I usually hate anecdotal stories, especially as it's the tool of the right to defend pseudoscience. However, there's a heap of scientific evidence behind us.
In the last six months, I've a lot of older people and family passed due to heart troubles, including my dad. I would never say anything out loud, as it's just rude, as people are grieving and I don't know for 100% sure (the fecking burden of not being a reactionary). Like a friend's mum died of heart failure 3 months after a COVID infection, and I thought to myself "this is a very good chance that COVID increased her risk" but I'm not going to be a knob and say that out loud. You know who didn't fail to give their opinion? Fucking antivaxxers everywhere. "Did you mother get the jab?" "Fuck off her last vaccine was in 2021".
The other massive glaring thing I see every day is my students. Exam scores are way down, while behavioural and emotional problems (including medication) is up. COVID infections definitely can hurt kids' cognitive ability and cause an increased risk of neurological problems. I've just see way more fighting, anger, and serious emotional troubles in school than I ever have in my 20+ years of teaching. Students are missing way more school due to illnesses like COVID but also other viral stuff like the cold and flu than they ever used to, and they're falling behind because of it.
Total shot in the dark, but I see more of my close friends struggling with depression, anxiety, and low energy than I ever remember. I don't mean to downplay the genuine struggle that is mental health, people definitely had symptoms before COVID and many other issues are completely unrelated to COVID. I'm just seeing an increase across the board with people I know, especially people who I previously considered to be a rock.
I know that anecdotal evidence isn't worth considering, but we've being posting hard science for years, and I think it's fair that we start to notice patterns in our community.
I think it's part COVID but also just part stress. Stress is absolutely a killer, extremely well documented. Who isn't more stressed these days at least in the western world? Everything is more uncertain. Things are expensive. Jobs are harder to get and keep. Wages are lower. Medicine and healthcare is harder to get. Society is literally collapsing around all of us in real time. That HAS to increase the general stress level of the population and that increased stress would absolutely lead to a lot of these things I think a lot of us are anecdotally seeing.
Definitely not saying COVID isn't part of that...it absolutely is, even if just "one more Big Illness going around constantly making life harder for everyone." That increases stress too and makes all of the other shit even worse. COVID is definitely one piece of the puzzle. It should be an easy piece to solve too... vaccination and masking and quarantines...but here we are.