9 Comments

Glad to hear you made the decision to explore your ideas/options in MT! I'm excited to learn more about your adventures.

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Have you written in greater detail what happened between you and your school? If so, please tell her I can find it. If not, may I ask for more details? Your experience seems so close to mine.

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Hey Kitsune, I don't think I've written too much on the work situation in Japan beyond these two: https://shumway.substack.com/p/12-no-mask-no-vax-no-job / https://shumway.substack.com/p/sayonara-japan-part-2

Reading your stack I see a lot of similarities indeed.

I'm behind schedule getting things sorted here for Montana life, but hope to have yours and Guy Gin's interview up soon!

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Just gonna have to find a way to watch the video. From the little you did right i can tell you took the harder route to maskless living. I believe it is harder to stop that it is to not start when it comes to following stupid requirements. I learned this sometime earlier in life and with my certification in respirator use, knew not to start and have had my fears that once people started masking, that the habit would never go away.

Picking up the 10 year old from cram school now three nights a week. More kids leave the school masked than unmasked.

Today, Feb 29, 2024, I received a survey from the med school. They want to know our thoughts on continuing all the madness they have had us under go these past 4 years; mask requirements, zoom classes for elective classes, Mokushoku (eating in silence for your non Japanese abled readers) and all the rest. They are still spooked by the infection rate here.

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Hey that's encouraging that at least they are asking. Give 'em hell!

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Yes, but why is a medical school even contemplating starting a 5th year of masking and zoom classes?

Watched the video late last night after everyone else went to bed and had difficulty getting to sleep. Will write a more thorough response later, for now I’d like to ask if you have electronic versions of the materials you produced that you show in the video?

Also, I don’t know why I feel this is important, but I am curious about the time line of the events of your story. As I mentioned during the interview, no one said anything to me about being unmasked for the first 18 months of the madness, then suddenly every one was giving me grief over it. I have no idea what brought that about nor of the timing of it but it could not have been a coincidence.

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To reiterate, you are unique among all I know or have met, with your actions over the mask. Among those who are against masks, you and I are the only too I know who have refused to wear them regardless of the cost. While my situation has not been anything other than extremely difficult, your path to anti masking was more difficult. It is my belief that as hard as it is to stand up to the peer pressure to do something one’s training and certification demand should not be done, it is harder to resist this pressure after having initially gone alone with it. Knowing this, I feared that once submitted to, masking would be woven into society’s norms. This fear seems to have been borne out.

I am interested to learn how you came to give up the mask and how you were able to make the decisions you made over masking and stick with them. I know no one else who has done as you have.

I have also been insulated from the vax issue. All my students are adults and the college students have already had their clot shots before I meet them for the first time. Not limited to the clot shot either. The female med students are required to get the HPV vaccine too. I have had one student get cervical cancer despite (because of?) this vaccine. But they get these and others before I have any opportunity to try to persuade them. Doubt I would be persuasive anyway, as refusing these shots means they cannot attend class and thus abandon their desires to become doctors. I have tried to steer my private students away from them without success, but again, they are adults. I would not be able to stay with any organization that promoted them for children.

You spoke of the nervousness and other emotions you experienced while standing up and speaking out against the madness and the difficulty you have in describing the situation. No one who has not stood up and said “No.” when no one else would can comprehend what it is like to do so. It cannot be described.

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Thinking back on what I wrote earlier, I fear the following may be taken as criticism when I mean to communicate that I too would not have been able to continue there: “I would not be able to stay with any organization that promoted them for children.”

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Quite the contrary. I appreciate everything you wrote.

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