Covid denying friend had a meltdown over me getting vaccinated

Buddy Bubs wrote: »

She will probably think she's operating on a higher intellectual level than everyone else and won't respect your opinion. Calling you a sheep etc and not having your own opinion.
I have a family member exactly as you described. I have ignored them for last 4 months, no contact after initially trying to talk them around but realized it was a waste of time.
Same craic, YouTube videos from people claiming to be doctors etc. You should hear the mad ideas that they believe, absolute madness.
Her being an employee complicates things a lot.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

id say she's just a bit embarassed with her carry on and at least she apoligised

The fear of "shedding" is scientifically with merit aparently,but difficult to credit in light of attending anti-lockdown protests etc

If it was me,id just let it be one of those embarassing things that never gets spoken about again....theres no value for anyone raking over this again

"For those who have fallen deep down the conspiracy rabbit hole, getting out again can be a very long process.

"Be realistic about what you can achieve," psychologist Jovan Byford warns. "Conspiracy theories instil in believers a sense of superiority. It's an important generator of self-esteem - which will make them resistant to change."

Don’t engage with her anymore on the subject.

” We’ve already discussed this at length, we are not going to agree. I’d be grateful if you’d respect my wishes that I no longer want to spend time speaking with you or anybody on the topic, thanks.”

if they mentioned it again.. “ sorry but you are now actively jeprodisring our friendship, as I clearly requested this is not a subject which I want to have further discussion with you, please respect this, it’s a private health matter, I’ll only be spending time speaking with my doctor on this subject, thanks.”

See , this whole attitude of

"I don't want to work with you because your vaccinated but don't force me to dine outside because I'm not vaccinated"

It really annoys me! And I don't agree with stopping unvaxxed people dining indoors but then unvaxxed people want to segregate vaccinated people. Where is the logic.

Anyway OP, I have a friend who dosnt agree with vaccines, she's actually one of my best friends, we often have vaccine discussions (long before covid) but we both know how fat to go and respecting each others views. You need to draw a line with your friend and refuse to discuss these things, the only alternative is to ignore her and end the friendship.

Wait, so she is a covid denier and believes the virus is just a flu but at the same time is so scared of the virus, because as you said she is worried you will shed the virus after your vaccinated and may infect her? This makes no sense.

It appears why she got so upset is because with the new of you getting vaccinated that she will get sick from it.

So then she knows the risks of the virus and how sick it can make her and she know she is vulnerable with her asthma.

I am in the same situation with my friend, he is believing spoons are sticking to people.

He believes that everything but real information, I am done with speaking to him about covid related topic and he if doesn’t shutup I will be done speaking altogether.

Don’t bring her to your GP, don’t speak anymore about covid or the vaccine or any medical related topics, she has her views and that’s that.

I am not sure why there is so many people like this all of a sudden it is very scary, they have to grow up get jabbed and get on with it.

Hi everyone OP here, thanks again for all the replies, I checked back in on the thread during the outage to re-read the thread once or twice. 

Well, to give you an update, after working from home for the week my friend asked to meet up to have a chat on the weekend. We met and she was deeply apologetic about her behaviour, she said she was very embarrassed and felt terrible about it all week. She said it wasn't an excuse but she lost the run of herself and her emotions got the better of her. 

I said that it was okay and not to worry, I told her that the main thing for me wasn't one drunken incident but the fact that this whole thing is going way too far. I had hoped that it would be a wake up call for her but unfortunately that doesn't appear to be the case. Whatever regrets she has about her reaction on the night do not extend to any of her views that may have driven that reaction. 

I asked her if she wanted to talk to a GP, but she said GPs don't know about this stuff and while they know about general medicine, if they can't answer her questions about the vaccine it'll make her feel worse. She said she doesn't think the government / HSE are corrupt per se, but very misguided.

She said she DID talk to a doctor (an MD rather than GP, so I knew it'd be suspect) who advised her on the vaccine 'shedding' period, she made reference to him being a proponent of 'terrain theory' which I looked up and sure enough it has crossover with anti-vaccination views. So, she found one of the only doctors who is anti-vaccination and sought advice from them about this and in the week since, she even paid to sign up to their seminar where they'll go into more information about covid19 vaccines. 

From this I tried explaining that with the internet being the internet, she is determining her own outcome here and driving herself further down the rabbit hole and the path she is on will result in her being more afraid and more isolated. She said if it was a choice of living by herself on a mountain and taking the vaccine, she'd choose the mountain.

