Thread by @1goodtern

I had a catch up with an old friend yesterday.

He works on WHO programmes to reduce the global burden of long term illnesses.

This is probably a more interesting thread than I thought it was going to be.

We met decades ago, when my main thing was engineering interventions for transmissible disease, especially:
Clean water
Clean air

Yesterday I mostly pumped him for information.
😂

None of which I'm going to share with you, because that doesn't seem right, but I am going to share with you the same insight that I shared with him:

That he's a shameless yes man who has betrayed his scientific curiosity, the precautionary principle, and his own family's health in exchange for career advancement, reputation, and financial reward.

He took it well.

But I also told him that, even worse, he and all his colleagues are hopelessly enculturated.

That opened his eyes, because he's worked on four continents and thinks of himself as a citizen of the world.

So I explained it to him.

He cannot see that the culture around him ignores airborne infectious disease.

He is enculturated in the idea that we can not and should not and must not prevent the circulation of airborne infectious disease.

He is enculturated in it at work, and he is enculturated in it at home.

He lives in a country that denies airborne infectious disease transmission to the extent that it tells people to wash their hands to stop spreading it, and tells kids to attend school when sick.

He works for an organisation that for years actively and aggressively shouted down the idea that covid was airborne.

But it's not just his country and his work.

It's all the details of both.

The wine club and dinner parties, the conferences and international flights, the wider family skiing holiday and the yacht club.

He can't leave them or change the way he does them.

Or even imagine a world where they are different or he is without them.

He is enculturated in the world where we prevent waterborne disease, but we don't prevent airborne disease.

He is immersed in the culture of a world where airborne disease is not just tolerated, but actively encouraged.

Where transmission is not just accepted, but obliged.

Like I said, he's a shameless yes man.

No backbone, no spine, allergic to sticking out or appearing different.

His head never above the parapet for a split second.

This hypocritical denial of the danger of airborne disease (his current and former employers have world class papaya) laboratory grade ventilation and air filtration in the buildings he works in) is paired with a denial of the dangers of repeat infection.

His wife is retiring early due to new onset chronic illness.

He's younger than me and cutting back on his hours due to 'exhaustion'.

But he cannot accept even the possibility that our society is doing things the wrong way.

Because he is *enculturated*.

He is saturated in the culture.

Unable to see that he's in it.

Unable to see its flaws.

Unable to see its dangers.

He's unable to see a way out if it, or any need for a way out of it.

And almost every WHO colleague, breakfast TV presenter, influencer, politician, teacher, doctor, lawyer, prison guard, sales assistant is trapped in there with him.

We live in a society that refuses to believe that it needs to change.

And nobody even knows.