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.
I work in a bullshit office job and I had a meeting where someone did an icebreaker by asking what we all bought for Black Friday :agony-limitless:
I proudly said I bought nothing :gigachad:
There was actually another person who also didn't buy anything, so I think it was received better than it otherwise would have been, lol
Oh damn, I didn't realize you were saying you had the same exact scenario happen to you lol, I thought you were just saying you didn't buy anything on Black Friday. Did you have your social credit score deducted for this transgression against consumerism?
Oh god, that sounds awful, you have my sympathies. And I've always hated all of that "team building" shit, even before the pandemic. And especially now because it usually entails eating out at a restaurant or going to a bar, and I just turn all that shit down now for obvious reasons.
Years ago, I used to get all bazinga about the Steam winter sales, until I realized I was never playing most of those games and wasn't "saving" money at all.
I bought all these games on Steam that I will never play
:side-eye-1: :side-eye-2:
LOL they actually said Black Friday or Cyber Monday, now that I think about it :yea:
You're right, COVID was only a problem under Trump, thank you for helping me see the light, Neera Tanden.
Glad I could help. Didn’t need you gaslighting anyone about the trump virus
Same here. I recently made a post here where I was looking for some mechanism where inevitable exposure to Covid would build on my vac immunity. @chickentendrils shared a paper with me that destroyed all hope of that. We’re going to be wearing masks and getting whatever vaccines we can get our hands on for the rest of our lives, which will be shortened by the inevitable breakthrough cases.
:yea: I've seen the science on COVID and can't unlearn what I've read or ignore the threat, it is not remotely like the flu at all. And the evidence seems to mount with the passing of time. I think if I tried to live my pre-pandemic life, I would have cognitive dissonance and really bad anxiety attacks as a result.
Do you have a link to the paper, by any chance?
The post here has some good context setting, and the link to the paper https://hexbear.net/post/236304/comment/3025170 From what I gather, there’s no form of exposure to it that builds any sort of immunity besides infection, which is obviously causing more damage than it’s worth.
I’ve seen the science on COVID and can’t unlearn what I’ve read or ignore the threat, it is not remotely like the flu at all. And the evidence seems to mount with the passing of time. I think if I tried to live my pre-pandemic life, I would have cognitive dissonance and really bad anxiety attacks as a result.
Me in 2020: Huh, I guess Covid is like the flu except far more infectious.
Me in 2022: Huh, I guess Covid is like airborne Aids except it doesn't stay in your body forever except you can get reinfected with airborne Aids forever so it's functionally in your body forever
Thanks for the hug, I definitely need them now more than ever, right back at ya :meow-hug:
Hexbear zero-COVID commune when?
But yeah, I definitely yearn to be in an environment like that. Or at least in a country that actually does proper mitigations and where the community spread of COVID is much, much lower.
I just want to be in a community where people give a shit, basically.
Someone was talking about this on twitter but I can't find it anymore.
PLEASE link it if you know, they had an actual community and land, and it was in Canada I think? or Michigan maybe
we need to start seriously working towards building communities where covid is taken seriously.
I had long-COVID and now I feel better than ever simply because I lived as an isolated NEET for 2 years, and avoided reinfections
You have to convince people that another way is possible. I got banned from reddit for suggesting zero-COVID communes lul
I don't even remember, this was a year ago.
I was also banned multiple times before that for saying China-not-so-bad
Unless my understanding is incorrect, it seems like, while there is a lot unknown about long COVID and some symptoms might be permanent (like other post-viral/chronic illnesses received from other viruses pre-pandemic), there are some symptoms that can mostly clear up over time, if not entirely, but one has to actually give their bodies/immune systems a chance to recover/heal. Is that an accurate assessment?
I recently talked to someone who has been immuno-compromised for years, i.e. before the pandemic, but they have been very vigilant about masking and other precautions during COVID, and told me that their health has been the best it's been in years as a result, and they're going to continue to take caution because they don't want to erase that progress. And that has a lot of parallels with your own experience.
