Oh good, I'll put on my hazmat suit with a rebreather when I go to the grocery store. Let me just pull that out of my closet. Most people are not capable of protecting themselves "fully." It's not realistic to live in most areas of society with zero contact with other human beings. If you are in the tiny minority that can do that, I'm happy for you. But me, I need to go to the store, get gas for my car, walk my dog, go to the doctor - all things that require me to be in the presence of other humans. My high-risk parents also need to do these things. My sister and her partner's jobs involve interacting with people - those are their job skills, that's what their career is based on. What would you suggest that they do? Tell my dad that his heart surgery follow-up appointments aren't worth it? Tell my sister to go start a new career during high unemployment? Tell my mom that she should stop eating because she lives in a smaller town where the stores aren't equipped for delivery or curbside? Maybe my friend who just went in for an emergency appendectomy should have just toughed out the inevitable sepsis, because going into the ER was too dangerous. The whole idea that you don't need to worry about what society does because you can protect yourself isn't "rustling jimmies" - it's just flat out wrong. That's not how a contagious airborne disease works. You don't get to just opt out of all possible activities that could spread it.
Am I the only one who is starting to get numb to all of this? I know so many people who have either gotten covid and died, or died while in the hospital after a major lack of resources (they were bad, but their care -- and nothing on the hospitals here, they're doing the best they can -- was not at the usual levels, as their death could likely have been prevented or at least delayed under normal circumstances). Now it's like "oh, so and so died? That sucks.... what time is dinner?" I think mental health is going to be a major issue, more so than it already was, after this is all over with. I've seen a lot of people exhibiting behavior that reminds me of the worst of my PTSD when I was in the middle of it.
Many many pages back I replied to you about how it must be the circles you travel in because I had known four people to get covid and they all recovered. Today, that count is still four people. A friend I haven't seen in close to 15 years, wife's coworker who I met once and a friends parent's that I met on her wedding day almost 20 years ago. With CA cases on the rise, I'm sure it's just a matter of time though. Honestly, I'm surprised I haven't got it yet *knocks on wood*
i think it’s also the fact that I just know a ton of people. 500+ coworkers (and many of their families), and then I have a large family on both sides. in this area there are a bunch of covid deniers (how that’s still a thing I don’t know). People who call it “plandemic.” I fortunately don’t run in those circles, but I imagine the death rate is a lot higher there. Of course I know a bunch of people who have gotten it and recovered without any issues that they’re aware of — was talking to two of them today — and I think the rate of people I know to people I know who have died from it is somewhere around the national averages. it’s also a lot of old people who have succumb to it, or the resources issue. I’m trying to recall right now and I can’t think of one person under the age of around 50 who has gotten seriously ill or died from it
The numbers and scale we are dealing with is mind boggling. Its not numbness as much as an inability to really understand big numbers of people. Right now, as a general trend its hitting rural areas of red states. So the best place to be is rural and blue. We are doing contingency planning for this, and same as spring, there are not great options....
Public officials violating their own pandemic restrictions should be forced to resign. There’s been more than a few examples of this in the last week alone.
I can't be the only one with nothing but scorn for this "uptick". Oh, these fuckin' normies had to spend a few months with their family (who, if I'm understanding families correctly, "love them") and suddenly their brain doesn't work right? No actual history of mental illness, no trauma, nothing like that; just a slight loss of convenience and suddenly it's a crisis for them. Somehow people with actual mental illnesses are coping better than the people who act like not being able to loiter at Starbucks is the end of society.
I can't be the only one who lives alone, right? I've noticed a difference, mainly this spring and now in fall/winter when I'm not outside as much and can't golf. The isolation is real and while I'm not feeling depressed or having serious issues I can see how someone could. My brother is a super social guy and we've talked about this at length a few times. Yes, he has a family but he's used to work meetings over drinks three to four times a week, the people in the office where he works (they have done a bunch of work from home and are back to that). I think you need to take into account that some people, outside of phone calls, texts, and the occasional zoom happy hour, are really missing their social safety net. It's not a loss of convenience so much as a feeling of isolation that didn't exist maybe ever before in their lives. So I say fuck your opinion, have a little compassion for those that might not be built to be alone all the time.
