Covid. The big shift

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I work in education and people who came of age and were still in K-12 or college during COVID are developmentally stunted. They don't seem to have coping or problem solving skills and ignore deadlines and have trouble taking initiative.

We’re moving school districts next summer and are holding our daughter back - she’s young for her class and has diagnosed learning disabilities, and covid was a huge challenge to her learning.

I don’t know why it’s so difficult for people to acknowledge the intense trauma we all experienced. Just because some of us coped better or were less materially affected does not invalidate other people’s experiences. I guess that’s another fun legacy of covid: a notable decrease in empathy and compassion. Ironically.

But so much if it was self inflicted. That doesn’t make everyone a victim. People went way overboard and now have to suffer the consequences.

NP. You highlight what has caused is shift in my worldview from which I am having trouble recovering. You think that people went "overboard" by following public health advice, taking COVID seriously as a health risk, and trying to do their part to avoid spreading it when certain members of the community were at greater risk. Your "overboard" was my trying to be a decent human being. The new narrative is that any fallout from restricted activities or isolation was self-inflicted and, therefore, not worth acknowledging or addressing.

I'll say that my view of "experts" in various realms has become increasingly distrustful. This is particularly true with those in public health and education, where experts offered assurances that were solely focused on maintaining desired outcomes without honest acknowledgment or discussion of potential long-term consequences.

At some point common sense should have been restored. Some of the measures and actions were ridiculous and should have been obvious. Children never needed to be banned from playgrounds, masks weren’t needed on solo runs in suburban neighborhoods. I lived in a place where police were called on kids playing at a park. So we moved. A whole lot of this never made much sense and shockingly a lot of people blindly followed along and gleefully shamed their neighbors who weren’t in lock step. It’s hard to muster sympathy now.

So you are happy that people are having trouble rebuilding their lives because they tried to control and shame others.

NP here
Fixed it for you.

And yes, I for one am very happy at ANY misery brought upon those who tried to force others into isolation, unwanted vaccinations, and other horrors. They fully deserve it.

This is exactly why it's hard to move on. People who are angry about COVID restrictions believe that anyone who followed them is equally as responsible for the measures and their consequences as those who made the decisions. Yes, every single person who tried to avoid contracting and spreading COVID was actively policing the activities of others, reporting them to authorities, lobbying for more and longer restrictions, and otherwise trying to make your life miserable. ALL OF US. We did nothing but try to ruin your life for more than two years. We deserve to suffer.

What exactly do you want here? If it’s sympathy and empathy you’re going about it the wrong way. You’re making things even worse for yourself.

I think PP is saying to move the f-- on from whining about COVID restrictions. It's tiresome. Nasty (see the bolded). And pointless. The anti-science crowd saying things like the bolded and you're whining about the PP and lack of sympathy/empathy? That's. rich.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work in education and people who came of age and were still in K-12 or college during COVID are developmentally stunted. They don't seem to have coping or problem solving skills and ignore deadlines and have trouble taking initiative.

We’re moving school districts next summer and are holding our daughter back - she’s young for her class and has diagnosed learning disabilities, and covid was a huge challenge to her learning.

I don’t know why it’s so difficult for people to acknowledge the intense trauma we all experienced. Just because some of us coped better or were less materially affected does not invalidate other people’s experiences. I guess that’s another fun legacy of covid: a notable decrease in empathy and compassion. Ironically.

But so much if it was self inflicted. That doesn’t make everyone a victim. People went way overboard and now have to suffer the consequences.

NP. You highlight what has caused is shift in my worldview from which I am having trouble recovering. You think that people went "overboard" by following public health advice, taking COVID seriously as a health risk, and trying to do their part to avoid spreading it when certain members of the community were at greater risk. Your "overboard" was my trying to be a decent human being. The new narrative is that any fallout from restricted activities or isolation was self-inflicted and, therefore, not worth acknowledging or addressing.

I'll say that my view of "experts" in various realms has become increasingly distrustful. This is particularly true with those in public health and education, where experts offered assurances that were solely focused on maintaining desired outcomes without honest acknowledgment or discussion of potential long-term consequences.