I told her that I feel she's acting out of fear, and reminded her that at the start of the pandemic we were both terrified and that I feel she went looking for reassurance that the virus wasn't real and she found the answers she was looking for, because internet. She feels that everyone else is allowing themselves to be blindly lead and not questioning anything. 

She said that she didn't tell her counsellor about the meltdown because it's too embarrassing. 

She said she’s trying to take the view to ‘live with it’, that all of this stuff is beyond her control and she is just going to have to take it as it comes and try not to let it affect her, to live and let live. 

Personally I’m trying to hold the same view but when it does flare up I find it hard. I see it as pure wilful ignorance and complete arrogance, acting through pure bias. The nature of our friendship is that we are quite close and with work as well there is the element of depending on each other too, but this makes me really question her capacity in some professional aspects and whether you can maintain a meaningful friendship with someone with such an elephant in the room. I’m torn between going all out and sitting down with her to let her express and debate her views in a more academic/structured way, or making an appointment for her with a GP, or just trying to ignore it all for now and as some of you have suggested just completely ban the topic entirely. If the latter I know it’ll reemerge at some point though and it’ll be back to 2 weeks ago. 

It’s actually a common mental issue at the minute, a friend of mine has lost the plot over it

OP, it’s quite worrying that she doesn’t want to tell her therapist about the meltdown because its embarrassing. This signals she is not willing to accept or take ownership of her issues and therefore will continue to be a drain of a ‘friend’. I know we need to support our friends through thick and thin, but this one is willingly being obtuse.

Thanks for reporting back OP.

It sounds like your friend is a lost cause for now. She can’t face the cognitive dissonance that would come from listening to reasoned argument from the opposing view about covid and vaccines and feels secure only in her bubble.

You cannot fix her.

It's that simple. All you can do is let her know that you are there for her when she comes back to dealing with reality and make sure she doesn’t put you or any other employees in harm’s way.

OP, your biggest problem is that your work and personal lives are so intertwined. This is exactly why nobody should ever employ family or friends and I think you're now coming to learn that the hard way. I don't know how you'd broach the conversation but it would be better for all concerned if your friend moved on and found another job. I doubt very much that she will ever fully emerge from the conspiracy theory rabbit hole that she has burrowed herself into. Even if she gets herself out of the current predicament by catching and recovering from Covid (which could be unpleasant for her if she's asthmatic), something else is inevitably going to come along. You should assume that you're not going to be getting your old friend back.

It's possible to ignore a friend's viewpoint when we don't agree with them (I daresay we all do this) but when it impinges on your work life, it's an entirely different matter. Already you've said that it's starting to make you question her professional abilities. I can see that continuing to niggle at you. You haven't said what the size and nature of your business are (and you don't have to) but your friend could do damage to it. You could lose other good staff members or customers over this. If she deals with other colleagues or the public, they won't be happy with her refusal to wear a mask. And if she's the sort of person who is vocal about her anti-vax views and makes her thoughts known to others, they're not going to appreciate that. They mightn't say anything to you but might quietly take their business elsewhere.

OP here again, thanks again everyone for all of your input. Back with another update and to once again get all of this off my chest.

We met up yesterday to do some work together at my apartment. We chatted about what we did over the weekend and she said she didn't do much, but then later remembered that she was actually at the protests on the weekend, and met with people from a group of similarly minded people that she's in. Since she was in my apartment and because I have my next vaccine dose coming up I asked her was she hanging out with these people indoors or outdoors. She refused to answer so I told her she should leave. She got super upset and accused me of labelling her as a leper. She demanded an apology and said that if I don't apologise there would be "dire consequences".

I actually regret giving in to her on this but after she said that she met them outdoors and there was only 2 of them I apologised for how I expressed my concerns to her, in order to calm things down, which they did, but of course the old topic continued from there. The initial and civil proposal was that at some stage we should have a calm/respectful debate around a single topic where she would present me with an argument and the challenge would be on me to disprove it - she agreed that if the numbers/data were worthy, they would stand up to scrutiny.

