if anybody made a boomer psa after all feel free to link me...

[cimorene]

My parents seemed to be doing fine with their relative isolation and have got masks for when my mom runs errands, so of course now my sister's mother-in-law wants to go from Dallas to Baton Rouge to stay with my sister and her husband, NOW, for two weeks.

UM??????

This is my reaction and my sister's reaction, but my sister's sister-in-law thinks the MIL should FLY there (because it's approx 8 hrs by car) and my sister is like "She shouldn't come and she DEFINITELY should not fly there because duh"... so my sister's husband is now mad at her and accusing her of "just not wanting to see his mom"... even though my sister wanted to invite her mother-in-law to visit them last Christmas and HE vetoed due to not wanting to see her.

So to make all this even better, of course my mom is in the family chat arguing that it would "probably be fine" because maybe if she's "careful" she won't be exposed to other people in gas stations that much and besides, "you go to the store and in to the office occasionally anyway", and besides, she sort of might NEED to visit because in spite of having a boyfriend and local child she "might be lonely" and that might make her "depressed".

Comments

Wow, and also a link

[stranger]

Here's a Captain Awkward post addressing exactly this pandemic-related problem:
here

Good luck to you with the family drama, and stay as safe as you can.

Re: Wow, and also a link

[cimorene]

Thanks! That post actually includes scripts for this situation and would've answered exactly her complaints - persuading that it's not safe, explaining why X reason isn't an exception, even another whole essay in there about interstate travel to visit family!

I shared it with my family though and my sister got mad claiming that she "understands the issue" and "doesn't need it explained to her" even though she had also just said she wasn't ready to "push it" and is just trying to PERSUADE him.🙃

This may not help, it's just me ranting

[stranger]

Wow again. (To your sister, who is stuck with far too much family cross-talk.)

Maybe the short version is: Sister *doesn't* want to see her MIL -- at the price of MIL possibly dying, husband and other family members possibly dying, herself possibly dying. That possibility is around 1% for each of them once exposed, which extended travel is a recipe for. Say, 5% chance that someone in the family will die. Does sister's husband want to risk that for his mother and sister, himself and his wife?

[yvannairie]

what the dick-hickory

[vass]

she "might be lonely" and that might make her "depressed".

Me, already depressed and socially isolated before the pandemic, giving up my one regular social contact because both I and that person (who is also socially isolated) are in multiple risk groups: *stares at the webcam like I'm in The Office*

[cimorene]

Exactly!!! I mean I bit my tongue to not go on a rant about your post about that a few weeks ago. My brother-in-law is not susceptible to logic, clearly, since they live in a state that held Mardi Gras in March and has seen hundreds of deaths in New Orleans alone.

The idea that he considers 'lonely depressed' a get-out-of DEADLY PLAGUE QUARANTINE card when self-evidently literally almost everyone in the world is going through the same thing and my sister thinks him being 'mad at her' is serious enough to not put her foot down and just try to gently 'change his mind' is driving me up the wall.