At some point common sense should have been restored. Some of the measures and actions were ridiculous and should have been obvious. Children never needed to be banned from playgrounds, masks weren’t needed on solo runs in suburban neighborhoods. I lived in a place where police were called on kids playing at a park. So we moved. A whole lot of this never made much sense and shockingly a lot of people blindly followed along and gleefully shamed their neighbors who weren’t in lock step. It’s hard to muster sympathy now.

"Common sense" was restored when we had vaccines.

Your lust for punishing people who "took COVID seriously" is noted. I get psychopathy vibes from you.

The self-appointed covid police were still loudly shaming well past vaccines being out and the only reason anyone went back to school was laws were passed (in VA at least) and our kids still spent part of that year wearing masks (aka chin straps/napkins/tissues). Please note I am not anti-mask I am anti-useless masks worn improperly by young children as virtue signaling. Always have been.

It wasn't common sense. You got forced and outnumbered eventually.

And the self-proclaimed COVID experts who denied that it existed or denied precautionary measures worked, were loudly shaming those who chose to act cautiously. Or bi---ing about private institutions covid policies. AD NAUSEUM. I had to witness some vapid, ignorant Karen lecture the 18 year old receptionist at my hair salon (this was MAYBE late 2020 and they required masks and spacing) about her scientific analysis and why Fauci was a terrorist. Took every ounce of me not to tell that B to STFU and move along. Which is what the admin told her, albeit much more nicely than I would have.

Unless you are an expert. Unless you understand the scientific process. I simply do no give a flying rat's F what you thought or think now (with 20/20) about Covid or Covid policy.

[Anonymous]

I'm not the same and I can't seem to find my way back it doesn't help at all that I'm immune suppressed and don't know how to begin to find my way...I'm very depressed and feel trapped in certain areas of my life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had Covid last November. I'm a long-hauler, and it has been very rough. I overheard my DH telling a friend "She hasn't been the same since, and I'm afraid she never will be." So yeah, for me personally life is not the same.

But the societal shifts are huge, of course. The vast numbers of folks who are still WFH, and the folks who will only be willing to do remote work going forward. Oh, and remember how going to work sick was a badge of honor? Lol, those days are over. Also, someone went to shake my hand the other day and it felt awkward and I couldn't put my finger on why and I realized it is because post-Covid we don't do it anymore. Probably good riddance on that one.

That’s so weird. I’m a guy. I shake hands all the time when I meet people.

Stop putting your hands in your mouth and you’ll be fine.

Who's shaking hands? No one is doing this anymore. Why would you want to touch a stranger anyway?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m not the same. It changed me, us, everything. I feel much less grounded and sure - in our institutions, in my fellow humans, the future. Everyone around me seems to teeter between anxiety/anger and being checked out. Everyone is overwhelmed. Or maybe it’s just me.

You articulated what I couldn't. This is exactly how I feel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[twitter]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid turned into a hermit. Anxiety about getting COVID was high. This pandemic affected their learning and social development.

We had to play catch up getting them prepared to move away to college. Even then, there were gaps. They’d never used a debit card for instance. They rarely went out and, when they did, used our credit card.

The learned to drive “late.” Once they did, that helped to accelerate their growth.

They caught COVID finally and felt pretty sick. In a sense, it was probably good to finally catch it and get that over with.

Zoom and telehealth have saved me hours.

We missed saying goodbye to a dying parent due to hospital COVID protocols. Still hard to believe that.



Long COVID is a disease of inflammation, a doctor told me. I hope you feel better every day, OP.

How do teens end up with anxiety about covid? I truly don’t understand that

One read the news and when our aunt died of Covid, it galvanized into anxiety.

I’m sorry about your aunt, really I am. But please be honest- how old was she? What other health conditions?

NP here - so it wasn't my aunt. I lost a cousin - age 43, no health conditions. So go ahead please rationalize that because you know covid ONLY affects the old, the sick, and the fat right, and if anyone else worries about it they're paranoid, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[twitter]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid turned into a hermit. Anxiety about getting COVID was high. This pandemic affected their learning and social development.

We had to play catch up getting them prepared to move away to college. Even then, there were gaps. They’d never used a debit card for instance. They rarely went out and, when they did, used our credit card.

The learned to drive “late.” Once they did, that helped to accelerate their growth.

