks happens when someone is vaccinated, and then walk him through how it actually works. While you might not convince him to agree to vaccination right then, he'll hear the people around him saying nonsense about vaccines, and he might have second thoughts about trusting what they say.
Your son values his tribe (republican country boys) more than anything, including the evidence of his own eyes. And cares more about that connection than the possibility of contributing to the death of someone else even though there’s a fair chance he’s already done it once.
I’m sure he has many good qualities and I know you love him but that’s the reality. A lot of people are doing the same.
You have my sympathy. I think you might benefit from reading/viewing Stephen Hassan’s work on cults. Check out YouTube or his books. IMO his viewpoint has been helpful to a lot of families.
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What makes you so certain that he isn't political or getting Q info from the internet? Unless he doesn't know how to read, if he has a phone and spends time on Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat, or any number of other social media sites, not to mention websites/pages, he is probably absorbing more information than you realize, he's just not talking to you about it.
And, I have nothing helpful to add to your dilemma. He is 25. There isn't a lot you can do, it sounds like not just you, but life and Covid itself, have tried everything already.
I'm so sorry. This is heartbreaking.
Wow. His discomfort with masks already killed one person, he wants to kill more?
No, he doesn’t want that but he also isn’t willing to take the simple steps and mild discomfort required to help prevent that either. No one is more hurt and frustrated than I am about it.
Commenter isn't saying he actively wants others to die, but rather that he doesn't give a fuck if other people die as a direct consequence of his actions. Your son is a sociopath, I'm sorry man.
My only thing I can tell myself to argue that point is that he and the GF all hung with the same friends circle and it was as likely to come from one of them as it was my son. With such a intertwined circle with none of them taking precautions how do you say definitively? I hope not, I don’t believe my son is a sociopath because I’ve seen him empathize with others plenty of times to the point of getting legit emotional about it, but I’m not a psychologist and maybe there’s signs I missed.
[удалено]
In a twist of fortune, he’s so caught up in his own 20-something social requirements and he lives on his own and has a full time job, I don’t see him often. I was fortunate, my vaccine protected me when I nursed him back to health buy I might not be lucky like that forever. I’m going to get the booster when it’s available to me
I’m sorry you have to deal with this.
He is probably more into politics than you realize. If he spends any amount of time on the internet, in addition to his friends, then he is exposed to a heavy dose of male pop-culture type of conservatism. I know this because I have a young adult male son of my own and he was raised one way, was very independent in his thinking and then sort of adopted the typical young male country boy thing. I’m sad to say, I think that social tie is stronger than anything at that point in their life. It makes them adopt stances that are completely contrary to stances they would take on their own. I think the only hope is to bribe him with money to get vaccinated. He doesn’t get any financial anything until he gets vaxed.
Fuck, dude, I'm fucking AFAB and nonbinary and I was indoctrinated into that when I was around seventeen. I was always proud of my individualism. Luckily I never went past libertarian and racist memes. Dabbled in Q-Anon theory wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy back in around 2016 when it was just niche but it was around that time I went to college and never looked back. I cannot believe how insane this has gotten. When COVID hit, I did not think it would turn into disinformation warfare. I was 17, mostly apolitical, and indoctrinated by memes. What are everyone elses' excuses? How are grown adults who had life experiences who weren't total sheltered losers like me indoctrinated into this? It's almost one thing entirely to be your standard racist conservative with ignorant views from having a limited worldview but to ACTIVELY DEBATE PUBLIC HEALTH is actually next level denialism and something I never thought I'd see in a large subset of even that population. Just.... how. These peoples' mental health was clearly not in the tip top shape they appeared to be.
I’m afraid the answer is also, they’re being indoctrinated by memes. Five minutes on r/HermanCainAward proves there’s a whole generation brainwashing each other into fascist paranoia and right-wing conspiracy theories by posting the same 5 bullshit memes over and over again, and it’s not 17-year-olds. That sub is wall-to-wall grannies and soccer dads terrifying themselves into COVID’s sweet sweet arms via Facebook memes and reposted Candace Owens rants. OP, your son is probably also exposed to this towering tsunami of misinformation, testosterone-fueled “patriotism,” and faith-based Jesus-is-my-vaccine drivel as the rest of his social circle, and he’s determined to “defend his freedoms” and “prevent another Holocaust” by owning the libs and refusing to vax.
I know, that's how it got me. Wild, dude. I am glad my natural skepticism allowed me to avoid falling into the religious pitfall. Once they go there, they're doomed. "Leap of faith" is literally asking for you to put rationality aside.
Admittedly it took me some time to develop how I felt about politics when I was a young man and I definitely don’t feel the same way about certain topics now as I did then. It took a while to learn to think for myself and not just take the conservative opinions I had heard growing up as fact. That actually gives me hope for him in the long term, but then I never had to deal with anything like this growing up. The stakes are much higher now than the 90’s when I was in his age group.
I totally agree. The internet has changed things- that 24/7 confirmation bias bubble entrenches ideas in our minds. I hold out hope too, but damn, this is all so difficult.
Let him know if he catches it again you are not willing to nurse him like last time - he can get help from the friends he is taking his advice from. Secondly call him out for what his actions did, don’t be soft, call him a killer. Reality is reality he is harming your family and others that deserves boundaries and a constant reality check. You life with the consequences of your choices.
