People are making me feel crazy about fearing Covid. I heard a therapist go "I don't want to say Covid is OVER..." (but)
cw: death
I just look them in the eye as I tell them about how I held my mother's hand as she drown in her own liquefied lungs. This was after I threw up a few times from the hours long horror show of restraining her as she flailed around in a panicked delerium of trying to pull her breathing mask off, already too brain damaged to understand it would kill her. Until finally the staff who were devoting the precious time they could to people they could actually save, got to her with some sedatives.
She had gotten so confused in those last couple of days before the turn. My dad caught it too and was not at all with it, but not hospitalized. My mom called him and he couldn't even register that the phone was ringing. He heard the voicemail a week after she died... She was asking for him to come see her, confused and scared, not knowing where anyone was or why she was there.
Death rattle, if you've been there at the end for someone you know it. Thing is, there was nothing left to "rattle", just the last puff of air at the top of her lungs that she didn't have the strength to hold on to, naturally flowing out into a faint groan. Her heart monitor getting weaker, stopping, a few seconds later and another set of beats that looked more like a scribble than rhythm. Another pause, another attempt at the nervous system trying to grasp for life that just isn't there. Gone.
All because of the bullshit and lies. She was about to get the J&J vaccine because it was a normal type of vaccine, but then the brief blood clot scare that the news overhyped scared her off of it. She was begging for the vaccine shortly before the turn, but couldn't understand that it was too late.
How do I stay sane? I work to help people in any way I can. I try to enjoy what little time I have on earth. I build things that interest me. I play with my dog. I spend time loving my partner, and with my friends. Those people are going to die, so will you, so will I, and every single person that exists or will exist. So focus on living what you've got, because it's all you get and these stupid jerks and the stupid things they do and say will distract you from the shit that matters.
If my mom had died of a heart attack, I wouldn't have people telling me heart attacks aren't real. People will look me in the eye, and tell me she must not have died of Covid. She died before the vaccines were approved in late 2020. Got it from a coworker with anti-masking family. They all lived. Covid still isn't real to them.
Sorry to hear that, I know it's maddening. My mom's sister was yelling at us to demand the doctors give her the horse paste. She believes that armageddon is going to happen before she dies too, because some old lady at her church told her it would. One of my mom's close friends told my partner at her funeral that "she died for what she believed in" and insinuated that we were lying about her asking for the vaccine. Same breed of psychosis.
At the end of the day there's no point trying to argue or give them any energy or thought, you can't reason with that level of delusion. This is one of those times where living well is a radical act.
This is one of those times where living well is a radical act.
I'm sorry your family was affected like this. I'll try to live as well as I can.
Positive tests, hospitalizations and deaths are all increasing (in the US). You're not crazy, everyone else is in denial and avoiding sources of information that would punch holes in their bubbles.
deaths are all increasing
This is pretty wild because you'd expect deaths to go down significantly over time because all the people who would have been particularly susceptible are already dead from previous waves
And also viruses usually become less deadly over time because variants which kill the host infect fewer new hosts, so variants which do not kill the host become more prevalent.
I suspect that (1) people have become complacent, (2) people are blaming their symptoms on flu season and not realizing they need medical care until it's too late, (3) people are not bothering to get the updated COVID vaccinations, and (4) COVID isn't a regular part of the news cycle anymore, which is exacerbating 1-3.
Covid kills people after a fairly long infectious period anyway so there's not much selective pressure there
I keep in mind that we were outrageously correct about the War on Terror, climate change, and a bunch of other stuff. I'm in my mid forties, I'm ugly and nerdy and my parents are working class, and I'm used to people dismissing my opinions for a very long time.
How do I stay sane? Hate (maybe a better word is resistance). I hate nearly all white people I meet, and all rich people. I'm not some sort of ideal communist, but I care more about the opinions of the cleaners at work than my "work colleagues".
When I see yet another generic white dude not masking, or a posh person aggressively pushing back-to-normal, I barely register them as human. Maybe it's harsh, but it keeps me feeling OK.
Also climate change at this point is sort of like the first volley of nukes already went off in slow motion, and even more are still being launched with no immediate end in sight while a significant portion of people are still arguing about whether nukes are real or a Chinese hoax
I was going to say you deal with it the same way you deal with being the only people who are right about a dozen other things while liberals and chuds agree were wrong.
In my case barely contained contempt.
