Voting at Eurovision is not like voting in an election

I admit, I didn’t watch Eurovision last night. In fact, I haven’t watched Eurovision in quite a few years. One of the big reasons is its transition from a fun little Europewide song contest to a serious political platform. Somehow, I doubt that Bucks Fizz or Abba would have had their famous wins singing about Black Lives Matter. That, and the phenonemon of block voting whereupon voters, unable to vote for their own countries, vote for surrounding nations. I think this should be banned, or at least given some kind of handicap at the tallying stage.

But I know Ukraine won, to the surprise of nobody. A record televoting points tally too. I was watching Sky News earlier and even they admitted that it was about politics and not music. When you value sympathy over merit, you do a disservice to Eurovision, the people of Ukraine and music in general. Ukraine has been very successful in recent years, but would this “folk rap” have won in any other year? I think not.

In recent years, “virtue signalling” has become a household term. It refers to the caring about hot-button political issues just for the optics rather than having any real feelings about it. We see it every June with companies adopting rainbow logos (more often than not now, the “progress” variant with black and brown and/or the stripes from the transgender pride flag. I’ve discussed my misgivings with lumping in being black or “brown” with sexual orientation- as well as with rainbowwashed capitalism in general- here) .

Virtue signalling accelerated early in the pandemic, when businesses added face masks to their logos to show “they were with you” when they weren’t. Weeks later, an unarmed black man called George Floyd was murdered by a cop. In any other year, corporations would never have felt the need to address something that was so political. But again this was during coronavirus, where the personal became very, very political, and so every single faceless entity wrote rambling social media posts about how they “stood with the black community”, sometimes donating a token amount to organisations benefitting said community (but hardly divesting from the projects that were destroying African villages. Clearly those black lives didn’t matter much to them).

It is now expected of everyone, from the biggest corporations to the Twitter user with two followers, to show “solidarity” with the cause of the week. Since February this has been Ukraine, a country many of these people probably couldn’t even locate on a map prior to this year. We are told that such issues are “not political issues, but human rights concerns”, even though human rights is inherently political. Do you think winning a TV talent show is going to help Danylo and Halyna put food on the table? Is that Ukrainian flag emoji going to do the same? It used to be that the best entry won, but not anymore. I’m not denying that there are likely many people out there who liked the song better than any of the others, but they are drowned out by those craving the optics of voting for the cause celebre.

And as for the people getting tattoos of Ukrainian symbols despite having not one drop of Ukrainian blood…

My experience with COVID

Yes, I finally tested positive about a week ago and had extremely mild symptoms. Began returning negative tests this Monday yet am still dealing with some lingering issues.

A quick background: A person who I live with had tested positive the previous Monday (18/4). I kept testing negative throughout that week in spite of my developing a cold. I did not test from Wednesday 20/4 to Thursday 28/4 due to scarcity of tests, when I was required to for an activity. By this time, the cold had completely cleared up. I was under the impression that I was constantly throwing up false negatives, and then BAM.

The course which followed was extremely uneventful. The Friday it just felt like I had bad hayfever. I seriously could not believe there was anything “wrong”- the only sideeffect was some tiredness. About the most unpleasant symptom was a feeling of “hair” in my throat, as well as excess phlegm. I also suffered some mild chest and GI discomfort. Based on other peoples’ experiences (generally, a week between initial infection and symptoms followed by a week of symptoms or testing positive) I estimate that I caught the coronavirus on 18/4. That day I had had extensive contact with the person in the household who tested positive due to watching a televised football match with them. I am uncertain to when I would have become contagious because, as stated, I did not test between 20/4 and 28/4. What I do know is that I began returning negative tests beginning this Tuesday.

I’m still more tired than I was before infection, I still get GI discomfort and phlegm from time to time, but this has been an incredibly, incredibly mild course. Kenahora, I should not develop any unsavoury sideeffects. While there are some people determined to smear me as an antivaxxer based on my lockdown skepticism, I am far from such and would like to thank my jab for keeping my symptoms mild. The other person in the household also had a very mild course when usually even common colds go straight to their chest, and they can also have the jab to thank for that. The really good thing now is that I have antibodies for two different strains- the older Delta variant and this BA.2 variant. I haven’t been wearing masks in public for about a month, and I don’t see myself doing so for a long time now.

I’m surprised I hadn’t caught an earlier strain (to my knowledge) or even Omicron. Last winter I had about four colds and I reckoned the chances were high that one was Omicron or a sublineage rather than a “true” cold, but apparently not. I do suffer from iron deficency which could explain not only the excess tiredness but the multiple episodes of colds due to impaired immune function (I normally catch one or two colds in winter and maybe one in summer). I had also been in various high-risk situations, which contributed to my presumption that I’d had O.

So now I continue with my life, safe in the knowledge that I’m probably immune to the worst of the virus.