Why tf do we not talk about COVID?

[Apparition of Jack]

Are we really all that fragile and gutless that a single pandemic causes us too much trauma to even talk about? Does our obvious mortality frighten people too much? Are people so addicted to baseless material distractions that we still can’t cope with the idea we might not be fundamentally in control of our lives?

I’m sick of this shit. People died. People still have long COVID today. It affected the entire planet.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT IT. HOLY SHIT.

 

EDIT: I’ve cooled down a bit. I guess I got a little heated, lol. Still, it frustrates me that idk, we haven’t yet really talked about what we went though and how it impacted us. I just wish there was more discussion about it.

Edited 1 hour ago by Apparition of Jack

[Yimpa]

Talk about it?! I suffer with long covid symptoms every year and can barely talk when I’m in the thick of it. Been dealing with  very bad rough for the past 2 weeks. Good for me tho, gives me an excuse to trip more instead of going to work 😸

[aurum]

People have done almost nothing but talk about COVID.

[Apparition of Jack]

18 minutes ago, Yimpa said:

Talk about it?! I suffer with long covid symptoms every year and can barely talk when I’m in the thick of it. Been dealing with  very bad rough for the past 2 weeks. Good for me tho, gives me an excuse to trip more instead of going to work 😸

Well, see, that’s what I’m talking about. Your symptoms are a very real thing that need to be socially addressed, lol. If most people just pretend it didnt happen, then too many other people with long COVID won’t be able to express themselves and get help if they seek it.

I’m glad you’ve found some humour in it though, life can be rough but it’s always good to look for the silver linings 😂 

[Apparition of Jack]

1 minute ago, aurum said:

People have done almost nothing but talk about COVID.

Are you sure? I feel like I almost never see it come up on Twitter, youtube, everywhere basically. I don’t see people talking about how lockdowns affected them, the need for more research, etc. It’s almost always other issues (Trump, Russia, AI, whatever), which while obviously important, have all also been influenced by the pandemic we all went through.

[aurum]

20 minutes ago, Apparition of Jack said:

It’s almost always other issues (Trump, Russia, AI, whatever), which while obviously important, have all also been influenced by the pandemic we all went through.

Yeah, because life goes on. We are onto new problems, new situations that require attention.

COVID was years ago at this point. How much do you really expect it to still be at the center of mainstream conversation?

[Apparition of Jack]

1 hour ago, aurum said:

Yeah, because life goes on. We are onto new problems, new situations that require attention.

COVID was years ago at this point. How much do you really expect it to still be at the center of mainstream conversation?

Was it really though? Lockdowns changed how we thought about working in office and how much we relied on social media. A lot of people are still struggling with strong symptom of it (literally Yimpa in this thread has long covid.) The fact that we haven’t poured millions of dollars into helping people deal with on-going symptoms is criminal in my opinion.

What about the social aspect? Half of society proved themselves to be petutulant children who thought wearing a $5 mask to prevent people from literally dying made them fucking Soviet prisoners in a gulag. It’s absurd. 
 

What about supply chain issues and the economy? People blame Biden for inflation or whatever but when your entire society grinds to a halt, the economy is going to take a hit no matter what.

What about collective health and responsibility? Millions of people died. Could that number have been lower if society was more prepared and culturally aware of disease mitigation? It’s not lost on me that America - the richest country in human history - was also the home to the most COVID deaths. Are we prepared for the next pandemic? How many more thousands of people will die again needlessly because people haven’t gotten the memo that masks = good? 
 

Can you imagine if no one discussed WW2 or the Holocaust after 1945? We’d be culturally adrift. I don’t think we’ve “discussed all there is to discuss about it”, I think we prefer to ignore the question because it reminds us of our own mortality and that hurts our fee-fees. 
 

EDIT: What about worker’s rights and nurses? It wasn’t billionaires who got us through the pandemic (they all fucked off the Hawaii), it was front-line store keepers, factory workers, garbage men, truck drivers, etc. Shouldn’t that account for something?

And nurses and doctors obviously too. Thousands of nurses - again, people literally saving lives - had to give up their jobs after because the stress on the health system and the mass level of denial put them through traumatic shock. Hell there are literally thousands of nurses struggling with actual PTSD today. That’s not “a few years ago”, that’s TODAY.

For fuck sake. Why do I even bother. Pearls before swine and all that. 

Edited 1 hour ago by Apparition of Jack

[Apparition of Jack]

Also, it had direct impacts on events still happening today. Lybvov has pointed out that Putin only invaded Ukraine because she spent too much time on brainrot internet during lockdown and came to believe his own shit about Russian destiny. Hamas only committed October 7 because Gazans were feeling super frustrated because of Covid and wanted to take it out on the Israelis. How about all the anti-social behaviour we’ve been seeing? Jan 6th happened a year into the Pandemic. What about all the crime, speeding, greed that has occurred as a result of it? We all went super insane for like 2 years after COVID and we haven’t yet accepted that fact.

im not alarmist when I say COVID had dramatic implications for the whole world that we haven’t even yet BEGUN to address. This is just like incredibly basic surface-level understanding of history and societies. 

[Elliott]

3 hours ago, Apparition of Jack said:

Are people so addicted to baseless material distractions that we still can’t cope with the idea we might not be fundamentally in control of our lives?

I really didn't have any problem isolating during the pandemic. I turned the circumstance into an opportunity for constructive solitude.

 

3 hours ago, Apparition of Jack said:

Are we really all that fragile and gutless that a single pandemic causes us too much trauma to even talk about? Does our obvious mortality frighten people too much?

I think pandemics should be expected in a centralized world. You should prepare for more, and worse ones.