Anonymous wrote:You must be living under a rock if you don’t see major changes in all areas of life. To start, behavior problems in kids is out of control. Our broken medical system is even more broken. And there’s politics. For me personally I will never trust or respect anyone who supports right wing extremism. Shootings, a pandemic, out of control mental illness, if you don’t have anxiety you’re not paying attention.

You have this backwards. People out and about since 2020 aren’t the ones living under a rock in a tiny bubble. The people that overreacted in select areas are the ones suffering these consequences. Many many people are back to normal. You have no idea how unrelatable your experience is.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My social life and plans with my friends-but-not-best-friends has not recovered. Neighborhood events never recovered. Attendance at school events is still way down. I feel like my kids (teens) social circles has shrunk too. None of this feels for the better.

Also, the MS and HS teachers are still teaching like it’s virtual school. All on Chromebooks. No lessons and hands on teaching anymore.

Not my experience on one single one of these. Not invalidating. Just interesting. Wonder if it’s more regional. Are you in one of the very extreme blue bubbles?

No not at all. Just a bunch of social events that went away at the beginning of Covid - no one has bothered to bring a lot of them back, and when people have tried to bring them back, there seems to be lack of interest (but not fear of Covid.) And the teaching thing is just laziness. Why explain a concept in person when you can post your Covid slides and links to YouTube?

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.

Anonymous wrote:One daughter was a senior in HS in ‘20-‘21, the other was an eighth grader. Lack of socialization and more time spent online pretty much ruined their lives. They are not the same.

Same for my son, who was in college 20-21. The draconian measures their college did are still having ripple effects.

I lost confidence in the political system as both parties weaponized COVID for political gains. I also lost full confidence in CDC to be honest and trustworthy, especially with the recent information about a certain head of the CDC. I watched major news organizations censor and shut down discussions on the origin of the virus and any dissenting views on the appropriateness of the COVID responses. I watched the reaction and counterreaction from fools who refused to take a vaccine despite being a high risk demographic and I watched a major presidential candidate diss the vaccine and called it untrustworthy because it'd been released under a different president. So the whole COVID episode left me deeply jaded about the sincerity of so many values about honesty, trustworthy, the truth, freedom of press and willingness to investigate, and attitudes of the political classes.

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 must be living under a rock if you don’t see major changes in all areas of life. To start, behavior problems in kids is out of control. Our broken medical system is even more broken. And there’s politics. For me personally I will never trust or respect anyone who supports right wing extremism. Shootings, a pandemic, out of control mental illness, if you don’t have anxiety you’re not paying attention.

Anonymous wrote:Toilet paper rolls never returned to their pre-pandemic thickness.

+10000 rip Kirkland tp.

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.

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if folks who feel some big shift have kids?

I have two in school and it’s like it never happened, thank god. I work in an in-person job which I prefer. Grateful I didn’t have an industry that stuck with remote work as I found it depressing and isolating. My spouse does have some lingering covid issues but they’re managed.

It feels like a distant haze and I guarantee you kids and teens never ever think about it and didn’t feel some big shift to them.

The shift isn't just thinking about the virus. My kids have been back to school and normal activities since 2021. It's the subtle shifts that were caused in society that we still haven't even felt the full impact of. For example, increased WFH, supply shortages and financial changes that led to inflation, people dropping out of the workforce (and now lack of workers in the service sector and healthcare), lack of trust in government, increased hostility, children who haven't ever recovered from the learning loss.

Anonymous wrote:

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

Modeling from anxious parents.

Any child or teen I know who has linger anxiety about it

Anonymous wrote:One daughter was a senior in HS in ‘20-‘21, the other was an eighth grader. Lack of socialization and more time spent online pretty much ruined their lives. They are not the same.

One of my kids graduated high school in 2020 and it's similar for him. His freshman year of college was a disaster with online classes, literally barriers at all the dining hall tables so you couldn't even see the people sitting near you, no in person activities like clubs or organizations.

Anonymous wrote:

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

Modeling from anxious parents.

That’s what I suspected. We rarely talked about it at our house, once we got past the 2020 craze.

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

Modeling from anxious parents.

Things have been mostly normal for us. I ended up getting it in February and I'm hoping not to get it again and be out of work for 6 days again (independent contractor who doesn't work at home but with kids so yeah, I can't work and still have it.)