Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I got Covid for the first time, a month or so ago.

It bruised my ego. I thought I was one of the special few who would never get covid. Then I got it.

I recovered, and it's been fine. But my ego has never been the same.

I think you know it is silly to assign moral value to having Covid or the lack of it, so I will not flame you on this.

I'm not assigning moral value - I've lived my life 100% normally for the last 2.5 years, and probably did some "risky" things in the first year pre-vax (regular gym use, for example).

After a while, I thought I might have been genetically gifted or something! Nope, turns out I just hadn't met the right covid+ person to get infected by

These are the weirdest stories to me. Because I do think those of us who have never had it (myself included) start feeling like we must be immune. I know several people who slept in the same bed as their spouse all the way through spouse's covid illness (because they figured isolation was futile in the same house) and never got it. Testing the whole time. But then some of those people eventually have gotten it. So weird. If not some natural born immunity, how did they (we) avoid it in so many "high risk" situations?!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Adding: I think it is crazy that masks aren't required in doctor's offices while COVID is still going around.

They’re required in every doctor’s office I go to. In my family, that’s a pediatrician, a GP, two oncologists, a rheumatalogist, two dermatologists, an asthma and allergy specialist. Even the dental practice we go to requires them if someone isn’t actively in your mouth.

If you are in the DC area, could you please share the doctors name? I’m looking for doctors that still mask. Most of my specialist still do but the PCP doesn’t because she is at MedSTAR

Masks don’t work for a virus spread via aerosols.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Adding: I think it is crazy that masks aren't required in doctor's offices while COVID is still going around.

They’re required in every doctor’s office I go to. In my family, that’s a pediatrician, a GP, two oncologists, a rheumatalogist, two dermatologists, an asthma and allergy specialist. Even the dental practice we go to requires them if someone isn’t actively in your mouth.

If you are in the DC area, could you please share the doctors name? I’m looking for doctors that still mask. Most of my specialist still do but the PCP doesn’t because she is at MedSTAR

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Adding: I think it is crazy that masks aren't required in doctor's offices while COVID is still going around.

They’re required in every doctor’s office I go to. In my family, that’s a pediatrician, a GP, two oncologists, a rheumatalogist, two dermatologists, an asthma and allergy specialist. Even the dental practice we go to requires them if someone isn’t actively in your mouth.

Are you in DC? Our kids' pediatrician (MedStar), adults' PCPs and specialists (GW), and my oncologist (unaffiliated) have all ditched masks.

Anonymous wrote:I have no issue with government or institutions. They did the best they could with the information that they had and I doubt most or any of you could have done better.

I am sincerely affected in how I view my fellow Americans. The selfish disdain for others. The ignorance. Questioning experts based on their keyboard searches. I have little faith in people, their community concern, their kindness. And this manifests itself more and more every day, since COVID.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a nurse who worked during Covid in the hospital. I think the weirdest thing I see is that sometimes it feels like people went through it but came out with different realities? Like when I read someone say “I can’t believe how much we overreacted, etc etc” and my memory of it is still lots of people dying and/or getting really sick. Including co-workers. Like yes, it involved. But it was surreal in 2020 and even parts of 2021. So yes, it changed me. It also made me aware how the US is so politically divided and the days of uniting over something big (pandemic or something else) are gone.

I think there is nuance here, though, and that part of the problem is that people seem to think there are just two Covid camps, but there aren't.

I am totally with you on 2020 and the idea that Covid was absolutely a big, scary deal, and the initial reaction to shut everything down, start masking up and isolating, was correct and probably the least we could do. I have issues with the initial response but they are entirely about the government's lack of preparedness and proper messaging.

Like it's dumb that people were making their own cloth masks or trying to procure their own masks online. That's part of why masking became so politicized, because there was this idea that if you took Covid seriously, you'd be ready to sew your own mask or spend hundreds of dollars trying to buy masks online. But not everyone can do that. The government should have just handed out masks in public spaces and said "please wear this, it's a pandemic." If instead of special ordering or making a mask in order to go the grocery store, you'd just been handed a surgical mask on your way into the store, I think you would have gotten high compliance with some of this stuff very early on because it would have been seen as just normal public health precautions and not a political statement.

And then there were a bunch of other things where people divided into two, nonsensical camps instead of coming together to find a reasonable solution. Like school closures. I think it was a good idea to close schools in March 2020 and a good idea to be cautious about reopening, making every effort to limit Covid spread and exploring hybrid school, outdoor options, maybe shifting the school calendar up to have more school in the summer when Covid rates were lower, etc. But we had one group of people who were like "who cares, kids don't get Covid, teachers are wimps, schools never should have closed." And another group who was like "virtual school is amazing, there's no learning loss and if there is it doesn't matter, there's no way to have in person school without killing people." And I'm sorry, but they were all wrong, and the upshot is that we screwed over a lot of kids. It's frustrating how unwilling people are to find middle ground, everything is either/or.