They caught COVID finally and felt pretty sick. In a sense, it was probably good to finally catch it and get that over with.

Zoom and telehealth have saved me hours.

We missed saying goodbye to a dying parent due to hospital COVID protocols. Still hard to believe that.



Long COVID is a disease of inflammation, a doctor told me. I hope you feel better every day, OP.

How do teens end up with anxiety about covid? I truly don’t understand that

One read the news and when our aunt died of Covid, it galvanized into anxiety.

I’m sorry about your aunt, really I am. But please be honest- how old was she? What other health conditions?

NP here - so it wasn't my aunt. I lost a cousin - age 43, no health conditions. So go ahead please rationalize that because you know covid ONLY affects the old, the sick, and the fat right, and if anyone else worries about it they're paranoid, right?

The ignorance about who covid affected 3.5 year later is astounding. Also like the PP doesn't even care if they people had medical issues or not like their life lost didn't matter. Like what is wrong with people? Their souls are missing.

For the record I lost two HEALTHY uncles in their early 60's from covid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m not the same. It changed me, us, everything. I feel much less grounded and sure - in our institutions, in my fellow humans, the future. Everyone around me seems to teeter between anxiety/anger and being checked out. Everyone is overwhelmed. Or maybe it’s just me.

You articulated what I couldn't. This is exactly how I feel.

I read this in an article about the pandemic and collective trauma, and it helped me to understand why I'm having trouble moving on.

[google]Trauma can be understood as a rupture in "meaning-making", says David Trickey, a psychologist and representative of the UK Trauma Council. When "the way you see yourself, the way you see the world, and the way you see other people" are shocked and overturned by an event – and a gap arises between your "orienting systems" and that event – simple stress cascades into trauma, often-mediated through sustained and severe feelings of helplessness.

Even our most everyday tragedies stand as potential pits for trauma. Being fired from a job, for example, can be highly traumatic. One's identity, the foundation of a "personal GPS", is often tied to work and its execution. A job provides self-esteem, purpose and a social network, as well as comprising the activities of much of waking life. Being unexpectedly fired overturns this all. Stress accumulates and the nervous system is forced on high-alert.

One's mental resilience, the oil that churns our cognitive machine and keeps us moving in stress, is depleted. And if nothing fills the gap – nothing external to define and evaluate your worth, no other reasons to go on, nothing to explain the why, what, and how of each day – for some time, one can become unmoored. It takes an update and reframing of your beliefs and sense of self, a new round of "meaning-making", to work through the trauma's impact.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210203-after-the-covid-19-pandemic-how-will-we-heal

Some people continue to define themselves through their extreme COVID viewpoints. As this thread demonstrates, you have people fueled by anger at what they believe are unjustified and unreasonable restrictions on their lives, unable to muster compassion for anyone whose view of COVID was different from theirs, and on the other hand, there are the zero COVID people (which are often vocal activists for other causes) whose identity focuses on performative expressions of moral superiority and judgment of others.

In between, there are the majority of people trying to make sense of what happened. But it can be difficult to get motivated when you can't see the horizon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work in education and people who came of age and were still in K-12 or college during COVID are developmentally stunted. They don't seem to have coping or problem solving skills and ignore deadlines and have trouble taking initiative.

We’re moving school districts next summer and are holding our daughter back - she’s young for her class and has diagnosed learning disabilities, and covid was a huge challenge to her learning.

I don’t know why it’s so difficult for people to acknowledge the intense trauma we all experienced. Just because some of us coped better or were less materially affected does not invalidate other people’s experiences. I guess that’s another fun legacy of covid: a notable decrease in empathy and compassion. Ironically.

But so much if it was self inflicted. That doesn’t make everyone a victim. People went way overboard and now have to suffer the consequences.

NP. You highlight what has caused is shift in my worldview from which I am having trouble recovering. You think that people went "overboard" by following public health advice, taking COVID seriously as a health risk, and trying to do their part to avoid spreading it when certain members of the community were at greater risk. Your "overboard" was my trying to be a decent human being. The new narrative is that any fallout from restricted activities or isolation was self-inflicted and, therefore, not worth acknowledging or addressing.

