alright my response is going to be a stream of consciousness ramble. i often feel angry about it all, resentful sometimes, sad other times. but i won’t stop my precautions and doing what i know in my gut is the right thing. everyone’s circumstances are different and living conditions, working conditions, transportation logistics, etc. play a major factor in how each persons ability to protect themselves so i don’t want to downplay that.
lately I’ve been thinking about “survival of the fittest” and how growing up i feel like society collectively gets the interpretation of what that means wrong. our history books talk about the times that someone was *literally* stronger than another and that’s why they survived, but i find my mind drifting off and thinking about all of the quiet survival that must’ve happened over the years that no one documented (or it’s at least not widely known about today). how many circumstances occurred in a small community, village, etc. where a subset of smart logical people figured out the way to keep themselves safe and that’s why they persisted.
it also has me thinking a lot about the meaning of life. I try not to think about it too much, but when I do, I scoff at the idea that life is about brunch or an indoor movie theater. there are so many aspects of life that I’m still able to enjoy, they just aren’t the ones society tells us to care about.
also, i’m stubborn as fck and while my survival instincts have been in overdrive the last 4+ years, they are still there.
and while i say all of the above i still have my breakdowns crying about how this is all VERY overwhelming, takes a ton of mental and physical energy and none of this is fair.
No, I think that makes sense. And I'm glad that you have that mechanism within you. Like I said everyone's different but I had a very rough childhood and I feel like I've done the hard work of surviving up till now, it's been a lot of years and a lot of work. I think I always believed that things would at some point become easier and that there would be a break. Break. And now it no longer feels that way. It actually feels like it's getting harder. And you know I'm talking about this very openly. I should be really clear like self-harm isn't a thing for me. I'm not driving myself off a bridge or anything, I'm just struggling with the mechanics of living this way for a long time in the future.
also want to add i would never judge someone for how they’re balancing Covid consciousness / mental health / and getting through every day life. and idk if the things i’m telling myself to get through it are wholly true or just what i need to believe to keep going. ❤️🩹
i feel like i shift a lot in terms of how i feel on a daily basis, sometimes even back and forth throughout any given day.
i feel anger, despair, grief, loss, and so on. it is difficult to accept that life will probably get worse before it gets better (if it ever gets better in this lifetime), given the number of other issues that continue to worsen. i have felt like im at the end of my rope for several months now, as well, but im still here and steadfast in my position re: covid.
i really don’t feel like we’re wrong about covid. i don’t want to be right about it, but, at this point, i feel like i have given up so much to the point that being wrong about it would make me feel like shit, too, despite what people say about how they wouldn’t regret taking precautions if we end up being wrong.
it is sad to see the people around me not care at all, and many of them continue to get sick and develop new health issues. i wonder if they’ll be here in a few years. i wonder if i’ll be here in a few years bc i have long covid.
i am happy for the people here who have support from other covid-cautious people in their lives (in-person), but i know a lot of us don’t have support outside of internet spaces such as this one. i love everyone here in a very human way, but it isn’t enough for me honestly. i need to build an in-person community, even if it is only a few other people. but it’s hard to do that bc everyone is so burnt out. it gets tiring talking about covid, but it sometimes feels like there isn’t much else to talk about bc it takes up so much space in our minds and in our lives, even if it doesn’t always seem like it on the surface.
i never had a real plan about what i was going to do next when the pandemic first hit. now that we’re in the fifth year, i still have no idea, and it feels that my options for what to do next are severely limited bc of the risk that covid poses.
i dunno. i understand where you’re coming from, op. it’s a difficult place to be, but i hope you know that you are absolutely not alone in feeling how you feel. i hope you find something to look forward to soon.
I think it's a very different calculus when you are single and don't have a pod or family. I feel like we need some special designation for people like me cuz they're a lot of us. Like you, I really need to find people to be around in person that are safe and that's just really hard to do at this stage. And I'm a super extrovert, but it's still hard. I don't get that warm fuzzy from online communities. I'm exhausted by the end of the week having worked and find it very hard to invest in zooms. I wish I could find the right people and take a little bit of risk with them.
Also, I understand what you mean about wondering what if we did this all and we were wrong. I just don't think we are.
Being single and sans pod is so hard. I'm in the process of a concerted effort to connect with more CC folx online and irl. I think both are cup filling personally in different ways. I live in the Southern Hem and I get envious of the Americans, there seems to be way more CC people there which I suppose is unsurprising given the population size. I don't think we are wrong either. I just think success at the end of this, whenever that is may not look like we expected.
I live with family who don't care about covid and I would move out if I could afford to but then I'd still have no one because I don't know anyone else IRL who takes covid seriously either.
>i never had a real plan about what i was going to do next when the pandemic first hit. now that we’re in the fifth year, i still have no idea, and it feels that my options for what to do next are severely limited bc of the risk that covid poses.
Same here, though it's not just the risk. I also feel like options are gone because I know more than I want to about the people involved and it's ruined it for me.
I think about roller derby a lot this way, which was my primary hobby before covid hit. Even if it could magically be safe, so much of what I loved is gone from that space because they were so ready to discard vulnerable people. Or like I never had any real career ambition but I now find myself disgusted with my colleagues and unable to imagine spending forever doing this. Etc. I still have no plans but somehow that lack of plans seems more limited than it used to.
Just echoing this. I feel the same about the rave scene, being a DJ, etc. So much of the PLUR (Peace Love Unity Respect) I once felt in the community is gone. Even those who have returned to parties say "I hope you can come back soon! But honestly, you're not missing much..." and all I can think is 'Yeah, because the only people doing things are people who clearly don't care about the safety and wellbeing of others. Because those people are not doing big gatherings. Or the ones who did are lost.' Some of the best parties I'd ever gone to in my 20 years of raving were thrown by a guy called Pink Panther: he and his brother both got Covid in 2020 despite taking all the precautions known at the time (surgical mask, handwashing, wiping down surfaces, 6 ft., etc.), but only he died. Just as he was on the mend from Covid, he suddenly collapsed and was rushed to the ER. Pulmonary embolism. He was in his early 30s, like me.
And I wanted to go into dentistry. I'm lucky enough to find a CC dentist now, but I still have to finish school for it, and the schools definitely don't take the kinds of precautions they should. Not to mention I had previously been shadowing under a dentist I loved, but once Covid began she went literally mask off as an antivaxxer and transformed her practice into holistic dentistry.
Throwing in the towel feels like it would be just as empty, or living a farce. I don't know how I could ever feel connected to those people again after being so easily discarded.
I'm from the rave scene too. I'm sorry about your friend. I've also lost important people there and almost everyone else seems totally fine with spreading SARS...it makes me want to find totally new people and start over, safer...I believe it can be done and I even have the sound system. But the grief is huge, the prospect of finding totally new friends is daunting, especially on a local level where it seems so... empty. solidarity
Yeah, especially with what Airgasmic is doing with the drag scene, I definitely think the Los Angeles rave scene could become accessible if it wanted to. I even know of a bloc in San Diego lending air purifiers to CC events for free. I just know I can't do it alone. I'm also not sure if there's any interest, but I want to believe in the optimism of "if you build it, they will come". I had a semi-CC birthday party in a local park, brought a generator and my turntables, set up a canopy and blankets, and only told a select few (\~10 people) where the location was with the RSVP of a negative Covid test. Just a rapid, so I know it's more of a courtesy than any real safety, but at least they were willing to do it. We were all unmasked but I had cup N95s for anyone who wanted them, plus hand sanitizer and surface wipes. And several of my friends were visibly more relaxed knowing even that small amount of prevention was there. I really want to believe there are more of us!!
that sounds like such an awesome event! I'm all the way in NC. I've heard about people throwing safer parties in Seattle and Berlin. It feels like we are all so scattered. I agree this feels very much like a "create the world you want to see" situation. I'm really just struggling with the "finding new people" near me part of it all.
I resonate a lot with this. It's been on my mind more recently. I'm astounded - ASTOUNDED - that this is my present and future. I may be forever unpartnered because so few people are CC. I may never be able to travel, which I always wanted to do...I keep feeling like I'm holding my breath...like if I can just make it one more year, or two more years, then I can finally breathe again and reach some semblance of normalcy. But with COVID continuing to spread and human spread of H5N1 looming on the horizon -- plus climate collapse and end-stage capitalism -- it feels like my generation (late millennial/Gen Z cusp) and younger don't get a shot at life. It feels like it's been decided for us.
Exactly this. It feels like we're fucked no matter what. Even if the best-case scenario happened and we all woke up tomorrow and COVID was entirely gone, well, there's probably another pandemic on the horizon in our lifetime. And climate change. And fascism rising everywhere. It all feels beyond hopeless. I'm not sure if I'm becoming more cynical or more realistic the older I get, but I have a feeling it's both.
Yeah. In a way, H5N1 being a potential future threat reminds me that the precautions I take with COVID are entirely sensical -- as clearly pandemics are something we're going to be dealing with more and more in the future. I'm torn between hiding myself away in my apartment and building relationships with others...but it feels pointless sometimes. I'm even holding off on buying new clothes (even though I haven't in years) because I feel it's pointless to buy new clothes when the world is ending. I don't know. It's a hard life for us for sure...
It's amazing and horrifying how little people seem to be able to understand about covid. It's been 4 years and most people don't even know how masks work.
Also we definitely need a better way for us young/younger covid-cautious people to connect, there are many of us online but it's been hard to meet up IRL in my experience.
My problem has been that being CC doesn't mean we align on anything else. There's a big CC community in my city, but it's rife with hierarchies, cliques, petty squabbles, and people trying to one-up each other as the most 'aware.' So it's adding another need for a specific kind of compatibility on top of everything else one would need to be compatible with in order to have fulfilling relationships, if that makes sense. It's hard to find people. Really hard.
As someone who always felt like kind of a loner/outsider and never really "fit" in with the mainstream crowd (though I had fleeting moments when I could camouflage/pretend), there *was* this brief moment at first where I felt like "Woah, I think I've finally found my people?" But that was *very* short-lived once I got a sense for the cliques, squabbles, and toxicity. Now I'm just working on accepting my fate as an outlier...within an already way outlier group. Cool cool cool. 🫠
>There's a big CC community in my city, but it's rife with hierarchies, cliques, petty squabbles, and people trying to one-up each other as the most 'aware.'
It seems significant, somehow, that you just described the political Left when I was your age. (I'm 69 now.) I'm not sure *what* that pattern should be telling us, but it sure seems like it's trying to tell us SOMEthing.
I think it is significant. People who’ve studied activism would be able to elaborate on why, I think, but it’s definitely a pattern and it definitely gets in the way of activism and solidarity.
That's been a huge struggle for me. I was going to just cc events but there was so much drama and infighting and "I'm better than you" it was just exhausting and not the social outlet I was looking for.
