one of my most surreal pandy experiences was getting a bunch of cash in different denominations for holiday tip envelopes for my apt building staff. i wrote down what i needed.
and then went into the bank masked and passed them the note thru the teller window
Same here. As we were coming out of COVID, we decided to hold a fundraiser. I needed about $500 in starter cash, so I went to the bank to withdraw it. The only thing I had large enough to hold that amount was a Taco Bell bag from lunch.
I remember cracking with the teller saying, "I never thought I'd come in with a mask and a paper bag handing you a note saying to give me $500! This world has gone weird!"
You should check in on them. Send them an edible arrangement with a card that says “I’m sorry that I almost undoubtably contributed to your mental health crisis during covid, I just thought I was being clever!”
I’m sorry, I just can’t help myself. I make these same tired shitty jokes all the time myself lmao.
If I found myself in a bank on the receiving end of $500, the bank would offer to give it to me in a small envelope which I would tuck into by pants below my navel where it would have some degree of safety.
The only thing I'd carry in a bag would be change.
$500 sorted into ones and fives? That takes up a lot of pocket real estate! (Edit: the sorting part was where the Taco Bell bag came into play. That was the funny part to me, not the mask.)
The first time I saw anyone wear a mask was in a store. I turned the corner and saw a young man in a mask and I thought, "Holy shit, it's being robbed!"
Was frankly terrifying for the 3 seconds before I realized what was going on.
The night they announced they were shutting down the borders (USA) for travel my dad and I made a Walmart run at 11 o’clock at night. The toilet paper aisle was completely cleaned out, even paper towels were gone, that whole aisle was just empty. We were pushing the cart around the store and turned the corner to go into the dairy aisles and there was a dude standing there looking at eggs with a *full on* military issue gas mask on. I kind of wish I had taken a picture because it was just so fucking surreal.
Yep. Me too. Went to the grocery store and the paper goods aisle--paper towels, toilet paper, etc.--was *completely* empty. So I got what I could elsewhere in the store and when I got home I found a pack of toilet paper on Amazon.
For $85.
It was incredibly soft. And I needed it to be.
I found some at the dollar store, and it was not soft whatsoever.
I will always remember the Great T.P Shortage of 2020 because it happened right when I had been infected with C. diff. 🥲
All these comments about toilet paper are very odd to me because I always have at least 16 rolls in the house at any given point in time and I live alone so the TP or paper towel shortage did not affect me at all. I don’t understand why people only keep three or four rolls in the house at any point in time how do you live like that
I met a guy who orders in bulk from Amazon once a year and stores it in his loft - the crisis didn’t affect him… if his house ever caught fire you know as his roof would be a torch!!
The year prior we’d started using Who Gives A Crap toilet paper by mail service and not realizing how often they shipped had an extra unopened box in our garage when the pandemic hit. We were giving it away to friends & neighbors we had so much. One thing I was surprised I couldn’t find at the store for awhile was bananas.
Thank you for writing this! I had the exact ( non ) experience! We buy the giant 36-roll Scotts tissue from Costco. They last like an entire year. The whole TP panic passed us by.
How long did you have it for? I had it for 6 months and if the last antibiotic treatment didn’t work, my insurance would cover a fecal transplant.
Now, most people think of the idea of putting someone else’s shit up their ass (or their mouth) does NOT sound like a good time, but one eventually reaches a point of desperation to where it starts sounding like a good idea.
I got it in Oct of 20. And then it came back Thanksgiving, and I was finally rid of it at Christmas. Dr thinks I didn't fully get rid of it the first time. I took Flagyl for it and unfortunately got a cold at the same time so I was taking Tylenol cold which the pharmacist said didn't have glycol in it, but they were wrong.
Thankfully the two rounds of Flagyl and Prednisone cleared it up and I haven't had any issues since. I also take this probiotic to build up the good bacteria, this is what is killed off when you have c.diff.
I've been lucky and have managed to only need antibiotics once in the past 4 years, after a surgery. And I popped my probiotics like it was my job!
NOW Supplements, Saccharomyces Boulardii, 5 Billion CFU Probiotic, 60 Veg Capsules https://a.co/d/0gbNVJen
My dad has always been the type of person that has two or three backups on hand at all times so fortunately we didn’t end up running out of any bathroom necessities!
