I've had coworkers show up literally wheezing. No mask, no distancing. And my job has PSL too but they'd rather use that on vacation.

Ultimately this is a systemic and cultural failure. But it's hard not to be bitter at the individual manifestations of the social rot.

Anecdotally, any injury or illness seems worse and takes longer to recover than it used to. Some of that is age for sure, but like... Seems like 10-15 years of aging in the last 4 years.

Can't go anywhere in public without hearing a chorus of productive coughs. And some of them may not even have covid; colds and allergies and changes in temperature are enough to trigger the cough I've intermittently had since early 2020.

Ironically I wonder if covid's effect on the brain and risk analysis / decision making causes people to take it less seriously, not even think about the potential consequences. Like a human toxoplasmosis.

Hope it at least accelerates the collapse of the first world

The ambient lead poisoning of the 21st century.

I've been reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. I don't know if it contains anything particularly revelatory, but it does do really well to line up all the evidence that tech (and our culture more generally) is designed to wreck our ability to concentrate. Anecdotally, my partner teaches and the number of kids who have issues with their phones and video games seems pretty high. COVID is probably accelerating the development of all these problems.

Also speaking anecdotally, I haven't had any major illnesses since the pandemic started and I've been massively struggling with mental health. I think we're just able to sense that our culture and society are both in a terrible place and that's causing a lot of mental strain.

I have noticed that people generally seem more rude and selfish, whether that's behind the wheel or on a sidewalk or in a grocery store. is it due to cognitive changes from covid or because the pandemic drilled into their heart that nobody gives a fuck about them? 😞

I finally have it, and this "just a flu" thing is such horseshit. I know you all know already, but jfc. my brain is a disaster, my lungs hurt like I just chain-smoked a pack of Red 100s, and I get winded walking to the kitchen 😑 the only times I've been more tired involved opiate withdrawal or parenting a newborn.

Girlfriend just got another round of it.

It's always funny when people are like "how is this still a thing?" And it's just like ........ it was everywhere and then we did nothing and declared it Not Our Problem anymore.

Can't imagine why it's not all wrapped up.

I think it's part COVID but also just part stress. Stress is absolutely a killer, extremely well documented. Who isn't more stressed these days at least in the western world? Everything is more uncertain. Things are expensive. Jobs are harder to get and keep. Wages are lower. Medicine and healthcare is harder to get. Society is literally collapsing around all of us in real time. That HAS to increase the general stress level of the population and that increased stress would absolutely lead to a lot of these things I think a lot of us are anecdotally seeing.

Definitely not saying COVID isn't part of that...it absolutely is, even if just "one more Big Illness going around constantly making life harder for everyone." That increases stress too and makes all of the other shit even worse. COVID is definitely one piece of the puzzle. It should be an easy piece to solve too... vaccination and masking and quarantines...but here we are.

I got the jab today. My arm hurts. 😢

Don't know, man, last four years are globally fucked up, disaster after disaster, I don't blame the virus, I blame how it was handled and where that led us in the end. No wonder we're all fucked up.

Has anyone pointed out that people are treating COVID like they're playing with house money? They don't care 'cause they think it only harms people other than themselves.

COVID damaged my lungs, I have brain fog which combines with my ADHD to make thinking damn near impossible sometimes and I'm always so tired. I have sleep apnea but it seems worse now than it did before.

Yeah, the number one injury among Covid conscious people for the foreseeable future is gonna be a bitten tongue. Last big visit I had with friends for a birthday was a lot of conversations about all the people we know getting sick and how everyone is dying so young all of a sudden. No mention of Covid, just me sitting there in my lone mask.

Are the constant attacks of breathlessness and gut-punch waves of terror because we have long covid or because we just 4 years ago had our faces clockwork-orange bad-dogged into the streaming pile of shit that is our material condition?

My sibling, who was already dying of cancer, died a lot sooner and suffered so much more from a covid infection that almost definitely came from his nurse.

I cant talk to anyone about it because my adoptive family is very antivaxx and anti mask

My grandma is pretty old...like 90, but I really feel like she's experienced some major cognitive decline since she got Covid.

My ~40 year old friends are suffering from strokes and coming down with rare forms of cancer left and right.

Thread has convinced me to go get the latest shot right now, because it sounds like I've been absurdly lucky putting it off this long

Social issues can exacerbate the biomedical stuff, making it all worse. Tons of kids lost their grandparents in the last four years, along with other family members, just as one example. Their parents have post-infection problems that frustrate the parents, that anger and frusrtation effects the kids even if the parents don't take it out on them, it makes the behavioral problems worse. kids are already stressed and then stuck in a boiler with other stressed kids, everyone's sick all the time, their parents are stressed from the profiteering on food and rent and everything.

It all feeds back on itself. Refusing to stop Covid was a world historical sin that can never be made right.

I got it for the second confirmed time recently and the symptoms lasted almost 2 full weeks, testing positive on antigen tests the entire time.

I was listening to knowledge fight yesterday and they were talking about Alex's grift he released in 2021 called reset wars. One of the hosts made an offhanded remark like "keep in mind this was released during the pandemic.... Which is ongoing but this was released when thousands of people were dying a day"

I almost yelled at the car stereo. We know there's a MASSIVE spike in infections right now but we don't have any data other than wastewater so there's no way to have an accurate death count.

Another grim thing i heard i think on the death panel podcast was that one of the reasons recent strains of COVID seem "less deadly" is because most of the people who were at risk of dying to a single COVID infection are already dead. That was a big wake up call for me to get my shit together honestly.

It relates to your comment about it being a burden, people who would ostensibly be on our side are more likely to hedge and "uh well i guess" their way through anything about COVID while any reactionary just shouts whatever they heard last at anyone who will listen

Oh I just posted about this in the mega. A coworker just died from a heart attack in their 40s. Ths situation screams covid but I can't say that out loud.

As a global population I feel like we now inhabit two different worlds, and I do not see how the gap will be bridged. It is terrifying.

this reminded me to get my vaccine today. Found the novavax being done at CVS, so going there

Yesterday, I saw a big rig truck almost run some old lady driving a Prius off the road. Aggro car drivers are one thing, but aggro big rig drivers?