Sometimes I hear people say they're less worried about COVID than they were in previous years. That surprises me, because I'm more worried.
Here's why:
1. I now know more about Long COVID, in particular its potential cognitive effects. In 2020 and 2021, my biggest COVID-related fear was spreading it asymptomatically and inadvertently infecting someone more vulnerable than I am. Now my biggest fear is expediting my dementia.
2. I now know that reinfection is possible. And each reinfection increases the risk of Long COVID. In 2020 and 2021, I figured if I caught it, I'd be in for a couple of weeks of misery and then either die or get on with life. Now I know that it's a perpetual risk.
3. With the removal of the required isolation period, the likelihood of any random person being contagious has increased. Unlike 2020 and 2021, people are now far more likely to be incentivized to work while contagious, thereby increasing the risk of contracting COVID in any random interaction or contact.
4. With the removal of mask mandates, these contagious people who are out and about are far more likely to be unmasked.
5. I now know that COVID is aerosols, not droplets, which means that the virus exhaled by these unmasked contagious people who are out and about can linger in the air for long after they have left the room. I now know that I have no way to tell whether a space is safe.
6. Hospitals are under more pressure now. We didn't have ERs and ICUs closing in 2020 or 2021! We didn't have 41-hour ER wait times in 2020 or 2021! This puts everyone at risk in ways that go far beyond contracting COVID - what if you get hit by a car? What if your appendix bursts?
7. There's no more feeling that those in power want us to be safe, or even want society to continue functioning. There's no more "All in this together", there's no more "We'll get through this". Which is even more disheartening when we know what to do, we just have to do it!
8. Given the uncontrolled spread and potential for reinfection and increased risk of Long COVID and its potential cognitive effects - and given the dearth of treatments and supports for people with Long COVID - I fear a world where people with brain fog are driving trucks and performing surgery and important things like that.
9. 90% of the people I love in the world are high risk. 90% of the people I love in the world have already had COVID at least once. There is significant overlap between the two groups. Not everyone got through it okay. I fear being the last one standing. Maybe with dementia myself, and no one left who cares about me.
10. In 2020, we hardly knew anything, but we took a bunch of measures. It felt like things could only improve as we learned more.
Now we know way more, and we aren't doing any of it. A world where we haven't figured out how to solve the problem is nowhere near as scary as a world where we have figured out how to solve the problem, but refuse to do so.
4 comments:
I am so, so, so angry about the way Covid is being handled collectively by my communities, my friends, my governments. At first, it seems like society was willing to sacrifice the old and disabled. As we enter another winter, I am seeing such terrible consequences on children and young people especially. The cruelty never seems to end. I am breathless with rage.
Thank you for writing this.
People may be less worried because they've learned how to deal with worry. Worry does nothing but hurt you. It doesn't make you safer. It just makes you more worried.
The less you can worry about things you cannot control, the happier you will be. It is my belief that this is a learnable skill.
I feel like if people could just "deal with worry" and therefore not worry about COVID, then worrying about money wouldn't be a thing, since money (and the worries it can generate) have been around for far longer than COVID.
When I say "deal with worry," I'm oversimplifying. I think that it's possible to dial down our worry, release our minds from the worries being front and centre, always present, disturbing our sleep, and etc. I've done this in my own life and have seen a lot of evidence of other people's success with this. It can reach a point where one says to oneself, I've done everything I can, I've controlled what's in my power to control, and I can let go of the rest.
And when worry begins creeping up and becoming intrusive, one goes through the checklist again. Is there anything else I can be doing? If yes, I'll do those things, if not, time to let go again.
It's another form of trying to stay in the present. Worry is living in the future -- stressing about something that may or may not happen. The more we can stay in the present, the less worried we are. (This also applies to guilty feelings, which are about living in the past.)
Some people do this without realizing it. For others it requires conscious effort. From my observations, people have mainly learned to deal with their worry and anxiety about covid this way. They are learning to live with the reality.
I didn't mean to make it sound simple or to imply it's something one can just switch on or off.
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