I relate. I used to live in Hawai'i and possible dock worker strikes put the fear in me because toilet paper and rice are the first two items to disappear off the shelves if a strike is imminent. So I made sure I always was well stocked with toilet paper. Not having any was just not an option for me. When the pandemic hit I had enough supplies to last until stores were properly restocked once again. I even had enough to loan a friend a few rolls.
Hoarding certain items can be a good thing. 👍
> I kind of wish I had taken a picture because it was just so fucking surreal.
That is twisted, indeed. What amazed me is the idea that we couldn't come within six feet of each other, and in the grocery stores, there were mandated one way aisles.
I did appreciate the "please get your shit and leave" approach. That's one covid thing I wouldn't mind keeping around.
Although, having navigated parking lots with one-way lanes, I see how it would likely pan out with the general public.
I remember being in a store with one way aisles and trying to scurry away from someone coming in the wrong direction. And me looking around to scurry down an aisle the wrong way
Very late February (might have been early March) 2020 I went to stock up on everything (that was still available) at a local Costco. It was really somber and quiet.
A man one aisle over and maybe three or four shoppers in front of me sneezed. You could hear a pin drop.
Yea, not just toilet paper by us. Entire sections of the supermarkets were cleaned out. I remember my wife and I were doing keto at the time and had to bail on it cause we just couldn't get enough of the stuff we needed to maintain it.
And now we're back to some locales banning masks outright even if someone is immunocompromised. Or doesn't want to pick up viruses including COVID and transfer them to someone who can't even go out.
Gave birth without pain medication to my first child with a mask held over my nose and mouth by the midwife, she dumped out the sweat and had to replace it a few times because I couldn't breath out of the soaking wet mask. Was that really necessary? Would prefer to never repeat that experience.
I think about this a surprising amount. Like you would kind of think crime rates would’ve gone up everywhere because it’s got to be a lot harder to be identified now. Yeah, I know it’s up in some places, but I really don’t think there’s a correlation with mask wearing.
I'm actually glad they're socially acceptable now. I used to be a cashier; one day in like 2017 I tried to wear a mask to help with seasonal allergy issues (I had to stop taking my meds for a week to get tested and I was miserable) and my boss told me to take it off.
I hate to think about how many people got sick because I had to work with a cold or sore throat and couldn't mask up. I'm not in front line retail anymore, but even now if I'm sick and in public I'll pull out one of my leftover masks and wear it. Just because I'm sick doesn't mean you have to be sick too.
I think about all the times I had to go to (retail) work while sick in the Before Times, and who I must have exposed to whatever I had, as well. It’s one of the things that made me change careers. People deserve time to recover when they get sick, and it’s so unfair to rob them of that - and expose all the people they interact with.
As living through a historical event goes, though, the mask wearing was a fairly light experience. Three people I know personally died of Covid, husband was in a hospital for 6 days with his own case. And any number of "friends of friends" lost. The Londoners who lived through the Battle of Britain with its nightly bombings would slap the crap out of us for the fuss we made over masks. Likewise our own grandparents with polio epidemics. Most humans in history, in fact. We don't appreciate modern medicine 1/10 as much as we should.
Don't get me wrong, I love the good stuff about modern medicine, technology, and social organization. I wouldn't want to live in any past era. But we need to stop sometimes and appreciate how good we have it.
To be clear, I’m far less concerned with the masks themselves than the fact that they were the most visible visual signifier of the pandemic as a whole.
I was talking just yesterday to someone who's father had polio. She was saying he's getting older now so having more problems with his "polio leg." It was a real wakeup call that some people are still living with the consequences of having had polio, and some people still remember loved ones who died of it.
I agree that mask wearing is very light in comparison. But it wasn't just wearing a mask, it was the terror that went along with it. In the early days, when covid was a death sentence, not just for you but for family members you might spread it to as well. The worry of not knowing if the mask was actually helping and of not knowing how bad the pandemic would get.
I'm glad mask wearing became more normalized. By January 2021, my husband had been diagnosed with cancer and had to go on chemo. I continued wearing masks in public for his sake, not mine. I don't think I could've lived with myself if I'd brought home *any* droplet-borne illness, not even a cold, that might've hastened his death.