Literally any time I get confronted for wearing a mask I just tell people (while slipping in small clearing of throat sounds) that I am currently positive for COVID, but we can't live in fear any more so I'm just trying to infect as few people as possible while getting back to normal.
As soon as they start freaking out at you because they now are able to conceptualize a hypothetical because it involves them personally, start repeating their disingenuous questions with the same tone that insinuates that they're a hypochondriac like "What are you so worried about? It's way less serious now." etc (it will 100% actually make them madder because now the hypothetical person whose safety is being dismissed is them) and once they're pissed about it you can start shaming them for their anger and ask why the fuck they mask shame people trying to make (literally any, even if only token) effort to protect themselves and others if they're so fucking mad about it when it personally involves them.
I bounce between that and making extremely belittling jokes about 9/11 (it helps that I'm a non American in America) only to completely dismiss their indignation and tone policing afterward by comparing the months where we losing more people per day than 9/11 because dipshits like them were too selfish to literally sit on their fucking hands and wait for the situation to slowly be brought back into control instead of making it worse, and asking why they can dismiss dozens of 9/11s and I can't dismiss the ONE that convinced them all to go a on a 20 year mass murder spree.
So I guess tl;dr: extreme hostility.
literally just ignore them, can't do much else.
also helps that i think masks are pretty cute i guess?
SAME.
Wore a mask to the shrink. "Are you afraid of COVID?" YES. "Are you afraid COVID is going to kill you?" YES. THESE ARE RATIONAL FEARS. I KNOW WHAT MY ANXIETY FEELS LIKE DAMMIT
Call doctor because my partner got COVID. "Oh you're young, COVID can't harm young people". NOTE: I AM VERY NOT YOUNG. I am old enough to have multiple kids with bachelors degrees.
Why?
My eye doctor told me masks don't work, so i got a new eye doctor
Woah not a guy you want close enough to inspect your eyeballs.
She starts going off about how the virus is whatever ever microns and im just like your wrong masks are the only thing that works. I was so shocked i completely forgot to mention how the virus commonly attaches to respiratory droplets, or the concept of viral load. She took my eye pressure reading as i was glaring at her and it was the highest reading id ever gotten. I cancelled my follow-up at reception and got out of there.
you're not crazy. they're wrong. you can ignore them or confront them, but ultimately you're going to have to learn to live with them being wrong. just gotta do what you can to protect yourself.
Accept and cope for me.
I'm gonna get covid multiple times for the rest of my life regardless of how I try to avoid it. Best I can do is give someone an "I told you so" when they get long covid, but it's not worth much
Tbh, I've largely stopped putting much weight into the words of people who have been taken in by the "back to normal"
. They get a big ol' 
sticker in my head and their opinions just don't carry much weight. I still love them and would like to help them, but I'm not gonna be able to butt heads with them into accepting reality. The way our behavior is determined typically happens at a level much broader than one on one interactions and so I try to spend my time thinking on how to fight the consent manufacturing machine. Mostly, I just avoid certain topics and focus on trying to be a good role model, and someone that can be there for them when shit gets so bad that they need help. Honestly, I get far more stressed worrying about the consequences of their ignorance than what they think of me.🤷♂️i have roommates i drive to work and one of their bosses is letting one of their coworkers come in for shifts after testing positive for covid 8 days ago, so hopefully we don't all die i guess.
Gaslighting is when someone lies to convince you of something they know is not true. The people who are telling you these things do not feel the same way about COVID as you. You are not being gaslit. You are being confronted with a perspective different than your own.
Yea, the intention may not be one of gaslighting but the result is the same. Harmful and dangerous
I think it’s kind of obtuse to conflate someone who spreads misinformation as a form of abusive control over another person with someone who spreads misinformation because they’re uninformed. Ignorance is harmful but this is one thing where I think intent matters.
Like you're completely correct here, but it's a little tone deaf and rude to try and correct OP on this when they're venting about being upset and seeking advice
You're correct but in this specific scenario it's useless to argue semantics of whether it's gaslighting or not because OP is upset about the content of the others' statements, not the intentions, and asking how others deal when presented with the same incorrect information about COVID
They know it’s not true because they get angry if you disagree with them.
If you're a "people who don't wear masks are doing genocide" type I don't think you want to go with "anger indicates someone is lying".
People can be angry for all kinds of reasons. If you prove to someone that failing to mask indoors in public kills people, and that person gets angry, it’s because they know that they’re killing people deep down and they don’t want to hear the truth from you since it’s embarrassing.
And it's not possible that they're angry for a different reason? Like they see their friend's mental health spiraling?