To me, it sounds like one of the most dangerous parts of long COVID is that it depletes your t and b cells and makes you more susceptible to worse outcomes from other viruses (which would make sense in the context of the surge of severe flu/RSV cases), and, additional COVID infections, too. And unless you give your body space to recover following a COVID infection, you can get COVID several times within a year if you're not taking caution, sometimes even twice within the same calendar month. And the time between two infections can be so quick because COVID has evolved to be extremely contagious, immunity does not last, sometimes getting infected with one variant doesn't really confer any immunity to other variants, and COVID is a very unstable virus prone to lots of mutations. And there is evidence that repeatedly getting infected just leads to even worse health outcomes.
Again, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but that's my understanding of all this stuff.
many long COVID symptoms can clear up over time, but one has to actually give their bodies a chance to heal by avoiding reinfections
yes.
To me, it sounds like one of the most dangerous parts of long COVID is that it depletes your t and b cells
It can do this, yes. My T cell count was still within normal range, although slightly on the low end
And there is evidence that repeatedly getting infected just leads to even worse health outcomes.
yes.
Hey I am glad you are still taking precautions! I think this is a battle of attrition, and tbh I think the best way to stick it out is to hold our values and find ways to fight back.
I think there is usefulness to putting anti-eugenics agitprop on the streets, whether stickers or posters. Its not going to convince everyone, but its a way to plant seeds in people's minds and challenge the mainstream narrative. Plus that agitprop will not be mediated by algorithms. It is not exactly building dual power, but it could lay the ground work for people's willingness to partake in that kind of work since masking is at the end of the day an act of solidarity.
Thanks! Tbh though I feel like I don't deserve any praise, and that wanting to mask to keep myself and especially others safe and other precautions should just be something expected to do out of solidarity. Which basically doesn't exist in the US at all, LOL. And I feel guilty whenever I get those feelings where I feel like I'm the crazy one for still taking all those precautions when virtually no one around me is masking, and wondering if I'd be better off not taking caution. But it's always very fleeting and has never been a serious consideration.
And I think in theory it's still possible to live a pretty fulfilling life and adjusting to the pandemic. I just gotta find more like-minded people IRL and online, do more of the activities/hobbies alone that make me happy, and prevent my pandemic despair from making me spiral. Also started doing mutual aid for the first time recently and that's been nice and fulfilling.
The agitprop is a good idea! TBH, I'm embarrassed how ignorant I was of all the institutionalized ableism in society pre-pandemic. I didn't even know about things like ME/CFS and how disabled folks have had those kinds of post-viral symptoms ignored or pathologized by doctors forever. I'm definitely all ears when it comes to books about disability rights and the like. I just started reading Health Communism after finding out about the Death Panel podcast a few months ago.
This is a decent piece of agitprop to start with spreading . It is technically an IWW-modified poster but you can crop out the IWW logo portion of it pretty easily if it suits you best.
Mutual aid work is pretty sick also. This is a pretty cool group doing pandemic mutual aid work in so-called "Portland, Oregon". I think they are a good group to get inspiration from; even if you contact them for advice like on where to get masks to distribute for mutual aid I am sure they would be down to help.
Thanks for the links! I have a printer now and plenty of wooden utility poles in my area. :sicko-yes:
LMAO I wish people most people who were getting sick were masking. :pain: Amazing how it's always just a cold, despite being surrounded by one of the most infectious viruses known to humans. That's good advice though, I appreciate it.
Yeah, that's sort of been my rationale, too. I'd rather wait it out for the foreseeable future--continuing to take caution is a long-term bet, in my view. If I'm wrong, then I can't beat myself up and was only doing what I thought was the most rational thing at the time. But yea, it's hard to find people my age who actually give a shit about COVID still. There's a sense with a lot of these people that they are invincible and will always be "healthy". But it really seems like long COVID does not discriminate much, if at all, and if it's anywhere near as bad as what a lot of the scientists/epidemiologists are saying, then one interpretation could be that younger people have even more to lose by trifling with this virus.
Either way, there’s sorta one silver lining. If you do manage to find your friends and partners before the pandemic is over, you won’t have to guess in the future whether your friends care about their health as well as others’.
:100-com:
I feel every ounce of this post in my bones comrade. This has been the hardest year by far. I got diagnosed with several autoimmune diseases a few months before covid hit. I'll never have a normal day again.