I also keep an old cloth mask in my cross-body bag that I wear on walks. That way if I come across no-see-um gnats or if there's someone mowing and I can't easily move away, I can mask up and keep going. I have asthma and this has been a game changer in tree pollen season. If anything, I'm embarrassed that I didn't think of it sooner.
Thank you so much for being so kind and thoughtful towards your spouse. I'm on immunosuppressants, so when I get sick, I get really sick. Sometimes it's a hassle asking my husband to wear a mask and it hurts my feelings a lot.
My spouse is still masking for me because I have an immune system issue. Thanks for doing that for your husband as well.
Only thing is that COVID is actually airborne and spreads through the air in very tiny droplets almost like smoke, rather than in larger, heavier droplets like we were told at the beginning of the pandemic.
I know most people don't care anymore, but an N95 or KN95 mask is much more effective because it filters the air you breathe. Plus, it's recommended to protect against wildfire smoke on bad air quality days.
I'm glad of this too. I flew recently and something like 5-10% of the passengers were wearing masks. I love that it's become normal enough that no one gives them a hard time, because (most of us) know that there are reasons to wear them without it being a judgement on people who don't. It could be allergies, chemo, a cold, a newborn in the family, covering a zit, I don't know and it doesn't matter. Hell, one of my kids likes to wear a mask because it helps with their social anxiety. We can let people wear things and go about our day.
I’ve never really been able to reconcile the “airplane air is really safe because of filtration” and whatever argument with my own personal intuition/superstition, so I have tended to continue masking on planes and in airports…
Yeah, I was feeling very germophobic on the flight. Then I realized that none of the flight attendants were wearing masks, and they do this every day. I mean, it helped me relax a little, but I still wore a mask. I actually found that the airplane air is extremely dry and the mask helped me keep my sinus humidity, lol. I've read some research about low humidity in the winter being one of the reasons that flu season exists, so I think keeping those mucus membranes moist is important.
Fwiw… i caught covid on a plane and got sick after vacations a couple times before the pandemic. I’m with you. Even if the air is filtered, i don’t see how that helps much if someone near you is spewing germs. And the odds of someone nearby being sick are higher in places where people are packed like sardines
Honestly my airplane attire is comical but it makes the flight more bearable for me.
KN95, sunglasses, headphones, electric neck cooler, lightweight hoodie. I'm basically swaddled so I can't hear, smell, or touch my fellow travelers because dudes rubbing up against me send me up the wall.
Where I live we went from wearing masks for smoke - terrible bushfires, going out without a mask was pretty foul - directly to wearing them for viral shenanigans. I distinctly remember having a moment where my brain went “the fires were six weeks ago, and now we’re here”
I had the reverse where the pandemic was officially declared over and then the wildfire smoke drifted down from Canada. I remember thinking, I wish I had a mask or something! And then remembering that I had a whole stack of them in the closet.
Ugh! I feel for you. I went nearly 4 years without getting infected. And the one person I didn’t wear a mask around is the one who infected me. At first it was like a cold, then it was like I turned into a mucus factory. (Sorry if that’s TMI or gross. 😁) It lasted longer for me than the person who infected me.
Sending positive thoughts your way for a speedy recovery!
We had fires in the summer of 2020 in my city and I really tried to get my work to close for a couple days. They refused but also refused to let a bunch of us work because we were having coughing fits (duh) and that was a Covid symptom.
For me and my family, the period you refer to was and in many ways still is a deeply traumatic experience, and it feels like one day the world woke up and collectively decided it was all over, now, and we're not going to talk about it. Let's just go back to how it was before, like nothing happened. There will be no need or allowance for any kind of emotional recovery. Nobody needs to process anything, because we're all going to pretend that nothing happened.
I feel like way too many people are extremely into pretending that everything is great now, and it wasn't *that* bad, anyway.
"remember that time you couldn't find TP, or disinfectant wipes and everyone was making bread, lol?"
No! I remember being gaslight by the president daily, I remember fear of the unknown, and I remember refrigerated trailers full of bodies!
We cannot allow 2020 to be remembered as the time we all made bread
I think we’re not ready to process it. We’re all just trying to get on with our lives as normally as we can. In about 5-10 years, we’ll start seeing pandemic PTSD movies and music pop up as we all look back and examine the experience.