I'll say that my view of "experts" in various realms has become increasingly distrustful. This is particularly true with those in public health and education, where experts offered assurances that were solely focused on maintaining desired outcomes without honest acknowledgment or discussion of potential long-term consequences.

At some point common sense should have been restored. Some of the measures and actions were ridiculous and should have been obvious. Children never needed to be banned from playgrounds, masks weren’t needed on solo runs in suburban neighborhoods. I lived in a place where police were called on kids playing at a park. So we moved. A whole lot of this never made much sense and shockingly a lot of people blindly followed along and gleefully shamed their neighbors who weren’t in lock step. It’s hard to muster sympathy now.

"Common sense" was restored when we had vaccines.

Your lust for punishing people who "took COVID seriously" is noted. I get psychopathy vibes from you.

The self-appointed covid police were still loudly shaming well past vaccines being out and the only reason anyone went back to school was laws were passed (in VA at least) and our kids still spent part of that year wearing masks (aka chin straps/napkins/tissues). Please note I am not anti-mask I am anti-useless masks worn improperly by young children as virtue signaling. Always have been.

It wasn't common sense. You got forced and outnumbered eventually.

And the self-proclaimed COVID experts who denied that it existed or denied precautionary measures worked, were loudly shaming those who chose to act cautiously. Or bi---ing about private institutions covid policies. AD NAUSEUM. I had to witness some vapid, ignorant Karen lecture the 18 year old receptionist at my hair salon (this was MAYBE late 2020 and they required masks and spacing) about her scientific analysis and why Fauci was a terrorist. Took every ounce of me not to tell that B to STFU and move along. Which is what the admin told her, albeit much more nicely than I would have.

Unless you are an expert. Unless you understand the scientific process. I simply do no give a flying rat's F what you thought or think now (with 20/20) about Covid or Covid policy.

No one needs to be an expert to see what covid policy did to kids. Widely reported data. If you don't have kids, it's still very much our collective problem. It affects all of us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had Covid last November. I'm a long-hauler, and it has been very rough. I overheard my DH telling a friend "She hasn't been the same since, and I'm afraid she never will be." So yeah, for me personally life is not the same.

But the societal shifts are huge, of course. The vast numbers of folks who are still WFH, and the folks who will only be willing to do remote work going forward. Oh, and remember how going to work sick was a badge of honor? Lol, those days are over. Also, someone went to shake my hand the other day and it felt awkward and I couldn't put my finger on why and I realized it is because post-Covid we don't do it anymore. Probably good riddance on that one.

That’s so weird. I’m a guy. I shake hands all the time when I meet people.

Stop putting your hands in your mouth and you’ll be fine.

Who's shaking hands? No one is doing this anymore. Why would you want to touch a stranger anyway?

Everyone does.

It's totally back to normal now. Shaking hands is a fine way to greet someone

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work in education and people who came of age and were still in K-12 or college during COVID are developmentally stunted. They don't seem to have coping or problem solving skills and ignore deadlines and have trouble taking initiative.

We’re moving school districts next summer and are holding our daughter back - she’s young for her class and has diagnosed learning disabilities, and covid was a huge challenge to her learning.

I don’t know why it’s so difficult for people to acknowledge the intense trauma we all experienced. Just because some of us coped better or were less materially affected does not invalidate other people’s experiences. I guess that’s another fun legacy of covid: a notable decrease in empathy and compassion. Ironically.

But so much if it was self inflicted. That doesn’t make everyone a victim. People went way overboard and now have to suffer the consequences.

NP. You highlight what has caused is shift in my worldview from which I am having trouble recovering. You think that people went "overboard" by following public health advice, taking COVID seriously as a health risk, and trying to do their part to avoid spreading it when certain members of the community were at greater risk. Your "overboard" was my trying to be a decent human being. The new narrative is that any fallout from restricted activities or isolation was self-inflicted and, therefore, not worth acknowledging or addressing.

I'll say that my view of "experts" in various realms has become increasingly distrustful. This is particularly true with those in public health and education, where experts offered assurances that were solely focused on maintaining desired outcomes without honest acknowledgment or discussion of potential long-term consequences.

