Ask Lemmy

Kind of. Father has turned into a religious right Trump supporting nutjob. COVID is bs, vaccine 'changed your DNA', etc. He's 80 now, and the sad part is he used to be a science teacher.

And then he got leukemia. Because of his BS rhetoric, my mother and brother who live with him couldn't visit him in the hospital because they all refused to get the vaccine. My brother almost lost his job over it.

Anyways get this: my dad got COVID while he was in the middle of chemo with zero white blood cell count, and recovered in like 3 days! And .. is in remission from leukemia and has stopped chemo.

So I mean he's really damned lucky, but this all just reinforces his view that COVID was nothing and he made the right choice. Meanwhile he spams my inbox with alt right bullshit all day. The fact I live in a different country and only see him once a year keeps things cordial I think.

Not family, probably because my father passed away just before the pandemic. But it has changed friendships forever. I was surprised by the lack of empathy from people. Like the mild inconvenience of wearing a mask was worse than people dying…

Yes and no.

My parents are thankfully at the age at which they just don't give much of a shit. They think that there was a lot of shady political shenanigans surrounding the whole thing (and I'd say they're objectively correct about that), but they cynically expect that and mostly ignore it. They talked to their doctors and came to understand that covid is real, and dangerous, and that the vaccines do have some risks, but the benefits outweigh the risks, and that was enough for them to take it seriously and take proper precautions.

My brothers on the other hand...

I'm the oldest of three, and they're both... well... angry, spiteful, delusional, Fox News and talk radio consuming, gun-toting, Trump-voting, road-raging reactionaries. So they both lined right up and marched in lockstep with the expected dogma, to my complete lack of surprise.

So yes - our relations have been strained over it, but really it's not quite accurate to say that it's because of that, since that's just one of the many, many MANY things on which we disagree.

For us, the topics just changed. After Covid, they started to talk Pro-Putin bullshit, probably Q-Anon related. It's honestly shocking to see people who I once thought of as intelligent turn brainwashed. We rarely talk anymore, and if we do, it's very superficial.

I got my shots in secret due to needing them, didn't tell my family (they went full Q) until a recent health crisis had me hopeful admitting to it would get a member to get their shots (they're hilariously high risk).

It did not work, but they shut up about all of the BS and basically exclude me from it now. So I will say it's a win; they also shifted goal posts so I'm no longer going to die, be sterile, or autistic from getting shots.

I frequently have to nodd and smile along to people trying to tell me an illness that hospitalised and almost killed my brother didn't exist or was overreacted to . It's easier than trying to change minds at this point.

My family became very Anti-Vax during that time. My wife and I had just had a newborn about a year in to the pandemic and demanded everyone get their vaccines before they got to be around the baby.

My parents didn't get any and didn't see the baby for a while.

Then when we did start seeing them, they had completely lost their minds. Blatantly racist, blatantly homophobic. Even when it wasn't things political, it felt like they had forgotten how to properly talk to people in an appropriate way. My mother made comments about my DAD having relations with my wife and that the baby wasn't mine.

I know they watch Fox, I know my mother watches a bunch of far right-wing YouTubers. All of it has led to them barely being functioning adults.

I'm still friendly with my in-laws, but I will never respect or trust them in quite the same way.

They're very liberal and proud to "believe the science!", always making fun of conservative anti-vaxxers.

And yet, during a major COVID wave, they went bar hopping without telling us (we were all going to a family member's wedding, so my partner and I were trying to be VERY cautious and avoid bringing any germs to this wedding). Then they coughed all night without bothering to test. And once they tested positive, they started googling different countries' COVID policies looking for any guidance that would "let" them go to the wedding. With the bride's 90-year-old grandpa in attendance.

On the plane ride back, I emphasized the importance of wearing N-95s in case we were still contagious ... but as soon as I got up to pee, I realized they were both napping UNMASKED.

But somehow they're not the problem. If only those stupid Trumpies would wear masks, then we wouldn't have a pandemic.

We had an awkward semi-falling out over this at the time. And yet, the next time we visited his family, people were coughing all over the place AGAIN, and no one had tested AGAIN. (This was over the holidays, so I would have been "stuck" there and unable to see my own family if anyone actually had COVID, which thankfully they didn't this time.)

At this point, I've just come to understand and accept it. His parents were always the fun ones - they have people over all the time, they'll cook for you, they can hold their liquor, they'll light up a joint while blasting Grateful Dead. They're also politically vocal and super woke for their age.

But don't expect them to be honest if it might interrupt their fun. Don't rely on them. Because really, they only care about other people when it's either fashionable or convenient.