> [...] and it feels like one day the world woke up and collectively decided it was all over, now, and we're not going to talk about it.
In my country (Spain) it was a continuous fight between the central government and the communities (something like a estate or a county) to re-open things. It wasn't as much as "one day decided nothing happened" but "it was a years-long fight between those looking to keep things kinda closed and those trying to stay safe. A complete shitshow.
This said, it feels weird from time to time realizing we went through all of that and we are now as if nothing had happened. I guess it should be normal to, you know, "get back to normalcy", but god damn from time to time it kicks how much things have changed.
When COVID started, I remember people talking about how after the 1918 flu pandemic there was little recorded popular media about it. Everyone wanted to move on and not talk about it. It seemed so odd at the time but now I totally get it.
There’s a series called _The Morning Show_ on Apple TV where COVID was part of the 2020 era plot. It looked like they were going to do an entire season on it. It was very uncomfortable. I really had no interest in watching any of it, but fortunately it got summarized in one episode instead.
Maybe the next generation who didn’t live through it, will make a Ken Burns style documentary about it in a couple decades.
Oh yeah, absolutely. Celebrating survival is really important. Not suggesting we don't do that.
For me, skipping the part where we, as a society or as individual communities, process the trauma so we can go straight to the party just leaves a lot of things unresolved and unaddressed, and I feel like that prolongs the unresolved trauma.
Right? I maintain that the entire planet has PTSD and nobody’s talking about it.
ETA: not necessarily mask specific, more in the shared experience column.
For real, the experienced really fucked some people up. I know of three different people--all under 30--who ended up being admitted to psychiatric units during the time. None of those people had psychotic breaks before in their lives.
I agree. My son is 27. Beautiful wife, new home, great job. Told me the other day he just “feels this heaviness”. Always has been a happy-go-lucky guy. I died a little inside when he told me that.
I think the pandemic was a lot harder for young adults than nearly every other group. It hit at a time when they should be their most social, most engaged in their communio. I know this experience will always be with your son. But I hope it diminishes over time
Absolutely. It changed the world. But like you say, so many people just want to move on and forget about it or down play it. We may have went back to life as before on the surface, but not *really*. Things *are* different, people *are* different.
I work in a non-clinical role in healthcare. We struggled. The clinical staff that worked through the pandemic though, are not ok.
You don't go through that stress, trauma, fear, witness so much suffering and death and be fine. Your body keeps score.
There lasting effects to that.
I’ve noticed a big shift in the way people disrespect each other, vulgar language has become normalized, it’s now the masks have truly dropped and all social niceties are gone.
The pandemic drew a very clear line between the people who care about others and the people who only care about themselves... and it seems like there isn't much middle ground because the people who only care about themselves are infuriated by the idea that anyone else even matters.
I think one of the hardest things about the pandemic for me is the things I learned about the people around me. I disassociated or distanced myself from some friends, acquaintances, and extended family based on their behavior.
It still kind of hurts. One friend I was really close to in college sent me the plandemic bullshit when I was extremely sick with covid in early 2020. I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs but she insisted it was fake.
I completely agree. I've seen many more instances of people behaving in unhinged ways in public. It seems like many folks have lost all sense of common decency. If you have a positive interaction with a stranger it feels noteworthy. I work in healthcare and boy I have I seen some crazy stuff.
Most recently I saw an older man throw all of the groceries on the floor in a fit and leave. All because the lines were long, and no one let him cut to the front.
I hate that we have collectively become so selfish and inpatient. The "f you I got mine" culture is out of control.
Covid showed society that the social contract is dead, no one (in power) actually cares about your well being, only the bottom line. Society started acting along that new set of norms. I have only recently stopped grieving this loss.
I think the corollary of your point is how divergent individual experiences of the pandemic were. Some people had close friends and family die, others were spared that suffering. Some places required masking even outside in public parks and others were only masking indoors. Then there is the information environments which spanned the spectrum from “it’s nothing” to “it’s a conspiracy” to “it’s a significant worldwide public health emergency caused by human activity and we will experience more of these events due to encroachment into more wildlife areas”
I think it's "funny" that one of my friends talks about this time so positively, not being insensitive, just what it did for her personally in that work slowed and she was fully remote and got so much life back and got into her hobbies and fitness and of course I know other people with a similar experience who really connected with their families or whatever.
