Last Week's Most Active Threads

On Sundays I generally discuss the most active threads of the past week. However, all but three of the top 15 were previously included in daily posts. So, today's threads will be limited to the three remaining topics. The first of those was titled, "Covid permanently harms immune system, repeat infections increase damage" and posted in the "Health and Medicine" forum. The original poster links to an article in Canada's National Post newspaper about findings by Ontario public health officials concerning changes in immune cells in some of those infected by COVID-19. The original poster overstates the findings and ignores the caveats included in the article. Based on a very superficial look at the responses in the thread, I think the attitudes towards COVID among those replying have hardened to the point where few posters are open to new information. Essentially, everyone simply promotes their previously held viewpoint. Some posters doubt the findings, some don't care, and some question the source. But, those with preexisting strong concerns about COVID, see this as justifying their worries. A few posters argue for moderate, nuanced approaches, but they are largely drowned out. I fear that we are rapidly reaching a point where COVID is another topic that is not really worth discussing on DCUM. Posters, like the original poster in this instance, are so eager to spread awareness of COVID dangers that they misrepresent or overstate scientific findings. This reinforces allegations that they are simply fearmongering and causes others to tune out. Those who have basically given up on doing anything about COVID interpret everything to support their point of view regardless. If a finding is that COVID is not serious, they don't want to take preventative measures because the COVID is not serious. If the finding is that COVID is very harmful, they don't want to take precautions because it will kill you anyway and there is nothing you can do about it. We basically have two groups that don't want to hear each other.

The second thread was posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. Titled, "If H takes this job, it’s going to break me.", the original poster explains that she and her husband have a long-running conflict about the divison of domestic labor with her husband largely refusing or ignoring any chores at home. In the midst of this, the original poster's husband has been offered a six-month trial opportunity that could make or break his career, but would be very demanding. The original poster told her husband that she could not support his taking the opportunity unless he could improve his time management skills and carry his weight at home. This led to a big fight between the two and the original poster is basically asking if she was wrong in this situation. The thread is 16 pages long and I am not going to put much effort into reading it. But, from what I have read most posters think the husband is not going to change and it is useless to expect otherwise. Posters differ in how to respond to that reality, however. Of course, no thread of this sort would be complete without suggestions to divorce, and such advice is provided in multiple posts on the first page. Others suggest sucking it up for six months in the hope that a resulting salary increase would enable them to afford outsourcing many of the tasks. In a late update, the original poster disclosed that she has left their house for a couple of days so that her husband can see what life without her is like. As far as I can tell, there has been no update since then so we are left with a cliffhanger.

Because all the other topics in the top 15 most active threads of the past week have already been discused in one of the daily posts, this will be the last thread for today. Titled, "Dax Tejera’s widow’s arrest for child endangerment" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum, I had to Google to find out who Dax Tejera was and why his widow's arrest would be worth discussing. It turns out that Tejera was an ABC News executive producer who died of a heart attack last month. His wife says that she left their 2-year-old and 5-month-old daughters alone in a hotel room while she accompanied her husband to a hospital in an ambulance. She was subsequently charged with child endangerment. However, it appears that Tejera and his wife had left the children alone before he suffered the heart attack and the couple were away from the hotel when Tejera collapsed. His widow has explained that she monitored the children via camera. Posters largely agree that the two children should not have been left alone. While there is disagreement about the child endangerment charges, opinions seem to strongly favor the charges being warranted. Much of the discussion appears to surround the mechanics of children being alone in a hotel room and exactly what dangers they might face. Some posters also express irritation toward the widow for immediately asking for contributions to the kids' college funds, seeing this as exploitative of the tragedy.