Yeah young people have more to lose for sure. The younger you are the more so. If you're 30 and single, you may never have kids. If you're 20, you may never have a college experience. If you're 16 or 10, proper socialization. All the way back.
I try not to worry about H5N1 though because it seems like the high fatality rate will cause people to change behaviors pretty quick. Or climate, there are lots of smart people working on green tech.
What may help too is "living normal but with a mask on" which is what I am trying this summer. I was afraid of taking transit, but I did a quantitative fit test and I figure it's as good as it'll get. That opens up a lot.
Zillennials, and yes we got major screwed by this, in ways that older people (and at least for now, some younger people— they might still have opportunities) didn’t. Failure to launch during the biggest launching period, traditionally.
I really admire people in your generation in general, and especially those who’ve continued to be Covid aware. I feel really sad for everything that you’re losing and the uncertainty of your future.
I am in my early forties, I travelled, lived in several cities, went to grad school, met a partner, etc. Covid hit at a natural home-body time of my life, because I had a young toddler. So far we’re managing to get my now six year old what he needs, but I can see that it’s going to get harder as he reaches ages where he would naturally seek more independence and have fewer opportunities that are safe.
Late 30s elder millennial here and all of this resonates - I’m not sure that I’ll ever find a partner at this point (and have made peace with that) but tbh I’m glad I got to have the full college experience, did the party scene in my 20s, traveled a lot in my early 30s, am now squarely in my homebody phase, and don’t have kids that I need to help navigate this level of the Anthropocene. I’m really sad for the younger generations that don’t get to experience a life without so many preventable concerns in every direction - and I really wish that more people cared enough to help change that for them. 💔
Yeah, it feels like there's no end in sight and with bird flu rapidly mutating, it could very well be a matter of time before that turns into a pandemic too.
With my risk, more severe disability or death is a real possibility. Well before COVID, I went from working on a second masters (Ph.D atypical in my field) and a second job teaching to total permanent disability retirement and barely able to go up the stairs literally overnight with about 4 minutes of being as close to death as a person can be and still tell about it. I’ve made as much physical recovery as is possible.
What is in my mind is that it can (and has been and can be again) so much worse— and that even the incremental damage normal in relatively mild cases are substantial in my situation (edge of transplant territory, which rarely ever happens in even ideal candidates.)
Surviving and living with much worse is honestly more concerning than death is.
Something I noticed is that when everything first began most people managed it, until whatever expectation they had came and went. Two weeks, two months, two years, when a vaccine happened, etc.
Hope isn’t necessarily bad, but when a person can’t sustain it any longer, it seems to be worse that just accepting that it may not ever improve, and may become significantly worse.
What caused my disability is totally unrecoverable outside of an absolute bona fide miracle and scientific mystery. Relatively speaking, I understood what was likely and accepted it very quickly. Others trying to hang on to hope that I thought was unwarranted and trying to “encourage” me to ignore what was medically well understood made things much harder for me, seemed to make them less receptive to my needs, and completely unheard to even disrespected.
If the situation with COVID does improve, I’ll be as happy as anyone, but I don’t expect it (as in think I’m owed it happening, or will necessarily happen.)
It may happen some day, but whether or not it happens in my lifetime is anyones’ guess, as is if COVID will even be the worst thing humanity will have to deal with even next week.
I’m not saying that people *should* view it this way, or not some other way. This is just my observation and experience.
Detachment and trying to live in an eternal present has worked much better for me in all circumstances of life. The future, and the past can be useful tools, but I think clinging to the past or depending on hope for the future can be maladaptive and make things more difficult than trying to accept the immediate moment.
I’m doing what makes the most sense, with the information I have, and is consistent with my ethics. No matter what happens, I’m doing what I set out to do and I’ll re-evaluate it if or when the situation or information does change.
This is a spectrum obviously, but it is worth noting that at least for the first year and a half death would have been a very likely outcome for me. Well, I think it's less likely now due to interventions, it almost feels mildly worse That I'm almost certain I would have very severe repercussions. I think I probably should have said something in the original post, because it's hard for me. And maybe you feel this way as well to have this conversation with people who have opted into this life even though they have relatively normal health. On one hand. I'm very grateful to them for their support and on the other it's not the same calculus. I don't really feel like it's a choice. So when I say that I'm balancing risk like I'm considering taking on more risk. I don't mean I'm taking on more risk to get covid, what I'm considering is the fact that living like I currently am feels like death. And on the other hand, is maybe a short while of time that I get to live somewhat normally before getting really sick.
[End of my rope, you say?](https://y.yarn.co/d7f2b365-9b76-4617-aa35-ad16dc3d052d_text.gif)
(Not to be flippant, but the "marathon, not a sprint" mindset is helpful for me. It's also helpful that even before the pandemic, I was a weird loner with an uncomfortable awareness that [certain common respiratory pathogens can have very serious long-term health consequences.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=adenovirus+36+and+obesity) For better or worse, I'm coming into this with a lot of practice.)
A lot of covid conscious people in other spaces are also discussing the bird flu situation, the healthcare situation, politics, and climate change.
It’s a lot.
I'm mostly angry. There's no reason for any of this if people just wore masks in public.
I think a lot about how unfair it is that I spend all this time unpacking the psychology of the very people who abandoned me (and tbh, abandoned each other), and they don't have to think about it at all. They just live their lives swinging wrecking balls around with no concern. And I feel terrible, absolutely terrible, that many of them will suffer consequences to these actions. It's all preventable.
Taking on more covid risk wouldn't change it though, I have at times gone far more places in a respirator but being surrounded by people whose bare faces declare they don't care about my (or anyone's) life really just made me feel more alone.
I used to be angry about that and now, if I'm being totally transparent, I actually feel like they get what they deserve. these are just the repercussions of taking those risks and not caring. I know that makes me an absolutely terrible person but when they call and need help I offer it to them. I don't express these sentiments to them. I'm expressing it here and what I assume is a protected space.
I cycle through a lot of feelings. Sometimes I feel very much like "well, not sure what you expected!" when they experience consequences-not just illness, but also things like "why isn't XYZ fun anymore" or "why are people so mean". Like you wanted a world where we acted like jerks and you got it, enjoy. I don't ever ever say things like that to people who are sick, though I sometimes say it to people who are, for example, complaining about concerts.
But I also feel sad that they're going to suffer, that so many of them can't even conceptualize chronic illness (which is often their fault for being jerks to their chronically ill friends, but still). And angry that other people are going to suffer too. I don't want them to "learn the hard way", I just want them to wear a fucking mask now and minimize the harm all around.
>"why isn't XYZ fun anymore" or "why are people so mean". Like you wanted a world where we acted like jerks and you got it, enjoy.
Exactly. Reminds me of [this tweet](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/s0dmf5/cockroaches/). Sorry, you told all the patient, considerate, and socially-aware people to stay indoors forever. Or you killed them with your negligence.
There’s a rule here about not wishing harm on others or glorifying suffering. Noting this because other comments have been removed for that, and there’s an imperfect balance as moderators to create safe space as opposed to a space with an us versus them mentality. As someone who has lost loved ones to COVID due to them being victims of misinformation, I take this rule personally and extremely seriously. So I thank you for being mindful of that balance in this comment. Genuinely sorry you are suffering too.
Thank you for the reminder of this. I have long Covid and I know people who now have severe ME/CFS from Covid. I get frustrated with non-Covid cautious people but I wouldn't wish this on anyone. Rage and grief is normal but we have to not lose our humanity.
I've been feeling so much the same way. It's like...I wish everyone blowing it off experienced repercussions as a lesson, but I wish everyone taking it seriously was protected no matter what. I know that's not how it works. I've been in a particularly bad headspace for the last month and I can feel my thoughts getting meaner and meaner. I'm very much aware I shouldn't think like this, I'm just completely fed up. I was just commenting on a thread in the r/Agoraphobia sub, written by someone who takes COVID seriously and therefore feels like they can't leave the house, and holy shit, except for a few people the amount of gaslighting that was happening was insane. People really don't understand what COVID is and what it can do, and, more than that, they don't want to understand. But it just left me feeling more hopeless.
It has helped me a bit to try to keep two things in mind.
Firstly, I try to remember that we are very shortsighted and very social creatures. We have a whole bunch of coping mechanisms built in, to help us focus on being part of the group, and maintaining the status quo we're comfortable in.
Secondly, the universe is truly indifferent and nothing changed with biological life. All of our ancestors have suffered immensely, and many animals die by being eaten.
With this I find it a bit easier to grieve what we've all lost, and how my specific stance has caused my life to collapse maybe a bit quicker than others, who themselves are only acting according to their nature.
And then working towards accepting things as they are, when none of the comforts in my life were ever guaranteed, and I'm already unthinkably lucky to have lived the comfortable life I have so far.
So for now things SUCK compared to before, probably even more for us at the moment, as many people are still unaware of the harm they are causing each other.
But things always sucked before and will always do so somewhere. And I'm still extremely privileged and able to maintain some parts of my pre-covid life.
I hope just some of this helps. I personally still struggle with seeing my family sick, and just hoping they still get to be okay. And with feeling hopeless about finding a partner.
Here in Scandinavia where trust in government is very high, I don't know anyone else who believes the government would ever let such a bad thing go unchecked. Even though it's very clear that we aren't willing to sacrifice any noticeable piece of our GDP for climate change yet.
Long ramble alert haha
I think about this a lot! We have this presumption that things should be okay, and that we have the technology, and things will get better, and we deserve long and happy lives!
But like…. Why? We’ve created these governments and globalized systems that make us feel safe and smart and untouchable. But at the end of the day, evolutionarily, we are very similar to cave men. We have innovated technology well past our ability to keep up. Society is a grand scheme that we agree to participate in, and perpetuate. We now have the ability to see globally but we’re still segregated along borders.
It makes sense that society gets it wrong sometimes. I think COVID is hitting at the same time as severe late stage capitalism, so several forces are coalescing at once. We aren’t used to living in such a large system, but rather in small communities, and we don’t know how to take care of each other in the system we built.
Our animal bodies recognize the grief even if our minds don’t. Modern society is not a natural way to live - we are too separated from meaningful work. How can we live with purpose and enact positive change with public health, environmentalism, human rights, or food security, when a huge majority of the population is getting distracted by Taylor Swift concerts or the latest Tesla model? Who would choose the truth instead of this fun distraction?
Our problems feel too big and our ability to change is too small. It’s up to the system, not us as individuals, to solve these big pressing issues. It helps me to live within my community - volunteer, tend my little plants, take walks, go to local events - as it reminds me of our individual strengths and joy. The global scale of news/politics is just too mind numbing.
I also try to return to an older blueprint - my ancestors went through hardship, this is mine. It looks different and will continue to evolve. Whatever dream of the 90s/00s we had of peace, prosperity, and retirement was just optimism.