I'm sorry you have to deal with all this bullshit especially. :meow-hug:
This is the part that makes me really pissed, too. I am part of a few COVID-safe spaces/communities on the internet, including this one, and each of those communities has a lot of disabled/immuno-compromised comrades who basically feel like they can't leave their home period, lest they risk making their health even worse. And many anecdotes of people abandoning them as soon as their health was no longer what it once was, or being gaslit for taking their own health seriously with precautions.
I don't want to live in a world where a subset of the population feels like they have no choice but to more or less be siloed from society because of safety concerns. "None are free until all are free", words to truly live by :hammer-sickle:
And you have shit from people like the CDC director who have made statements expressing at least implicit approval of all the high-risk people who are getting culled from the acute phase of COVID. It makes my stomach turn and my blood boil. If there was any justice, all these people enabling the COVID response (or lack thereof) would pay for their crimes against humanity.
I appreciate people like you so much. There are not a lot of people I know IRL who get it, but based on interactions with you here, you really get it. You see the struggle that disabled/immunocompromised people are going through.
:meow-hug:
It feels like no one I know IRL can be fucked to take precautions anymore. Hell, they don't even express empathy anymore. It's annoyance from everyone now. No one wants to be reminded that it's still really bad. Until they have a bad outcome from it, they'd rather I shut up or get out of their lives.
Thanks comrade, a lot of the awful stuff happening with my nephew also strengthened my resolve to keep playing things safe for the foreseeable future, until things change substantially for the better. The fact that all the children are being sacrificed is one of the things that makes me most upset about all of this. If I end up being wrong or overreacting significantly to the pandemic, then oh well, I'm only doing what I think is the most logical approach when there's still a lot of uncertainty with COVID, and what we do know about post-acute COVID is alarming.
yeah. i mean, fuck. who knows what the future holds, but i just try not to think about it. i'm masking and not going out too much, but trying to drown out the :doomjak: with content
That's a good idea, I definitely need to find some levity right now and maybe find a comedy to watch, it's been a while since I watched a new series.
i watched the first mobile suit gundam anime and enjoyed it a lot, so that kept me sane through a bunch of november and october
People say I’m young and healthy, but to me that’s more of a reason to protect myself.
:100-com:
I actually made a similar comment above before reading yours haha, I feel the exact same way
Hi, thank you for the vent.
"Especially when I’ve previously been burned before by people not being fully transparent about their behavior when getting together indoors with them" yeah, the first time I went to play music with other people there was "Oh I'm just coughing because I just smoked a bunch of weed no worries", then I went over a couple weeks later "yeah so we both ended up having covid lol". And they didn't tell me, didn't text to say hey keep an eye out or anything.
My partner is actually more cautious than I am. We are in the 3% of people wearing masks in any given location. I will go into a gas station or something without one if there is glass at the register, but yeah I feel like I'm 100% with you on everything you said here. This shit has been hard for me to wrap my head around. On one hand, I want to do the thing that is best for humanity, on the other I am so angry at humanity that I hate almost everyone. It's confusing.
I will go into a gas station or something without one if there is glass at the register, but yeah I feel like I’m 100% with you on everything you said here.
Do you mean if there is plexi-glass at the register? I don't think that does much good to prevent COVID, I would probably still recommend wearing a mask. COVID can also linger in the air for hours, and potentially a lot of people were going in and out of that gas station in the preceding hours. Idk how long it takes to get infected, with previous variants it used to supposedly be 15 minutes between two unmasked people, but with Omicron and its subvariants, I'd imagine the time is even less.
On one hand, I want to do the thing that is best for humanity, on the other I am so angry at humanity that I hate almost everyone. It’s confusing.
Yeah, I feel that. I've definitely had feelings of misanthropy during the pandemic, but ultimately I feel like the onus is on our government and institutions, all of whom are subservient to capital and have an interest in minimizing the true threat of the pandemic and propagating that message to the public. The propaganda has worked unfortunately and and has had a huge influence on the behavior of most people.
Do you mean if there is plexi-glass at the register? I don’t think that does much good to prevent COVID, I would probably still recommend wearing a mask. COVID can also linger in the air for hours, and potentially a lot of people were going in and out of that gas station in the preceding hours. Idk how long it takes to get infected, with previous variants it used to supposedly be 15 minutes between two unmasked people, but with Omicron and its subvariants, I’d imagine the time is even less.