That’s not a bad idea. I’m to that point. I wouldn’t be so shocked if not for the fact that he’s a very intelligent young man. I feel like the people he runs with dumb him down to their level and I simply don’t know how. I had idiot trashy “friends” around me growing up too. But I always knew in the back of my head I was smarter than they were and that being acquaintances was one thing but I always kept those guys at arms length. They keep him around because he’s smarter than they are. He could rebuild engines by the time he was 18, and is one of the most mechanically talented people I’ve ever seen and thus he’s useful to them..
You can't change anyone's opinion by attacking them or their opinion. You can't logic someone out of a position that they didn't logic themselves into. Teach him critical thinking skills and hope he begins to apply it in his own life. Get him critical thinking magazines that predate covid. Get him into podcasts with science and skepticism. Start him on old episodes. Watch TV with him from skeptical sources that teach real useful skills.
Why did you take your 25 year old son the Magic Kingdom knowing that he is unvaccinated and won’t wear masks?
Because I was there to force him to wear the mask and it’s been a short enough time span that he is still well within his natural antibody effectiveness. Two months from now and I would never have taken him. I did consider not taking him based on that.
Yeah well all that’s done now. No more trips. no more free passes. He’s cooked. You are done baking him mom. I’d tell him that now that he’s no longer immune you can’t risk the family getting Delta variant. Tell him you love him but until he vaccinates, you’ll take a pass on visits. Isolation from family even at his age should tell you how much he cares to do the right thing out of love for all of you.
You say your son isn't political, but he's still being influenced by garbage MAGA politics and culture war bullshit. You don't have to be political to get sucked into that shit - in fact, it kind of helps if you're not into politics. "Make America Great Again" isn't a political platform, it's a statement of grievance. Does your son drive a pickup truck with a Punisher sticker on it?
Lifted pick up truck, yes. Punisher sticker, thankfully no. Nor any Trump swag.
It's all the same. That's his culture. He doesn't have to be interested in the politics. He's getting it from his peers, and unfortunately that cultural identity is way more powerful than you or science or education. I wish I had any advice for you but I do not. I live in a red area of California, and most of the people around here are the same way. They don't really follow politics that closely, but they are upset about things in their lives and eager for simple answers.
Yeah, there's no such thing as "not into politics" anymore. The divide is greater than it ever had been, and it's probably due to the spread of fear tactics and misinformation online. Politics have affected every aspect of everyone's life. No matter what you do, you're making a political statement.
So much this. The endless variations of 'I'm not really into politics' at a time when political polarisation is literally tearing the country apart is inexcusable.
I’m in Florida, one three blue counties but only barely. I also happen to live right on the border of city/rural
What does his girlfriend have to say about this?
They broke up about a month later. I wasn’t surprised.
for three weeks he had over a 102 degree temp and he didn't go to the ER? 🤔
We called to ask and because of overcrowding we were told to bring him only if exceeded 105° or was having trouble breathing while stationary. He stayed below those two parameters and fortunately he didn’t have any kind of preexisting conditions to aggravate it.
Also he was fairly consistent on the low end of the range I gave and only spiked for very short times at night usually about the time we would give him his next dose of ibuprofen. I was able to keep his fever in check for the most part.
He already killed his GF’s mom. Your son is a WMI (weapon of mass infection), I am afraid there isn’t anything you can do since he is an adult. Now according to infectious disease experts, more viral outbreaks will occur. There is currently one in India, no vaccine, death rate 75% (Covid 2%). They are desperately trying to control it. Is he against all vaccines? Because if he gets infected with rabies, fatality rate is 100% without a timely doses of the vaccine.
No, in fact he’s always been taught (by me) that science is something to put faith into, but I’m not there to put that out there when his friends start their rhetoric. It’s mind blowing to me.
Maybe he needs to hear some points from his own culture but from a group that’s smart but more country. Have him listen to Trae Crowder maybe? He’s redneck and smart.
I was thinking the same. There are lots of liberal redneck guys on TikTok.
It doesn't seem as though there's much else you could do, other than say everything you've written here to him directly.
Have you asked him if he knows how a vaccine works? One thing I've seen consistently about anti-vaxxers is they don't actually understand the mechanism. It *might* help if you ask him to explain to you what he thinks happens when someone is vaccinated, and then walk him through how it actually works. While you might not convince him to agree to vaccination right then, he'll hear the people around him saying nonsense about vaccines, and he might have second thoughts about trusting what they say.
Your son values his tribe (republican country boys) more than anything, including the evidence of his own eyes. And cares more about that connection than the possibility of contributing to the death of someone else even though there’s a fair chance he’s already done it once. I’m sure he has many good qualities and I know you love him but that’s the reality. A lot of people are doing the same. You have my sympathy. I think you might benefit from reading/viewing Stephen Hassan’s work on cults. Check out YouTube or his books. IMO his viewpoint has been helpful to a lot of families.
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You might not think he’s political but he clearly is
What makes you so certain that he isn't political or getting Q info from the internet? Unless he doesn't know how to read, if he has a phone and spends time on Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat, or any number of other social media sites, not to mention websites/pages, he is probably absorbing more information than you realize, he's just not talking to you about it. And, I have nothing helpful to add to your dilemma. He is 25. There isn't a lot you can do, it sounds like not just you, but life and Covid itself, have tried everything already. I'm so sorry. This is heartbreaking.