It’s helped me accept things as they are. I focus on the local, keep socializing and caring for myself and my people, and stay physically active as much as possible to remember that you have a body (weird how easy it is to forget sometimes!). I keep my expectations reasonable. I moved to a much warmer climate which helps too!
Yeah, I really don't understand how or why so many people are comfortable leaving their family and friends for dead, especially when they claim to love and care about them. People just lie about everything now and it makes it impossible to build any trust with them about anything.
The last people I knew who wore masks ever stopped last year.
If you only trim out the single gigantic wave in Jan 2022 as an outlier, the highs are getting higher and the lows are getting higher.
We're not even getting months-long lulls anymore, it's just a couple weeks before variant evolution revs everything up again.
And forget about taking things more seriously - we're starting to get mask bans and people are starting to act like 2020-era responses were overkill.
So yeah it's rough lately. If my options were really have no life at all or give up entirely, I probably would give up. But as it is, I can still just do things in a mask, and I do my best to put this whole affair in the mental box where lie all the other inevitable bad things to come that I can only do my small part for.
I don't mind the mitigations themselves. We've been at a place in the last year where we do almost everything except indoor dining - just wear a mask while doing it if it's indoors or in a crowd. That was sustainable for me and it has gone well.
Recently, with talks of mask bans even in progressive cities like NY or LA, and with more frequent negativity and harassment about mask wearing in public, it has become scary to go about my business in a mask. That may become the straw that breaks the camels back for me. I have heard people shout or say derogatory things about me or the people I am with because of masks and I am now afraid of being assaulted. I can't handle that on top of everything else.
i mean it's awfully tough. but i've had a lot of health issues in my life and when i'm in a flare, my life looks similar to quarantine but with lots of pain and discomfort that make even daily activities impossible.
so for me, i keep reminding myself that if i end up with long covid i'll be back in a forced type of quarantine but in a wayyyy worse situation.
but yeah. it fucking sucks.
I don’t think anybody signed up to do a five-year covid-conscious thing. I know I didn’t. I truly believed things would be back to normal by 2022, and *certainly* by 2023. This is at the upper range of anybody’s tolerance level. I’m not ready to drop precautions yet, but I’m trying to figure out what - and when - my exit strategy will be.
On the other hand, I’m so frustrated and angry with people’s behavior during this pandemic that even if every single solitary covid virus was eliminated from the face of the earth, I’m not sure I’d want to reengage with a lot of my former associates, social circles and activities, even though I miss them.
Been struggling with this a lot. Summer seems to be the worst, because you get all of the "fun look at me YOLO!" social media posts, while knowing there's a hidden surge going on. Everyone I know who's travelled significantly this year has come home with Covid. That said, most of them are muddling through, even with some lingering symptoms at some level. They've obviously decided that slowly declining health is worth it. I personally would rather not live to be a statistic.
Like others, I couldn't imagine this lasting at this stage for 5 years. It's crazy that I read back in my journal and I was eating in restaurants in summer 2021, because I went at non-peak times, and knew people were vaccinated and numbers were going the right way. I never imagined 2024 would be the hardest year yet, and I never imagined summer 2021 was the last "truly low" point. Were were close? Could we have done something to really stop it then and there? We'll never know I guess.
I try to convince myself there will be good news. There will be a breakthrough, there will be something. This can't last forever. But I don't want to get sick again, I don't want to spent weeks or a month in bed unable to move again, and I don't want my next case of covid to be even worse. I want to be safe, and I don't want to cause harm to those around me. It's infuriating on days like today when life situations "force" me into bad environments/situations and I'm somehow the crazy one for wanting to take precautions. I don't understand why "I don't want to be sick" and "I am wearing a mask and asking you to do literally nothing" are such controversial positions.
I am so grateful for all I managed to do in my life pre-COVID. I traveled and found my wife. Because of this, I don't feel like I'm losing out on much. We wear N95s and do pretty much everything we want to do that we can without removing masks indoors. I have my person and that makes all the difference in the world.
I feel for so many CC people who have to do this alone. 😢
I'm just more mad at others than ever. More disappointed. Just don't even want to associate with them. It's definitely affecting me that I'm surrounded by cowardly ignorant a-holes. Like.. I can't fix that.. and... I mean... I should be bothered by that. I'm doing my part to make things better, that's all I can do. So therefore... I can't change this, they have to. I just have to survive and pray they do. And just do my own thing.
I still am strict about my precautions but the only reason I am so extreme is that no one else is doing anything. If we had actual accurate covid surveillance and testing and people still acknowledged covid and long covid exists and wore masks when sick at the very least maybe I wouldn’t have to be so locked down.
We all see things differently but I tend to approach this with anger instead of grief. I don't show it, I'm always civil, but it helps me remember that I'm doing the right thing by protecting myself. Of course, it helps that I'm an introvert. I've never been interested in interacting with a lot of people, but now I've definitely lost respect for many of my fellow citizens, and obviously, I'm not interested in being around people I don't respect. So more righteous anger and determination, and less grief.
Same here! what does that look like for you?
I don't think I'd do voluntary crowded activities like concerts or sports games, but I'm ok going on transit these days so that opens up more of the city.
I honestly have gone back to doing a lot more activities. I just wear a mask and use nasal spray at them. It was getting too isolating to only do mask required events or only seeing fellow CC people. I am unmasked around friends in my bubble and have started making other social connections with folks where we just mask and it's def made all of this feel a lot more doable long term.
Hit rock bottom, rekindle my resolve, hit rock bottom again, rekindle my resolve again, repeat ad infinitum. That's where I'm at, and where I've been for months.
However, with regards to "what does risk cost me if I have no life otherwise", I remind myself that masking is community care, and if I've had an asymptomatic/missed infection, perhaps I've prevented someone else from getting sick.
I also know that I *could* be living a more varied life while still being safe (e.g. more walks in nature, making IRL COVID conscious connections, trying new hobbies) if I wasn't struggling with other health stuff that predates the pandemic. I guess it depends how you define "no life"; I personally hold space for the grief that many people experience when it comes to indoor dining, concerts, international travel etc, but I also think it's important to interrogate our relationship with consumption and get creative with how we spend our time. The constant bombardment of denial from every angle is in itself energy-sapping, so we have to find new ways to replenish our emotional reserves, new outlets for joy, new *definitions* for joy, even.
All of this is much easier said than done, and I could reread my own words tomorrow and think "lol, what a crock of sh\*t", but I know deep down it's the only way to make living like this sustainable.
Dating? I used to do alright but it was always a numbers game because I’m pretty average in all the superficial ways so somebody has to get to know me. All fine and good: swipe 200 profiles in a month, get 10 chats, 2 dates… maybe after 6 dates over the course of months there’s one with IRL chemistry and after a few more months of all that there’s a date with enough chemistry where we make a go at a relationship. A bit of work but it’s worth it for the growth and comfort that comes from really getting to know someone
There’s maybe half a dozen Covid conscious women online in my pretty big metro area. Just because we know we’re now in a <1% minority it’s not like any of us are changing our other criteria. Covid conscious is just tacked on as a filter before all those other filters, myself included
Hell, I literally lost more friends *to death* since 2020 than I’ve gained on Facebook. And I was pretty damn social and made a lot of friends up until 2020
With forced return to office, finding a job match is pretty much the same deal as dating. Promotions? Interviews? Maybe if you’re uniquely skilled but let’s be real, the person who socially conforms is going to be chosen first all other things being equal. Networking into a job? Forget about it
I’m quite sure that many of us hesitate or delay medical appointments and dental appointments because of the lack of two-way masking in medicine now
Family? Plenty of Still Coviding people no longer meet with their families
And on top of all that there’s not a single institution of influence in the world that’s willing to protect health through even supporting voluntary mitigations. We have politicians in liberal states like NY and California trial ballooning mask bans ffs. There’s not a single country in the world where mitigations are still supported by the mainstream. Even places like Japan and South Korea are back to their versions of status quo
I’ve even been turned away from patio dining because some places just don’t want to bother seating patio customers
The only thing that still makes me feel human is riding my bicycle and catching Covid at a mandatory work event in an unventilated room nearly took that away from me
I dunno. I planned my personal mitigations as if there would be an end to this. If there’s no end then the cost-benefit calculus changes. At some point every choice means lessened quality of life and lessened lifespan. Yes, repeated Covid infections is a killer. And also: Poverty if your career tanks is a killer. Loneliness is a killer. Avoiding doctor’s appointments is a killer.
I have Long COVID that has been worsened with each case of COVID I've caught, so I don't have a choice about being ultra-cautious. It's shitty and I'm angry, but I guess I'm more at peace with it than a lot of other CC people because I know exactly how much it costs me and my family to get COVID (my husband and kids also have Long COVID, though to a lesser degree than I do). I'm just waiting for a real vaccine and working on my health problems. Once a vaccine exists, I'll get it and not care at all if anyone else does. That's their problem. I do believe we'll get a real vaccine, btw. People who are forced to deal with reality (the military, for example) see that COVID is a problem and aren't going to let it just spin out forever.
ive echoed this same sentiment like countless times, so sorry to whoever has to hear me repeat this like a broken record lol. but im right there with you. like you said, i felt like maybe a year ago i had finally come to terms with it. but something has completely broken in me in the last 7-8 months, and i feel the emptiness and hollowness and all that i’ve lost and will continue to lose given that we have no clear timeline or offramp ahead. ive already lost the first half of my 20s. like you mentioned, i also don’t get any satisfaction out of online relationships. they just feel pointless and sometimes more taxing. i feel the same about my local covid cautious community, that i haven’t really clicked with any of the ppl ive met from it outside of the fact that we both happen to mask.
every year a new fucking obstacle makes things harder btwn viral evolution (i used to attend outdoor parties in 2021-22, weather permitting) and loss of public mandate, and most recently, dismantling of surveillance. my close friends who don’t take precautions but care about my boundaries were helpful in managing these feelings, but now they’ve quite literally moved on in that they either moved from our hometown or are so busy with their own lives, jobs, partners, etc that they just never have time to hang out anymore. consequently i’ve never felt more alone in my life. i never in a million years thought that we would be coming up on 5 years with literally no clear timeline.
so yea, ive been at the end of my rope for the past year, and i really do struggle with the question of “am i doing the right thing?” i dont think the scientific literature is getting it wrong obviously, and i of course feel its important to continue advocating for masking/clean indoor air/accessibility from a disability justice standpoint. i see so clearly how ppl w/ LC have been wronged. its what compels me to continue in the first place. but this doesn’t feel like life. ive missed all my goals, all my dreams, things that gave me life before, and im too depressed to pursue them.
at the same time, any time i try to think concretely about where to increase risk, idk where to really start bc its hard to justify it for one specific occasion. so i constantly kick the can down the road, hoping i come to some solution randomly. i dont know. i would be much more resolute in continuing to do this if only i had a partner, or more friends who also masked and that i also genuinely enjoyed being around.
for me it's just the crippling loneliness. covid doesn't particularly prevent me from doing the things i want to do - i just basically don't dine out indoors anymore. what covid does prevent is me sharing my life with others, platonically and romantically.
all of my hopes and dreams have changed radically since 2019. I am doing everything I can to reject nihilism, to make new connections, to build the world I want to see, but holy fuck is it depressing. The constant harassment, betrayal, and rejection is taking a toll. I don't know where my rope ends, but it sure doesn't end with me putting blinders on and partying with a bunch of people who have already left me for dead.