This was to happen "at some stage", but on the day the conversation progressed such that various websites and articles were being brought up. Well, I have to say that it gave me a fairly depressing insight into all of this - I was shocked at the low standard of quality, skepticism or due diligence that she was giving towards her acceptance and endorsement of these "resources of truth". The criteria just seemed to be "I believe it because it contradicts the mainstream, and I know the mainstream is corrupt" and "I believe it because there's no commercial incentive behind presenting this information".

One resource would argue that Covid isn't a threat, while another would argue that vaccines are ineffective against the threat of Covid. So, yeah.

She would fire up a video and a quick Google would show plenty of articles debunking the claims, but her response was one of mockery that of course they're trying to cover up the truth, and of course they're going to seek to discredit anyone who disagrees with them.

Another video of a scientist predicting widespread genocide from mass vaccination, who she totally respects as a scientist - when asked why she respects him over others, she has no answer.

Throughout the day the amount of contradictions, cognitive dissonance and inability to back up any points was honestly saddening. I had assumed that after all of this time she was applying some kind of academic approach to all of this. It made me sad that this is what she had got herself caught up in over the past year and a half, and this was all she had to show for it - a contradictory hodgepodge of articles and videos with no consistency, no structure, no concrete argument.

At one point I showed her a video of news reports of India's 2nd wave (for anyone who hasn't seen it it's fairly harrowing stuff) - my hope was that it might shock her into reality by seeing the devastation the virus can cause when there are no societal protections in place that we have the privilege of. She was completely unaware of what's been going on in India, but her response was to brush it off as mainstream media, that it could all be misleading (I don't know how you can immediately dismiss makeshift mass-crematoriums in car parks as misleading, but here we are), and then brought up a video of an anti-mainstream website interviewing a guy "from the ground" who gave no compelling counter argument whatsoever, but the message being that MSM is corrupt therefore wrong, therefore exaggerating the crisis, etc etc which of course she was happy to side with.

The most frustrating thing however was when she showed me a paper published by WHO. I asked her why is she sending me this, when she had said before that WHO are corrupt and untrustworthy - and from this I learned that she actually doesn't believe in any of this science anyway, because she believes in a thing called "terrain theory" which argues that there is no such thing as a virus either way, and that even the scientists whose papers she sent me she doesn't agree with on the fundamentals. Her view was that she wanted to show me stuff that is in line with my reality, my response was simple - send me something you're willing to stand over. She couldn't. This crossed a serious line for me.

She can have whatever views she wants but the thought of her having put us both through so much grief these past months, so much conflict and stress, driven through these random articles and videos she's been sending me which she doesn't even believe in in the first place.

Later that evening I texted her to say we're never going to reach a middle ground, and to avoid any further hostility or arguments I don't wish to ever discuss it again. She agreed it was for the best, then texted me in the morning saying while she doesn't agree with me getting my 2nd dose, she respects my decision to and that she'll be there if I need her. I responded to remind her that I asked her not to discuss the topic again, that I don't want to hear about her respect, that it doesn't involve her and to please leave me alone about it.

That's it for me now. I don't know where things will go from here, but I know that she's so deep down the rabbit hole that there really doesn't seem to be any reaching her. It was an eyeopener. My view is that it's all just very sad, the work that she's been doing on all of this for months on end is sad, the grief and conflict and absolute waste of time, stress and energy is sad, the utterly pointless conflicts we've had are sad, her cutting herself away from society in pursuit of her beliefs is sad. I think she needs help, but I know she's not going to seek it.

She's a good friend so I do want her in my life, but this issue has had a big impact and will remain the elephant in the room. We'll see if it's doable to maintain a friendship under such circumstances. I had thought it would be worth attempting a sit down discussion of the issue. It came about in not-ideal circumstances, but it's done now and I've now drawn the line on it all. And yes, I'm still reflecting on my decision there re apologising and questioning my response. I'm probably too caught up in it all myself. I do appreciate the advice and input.

This...exactly.

What is the point of being friends with this person? What are you getting from the relationship, it doesn't sound healthy at all, leave them to it

To make it easier, OP? Tell this woman she either has to get the vaccine or leave! 😈See how fast she'll behave herself then...

OP, she is not your friend when she can completely disregard your health. And why did you have her over in your apartment anyway. You knew you were waiting for your vaccine and you know her thoughts on it. It doesn't matter if she was at the protests herself, she is at risk of catching covid at the shops and can and will visit you unvaccinated. You allowed that.

Time to put distance between you two. Not just no vaccine discussion. Get rid of her and her threats to you.