At some point common sense should have been restored. Some of the measures and actions were ridiculous and should have been obvious. Children never needed to be banned from playgrounds, masks weren’t needed on solo runs in suburban neighborhoods. I lived in a place where police were called on kids playing at a park. So we moved. A whole lot of this never made much sense and shockingly a lot of people blindly followed along and gleefully shamed their neighbors who weren’t in lock step. It’s hard to muster sympathy now.

So you are happy that people are having trouble rebuilding their lives because they tried to control and shame others.

NP here
Fixed it for you.

And yes, I for one am very happy at ANY misery brought upon those who tried to force others into isolation, unwanted vaccinations, and other horrors. They fully deserve it.

This is exactly why it's hard to move on. People who are angry about COVID restrictions believe that anyone who followed them is equally as responsible for the measures and their consequences as those who made the decisions. Yes, every single person who tried to avoid contracting and spreading COVID was actively policing the activities of others, reporting them to authorities, lobbying for more and longer restrictions, and otherwise trying to make your life miserable. ALL OF US. We did nothing but try to ruin your life for more than two years. We deserve to suffer.

What exactly do you want here? If it’s sympathy and empathy you’re going about it the wrong way. You’re making things even worse for yourself.

I think PP is saying to move the f-- on from whining about COVID restrictions. It's tiresome. Nasty (see the bolded). And pointless. The anti-science crowd saying things like the bolded and you're whining about the PP and lack of sympathy/empathy? That's. rich.

So what do you want? Its a simple question. Do you want to rejoin society or keep spinning your wheels?

[Anonymous]

I’d say my life is back to 95% of normal. I am more cognizant of people with coughs and if I feel ill for more than a day or two I take a Covid test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had Covid last November. I'm a long-hauler, and it has been very rough. I overheard my DH telling a friend "She hasn't been the same since, and I'm afraid she never will be." So yeah, for me personally life is not the same.

But the societal shifts are huge, of course. The vast numbers of folks who are still WFH, and the folks who will only be willing to do remote work going forward. Oh, and remember how going to work sick was a badge of honor? Lol, those days are over. Also, someone went to shake my hand the other day and it felt awkward and I couldn't put my finger on why and I realized it is because post-Covid we don't do it anymore. Probably good riddance on that one.

That’s so weird. I’m a guy. I shake hands all the time when I meet people.

Stop putting your hands in your mouth and you’ll be fine.

Who's shaking hands? No one is doing this anymore. Why would you want to touch a stranger anyway?

Everyone does.

It's totally back to normal now. Shaking hands is a fine way to greet someone

It is in many places. People like PP don’t seem to understand that these aren’t broad societal shifts but more tiny bubbles surrounded by normalcy. They are the odd ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of stuff just never restarted because of laziness. At my kids' ES alone, many field trips are not back yet, many of the assemblies/all-school gatherings are still not back, several grade-level musical performances are not back, field day and holiday celebrations are shadows of their former selves. None of this is due to fear of Covid. Its just shear laziness. Nobody can be bothered and its sad.

Same is true with neighborhood potlucks, wine clubs, poker clubs, book clubs, etc. Many aren't happening any more and the ones that are have a fraction of their former attendance. Again, not fear of Covid, just laziness and people's preference to just sit at home in their sweat pants. I'm not sure we will ever fully recover from that.

I have noticed the same and I agree. It seems like a fair number of people just don’t want to do anything anymore. It took the public libraries until literally LAST MONTH (September of 2023!) to get back to normal hours. I still don’t see as many preschool/little kid events there as I used to. There used to be a book club in my neighborhood, it stopped during Covid and never returned. The HOA used to put on a Christmas/holiday party - nothing big, just an indoor/outdoor thing at the clubhouse and in the parking lot, during the day for the kids to enjoy. Cancelled in 2020 and never returned.

It’s like we spent so long cooped up that we eventually came to prefer it + people are so burnt out after working and taking care of kids at the same time since schools and sometimes even day cares were closed, that no one has the energy to organize anything anymore.