Fuck really? I've been pretty cautious comparatively but damn. I feel kind of jealous people are mostly just living their lives. I'm a musician so my life pretty much just ended 3 years ago.
Yeah, I think the push for plexiglass (and by that logic, face shields) was originally because COVID (at least at the mainstream level) was thought to spread primarily through droplets, so that was the rationale with plexiglass I think--to have a barrier between yourself and the droplets of others (and vice versa). But scientists soon realized that COVID is airborne/spreads through aerosols, so plexiglass would consequently appear to not be doing much of anything to protect people, if at all.
Damn, I'm sorry to hear that :deeper-sadness:. I've also been reading lots of articles about musicians on the road--even ones with decent followings--increasingly struggling to even break even while on tour, and sometimes losing money. Fucking capitalism. :agony-shivering:
I'm with you. I'm definately taking psychic damage from knowing about how bad the virus can be and seeing how most people act. There are people I know who have been infected three times and still don't take it seriously. Meanwhile there are people having strokes and getting vertigo and other shit. My coworker who takes it as seriously as I do got infected from a friend and now can't drink caffine because of the side effects and had heart issues for a month. Long covid is not nearly rare enough to ignore. I mean, it's a virus that can damage all of our organs, it's fucking people up.
I guess we'll see how it plays out in the next year, but I'm still trying to prevent as many infections as I can until better vaccines or treatments are available. But promoting it's spread like our governments are doing is fucking insane. No paid sick leave for people, so people are back to working while sick. Hell, We can't even get people to wear a mask when they feel sick or are coughing. "Just allergies!". Herd immunity through constant reinfection is what we've settled on. And now with the immunity gap bullshit the media is spreading they are attacking the very idea of trying to prevent illness. The old :galaxy-brain: "if you try to make things better, you're actually making it worse" canard.
I wear an n95 at work, and have a public facing job where I share the air with hundreds of people everyday, and I've yet to test positive for it, so masks + vaccines absolutely work (just not well enough to put me at ease) even when everyone else is doing whatever.
I completely agree with you on all counts. On top of all the evidence that bad outcomes don't stop with the acute phase of COVID (and ever-increasing evidence that the post-acute phase is even worse), I think the one thing that convinces me, more than anything, that I'm making the right choice to keep protecting myself and others is just all the deliberate COVID minimizing that all of our media outlets and institutions are doing. Like how the CDC hasn't mentioned masks on their twitter account in like three months. And how they're deliberately abstaining from using the M-word when they talk about ways to prevent the spread of COVID and "other respiratory viruses" (yet they'll mention coughing or sneezing into one's shirt instead). Despite evidence that COVID is not just a respiratory illness, but I digress. Same with the CDC director. Despite the fact that there are still polls coming out showing how a majority (or at least a plurality) of Americans would still support mask mandates on public transit and similar places. So it's not as if the political appetite for some masking isn't there. And also how Biden's COVID czar keeps saying we just need to get vaccinated and never have to worry about anything ever again.
I can smell all this bullshit from miles away, and it makes me deeply uncomfortable.
As I type this, I can hear someone with the classic COVID cough outside my apartment door. I don't get out much, but I fucking hear it everywhere I go, without fail. :agony-limitless:
throwing my hat in the solidarity posts here. I mask EVERYWHERE, I don't give a shit if it's outside. If I'm anywhere near people, I'm masking.
I've come to accept this is the new way of life here, the hell country got much worse as my only real outlets were once going to bars with friends. But whatever. Time to find something new.
I agree it's mad shitty that COVID hit right when we were starting to get a mass movement together, I was making connections with Marxists and anarchists through the Bernie campaign, then wham... The timing seems almost suspicious
it's also very weird that COVID hit right after the yield curve inversion of 2019, which has been shown 7 out of 8 times to precede a recession
The timing seems almost suspicious
:eric-andre: investigate 311 and Fort Detrick
None of us know for sure, it's very sus :soviet-hmm:
But yeah, it's just a bit from The Eric Andre Show
I always ask myself "who benefits from this bioweapon"? Even if the CDC is the one who payrolled it, surely some of those in charge are susceptible to it too right?
Or maybe it's really just :posad: and since we've mined out most of the gold and put it in a select few easily accessible places, they're ending the run