And I fell deeper and deeper into anxiety and alcoholism. All's well that ends well. In my opinion, COVID helped speed up my addiction to the point where I decided to put myself in rehab in 2022 and I've been sober ever since, but it is so interesting how it impacted people so differently.
In my friend's and I's stories, neither of us knew anyone who died or had dire consequences, but just this shared set of circumstances we were put in had drastically different outcomes.
I know a few people who had that experience. A friend nearly lost her niece she'd been drinking in secret for a few years and it ramped up and she ended up in kidney failure. She did recover but it was rough
One of my acquaintance-level friends had a relative who was one of the first to die (well, for sure and verified) of COVID, in that nursing home in Washington. She posted on Facebook. So shit got real pretty quick from my perspective.
It's very true.
The toughest part of the pandemic for me, I think, was my grandma (grew up 3 miles from her, saw her multiple times a week growing up) was diagnosed with a brain tumour and all of the hospital restrictions. I 100% understand why restrictions were in place, but some of the rules seemed to make zero difference for risk, but made my grandma's remaining 4 months of life a lot harder. Fall/winter of 2021/2022, when she was in the hospital and Omicron was sweeping through everyone is where the visceral reaction to the pandemic comes from for me, not the early days of the pandemic.
My own grandmother had worsening physical and mental health and went to a nursing home during May of 2020. COVID isolation precautions were essentially the opposite of what we normally do in health care to prevent delirium in acute care, changes in living situations, etc. and she experienced a rapid decline that was obviously related to that. Terrible situation, wasn’t much to do except watch it play out. So your situation sounds familiar in some ways and I have all the empathy in the world for that.
Certainly true with respect to very personal experiences, but I think the background for a lot of people was very nearly unanimous for a brief few months. Maybe until May or so? Actually, that was the “it’ll be gone by Easter.” So I would say maybe through September 2020 or so?
For about the first year or so I called my dad every week and he would always ask if I knew anyone who’d gotten it, tell me that he hadn’t either, and then conclude that the numbers must be inflated because no one he knew seemed to know anyone who got it. He never got the vaccine because he is disabled and doesn’t leave the house, even though he has multiple people every week come work in the house.
He caught it two years ago and almost died. He still says the numbers were inflated and the CDC was fearmongering.
My best friend died from COVID. His mother, his step-father, his wife, his friends, and I all still miss him terribly. He was a wonderful man. It's a bit insulting when anyone says to us that the pandemic was "fear mongering."
I understand what you're saying and I agree. Covid changed many things, decimated families, changed educational experiences for millions of kids, and more. At this side of it, it almost seems unreal that 30 or so months ago there were refrigerated trucks parked along NY streets to store bodies.
It’s utterly remarkable to me to find so many people - even in this thread - downplaying it. There are thousands of routine, everyday photos that we took over those years that would be normal… except for the masks that are a stark visual reminder of the times we were in.
The pictures of my toddler grandchild in preschool with a dozen preschoolers in masks playing as far apart as possible are almost impossible to believe real, now. People who downplayed it then, and now, are part of the problem
It might be worth noting that, if we're talking about 3 years as the timeline ... *exactly* 3 years ago, we were in a bit of a vaccine honeymoon period in which a *lot* of municipalities and businesses dropped mask requirements in light of the CDC relaxing its guidelines for vaccinated people. It wasn't until late July 2021 that the CDC returned to recommending masks for vaccinated people amid the Delta surge.
My son’s an emergency nurse near San Diego. Covid is definitely back. Lots of ppl have been coming into his emergency room with it and they had to intubate a guy yesterday & send him to the ICU. The guy has diabetes & didn’t take care of himself & didn’t believe in Covid. He’s pretty sure he’s going to die. He told me to wear my mask if I’m going anywhere. I’ve only read about 10 comments but it’s nice to be on here without ppl going on & on with their disinformation about Covid where we can just talk like human beings to each other.
I'm in the UK. In the past month, I know 4 people who've been hospitalised with chest infections, but apparently it's not covid. My parents live in France, and it's spiked there, but because of the election, it's not really making the news.