Yes to all of this. I think this is one reason why it can really vary by person as to whether they feel everything has shifted post-Covid. I think some communities/schools have recovered and gone back to normal, but not all. Mine definitely isn't. I am one of the people who used to plan and participate more pre-Covid and I struggle so much more now. I'm so tired and my mental health isn't as good as it used to be, so I've just dropped the ball on more things because I don't have the energy or mental bandwidth. I think many others are the same. I don't blame anyone. I think Covid hit some communities a lot harder in terms of what we went through, and that has impacted it. The communities where everything is "back to normal" I think probably were less scathed in terms of not just death and illness, but also probably didn't deal with as much of the stress of being in frontline jobs, having kids home for extended periods, maybe had fewer dual income families where both parents had to work, etc. We have friends who have SAHPs, were able to spend much of Covid at second houses, or have kids in privates that reopened quickly, etc., and they are, I think, more over Covid and don't feel the same aftereffects.

Also some communities (including ours) were more impacted by a lot of the conversation around police violence, racism, etc. Those conversations needed to happen but haven't always been handled well or made things better (there is a level of "open wound" that we can't seem to heal) and it all adds to more stress. More homogeneous or privileged communities might not deal with as much of that.

Yeah the George Floyd stuff happening at the same time as Covid was so rough. I had a social group implode because of it. not because of difficulties/disagreements between people in the group, but because the group’s parent org didn’t handle the overall situation in the best way and people knee-jerk reacted by disbanding their own chapters of the larger group. We used to raise money for charitable orgs in the area and do donation drives - not anymore since the group disbanded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of stuff just never restarted because of laziness. At my kids' ES alone, many field trips are not back yet, many of the assemblies/all-school gatherings are still not back, several grade-level musical performances are not back, field day and holiday celebrations are shadows of their former selves. None of this is due to fear of Covid. Its just shear laziness. Nobody can be bothered and its sad.

Same is true with neighborhood potlucks, wine clubs, poker clubs, book clubs, etc. Many aren't happening any more and the ones that are have a fraction of their former attendance. Again, not fear of Covid, just laziness and people's preference to just sit at home in their sweat pants. I'm not sure we will ever fully recover from that.

I have noticed the same and I agree. It seems like a fair number of people just don’t want to do anything anymore. It took the public libraries until literally LAST MONTH (September of 2023!) to get back to normal hours. I still don’t see as many preschool/little kid events there as I used to. There used to be a book club in my neighborhood, it stopped during Covid and never returned. The HOA used to put on a Christmas/holiday party - nothing big, just an indoor/outdoor thing at the clubhouse and in the parking lot, during the day for the kids to enjoy. Cancelled in 2020 and never returned.

It’s like we spent so long cooped up that we eventually came to prefer it + people are so burnt out after working and taking care of kids at the same time since schools and sometimes even day cares were closed, that no one has the energy to organize anything anymore.

Yes to all of this. I think this is one reason why it can really vary by person as to whether they feel everything has shifted post-Covid. I think some communities/schools have recovered and gone back to normal, but not all. Mine definitely isn't. I am one of the people who used to plan and participate more pre-Covid and I struggle so much more now. I'm so tired and my mental health isn't as good as it used to be, so I've just dropped the ball on more things because I don't have the energy or mental bandwidth. I think many others are the same. I don't blame anyone. I think Covid hit some communities a lot harder in terms of what we went through, and that has impacted it. The communities where everything is "back to normal" I think probably were less scathed in terms of not just death and illness, but also probably didn't deal with as much of the stress of being in frontline jobs, having kids home for extended periods, maybe had fewer dual income families where both parents had to work, etc. We have friends who have SAHPs, were able to spend much of Covid at second houses, or have kids in privates that reopened quickly, etc., and they are, I think, more over Covid and don't feel the same aftereffects.

Also some communities (including ours) were more impacted by a lot of the conversation around police violence, racism, etc. Those conversations needed to happen but haven't always been handled well or made things better (there is a level of "open wound" that we can't seem to heal) and it all adds to more stress. More homogeneous or privileged communities might not deal with as much of that.

Yeah the George Floyd stuff happening at the same time as Covid was so rough. I had a social group implode because of it. not because of difficulties/disagreements between people in the group, but because the group’s parent org didn’t handle the overall situation in the best way and people knee-jerk reacted by disbanding their own chapters of the larger group. We used to raise money for charitable orgs in the area and do donation drives - not anymore since the group disbanded.

That was the beginning of the end. Social gatherings were wrong and deadly, unless it was a BLM march. How stupid did they think everyone was? Life went back to normal after that.