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 5 hours 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 5 hours 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.

[Apparition of Jack]

33 minutes ago, Elliott said:

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

 

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

See, this is more of what I’m talking about. Everyone had different experiences. Some people got through the pandemic rather easily; others got super frustrated and turned into like aggressive extroverts the day lockdowns ended. 
 

some people used it to grow skills, watch shows, etc, while others, idk, tried to beef with police who were telling them not to cough all over the restaurant they were at, lol. 
 

What about kids? Kids these days fucking suck at school, and that’s largely because they spend much of their most formative years learning through online zoom meets.

We NEED to talk about it; it’s impacted everything but we remain silent.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

Are you sure the pressure of the COVID pandemic didn't just reveal the issues of humanity that were always present?

 

[Elliott]

6 minutes ago, Apparition of Jack said:

largely because they spend much of their most formative years learning through online zoom meets.

How many years? Out of how many "formative years"? I thought it was 6 months

By the way, I have never had covid. I got the Jansenn vaccine then I think only 1 Moderna booster. I'll get another booster if it ramps up again.

There was a study that showed the more times you get covid, the more your risk of developing more severe long-covid increases.

Edited 4 hours ago by Elliott

[Elliott]

5 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Are you sure the pressure of the COVID pandemic didn't just reveal the issues of humanity that were always present?

 

Ya. Kids have been attached to screens since tablets came out.

[Apparition of Jack]

2 minutes ago, Elliott said:

How many years? Out of how many "formative years"? I thought it was 6 months

By the way, I have never had covid. I got the vaccine then I think only 1 booster. I'll get another booster if it ramps up again.

It depends in which part of the world you are, but a lot of kids functionally spent 2+ years locked inside. Even if lockdowns only lasted like six months, most schools didnt really do full reopenings until like 2023. Not to mention even after schools reopened, a lot of kids / families simply checked out of school altogether cause of the psychological disruption and basically only showed up for lessons like one a month or something. 
 

I mean, I’m not making this up. Just search “kids education COVID disruption” or something on Google and you’ll find thousands of articles, all across the world.

This is nothing to say of teenagers / young adults who missed a lot of traditional milestones (prom, graduation, moving out of home, getting a degree etc) because COVID fucked everything over.

[Elliott]

Just now, Apparition of Jack said:

It depends in which part of the world you are, but a lot of kids functionally spent 2+ years locked inside. Even if lockdowns only lasted like six months, most schools didnt really do full reopenings until like 2023. Not to mention even after schools reopened, a lot of kids / families simply checked out of school altogether cause of the psychological disruption and basically only showed up for lessons like one a month or something. 
 

I mean, I’m not making this up. Just search “kids education COVID disruption” or something on Google and you’ll find thousands of articles, all across the world.

This is nothing to say of teenagers / young adults who missed a lot of traditional milestones (prom, graduation, moving out of home, getting a degree etc) because COVID fucked everything over.

How can you say this when traditionally, kids grew up isolated at rural homes?

[Apparition of Jack]

6 minutes ago, Elliott said:

How can you say this when traditionally, kids grew up isolated at rural homes?

What century are you talking about man? Are you from the 1800s? 💀 

I literally just searched it up, here was the first article. It’s a real thing that happened.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/18/how-covid-changed-children-britain

 

edit: quote from the article:

“Five years on the fallout continues. Uncertainty, increased inequality, accelerated screen use and crippling anxiety are just a few of the Covid legacies affecting children and young people. Covid babies are now five and struggling to meet basic developmental milestones; 1.6 million children in England are still persistently absent from school; and students whose university years were stolen by the pandemic are still struggling with low mental health“

 

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT COVID.

Edited 4 hours ago by Apparition of Jack

[Elliott]

2 minutes ago, Apparition of Jack said:

What century are you talking about man? Are you from the 1800s? 💀 

I literally just searched it up, here was the first article. It’s a real thing that happened.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/18/how-covid-changed-children-britain

Yes 99.9% of human existence

 

I think the school system is a problem in society.

Edited 4 hours ago by Elliott

[Apparition of Jack]

2 minutes ago, Elliott said:

Yes 99.9% of human existence

Being free to run around the countryside in a pre-industrial society =/= being locked up in an urban appartment or home for 2+ years having digital screens as your only source of education/human interaction while a pandemic rages around you. This isn’t rocket science.

 

fuck it I’ll make it painfully obvious for you. Did YOU go to school in some isolated rural hamlet?

Edited 4 hours ago by Apparition of Jack

[Elliott]

3 minutes ago, Apparition of Jack said:

 

 

Covid babies are now five and struggling to meet basic developmental milestones;

This makes the article a joke. Covid did not hamper infant development.

[Apparition of Jack]

Just now, Elliott said:

This makes the article a joke. Covid did not hamper infant development.

Yeah man toddlers being locked up in dense houses instead of being out at the park or on field trips certainly had no impact whatsoever right