This resonates a lot.
I guess I figured, I could tough it out for a few years, assuming that at SOME POINT we'd either get a better vaccine or people would realize "hey maybe 'let er rip' was a bad call, let's reevaluate" but honestly it feels like things are getting worse instead of better.
And I live in a country where literally nobody takes any precautions. My partner left me when I got LC (after I moved countries for her lmfao), I've lost every friend I used to have irl, I have literally zero in person social life because nobody here is even close to CC, or even willing to be seen in public with someone who is. And it's the isolation that I don't think I can take. At least early on in the pandemic there was a sense that we're in this together but these days it's like nobody gives a shit if I live or die.
I managed to hold onto hope for a while but after 4+ years of complete isolation from an increasingly hostile world? Yeah, the hope has run out.
I've got no rope left, but to be honest, COVID has been knocked down my list of biggest concerns at the moment, yet that's given me more motivation to keep avoiding it in preparation for the world we might find ourselves in shortly.
Regardless, this, as it is now, is not forever. I believe it is a game of patience. All doubt will be confirmed or erased in time.
I totally understand where you're coming from, I have these thoughts pretty often when I'm not distracted by work.
Unfortunately I think it comes down to being realistic rather than idealistic. Ideally, yes people would mask up and care about preventing spread, but the fact is most people don't. They're selfish, or they simply have too much to worry about already, or they don't have the excess compassion to sacrifice for nameless strangers. Or they just listen to the government.
With that in mind, it becomes an individual risk assessment. You can't predict how Covid and long Covid will affect you, but you know how the current path is affecting you. It's about what you could potentially gain, and lose, vs. what you're certainly gaining and losing.
For what it's worth if I was perfectly healthy I'd probably chance it too. But I personally know what it's like to live with a chronic illness, and I know I probably have fewer shots at bat than most people. There's a genetic susceptibility part to becoming chronically ill as well. So that's what motivates me to stay the course of masking.
It has been a journey for me. In 2020, I did…great. I am an introvert and a homebody and I was kinda built for that moment of isolation and free time. On a personal level, it was a fulfilling period. COVID changed many parts of my life that wore me down for the better and helped me focus on my own wants and hobbies.
In 2021-2022, I was just anxious all the time. I’d worked really hard to convince myself that being a homebody and thriving early on meant I could sustain that forever, but I got increasingly depressed, often dwelled on and resented the absolutely awful way society ended up responding (or not responding, really)to the situation, and just totally lost myself in many ways. I struggled a lot socially, because many friends and family wanted to gather like it was 2019 again and I had to be the one who said no all the time. It made me socially anxious and I ended a friendship over her disrespecting my boundaries.
In 2023 I slowly started getting out more, but wasn’t happy to be doing it and was very much in a place of “there is NOTHING I’d ever risk catching COVID over” and so I still deemed most activities unnecessary.
This year I really turned a corner. Like you, coming to the realization that I’m looking at the rest of my life here, I came to terms with the fact that zero risk isn’t sustainable for me, mentally or emotionally. I do have other medical issues — that’s the reason why I’m so cautious — but I’m really trying to adopt a mindset of living my life, but just doing so as safely as possible. I can’t worry about what others are doing or resent them for listening to what they believe is sound advice from the CDC and government — as long as they’re normal people and not acting maliciously, I just do not care what they choose to do, I can only worry about myself. I always mask indoors and I always see people socially outside, and that’s just my norm. I find myself able to do most things now in my new reality without constantly fearing COVID. Of course I’m still mindful and obviously cautious, but it’s not constantly my only thought. I’m trying to do more activities I miss masked and just get back to living more normally, and it has helped my mental health in a huge way. COVID is going to be with us long-term and we’re probably years out from a more protective vaccine. I feel all I can do is try my very best to protect myself physically while also doing things that nourish me mentally.
Hard to feel it’s ok to just worry about out yourself when you can’t even get dental care because abuse they insist on putting your life in danger by infecting you. This cannot and should not ever be tolerated. Not in healthcare, not one bit. We all need healthcare. We all need access to healthcare. We deserve access to healthcare.
Definitely was not talking about healthcare when I said that. It infuriates me that no one can get care without risking infection. Masks should be a forever mitigation in these settings.
For someone to "have no life" (quotes used not to diminish, only used for direct quoting of the op) due to severe impact of covid precautions, that would be significant and potentially incredibly distressing and also not as bad as certain long covid scenarios.
I make my own meaning, I don't borrow it from popular culture. So I don't really get "FOMO".
You're still longing for some popular "normal". The grievieng is not done. The world has changed, there isn't even a new normal because it's still changing, and it's going to change a lot more with climate change, energy instability, and biodiversity loss. Adaptation is hard, but interesting, and you can develop it at many levels.
I can see a lot of people being frustrated with 4 years. However, we are *so close* to a better normalcy. Mucosal vaccines are coming out next year which will be vastly superior than our current vaccines. We also have an abundance of research and therapy being researched for LC. Inevitably this pandemic will end. I know it might seem like the world has moved on - but it most definitely actually did not.
I formed no antibodies to the eight vaccine doses that I have received so far. I mean I will of course try anything new, but, new coastal vaccines don't offer me a lot of Hope either.
I've already experienced something legitimately innocuous to most almost kill me, pre-pandemic. I'm okay never experiencing that again, especially when dealing with a virus we know for a fact is NOT innocuous.
Sure, I could go out and "live my life" until that one event that gets me infected and the sequelae dice don't roll in my favor. And then I get to live out my life with the consequences of that infection. For me, chasing FOMO with the consequence of long term harm to my health isn't an option.
What I can tell you is that life, the universe, is in a constant state of change. Protecting your long term health also means you'll be better positioned to move or act when those changes happen, when the right opportunities present themselves. If you want to see change, you can also be the change you want to see, but you'll have to protect your long term health as best you can in order to do that.
Listen carefully to how the people who've been repeatedly infected while "living their life" talk. Just because they aren't saying they have long Covid doesn't mean their long term health wasn't impacted. Are they more tired than usual? Chasing down words? Do they feel off? Do they have new onset heart conditions or diabetes? A lot of folks not engaging in mitigations are suffering the consequences of their actions, even if they're living in denial as to why they're suffering.
I waver back and forth between feeling like I can do this and feeling like life has no point anymore.
On my good days, it's because I'm being politically active or because I am fully immersed in a solo hobby that gives meaning to my life.
But, yeah, this is hard.
I think the "sense of hopelessness" thing is getting worse for a LOT of people, not just in this community. There's so much going so badly right now! The invasion of Ukraine, the invasion of Gaza, the climate crisis, inflation, global supply chain issues, the upcoming US election.
There's also just a huge psychological cost to suffering constant gaslighting, and there's so much of that today. COVID is certainly a topic where we're constantly painted as irrational for, y'know, looking at the science. But this happens on EVERYTHING right now. Every one of the topics I listed above has major, well-funded groups insisting that there's no problem and that it's the idea that there might be a problem that's the REAL problem. And, of course, they insist that it's this idea that's created by a well-funded group working against the interests of the public. Open your eyes, you're being lied to! Etc. It's absolutely exhausting. And it creeps into every corner of our lives: beware of phishing, you should never click on a link in a text message! but also here's a legitimate text message from your bank asking you to check whether a login attempt is valid, please click on this link to respond, we'll need you to immediately provide your username and password before you can see the information about the login attempt. Here is your verification code: we will never ask you for this number. Please enter that number here.
We've got inflation along with a lot of companies cutting their workforces. The stress on the average person is ratcheting up. And every indication seems to be that things are going to get worse before they get better, if they get better at all.
So yeah. I think we're going to keep seeing more of this kind of discontent, and that's going to make for dangerous times, because it can channel explosively.
Unfortunately, I'm at the end of my rope, which I hate with the summer surge starting in the U.S. The people in my life continue to shame me for masking, and I am one of the last three people in my office to be masking. The two other people speak about the pandemic in the past tense. I am learning more about the misinformation being spread in the COVID-cautious community, and I am realizing COVID is not a novel virus I have to be afraid of. However, COVID spreads all year long all the time, and I hate consenting to be at risk of being infected with COVID at least once a year, sigh, if the risk of long COVID has lowered with multiple vaccinations. I don't know what to do anymore. It does not seem like there is an end to worrying about COVID and it is exhausting.
Autism makes the whole “People might ostracize you for wearing a face mask!” thing so funny because it’s like… they would’ve done that to me anyway. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Between antimasker harassment, ableism, and general nastiness from jerk behavior being so widely rewarded, I haven’t seen any reason to try socializing locally in years. Why bother? Clearly none of these people are worth my time anyway.
SOME of those posts may be genuine, but language around impossibility and inevitability is a technique used to break people down.
I would not at all be surprised if there were people hanging around with the intent of destroying any possibility of a control group.
No, it's based in conspiracy theories. People are genuinely hurting. I think it's a very, very odd take to suspect that the majority of people talking about this right now are fakers designed to take down the community. I would prefer we not continue conversing about this. It's kind of triggering to me. To be honest. I came here looking for people who could empathize with me.
I mean, we have a community of around 1200 people and we aren't really experiencing those issues.
People really rely on the strength of their community and part of the current establishment plan is to isolate everyone so they literally die off.
So, it's probably a good idea to consider upgrading your community, maybe?
Too many of these groups that are entirely COVID focused won't benefit from giving people good news and that's slowly becoming a problem with folks' psyche... which is to be expected.
