In the third year of the pandemic, my mental health has been significantly worse than the preceding two years. Perhaps it seems counter intuitive on first reading, but I was in a much better place mentally when this all started than I am now, when there was still so much unknown about this virus. The tenuous "we're all in this together" that was proudly adorned on the sleeves of all the liberals did make me feel better, as well as all the half-assed mitigation measures we had for a while. I believed the notion that the pandemic would be over once we had available vaccines. I was obviously extremely naive about all of this and how things would play out, and it didn't take long for insanely ghoulish sentiments to come out of the mainstream, like balancing the health and safety of the public with the health of the "economy" and other inane, murderous shit.

Eventually a lot of these COVID protections started being stripped away, despite the introduction to new dominant variants that were more contagious and/or virulent than the previous dominant variants. And all the liberals stopped giving a shit about COVID as soon as their team was in the White House and they received permission from "Uncle Joe" to be vaxxed and relaxed. And this year saw the stripping away of basically all the remaining protections, like mask mandates on public transit, the coordinated media job to pass the public health responsibility from the government to the individual and make it seem like the pandemic was over and safe to return to uninhibited pre-pandemic life as long as you were vaxxed, and most everybody following in lockstep with that messaging (joining all the chuds who never took caution to begin with).

Nowadays, I feel like I'm lucky if I even see like 15-20% of people masking inside a grocery store or on a bus, and I live in a big city. I imagine it's far worse in more conservative areas. I'm still masking everywhere I go and avoiding big indoor crowds, especially as the evidence for long-term damage from COVID grows and how those with COVID infections are more susceptible to bad cases of other virus (hello, flu and RSV severity spikes). And also, I don't want to get anyone sick as a result of my recklessness, especially my COVID-cautious parents whom I visit regularly, and they're technically high-risk anyways because of their age. And when it comes to strangers too, I don't want to get them sick. For example, me unmasking on public transit, the grocery store, the pharmacy, a doctor's office, etc. would just be making things even less safe for high risk/immuno-compromised individuals who might not have any alternatives to getting their essentials.

But I've been pathologized before for my continuing caution. I've heard stuff like "You're young and healthy, why are you worried so much about COVID?" I honestly am finding the distinction between "healthy" and "immunocompromised" increasingly useless, because everyone is at risk with this virus and being "healthy" is not permanent, and I think so many negative health outcomes are created or exacerbated by capitalism.

And everyone is at risk, including children, whom the media has moved the goalposts for so many times already ("children can't get COVID" --> "children can get COVID, but they can't spread it" --> "children can spread it, but they only get mild cases" --> "some children get hospitalized and even die, but most are fine". etc. For instance, my nephew is 3 years old, and he got his first confirmed COVID case about five months ago. Want to know what's happened since? He's been hospitalized three separate times after having trouble breathing in all three instances. He's had croup all three times, he's tested positive for COVID at least one additional time, and in his most recent trip, he had bad ear infections in both of his ears. In his most recent hospital trip, the doctor treating him told my sister that lots of kids getting severe cases of croup had previously had COVID. :this-is-fine:

I've also heard ableist bullshit from a self-identified progressive, like "Uhhh ackshully they found that a lot of the people who reported having long COVID symptoms never actually had a COVID infection", with the implication being "it's all in their head" I guess?

I don't know what the endgame is here. I still don't see a light at the end of the tunnel. Part of me feels like the suffering from COVID (especially the post-acute phase of COVID) will become so undeniable, as increasingly more people have personal experiences of suffering or tragedy in their lives, that we will eventually see a momentum shift for the better. Part of me feels like continuing to hold out and prevent/reduce COVID infections will pay off, and that we'll eventually have nasal/universal vaccines that make things much safer and other treatments or safety measures. The most :doomer: side of me feels these other parts of me are too optimistic and that mass suffering and death from COVID is going to be yet another form of mass death and suffering for decades to come that is completely preventable, just like mass deaths from car accidents, mass shootings, mass murder by police, mass murder of brown civilians overseas by the US and other western powers, etc.

Even though it's fucking shitty, I think I could have lived with the inevitable material decline as capitalism continues to eat itself, so long as I was able to endure it together with like-minded people in my community. But now we have to deal with one of the most contagious diseases in written history that is still killing and disabling countless people, infecting countless people, seems to only get more contagious as it evolves, has no apparent shortage to how many times it can infect each of us (with substantial evidence that each reinfection only increases the chance of bad health outcomes), has hundreds of potential symptoms of long-COVID (which has no legitimately proven treatment) that might be permanent, and the half-assed vestiges of protections fully stripped away in the US and other western countries earlier this year.

There isn't much of a purpose to life, in my opinion, without being able to mingle and share life experiences with others. And while I greatly appreciate online friends or doing things remotely with people I know IRL, I feel like COVID has taken away my ability to do that safely in-person with most people. Especially when I've previously been burned before by people not being fully transparent about their behavior when getting together indoors with them, so my default these days is to not trust being around anybody unless they give me some COVID-cautious dogwhistle or some shit. And it's been increasingly harder to find those people, as I've had a couple people in my life very recently revert to their pre-pandemic lives, after previously taking the same cautions as me.

I'm just so tired of all the gaslighting and pathologizing and the pure hopium that unmitigated spread of a novel virus will work out and soon be like the flu (hell, I'd argue most people are already conflating it with the flu, and hell, the flu never should have been trivialized either). I honestly hate being alive right now. Fuck.

Sometimes I wonder if I'd be happier if I just pretended to stop giving a shit, started hitting up bars and restaurants and concerts and all that jazz again, and crossed my fingers that all the COVID infections I would accumulate as a result wouldn't make me drop dead before age 40. Life expectancy is only going to continue to go down in the infinite-COVID countries anyways, right? :yea:

But I still feel like taking caution for myself and still wanting to protect others (especially those who are more vulnerable) is the objectively correct thing to do, and I don't know if I could live with myself if I put people like my parents in danger because of my carelessness. And that maybe I just haven't met the right group of IRL friends or the right partner, etc. I know there are a lot of people still playing it safe--I'm already part of multiple communities like this one that have been a godsend when it comes to trying to navigate this pandemic and the fucking shitshow of a response that is supposed to be public health. And I feel like it would behoove me to try harder to find those people near me instead of giving into abject despair or to stop giving a shit about others. Idk, this shit is a nightmare to navigate, nothing in my life has ever stressed me out the way the pandemic has.

Anyways, thank you for reading my vent.