It just sometimes feels like we had one group who decided Covid wasn't really, and obviously I wasn't going to join that group. But then we had another group that just sort of lost all ability to evaluate risk and was unwilling to consider ANY issues outside of Covid when it came to how we were going to behave as a society. Like I know people personally who stopped talking to me when I decided to stop masking in most outdoor settings after it became clear that outdoor transmission was rare, and when it happened required prolonged exposure. I literally had a neighbor who screamed at me for not masking my 3 year old on a sidewalk. I also have Trumpy family members who thought wearing a mask meant you were a fascist. Navigating between those two groups SUCKS.

And I think that's par to the Covid shift. It's not really even about Covid. It's about how it's just become impossible to function in a world where people have adopted such extreme viewpoints on absolutely everything. It's exhausting. I think a lot of people who talk about the "overreaction" to Covid are really talking about this polarization, and the heightened emotions around everything and not necessarily saying "oh Covid was a blip, who cares."

Amen. The bolded resonates with me so much. If you weren't predisposed to favor one group over the other, you found yourself either cutting off contact with the most extreme viewpoints or viewing all interactions with uncertainty.

What strikes me most now is that the two extremes have come together to deny the lasting impact of COVID in equally disingenuous ways. The "COVID is nothing" people claim that everyone overreacted and that they were out living their lives freely within months. At the same time, they are furious about prolonged and what they believe were unwarranted and burdensome COVID restrictions. However, if you took COVID seriously, followed any of these unreasonable public health directives, and struggled due to the restrictions, any negative consequences were a matter of individual choice and totally your fault.

On the other hand, there are the "avoid disease above all else people" who made demands for COVID sacrifices a matter of public health and social justice. These people are so convinced that unending sacrifice was necessary and right that they refuse to acknowledge the harms caused by the mitigation measures. "Public health" does not, in their view, include acknowledgment of social, educational, or other needs. The consequences of COVID sacrifice for the greater good are the responsibility of each individual and wouldn't exist if individuals had done a better job adapting, parenting, or whatever. Again, it's all individual choice.

It's like both sides are saying that COVID and COVID policies were of paramount importance while simultaneously denying the ongoing effects of the policies and blaming individuals if they struggled.

I'm not denying people struggled. I'm saying there is no large societal "Big Shift". In what ways has all of society been changed forever? Individuals? Yes. Society? No.

I think Covid greatly accelerated a process that had been in the works for a while and is what the PP is getting at -- the extreme political polarization of society to a point of paralysis (say that three times fast!). Obviously Covid didn't cause this to happen. It was well underway by the time Trump was elected. But Covid was the global crisis that took that from a troubling trend to a permanent shift. I don't think it's a coincidence that we saw events like the George Floyd protests (and riots) and the J6 insurrection during Covid. Like those weren't just unfortunate but coincidental timing. Covid broke some fundamental aspects of society that might have otherwise tempered the more extreme behavior we saw.

Like do really feel like society is the *same* as it was in 2019? Do you have the same relationship with extended family (including extended family with different political beliefs)? Do you have the same relationship with your kids school? Your employer? The same relationship politics generally? Do you think of government entities the same way? All of these things are different for me and that's not an uncommon perspective. Many, many people feel this way. I'm not saying Covid itself caused that change, but the "Covid era" is something with a before that looked one way, and an after that looks a different way.

So yes. A big shift.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Adding: I think it is crazy that masks aren't required in doctor's offices while COVID is still going around.

They’re required in every doctor’s office I go to. In my family, that’s a pediatrician, a GP, two oncologists, a rheumatalogist, two dermatologists, an asthma and allergy specialist. Even the dental practice we go to requires them if someone isn’t actively in your mouth.

Anonymous wrote:You are all so incredibly soft and entitled . . .

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Adding: I think it is crazy that masks aren't required in doctor's offices while COVID is still going around.

They’re required in every doctor’s office I go to. In my family, that’s a pediatrician, a GP, two oncologists, a rheumatalogist, two dermatologists, an asthma and allergy specialist. Even the dental practice we go to requires them if someone isn’t actively in your mouth.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Adding: I think it is crazy that masks aren't required in doctor's offices while COVID is still going around.

They’re required in every doctor’s office I go to. In my family, that’s a pediatrician, a GP, two oncologists, a rheumatalogist, two dermatologists, an asthma and allergy specialist. Even the dental practice we go to requires them if someone isn’t actively in your mouth.