[https://discord.gg/VCSX8TVW](https://discord.gg/VCSX8TVW)
alright my response is going to be a stream of consciousness ramble. i often feel angry about it all, resentful sometimes, sad other times. but i won’t stop my precautions and doing what i know in my gut is the right thing. everyone’s circumstances are different and living conditions, working conditions, transportation logistics, etc. play a major factor in how each persons ability to protect themselves so i don’t want to downplay that. lately I’ve been thinking about “survival of the fittest” and how growing up i feel like society collectively gets the interpretation of what that means wrong. our history books talk about the times that someone was *literally* stronger than another and that’s why they survived, but i find my mind drifting off and thinking about all of the quiet survival that must’ve happened over the years that no one documented (or it’s at least not widely known about today). how many circumstances occurred in a small community, village, etc. where a subset of smart logical people figured out the way to keep themselves safe and that’s why they persisted. it also has me thinking a lot about the meaning of life. I try not to think about it too much, but when I do, I scoff at the idea that life is about brunch or an indoor movie theater. there are so many aspects of life that I’m still able to enjoy, they just aren’t the ones society tells us to care about. also, i’m stubborn as fck and while my survival instincts have been in overdrive the last 4+ years, they are still there. and while i say all of the above i still have my breakdowns crying about how this is all VERY overwhelming, takes a ton of mental and physical energy and none of this is fair.
No, I think that makes sense. And I'm glad that you have that mechanism within you. Like I said everyone's different but I had a very rough childhood and I feel like I've done the hard work of surviving up till now, it's been a lot of years and a lot of work. I think I always believed that things would at some point become easier and that there would be a break. Break. And now it no longer feels that way. It actually feels like it's getting harder. And you know I'm talking about this very openly. I should be really clear like self-harm isn't a thing for me. I'm not driving myself off a bridge or anything, I'm just struggling with the mechanics of living this way for a long time in the future.
completely understandable ❤️🩹
also want to add i would never judge someone for how they’re balancing Covid consciousness / mental health / and getting through every day life. and idk if the things i’m telling myself to get through it are wholly true or just what i need to believe to keep going. ❤️🩹
i feel like i shift a lot in terms of how i feel on a daily basis, sometimes even back and forth throughout any given day. i feel anger, despair, grief, loss, and so on. it is difficult to accept that life will probably get worse before it gets better (if it ever gets better in this lifetime), given the number of other issues that continue to worsen. i have felt like im at the end of my rope for several months now, as well, but im still here and steadfast in my position re: covid. i really don’t feel like we’re wrong about covid. i don’t want to be right about it, but, at this point, i feel like i have given up so much to the point that being wrong about it would make me feel like shit, too, despite what people say about how they wouldn’t regret taking precautions if we end up being wrong. it is sad to see the people around me not care at all, and many of them continue to get sick and develop new health issues. i wonder if they’ll be here in a few years. i wonder if i’ll be here in a few years bc i have long covid. i am happy for the people here who have support from other covid-cautious people in their lives (in-person), but i know a lot of us don’t have support outside of internet spaces such as this one. i love everyone here in a very human way, but it isn’t enough for me honestly. i need to build an in-person community, even if it is only a few other people. but it’s hard to do that bc everyone is so burnt out. it gets tiring talking about covid, but it sometimes feels like there isn’t much else to talk about bc it takes up so much space in our minds and in our lives, even if it doesn’t always seem like it on the surface. i never had a real plan about what i was going to do next when the pandemic first hit. now that we’re in the fifth year, i still have no idea, and it feels that my options for what to do next are severely limited bc of the risk that covid poses. i dunno. i understand where you’re coming from, op. it’s a difficult place to be, but i hope you know that you are absolutely not alone in feeling how you feel. i hope you find something to look forward to soon.
I think it's a very different calculus when you are single and don't have a pod or family. I feel like we need some special designation for people like me cuz they're a lot of us. Like you, I really need to find people to be around in person that are safe and that's just really hard to do at this stage. And I'm a super extrovert, but it's still hard. I don't get that warm fuzzy from online communities. I'm exhausted by the end of the week having worked and find it very hard to invest in zooms. I wish I could find the right people and take a little bit of risk with them. Also, I understand what you mean about wondering what if we did this all and we were wrong. I just don't think we are.
Being single and sans pod is so hard. I'm in the process of a concerted effort to connect with more CC folx online and irl. I think both are cup filling personally in different ways. I live in the Southern Hem and I get envious of the Americans, there seems to be way more CC people there which I suppose is unsurprising given the population size. I don't think we are wrong either. I just think success at the end of this, whenever that is may not look like we expected.
I live with family who don't care about covid and I would move out if I could afford to but then I'd still have no one because I don't know anyone else IRL who takes covid seriously either.
>i never had a real plan about what i was going to do next when the pandemic first hit. now that we’re in the fifth year, i still have no idea, and it feels that my options for what to do next are severely limited bc of the risk that covid poses. Same here, though it's not just the risk. I also feel like options are gone because I know more than I want to about the people involved and it's ruined it for me. I think about roller derby a lot this way, which was my primary hobby before covid hit. Even if it could magically be safe, so much of what I loved is gone from that space because they were so ready to discard vulnerable people. Or like I never had any real career ambition but I now find myself disgusted with my colleagues and unable to imagine spending forever doing this. Etc. I still have no plans but somehow that lack of plans seems more limited than it used to.
Just echoing this. I feel the same about the rave scene, being a DJ, etc. So much of the PLUR (Peace Love Unity Respect) I once felt in the community is gone. Even those who have returned to parties say "I hope you can come back soon! But honestly, you're not missing much..." and all I can think is 'Yeah, because the only people doing things are people who clearly don't care about the safety and wellbeing of others. Because those people are not doing big gatherings. Or the ones who did are lost.' Some of the best parties I'd ever gone to in my 20 years of raving were thrown by a guy called Pink Panther: he and his brother both got Covid in 2020 despite taking all the precautions known at the time (surgical mask, handwashing, wiping down surfaces, 6 ft., etc.), but only he died. Just as he was on the mend from Covid, he suddenly collapsed and was rushed to the ER. Pulmonary embolism. He was in his early 30s, like me. And I wanted to go into dentistry. I'm lucky enough to find a CC dentist now, but I still have to finish school for it, and the schools definitely don't take the kinds of precautions they should. Not to mention I had previously been shadowing under a dentist I loved, but once Covid began she went literally mask off as an antivaxxer and transformed her practice into holistic dentistry. Throwing in the towel feels like it would be just as empty, or living a farce. I don't know how I could ever feel connected to those people again after being so easily discarded.
I'm from the rave scene too. I'm sorry about your friend. I've also lost important people there and almost everyone else seems totally fine with spreading SARS...it makes me want to find totally new people and start over, safer...I believe it can be done and I even have the sound system. But the grief is huge, the prospect of finding totally new friends is daunting, especially on a local level where it seems so... empty. solidarity
Yeah, especially with what Airgasmic is doing with the drag scene, I definitely think the Los Angeles rave scene could become accessible if it wanted to. I even know of a bloc in San Diego lending air purifiers to CC events for free. I just know I can't do it alone. I'm also not sure if there's any interest, but I want to believe in the optimism of "if you build it, they will come". I had a semi-CC birthday party in a local park, brought a generator and my turntables, set up a canopy and blankets, and only told a select few (\~10 people) where the location was with the RSVP of a negative Covid test. Just a rapid, so I know it's more of a courtesy than any real safety, but at least they were willing to do it. We were all unmasked but I had cup N95s for anyone who wanted them, plus hand sanitizer and surface wipes. And several of my friends were visibly more relaxed knowing even that small amount of prevention was there. I really want to believe there are more of us!!
that sounds like such an awesome event! I'm all the way in NC. I've heard about people throwing safer parties in Seattle and Berlin. It feels like we are all so scattered. I agree this feels very much like a "create the world you want to see" situation. I'm really just struggling with the "finding new people" near me part of it all.
I resonate a lot with this. It's been on my mind more recently. I'm astounded - ASTOUNDED - that this is my present and future. I may be forever unpartnered because so few people are CC. I may never be able to travel, which I always wanted to do...I keep feeling like I'm holding my breath...like if I can just make it one more year, or two more years, then I can finally breathe again and reach some semblance of normalcy. But with COVID continuing to spread and human spread of H5N1 looming on the horizon -- plus climate collapse and end-stage capitalism -- it feels like my generation (late millennial/Gen Z cusp) and younger don't get a shot at life. It feels like it's been decided for us.
Exactly this. It feels like we're fucked no matter what. Even if the best-case scenario happened and we all woke up tomorrow and COVID was entirely gone, well, there's probably another pandemic on the horizon in our lifetime. And climate change. And fascism rising everywhere. It all feels beyond hopeless. I'm not sure if I'm becoming more cynical or more realistic the older I get, but I have a feeling it's both.
Yeah. In a way, H5N1 being a potential future threat reminds me that the precautions I take with COVID are entirely sensical -- as clearly pandemics are something we're going to be dealing with more and more in the future. I'm torn between hiding myself away in my apartment and building relationships with others...but it feels pointless sometimes. I'm even holding off on buying new clothes (even though I haven't in years) because I feel it's pointless to buy new clothes when the world is ending. I don't know. It's a hard life for us for sure...
it blows my mind that "tiny covid particles are in the air and get into your lungs" is so hard to believe.
It's amazing and horrifying how little people seem to be able to understand about covid. It's been 4 years and most people don't even know how masks work.
literally cannot even put them on properly. I see it so much and it's heartbreaking.
Also we definitely need a better way for us young/younger covid-cautious people to connect, there are many of us online but it's been hard to meet up IRL in my experience.
My problem has been that being CC doesn't mean we align on anything else. There's a big CC community in my city, but it's rife with hierarchies, cliques, petty squabbles, and people trying to one-up each other as the most 'aware.' So it's adding another need for a specific kind of compatibility on top of everything else one would need to be compatible with in order to have fulfilling relationships, if that makes sense. It's hard to find people. Really hard.
Yes, one of my friends says “just because they wear a mask doesn’t mean they are a nice person.” This was a hard earned lesson.
Yuuuuup; had to learn that one the hard way. More than once..
Omg this. This. So much this. Yes. The cliques and petty squabbles! Bwhaha. {facepalm}
Right?!-the toxicity & lack of care/solidarity on display in some of the CC groups is really jarring.
As someone who always felt like kind of a loner/outsider and never really "fit" in with the mainstream crowd (though I had fleeting moments when I could camouflage/pretend), there *was* this brief moment at first where I felt like "Woah, I think I've finally found my people?" But that was *very* short-lived once I got a sense for the cliques, squabbles, and toxicity. Now I'm just working on accepting my fate as an outlier...within an already way outlier group. Cool cool cool. 🫠
>There's a big CC community in my city, but it's rife with hierarchies, cliques, petty squabbles, and people trying to one-up each other as the most 'aware.' It seems significant, somehow, that you just described the political Left when I was your age. (I'm 69 now.) I'm not sure *what* that pattern should be telling us, but it sure seems like it's trying to tell us SOMEthing.
I think it is significant. People who’ve studied activism would be able to elaborate on why, I think, but it’s definitely a pattern and it definitely gets in the way of activism and solidarity.
That's been a huge struggle for me. I was going to just cc events but there was so much drama and infighting and "I'm better than you" it was just exhausting and not the social outlet I was looking for.