I never saw this compassion for the lonely when all it cost to alleviate it was the effort of reaching out. But now when the cost is "grandma's twilight years" suddenly the loneliness of people who really aren't all that lonely is expected to be my top priority. Well, it isn't.
This may seem a tad off topic, but I hope that after all this, there might be some sort of push for prison reform specifically for solitary confinement. I don’t think people fully understand what it does to peoples’ psyche and the long term issues it can cause. I hope that the stress people feel from staying in their homes, watching the mandalorian, and ordering literally anything you want to eat might begin to realize how fucked we treat prisoners. I’m sure it’s a long shot because people feel that anything that happens to someone in jail is justified because criminal. But if someone can’t take being at home to avoid covid, imagine someone truly locked away.
I think this has been a pivot point for our society in so many ways. The mental health aspect of it is very real. I lost staff to self harm over this, and it is indescribably brutal. Is that the worst of it? No, the folks dying from this are. And yes, a lot of very privileged people have had their lives interrupted for the first time ever, some of that will come out in the wash as whining about an inconvenience. I wouldn't try and cast judgement on what that is yet. I also think that from a mental health perspective, this pulled back the curtain in major ways. We see how people are miserable, and how "normal" contributed to it, and how the uncertainty we now have is making it so much worse.
We live in different bubbles, what you see is not necessarily indicative of the rest of your town, state, country, world, and the same is true for me and my experiences. I'm sorry if no one has reached out to you to see if you're ok, and I hope you are doing ok. I do think there your comment about inconvenience is true for some, but that's not a catch all and shouldn't be used as one. Some are truly having a rough go as mentioned by dnd and xray above. The longer this goes on, and yes I get that it's going longer because many didn't take this seriously, the more destructive some of the mental effects will be.
What does “compassion for the lonely” even mean? What is anyone supposed to do about it? Some people are just weird and off-putting.
I can see where you're originally coming from in that mental health should have been higher profile and had more funding for a long time but I feel that you of all people should appreciate that this has dragged many people into recognising how big of an issue it is. Suddenly shutting people off from their normal life and confining them to their house is a big thing, have a look at the rate of mental health issues in prisons, it's a big deal and is having real repercussions throughout society. I think saying that people who already had mental health issues are coping better is a little off, you yourself mentioned that the lockdown didn't really change many of your habits in the first place I've generally thought that most of your opinions were well-considered if I agreed with them or not but as someone who has had issues with depression and substance abuse over the years, I think your stance on this is short-sighted and would have thought that you'd have a little more compassion knowing what these people are going through having done it yourself.
I interpret his post as "loneliness as an excuse to break quarantine" or as a high priority issue is a privileged perspective, and largely i agree, those people can go fuck themselves. If you can check on a neighbor or text a friend, cool, do your part to combat loneliness. But it's far from the highest priority in terms of a pandemic, and its not a valid consideration in the risk calculus. However, I have seen what it can do, and if we are not very kind to one another all of the sudden, we will have a suicide epidemic on our hands...
I feel you. I know from my perspective, I have been WFH for years, and deal with people socially, albeit virtually, all day, every day. Hours are spent on video calls and solid chatting via Slack to about 40 different people. When I am done, I want to be left alone, just to let the hamster in my brain slow down and hop off the wheel. A lot of people don't have that, so the loneliness sets in. Cabin Fever is a real thing. That being said, I think that rather than try and get social interaction in the previous manner, and putting people at risk, maybe try new ways to reach out and interact. I know in my mom's case, she was doing really badly... depressed, alone, all that stuff. I spent some time showing her how to use FaceTime, and Zoom, and she's now reaching out and teaching her friends how to have daily lunches over Zoom, or group texts where they share more and more pics of their days... not just rely on face-to-face time. That has REALLY helped her, and she is now a totally different person than she was 3 months ago.... and she's helping her friends do the same. Of course, a big part of her remedy was to just stop watching the fucking news and realize that the depression they peddle is not relevant. We've now set her up with a reading room with comfy chair at the window, good reading light, and a desk to do her iPad Facetiming with.