Or is it because their friend has brain damage from repeated covid infections?
Is the mental distress caused by westerners’ casual indifference to genocide?
I'm sure they feel that's part of it, but they never leave the house, got fired, got dumped, don't see other people, and only read/consume media about covid, so I don't exactly think they're setting themselves up for good mental health there.
They stayed at my house for a week a year ago and took a COVID test every day despite never going inside or unmasking. My wife and I also took a COVID test the day they arrived, and similarly didn't go inside their whole time visiting us, and yet they still requested (and we honored it) to wear masks in our own house for the whole week, despite all of the negative tests. If they don't accept negative COVID tests as proof someone doesn't have COVID (but still take them constantly), I'd say we live in different realities.
They've never actually tested positive for COVID themselves, but did go to five different doctors until they found one that would tell them they had long COVID. The first four all said they were too stressed. Since they got the diagnosis they wanted they have stopped leaving the house and been fired from their job. I also believe their partner dumped them and moved out. Before they got the diagnosis they were rock climbing and backpacking regularly (even during the period where they had decided they had long COVID already).
Before COVID this person was a self-aware hypochondriac, but they're well and truly gone now. So that's why I'm mad. I've lost a friend to their neuroses. And where they were previously aware of and working to mitigate their neuroses, they've now decided that their neuroses are correct and should not be a therapy target, so the outlook isn't good they'll ever come back.
So my friend is a hypochondriac who self-diagnosed with long COVID despite never having been infected. The symptoms of their supposed disease changed drastically after they got the result they wanted from doctor shopping, and they do not trust results from COVID tests.
So that's why I get mad at them, not because I'm trying to gaslight them.
I don’t blame your fried bro. It’s the people who aren’t masking during a deadly pandemic who are insane.
Ok but maybe don't generalize the hyper specific niche weird case of your allegedly hypochondriac friend to every other person who is afraid of having their lives ruined by a communicable disease that's known to ruin peoples lives.
Sure, just don't think that everyone who's mad about COVID shut-ins is trying to gaslight you.
Whatever. The word gaslight is used a lot because it describes how people feel in the face of an overwhelming propaganda campaign to get people to rawdog covid for short term economic reputation laundering. I don't give a shit about the word or the intent: at the end of the day, anyone trying to get me to take the risk of getting covid is trying to get me to risk my life for nothing, whether or not that's their intention.
Maybe covid minimizers aren't technically trying to gaslight people, but people sure as hell feel gaslit. The end result is the same: protections being undermined and more people's lives ruined.
Oh man you got me, I'm going to stop taking covid precautions now because I don't want to end up like your buddy.
I am! I'm acutely aware that if I got long covid and couldn't be athletic anymore, my mental health health would collapse to the point where my life would be destroyed and -- whether by my own hand or some knock-on effect of being disabled and unable to enjoy life -- I'd be dead within a year. Part of why I take precautions is to protect my mental health. Back in the brief period of time when I didn't wear masks due to social pressure and thinking that the vaccines 100% prevented infection, I had multiple scares where I was an anxious wreck because someone I had hung out with tested positive a few days later, or came down with symptoms, or their roommate had it or something. But now that I only hang out with people outside with some distance or inside with us all masked up, I never have that terror! I'm so much happier and more comfortable socializing taking reasonable, effective, realistic precautions.
Sure there are some downsides. I skip the big indoor parties and I do miss them. But I know they aren't worth the risk, especially since friends have spread covid to each other at some of the very events I avoided. I still make sure to see my core group of people regularly, for 1 on 1 hangs or in groups when we can coordinate it. It's different for safety, but not that different.
No more indoor clubbing or concerts for me, sadly. Those I do miss and there's no substitute that comes close. But I can live without those. I can't live with lungs so shot that strenuous workouts become impossible, as happened to a friend of mine.
I hope someday this pandemic is actually beaten and we can go back to how things were, but that requires us to still be alive and healthy -- so I'm doing what I can to stay OK until then.
You're right. I corrected my question. I do hear people be willfully ignorant about horrifying effects of Covid though.
Yeah my therapist has had similar sentiments. Considering it’s a as major source of my anxiety, I’m thinking I should find a new one.
Ooooh interesting. I’ll definitely give that a look. With or without my Covid concerns, I’ve been debating switching therapists for other reason, this is a good place to start.
Thanks!
You can't accidentally lie, that's called being wrong a lot of people are lying about covid, but some people are just wrong.