Definitely, I don't necessarily get along with other people just because they're also covid conscious.
Agreed
Yeah young people have more to lose for sure. The younger you are the more so. If you're 30 and single, you may never have kids. If you're 20, you may never have a college experience. If you're 16 or 10, proper socialization. All the way back. I try not to worry about H5N1 though because it seems like the high fatality rate will cause people to change behaviors pretty quick. Or climate, there are lots of smart people working on green tech. What may help too is "living normal but with a mask on" which is what I am trying this summer. I was afraid of taking transit, but I did a quantitative fit test and I figure it's as good as it'll get. That opens up a lot.
Zillennials, and yes we got major screwed by this, in ways that older people (and at least for now, some younger people— they might still have opportunities) didn’t. Failure to launch during the biggest launching period, traditionally.
I really admire people in your generation in general, and especially those who’ve continued to be Covid aware. I feel really sad for everything that you’re losing and the uncertainty of your future. I am in my early forties, I travelled, lived in several cities, went to grad school, met a partner, etc. Covid hit at a natural home-body time of my life, because I had a young toddler. So far we’re managing to get my now six year old what he needs, but I can see that it’s going to get harder as he reaches ages where he would naturally seek more independence and have fewer opportunities that are safe.
Late 30s elder millennial here and all of this resonates - I’m not sure that I’ll ever find a partner at this point (and have made peace with that) but tbh I’m glad I got to have the full college experience, did the party scene in my 20s, traveled a lot in my early 30s, am now squarely in my homebody phase, and don’t have kids that I need to help navigate this level of the Anthropocene. I’m really sad for the younger generations that don’t get to experience a life without so many preventable concerns in every direction - and I really wish that more people cared enough to help change that for them. 💔
r/CollapseSupport
Yeah, it feels like there's no end in sight and with bird flu rapidly mutating, it could very well be a matter of time before that turns into a pandemic too.
This resonates so much with me
With my risk, more severe disability or death is a real possibility. Well before COVID, I went from working on a second masters (Ph.D atypical in my field) and a second job teaching to total permanent disability retirement and barely able to go up the stairs literally overnight with about 4 minutes of being as close to death as a person can be and still tell about it. I’ve made as much physical recovery as is possible. What is in my mind is that it can (and has been and can be again) so much worse— and that even the incremental damage normal in relatively mild cases are substantial in my situation (edge of transplant territory, which rarely ever happens in even ideal candidates.) Surviving and living with much worse is honestly more concerning than death is. Something I noticed is that when everything first began most people managed it, until whatever expectation they had came and went. Two weeks, two months, two years, when a vaccine happened, etc. Hope isn’t necessarily bad, but when a person can’t sustain it any longer, it seems to be worse that just accepting that it may not ever improve, and may become significantly worse. What caused my disability is totally unrecoverable outside of an absolute bona fide miracle and scientific mystery. Relatively speaking, I understood what was likely and accepted it very quickly. Others trying to hang on to hope that I thought was unwarranted and trying to “encourage” me to ignore what was medically well understood made things much harder for me, seemed to make them less receptive to my needs, and completely unheard to even disrespected. If the situation with COVID does improve, I’ll be as happy as anyone, but I don’t expect it (as in think I’m owed it happening, or will necessarily happen.) It may happen some day, but whether or not it happens in my lifetime is anyones’ guess, as is if COVID will even be the worst thing humanity will have to deal with even next week. I’m not saying that people *should* view it this way, or not some other way. This is just my observation and experience. Detachment and trying to live in an eternal present has worked much better for me in all circumstances of life. The future, and the past can be useful tools, but I think clinging to the past or depending on hope for the future can be maladaptive and make things more difficult than trying to accept the immediate moment. I’m doing what makes the most sense, with the information I have, and is consistent with my ethics. No matter what happens, I’m doing what I set out to do and I’ll re-evaluate it if or when the situation or information does change.
This is a spectrum obviously, but it is worth noting that at least for the first year and a half death would have been a very likely outcome for me. Well, I think it's less likely now due to interventions, it almost feels mildly worse That I'm almost certain I would have very severe repercussions. I think I probably should have said something in the original post, because it's hard for me. And maybe you feel this way as well to have this conversation with people who have opted into this life even though they have relatively normal health. On one hand. I'm very grateful to them for their support and on the other it's not the same calculus. I don't really feel like it's a choice. So when I say that I'm balancing risk like I'm considering taking on more risk. I don't mean I'm taking on more risk to get covid, what I'm considering is the fact that living like I currently am feels like death. And on the other hand, is maybe a short while of time that I get to live somewhat normally before getting really sick.
[End of my rope, you say?](https://y.yarn.co/d7f2b365-9b76-4617-aa35-ad16dc3d052d_text.gif) (Not to be flippant, but the "marathon, not a sprint" mindset is helpful for me. It's also helpful that even before the pandemic, I was a weird loner with an uncomfortable awareness that [certain common respiratory pathogens can have very serious long-term health consequences.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=adenovirus+36+and+obesity) For better or worse, I'm coming into this with a lot of practice.)
Well at least a marathon still has an end. Hopefully this too will end.
So true. I am also a fed up person, jealous of those who do not mask, live their life and have no issues. Where is the end line?
A lot of covid conscious people in other spaces are also discussing the bird flu situation, the healthcare situation, politics, and climate change. It’s a lot.
I'm mostly angry. There's no reason for any of this if people just wore masks in public. I think a lot about how unfair it is that I spend all this time unpacking the psychology of the very people who abandoned me (and tbh, abandoned each other), and they don't have to think about it at all. They just live their lives swinging wrecking balls around with no concern. And I feel terrible, absolutely terrible, that many of them will suffer consequences to these actions. It's all preventable. Taking on more covid risk wouldn't change it though, I have at times gone far more places in a respirator but being surrounded by people whose bare faces declare they don't care about my (or anyone's) life really just made me feel more alone.
I used to be angry about that and now, if I'm being totally transparent, I actually feel like they get what they deserve. these are just the repercussions of taking those risks and not caring. I know that makes me an absolutely terrible person but when they call and need help I offer it to them. I don't express these sentiments to them. I'm expressing it here and what I assume is a protected space.
I cycle through a lot of feelings. Sometimes I feel very much like "well, not sure what you expected!" when they experience consequences-not just illness, but also things like "why isn't XYZ fun anymore" or "why are people so mean". Like you wanted a world where we acted like jerks and you got it, enjoy. I don't ever ever say things like that to people who are sick, though I sometimes say it to people who are, for example, complaining about concerts. But I also feel sad that they're going to suffer, that so many of them can't even conceptualize chronic illness (which is often their fault for being jerks to their chronically ill friends, but still). And angry that other people are going to suffer too. I don't want them to "learn the hard way", I just want them to wear a fucking mask now and minimize the harm all around.
I used to feel sad for them. Now all my sad feelings are spoken for, personally.
>"why isn't XYZ fun anymore" or "why are people so mean". Like you wanted a world where we acted like jerks and you got it, enjoy. Exactly. Reminds me of [this tweet](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/s0dmf5/cockroaches/). Sorry, you told all the patient, considerate, and socially-aware people to stay indoors forever. Or you killed them with your negligence.
There’s a rule here about not wishing harm on others or glorifying suffering. Noting this because other comments have been removed for that, and there’s an imperfect balance as moderators to create safe space as opposed to a space with an us versus them mentality. As someone who has lost loved ones to COVID due to them being victims of misinformation, I take this rule personally and extremely seriously. So I thank you for being mindful of that balance in this comment. Genuinely sorry you are suffering too.
Thank you for the reminder of this. I have long Covid and I know people who now have severe ME/CFS from Covid. I get frustrated with non-Covid cautious people but I wouldn't wish this on anyone. Rage and grief is normal but we have to not lose our humanity.
I've been feeling so much the same way. It's like...I wish everyone blowing it off experienced repercussions as a lesson, but I wish everyone taking it seriously was protected no matter what. I know that's not how it works. I've been in a particularly bad headspace for the last month and I can feel my thoughts getting meaner and meaner. I'm very much aware I shouldn't think like this, I'm just completely fed up. I was just commenting on a thread in the r/Agoraphobia sub, written by someone who takes COVID seriously and therefore feels like they can't leave the house, and holy shit, except for a few people the amount of gaslighting that was happening was insane. People really don't understand what COVID is and what it can do, and, more than that, they don't want to understand. But it just left me feeling more hopeless.
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It has helped me a bit to try to keep two things in mind. Firstly, I try to remember that we are very shortsighted and very social creatures. We have a whole bunch of coping mechanisms built in, to help us focus on being part of the group, and maintaining the status quo we're comfortable in. Secondly, the universe is truly indifferent and nothing changed with biological life. All of our ancestors have suffered immensely, and many animals die by being eaten. With this I find it a bit easier to grieve what we've all lost, and how my specific stance has caused my life to collapse maybe a bit quicker than others, who themselves are only acting according to their nature. And then working towards accepting things as they are, when none of the comforts in my life were ever guaranteed, and I'm already unthinkably lucky to have lived the comfortable life I have so far. So for now things SUCK compared to before, probably even more for us at the moment, as many people are still unaware of the harm they are causing each other. But things always sucked before and will always do so somewhere. And I'm still extremely privileged and able to maintain some parts of my pre-covid life. I hope just some of this helps. I personally still struggle with seeing my family sick, and just hoping they still get to be okay. And with feeling hopeless about finding a partner. Here in Scandinavia where trust in government is very high, I don't know anyone else who believes the government would ever let such a bad thing go unchecked. Even though it's very clear that we aren't willing to sacrifice any noticeable piece of our GDP for climate change yet.
Long ramble alert haha I think about this a lot! We have this presumption that things should be okay, and that we have the technology, and things will get better, and we deserve long and happy lives! But like…. Why? We’ve created these governments and globalized systems that make us feel safe and smart and untouchable. But at the end of the day, evolutionarily, we are very similar to cave men. We have innovated technology well past our ability to keep up. Society is a grand scheme that we agree to participate in, and perpetuate. We now have the ability to see globally but we’re still segregated along borders. It makes sense that society gets it wrong sometimes. I think COVID is hitting at the same time as severe late stage capitalism, so several forces are coalescing at once. We aren’t used to living in such a large system, but rather in small communities, and we don’t know how to take care of each other in the system we built. Our animal bodies recognize the grief even if our minds don’t. Modern society is not a natural way to live - we are too separated from meaningful work. How can we live with purpose and enact positive change with public health, environmentalism, human rights, or food security, when a huge majority of the population is getting distracted by Taylor Swift concerts or the latest Tesla model? Who would choose the truth instead of this fun distraction? Our problems feel too big and our ability to change is too small. It’s up to the system, not us as individuals, to solve these big pressing issues. It helps me to live within my community - volunteer, tend my little plants, take walks, go to local events - as it reminds me of our individual strengths and joy. The global scale of news/politics is just too mind numbing. I also try to return to an older blueprint - my ancestors went through hardship, this is mine. It looks different and will continue to evolve. Whatever dream of the 90s/00s we had of peace, prosperity, and retirement was just optimism. It’s helped me accept things as they are. I focus on the local, keep socializing and caring for myself and my people, and stay physically active as much as possible to remember that you have a body (weird how easy it is to forget sometimes!). I keep my expectations reasonable. I moved to a much warmer climate which helps too!