Anonymous wrote:Adding: I think it is crazy that masks aren't required in doctor's offices while COVID is still going around.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a nurse who worked during Covid in the hospital. I think the weirdest thing I see is that sometimes it feels like people went through it but came out with different realities? Like when I read someone say “I can’t believe how much we overreacted, etc etc” and my memory of it is still lots of people dying and/or getting really sick. Including co-workers. Like yes, it involved. But it was surreal in 2020 and even parts of 2021. So yes, it changed me. It also made me aware how the US is so politically divided and the days of uniting over something big (pandemic or something else) are gone.

I think there is nuance here, though, and that part of the problem is that people seem to think there are just two Covid camps, but there aren't.

I am totally with you on 2020 and the idea that Covid was absolutely a big, scary deal, and the initial reaction to shut everything down, start masking up and isolating, was correct and probably the least we could do. I have issues with the initial response but they are entirely about the government's lack of preparedness and proper messaging.

Like it's dumb that people were making their own cloth masks or trying to procure their own masks online. That's part of why masking became so politicized, because there was this idea that if you took Covid seriously, you'd be ready to sew your own mask or spend hundreds of dollars trying to buy masks online. But not everyone can do that. The government should have just handed out masks in public spaces and said "please wear this, it's a pandemic." If instead of special ordering or making a mask in order to go the grocery store, you'd just been handed a surgical mask on your way into the store, I think you would have gotten high compliance with some of this stuff very early on because it would have been seen as just normal public health precautions and not a political statement.

And then there were a bunch of other things where people divided into two, nonsensical camps instead of coming together to find a reasonable solution. Like school closures. I think it was a good idea to close schools in March 2020 and a good idea to be cautious about reopening, making every effort to limit Covid spread and exploring hybrid school, outdoor options, maybe shifting the school calendar up to have more school in the summer when Covid rates were lower, etc. But we had one group of people who were like "who cares, kids don't get Covid, teachers are wimps, schools never should have closed." And another group who was like "virtual school is amazing, there's no learning loss and if there is it doesn't matter, there's no way to have in person school without killing people." And I'm sorry, but they were all wrong, and the upshot is that we screwed over a lot of kids. It's frustrating how unwilling people are to find middle ground, everything is either/or.

It just sometimes feels like we had one group who decided Covid wasn't really, and obviously I wasn't going to join that group. But then we had another group that just sort of lost all ability to evaluate risk and was unwilling to consider ANY issues outside of Covid when it came to how we were going to behave as a society. Like I know people personally who stopped talking to me when I decided to stop masking in most outdoor settings after it became clear that outdoor transmission was rare, and when it happened required prolonged exposure. I literally had a neighbor who screamed at me for not masking my 3 year old on a sidewalk. I also have Trumpy family members who thought wearing a mask meant you were a fascist. Navigating between those two groups SUCKS.

And I think that's par to the Covid shift. It's not really even about Covid. It's about how it's just become impossible to function in a world where people have adopted such extreme viewpoints on absolutely everything. It's exhausting. I think a lot of people who talk about the "overreaction" to Covid are really talking about this polarization, and the heightened emotions around everything and not necessarily saying "oh Covid was a blip, who cares."

Amen. The bolded resonates with me so much. If you weren't predisposed to favor one group over the other, you found yourself either cutting off contact with the most extreme viewpoints or viewing all interactions with uncertainty.

What strikes me most now is that the two extremes have come together to deny the lasting impact of COVID in equally disingenuous ways. The "COVID is nothing" people claim that everyone overreacted and that they were out living their lives freely within months. At the same time, they are furious about prolonged and what they believe were unwarranted and burdensome COVID restrictions. However, if you took COVID seriously, followed any of these unreasonable public health directives, and struggled due to the restrictions, any negative consequences were a matter of individual choice and totally your fault.

On the other hand, there are the "avoid disease above all else people" who made demands for COVID sacrifices a matter of public health and social justice. These people are so convinced that unending sacrifice was necessary and right that they refuse to acknowledge the harms caused by the mitigation measures. "Public health" does not, in their view, include acknowledgment of social, educational, or other needs. The consequences of COVID sacrifice for the greater good are the responsibility of each individual and wouldn't exist if individuals had done a better job adapting, parenting, or whatever. Again, it's all individual choice.

It's like both sides are saying that COVID and COVID policies were of paramount importance while simultaneously denying the ongoing effects of the policies and blaming individuals if they struggled.

I'm not denying people struggled. I'm saying there is no large societal "Big Shift". In what ways has all of society been changed forever? Individuals? Yes. Society? No.