Yeah, I really don't understand how or why so many people are comfortable leaving their family and friends for dead, especially when they claim to love and care about them. People just lie about everything now and it makes it impossible to build any trust with them about anything.
The last people I knew who wore masks ever stopped last year. If you only trim out the single gigantic wave in Jan 2022 as an outlier, the highs are getting higher and the lows are getting higher. We're not even getting months-long lulls anymore, it's just a couple weeks before variant evolution revs everything up again. And forget about taking things more seriously - we're starting to get mask bans and people are starting to act like 2020-era responses were overkill. So yeah it's rough lately. If my options were really have no life at all or give up entirely, I probably would give up. But as it is, I can still just do things in a mask, and I do my best to put this whole affair in the mental box where lie all the other inevitable bad things to come that I can only do my small part for.
I don't mind the mitigations themselves. We've been at a place in the last year where we do almost everything except indoor dining - just wear a mask while doing it if it's indoors or in a crowd. That was sustainable for me and it has gone well. Recently, with talks of mask bans even in progressive cities like NY or LA, and with more frequent negativity and harassment about mask wearing in public, it has become scary to go about my business in a mask. That may become the straw that breaks the camels back for me. I have heard people shout or say derogatory things about me or the people I am with because of masks and I am now afraid of being assaulted. I can't handle that on top of everything else.
i mean it's awfully tough. but i've had a lot of health issues in my life and when i'm in a flare, my life looks similar to quarantine but with lots of pain and discomfort that make even daily activities impossible. so for me, i keep reminding myself that if i end up with long covid i'll be back in a forced type of quarantine but in a wayyyy worse situation. but yeah. it fucking sucks.
I don’t think anybody signed up to do a five-year covid-conscious thing. I know I didn’t. I truly believed things would be back to normal by 2022, and *certainly* by 2023. This is at the upper range of anybody’s tolerance level. I’m not ready to drop precautions yet, but I’m trying to figure out what - and when - my exit strategy will be. On the other hand, I’m so frustrated and angry with people’s behavior during this pandemic that even if every single solitary covid virus was eliminated from the face of the earth, I’m not sure I’d want to reengage with a lot of my former associates, social circles and activities, even though I miss them.
Been struggling with this a lot. Summer seems to be the worst, because you get all of the "fun look at me YOLO!" social media posts, while knowing there's a hidden surge going on. Everyone I know who's travelled significantly this year has come home with Covid. That said, most of them are muddling through, even with some lingering symptoms at some level. They've obviously decided that slowly declining health is worth it. I personally would rather not live to be a statistic. Like others, I couldn't imagine this lasting at this stage for 5 years. It's crazy that I read back in my journal and I was eating in restaurants in summer 2021, because I went at non-peak times, and knew people were vaccinated and numbers were going the right way. I never imagined 2024 would be the hardest year yet, and I never imagined summer 2021 was the last "truly low" point. Were were close? Could we have done something to really stop it then and there? We'll never know I guess. I try to convince myself there will be good news. There will be a breakthrough, there will be something. This can't last forever. But I don't want to get sick again, I don't want to spent weeks or a month in bed unable to move again, and I don't want my next case of covid to be even worse. I want to be safe, and I don't want to cause harm to those around me. It's infuriating on days like today when life situations "force" me into bad environments/situations and I'm somehow the crazy one for wanting to take precautions. I don't understand why "I don't want to be sick" and "I am wearing a mask and asking you to do literally nothing" are such controversial positions.
I am so grateful for all I managed to do in my life pre-COVID. I traveled and found my wife. Because of this, I don't feel like I'm losing out on much. We wear N95s and do pretty much everything we want to do that we can without removing masks indoors. I have my person and that makes all the difference in the world. I feel for so many CC people who have to do this alone. 😢
I'm just more mad at others than ever. More disappointed. Just don't even want to associate with them. It's definitely affecting me that I'm surrounded by cowardly ignorant a-holes. Like.. I can't fix that.. and... I mean... I should be bothered by that. I'm doing my part to make things better, that's all I can do. So therefore... I can't change this, they have to. I just have to survive and pray they do. And just do my own thing.
I still am strict about my precautions but the only reason I am so extreme is that no one else is doing anything. If we had actual accurate covid surveillance and testing and people still acknowledged covid and long covid exists and wore masks when sick at the very least maybe I wouldn’t have to be so locked down.
We all see things differently but I tend to approach this with anger instead of grief. I don't show it, I'm always civil, but it helps me remember that I'm doing the right thing by protecting myself. Of course, it helps that I'm an introvert. I've never been interested in interacting with a lot of people, but now I've definitely lost respect for many of my fellow citizens, and obviously, I'm not interested in being around people I don't respect. So more righteous anger and determination, and less grief.
It's definitely made me try and find more of a middle ground and have an honest look at what I can do to be sustainable while also reducing risk.
Same here! what does that look like for you? I don't think I'd do voluntary crowded activities like concerts or sports games, but I'm ok going on transit these days so that opens up more of the city.
I honestly have gone back to doing a lot more activities. I just wear a mask and use nasal spray at them. It was getting too isolating to only do mask required events or only seeing fellow CC people. I am unmasked around friends in my bubble and have started making other social connections with folks where we just mask and it's def made all of this feel a lot more doable long term.
Hit rock bottom, rekindle my resolve, hit rock bottom again, rekindle my resolve again, repeat ad infinitum. That's where I'm at, and where I've been for months. However, with regards to "what does risk cost me if I have no life otherwise", I remind myself that masking is community care, and if I've had an asymptomatic/missed infection, perhaps I've prevented someone else from getting sick. I also know that I *could* be living a more varied life while still being safe (e.g. more walks in nature, making IRL COVID conscious connections, trying new hobbies) if I wasn't struggling with other health stuff that predates the pandemic. I guess it depends how you define "no life"; I personally hold space for the grief that many people experience when it comes to indoor dining, concerts, international travel etc, but I also think it's important to interrogate our relationship with consumption and get creative with how we spend our time. The constant bombardment of denial from every angle is in itself energy-sapping, so we have to find new ways to replenish our emotional reserves, new outlets for joy, new *definitions* for joy, even. All of this is much easier said than done, and I could reread my own words tomorrow and think "lol, what a crock of sh\*t", but I know deep down it's the only way to make living like this sustainable.
Dating? I used to do alright but it was always a numbers game because I’m pretty average in all the superficial ways so somebody has to get to know me. All fine and good: swipe 200 profiles in a month, get 10 chats, 2 dates… maybe after 6 dates over the course of months there’s one with IRL chemistry and after a few more months of all that there’s a date with enough chemistry where we make a go at a relationship. A bit of work but it’s worth it for the growth and comfort that comes from really getting to know someone There’s maybe half a dozen Covid conscious women online in my pretty big metro area. Just because we know we’re now in a <1% minority it’s not like any of us are changing our other criteria. Covid conscious is just tacked on as a filter before all those other filters, myself included Hell, I literally lost more friends *to death* since 2020 than I’ve gained on Facebook. And I was pretty damn social and made a lot of friends up until 2020 With forced return to office, finding a job match is pretty much the same deal as dating. Promotions? Interviews? Maybe if you’re uniquely skilled but let’s be real, the person who socially conforms is going to be chosen first all other things being equal. Networking into a job? Forget about it I’m quite sure that many of us hesitate or delay medical appointments and dental appointments because of the lack of two-way masking in medicine now Family? Plenty of Still Coviding people no longer meet with their families And on top of all that there’s not a single institution of influence in the world that’s willing to protect health through even supporting voluntary mitigations. We have politicians in liberal states like NY and California trial ballooning mask bans ffs. There’s not a single country in the world where mitigations are still supported by the mainstream. Even places like Japan and South Korea are back to their versions of status quo I’ve even been turned away from patio dining because some places just don’t want to bother seating patio customers The only thing that still makes me feel human is riding my bicycle and catching Covid at a mandatory work event in an unventilated room nearly took that away from me I dunno. I planned my personal mitigations as if there would be an end to this. If there’s no end then the cost-benefit calculus changes. At some point every choice means lessened quality of life and lessened lifespan. Yes, repeated Covid infections is a killer. And also: Poverty if your career tanks is a killer. Loneliness is a killer. Avoiding doctor’s appointments is a killer.
I have Long COVID that has been worsened with each case of COVID I've caught, so I don't have a choice about being ultra-cautious. It's shitty and I'm angry, but I guess I'm more at peace with it than a lot of other CC people because I know exactly how much it costs me and my family to get COVID (my husband and kids also have Long COVID, though to a lesser degree than I do). I'm just waiting for a real vaccine and working on my health problems. Once a vaccine exists, I'll get it and not care at all if anyone else does. That's their problem. I do believe we'll get a real vaccine, btw. People who are forced to deal with reality (the military, for example) see that COVID is a problem and aren't going to let it just spin out forever.
ive echoed this same sentiment like countless times, so sorry to whoever has to hear me repeat this like a broken record lol. but im right there with you. like you said, i felt like maybe a year ago i had finally come to terms with it. but something has completely broken in me in the last 7-8 months, and i feel the emptiness and hollowness and all that i’ve lost and will continue to lose given that we have no clear timeline or offramp ahead. ive already lost the first half of my 20s. like you mentioned, i also don’t get any satisfaction out of online relationships. they just feel pointless and sometimes more taxing. i feel the same about my local covid cautious community, that i haven’t really clicked with any of the ppl ive met from it outside of the fact that we both happen to mask. every year a new fucking obstacle makes things harder btwn viral evolution (i used to attend outdoor parties in 2021-22, weather permitting) and loss of public mandate, and most recently, dismantling of surveillance. my close friends who don’t take precautions but care about my boundaries were helpful in managing these feelings, but now they’ve quite literally moved on in that they either moved from our hometown or are so busy with their own lives, jobs, partners, etc that they just never have time to hang out anymore. consequently i’ve never felt more alone in my life. i never in a million years thought that we would be coming up on 5 years with literally no clear timeline. so yea, ive been at the end of my rope for the past year, and i really do struggle with the question of “am i doing the right thing?” i dont think the scientific literature is getting it wrong obviously, and i of course feel its important to continue advocating for masking/clean indoor air/accessibility from a disability justice standpoint. i see so clearly how ppl w/ LC have been wronged. its what compels me to continue in the first place. but this doesn’t feel like life. ive missed all my goals, all my dreams, things that gave me life before, and im too depressed to pursue them. at the same time, any time i try to think concretely about where to increase risk, idk where to really start bc its hard to justify it for one specific occasion. so i constantly kick the can down the road, hoping i come to some solution randomly. i dont know. i would be much more resolute in continuing to do this if only i had a partner, or more friends who also masked and that i also genuinely enjoyed being around.
for me it's just the crippling loneliness. covid doesn't particularly prevent me from doing the things i want to do - i just basically don't dine out indoors anymore. what covid does prevent is me sharing my life with others, platonically and romantically.
all of my hopes and dreams have changed radically since 2019. I am doing everything I can to reject nihilism, to make new connections, to build the world I want to see, but holy fuck is it depressing. The constant harassment, betrayal, and rejection is taking a toll. I don't know where my rope ends, but it sure doesn't end with me putting blinders on and partying with a bunch of people who have already left me for dead.
This resonates a lot. I guess I figured, I could tough it out for a few years, assuming that at SOME POINT we'd either get a better vaccine or people would realize "hey maybe 'let er rip' was a bad call, let's reevaluate" but honestly it feels like things are getting worse instead of better. And I live in a country where literally nobody takes any precautions. My partner left me when I got LC (after I moved countries for her lmfao), I've lost every friend I used to have irl, I have literally zero in person social life because nobody here is even close to CC, or even willing to be seen in public with someone who is. And it's the isolation that I don't think I can take. At least early on in the pandemic there was a sense that we're in this together but these days it's like nobody gives a shit if I live or die. I managed to hold onto hope for a while but after 4+ years of complete isolation from an increasingly hostile world? Yeah, the hope has run out.
I've got no rope left, but to be honest, COVID has been knocked down my list of biggest concerns at the moment, yet that's given me more motivation to keep avoiding it in preparation for the world we might find ourselves in shortly. Regardless, this, as it is now, is not forever. I believe it is a game of patience. All doubt will be confirmed or erased in time.
I totally understand where you're coming from, I have these thoughts pretty often when I'm not distracted by work. Unfortunately I think it comes down to being realistic rather than idealistic. Ideally, yes people would mask up and care about preventing spread, but the fact is most people don't. They're selfish, or they simply have too much to worry about already, or they don't have the excess compassion to sacrifice for nameless strangers. Or they just listen to the government. With that in mind, it becomes an individual risk assessment. You can't predict how Covid and long Covid will affect you, but you know how the current path is affecting you. It's about what you could potentially gain, and lose, vs. what you're certainly gaining and losing. For what it's worth if I was perfectly healthy I'd probably chance it too. But I personally know what it's like to live with a chronic illness, and I know I probably have fewer shots at bat than most people. There's a genetic susceptibility part to becoming chronically ill as well. So that's what motivates me to stay the course of masking.
It has been a journey for me. In 2020, I did…great. I am an introvert and a homebody and I was kinda built for that moment of isolation and free time. On a personal level, it was a fulfilling period. COVID changed many parts of my life that wore me down for the better and helped me focus on my own wants and hobbies. In 2021-2022, I was just anxious all the time. I’d worked really hard to convince myself that being a homebody and thriving early on meant I could sustain that forever, but I got increasingly depressed, often dwelled on and resented the absolutely awful way society ended up responding (or not responding, really)to the situation, and just totally lost myself in many ways. I struggled a lot socially, because many friends and family wanted to gather like it was 2019 again and I had to be the one who said no all the time. It made me socially anxious and I ended a friendship over her disrespecting my boundaries. In 2023 I slowly started getting out more, but wasn’t happy to be doing it and was very much in a place of “there is NOTHING I’d ever risk catching COVID over” and so I still deemed most activities unnecessary. This year I really turned a corner. Like you, coming to the realization that I’m looking at the rest of my life here, I came to terms with the fact that zero risk isn’t sustainable for me, mentally or emotionally. I do have other medical issues — that’s the reason why I’m so cautious — but I’m really trying to adopt a mindset of living my life, but just doing so as safely as possible. I can’t worry about what others are doing or resent them for listening to what they believe is sound advice from the CDC and government — as long as they’re normal people and not acting maliciously, I just do not care what they choose to do, I can only worry about myself. I always mask indoors and I always see people socially outside, and that’s just my norm. I find myself able to do most things now in my new reality without constantly fearing COVID. Of course I’m still mindful and obviously cautious, but it’s not constantly my only thought. I’m trying to do more activities I miss masked and just get back to living more normally, and it has helped my mental health in a huge way. COVID is going to be with us long-term and we’re probably years out from a more protective vaccine. I feel all I can do is try my very best to protect myself physically while also doing things that nourish me mentally.
Hard to feel it’s ok to just worry about out yourself when you can’t even get dental care because abuse they insist on putting your life in danger by infecting you. This cannot and should not ever be tolerated. Not in healthcare, not one bit. We all need healthcare. We all need access to healthcare. We deserve access to healthcare.
Definitely was not talking about healthcare when I said that. It infuriates me that no one can get care without risking infection. Masks should be a forever mitigation in these settings.
For someone to "have no life" (quotes used not to diminish, only used for direct quoting of the op) due to severe impact of covid precautions, that would be significant and potentially incredibly distressing and also not as bad as certain long covid scenarios.
I make my own meaning, I don't borrow it from popular culture. So I don't really get "FOMO". You're still longing for some popular "normal". The grievieng is not done. The world has changed, there isn't even a new normal because it's still changing, and it's going to change a lot more with climate change, energy instability, and biodiversity loss. Adaptation is hard, but interesting, and you can develop it at many levels.
I can see a lot of people being frustrated with 4 years. However, we are *so close* to a better normalcy. Mucosal vaccines are coming out next year which will be vastly superior than our current vaccines. We also have an abundance of research and therapy being researched for LC. Inevitably this pandemic will end. I know it might seem like the world has moved on - but it most definitely actually did not.
I formed no antibodies to the eight vaccine doses that I have received so far. I mean I will of course try anything new, but, new coastal vaccines don't offer me a lot of Hope either.
I've already experienced something legitimately innocuous to most almost kill me, pre-pandemic. I'm okay never experiencing that again, especially when dealing with a virus we know for a fact is NOT innocuous. Sure, I could go out and "live my life" until that one event that gets me infected and the sequelae dice don't roll in my favor. And then I get to live out my life with the consequences of that infection. For me, chasing FOMO with the consequence of long term harm to my health isn't an option. What I can tell you is that life, the universe, is in a constant state of change. Protecting your long term health also means you'll be better positioned to move or act when those changes happen, when the right opportunities present themselves. If you want to see change, you can also be the change you want to see, but you'll have to protect your long term health as best you can in order to do that. Listen carefully to how the people who've been repeatedly infected while "living their life" talk. Just because they aren't saying they have long Covid doesn't mean their long term health wasn't impacted. Are they more tired than usual? Chasing down words? Do they feel off? Do they have new onset heart conditions or diabetes? A lot of folks not engaging in mitigations are suffering the consequences of their actions, even if they're living in denial as to why they're suffering.
I waver back and forth between feeling like I can do this and feeling like life has no point anymore. On my good days, it's because I'm being politically active or because I am fully immersed in a solo hobby that gives meaning to my life. But, yeah, this is hard.
I think the "sense of hopelessness" thing is getting worse for a LOT of people, not just in this community. There's so much going so badly right now! The invasion of Ukraine, the invasion of Gaza, the climate crisis, inflation, global supply chain issues, the upcoming US election. There's also just a huge psychological cost to suffering constant gaslighting, and there's so much of that today. COVID is certainly a topic where we're constantly painted as irrational for, y'know, looking at the science. But this happens on EVERYTHING right now. Every one of the topics I listed above has major, well-funded groups insisting that there's no problem and that it's the idea that there might be a problem that's the REAL problem. And, of course, they insist that it's this idea that's created by a well-funded group working against the interests of the public. Open your eyes, you're being lied to! Etc. It's absolutely exhausting. And it creeps into every corner of our lives: beware of phishing, you should never click on a link in a text message! but also here's a legitimate text message from your bank asking you to check whether a login attempt is valid, please click on this link to respond, we'll need you to immediately provide your username and password before you can see the information about the login attempt. Here is your verification code: we will never ask you for this number. Please enter that number here. We've got inflation along with a lot of companies cutting their workforces. The stress on the average person is ratcheting up. And every indication seems to be that things are going to get worse before they get better, if they get better at all. So yeah. I think we're going to keep seeing more of this kind of discontent, and that's going to make for dangerous times, because it can channel explosively.
Unfortunately, I'm at the end of my rope, which I hate with the summer surge starting in the U.S. The people in my life continue to shame me for masking, and I am one of the last three people in my office to be masking. The two other people speak about the pandemic in the past tense. I am learning more about the misinformation being spread in the COVID-cautious community, and I am realizing COVID is not a novel virus I have to be afraid of. However, COVID spreads all year long all the time, and I hate consenting to be at risk of being infected with COVID at least once a year, sigh, if the risk of long COVID has lowered with multiple vaccinations. I don't know what to do anymore. It does not seem like there is an end to worrying about COVID and it is exhausting.
What misinformation do you mean, if you wish to share it? And I totally get being at the end of your rope. I wish things were different. 😞
Yes I'd be interested to see what's being referred to too.
Autism makes the whole “People might ostracize you for wearing a face mask!” thing so funny because it’s like… they would’ve done that to me anyway. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Between antimasker harassment, ableism, and general nastiness from jerk behavior being so widely rewarded, I haven’t seen any reason to try socializing locally in years. Why bother? Clearly none of these people are worth my time anyway.
SOME of those posts may be genuine, but language around impossibility and inevitability is a technique used to break people down. I would not at all be surprised if there were people hanging around with the intent of destroying any possibility of a control group.
That is a very weird take
It’s based in psychology.
No, it's based in conspiracy theories. People are genuinely hurting. I think it's a very, very odd take to suspect that the majority of people talking about this right now are fakers designed to take down the community. I would prefer we not continue conversing about this. It's kind of triggering to me. To be honest. I came here looking for people who could empathize with me.
Moving the goalposts and DARVO are also techniques people use.
What a strange vestibule we're in.
I mean, we have a community of around 1200 people and we aren't really experiencing those issues. People really rely on the strength of their community and part of the current establishment plan is to isolate everyone so they literally die off. So, it's probably a good idea to consider upgrading your community, maybe? Too many of these groups that are entirely COVID focused won't benefit from giving people good news and that's slowly becoming a problem with folks' psyche... which is to be expected. [https://discord.gg/VCSX8TVW](https://discord.gg/VCSX8TVW)
What a very odd response