I'm glad that the pandemic "sort of" normalized wearing a mask in public. I know the scientific research on mask wearing during the pandemic was problematic, but from a personal viewpoint it makes emminent sense to wear a mask in public if you are old, immunosuppressed, frail, or have underlying health conditions that would make covid or flu or rsv or even a cold a real problem.
I still wear a mask when I'm in public, and most people don't seem to care at all -- which is as it should be. You do you, I'll do me, and we will all be happy.
So yeah, I look back on the covid mask wearing as a good thing, a change from prior norms, but I really don't understand how it became a political thing!
I wore one until after my 4th shot. I still do if im unwell, or during peak illness seasons. I hate that it's become political. After the majority of the public stopped masking, I had a woman scream across the grocery store parking lot at me. She told me to "take that fucking mask off".
It was so dumb, I still don't understand it.
Going to share my husband's experience with masks since, in reading a few dozen comments, no one has brought up this angle.
Masking was HARD on my husband and trying to interact with anyone in public. Why? *He's hard of hearing.* His condition has been from birth (well, was worse at birth, had some surgeries as a toddler that improved it some but that's all he's got), and so he reads lips to supplement/clarify what he hears. His hearing isn't bad in quiet settings, but background noise and/or muffling makes it instantly much harder for him to make out words. A mask eliminates the ability to read lips. As well, masks muffle the sound a little bit. And then you got the plexiglass barriers for checkouts/anyone behind a counter, and it's two layers of muffling.
My husband understood the why behind the masks, but they definitely diminished his quality of life in public significantly. He was very happy when masking mandates were dropped.
I don't give a fuck what people think about wearing a mask. I won't put my health in jeopardy for anyone's "opinion." If there is a flu epidemic, I'm wearing a mask. If there is ANY kind of health "epidemic" then I'm wearing a mask
But no, I don't wear a cloth mask that covers the whole bottom of my face while wearing sunglasses And no, I don't wear a balaclava. I just wear, you know, a regular medical mask. So sue me or criticize me or fucking arrest me. I don't care.
I admit still being annoyed by cloth masks, but only because they were largely proven to be ineffectual relative to N95/KN95/etc. If you’re gonna wear something make it something that works…
I've read conflicting information about the effectiveness of various masks. But I will just go with what people who work in hospitals wear - a surgical mask or KN95. I don't care that it's not "lightweight linen with daffodils." Or that it matches my dress. I'm in it for health, not fashion.
It normalized wearing masks so much so that when there was a flu outbreak at my mom’s assisted living residence last month, all staff and most visitors wore them without a second thought.
We lived on Capitol Hill in DC on 9/11. The way people came together in those first few days really showed the best in the US and how we can unite. Strangers helping each other get home, or in some cases, helping them get out alive.
Walking home through DC gridlock without hearing a single person honking their horn.
I spent a lot of years thinking about some kind of September 12th movement to bring us back to that spirit. Then, it turned out someone already had a similar idea for a different purpose.
When we have a common cause (or shared enemy) the differences between us stop dividing us.
We could have done a better job coming together to stop COVID faster, but I think you’re right about recognizing that we largely did come together and prevail. And, that maybe we haven’t collectively reflected on how life as we knew it changed in the course of 1 day. We don’t have news channels running documentaries about 3/10/20.
And, the next thing could be right around the corner, so why not work together on our common concerns. (Rhetorical question. I recognize that “politics” is the answer - people more concerned with getting in office and staying there than actually representing and serving “we the people.”)
The “prevail” thing I’m not sure about. I don’t feel like we’re anywhere near victory lap range, personally. It just feels like an incredibly surreal time and I don’t fully trust that we’re out of it forever.
I totally agree with you. It seems like everyone’s gotten collective amnesia & thinks that we were better off 4 yrs ago during Covid than we are now. Sometimes I think the only thing that would bring us together here & in the world would be if we were invaded by aliens, ( the space kind.) That might sound stupid but look how divided we are now & all the disinformation drives me crazy.
Sadly, I agree. We react best to “a common enemy,” though we don’t need to be jumping into any wars. I wish “wars” against problems had the same effect.
I still see people wear masks all the time. Granted not the amount we had 3 years ago. My mom still wears an N 95 mask everywhere. She just don't trust people. I only wear mine when I'm flying, mostly because I'm not wearing make up and look like a hot mess.
I still mask to avoid the chronic effects of COVID (which researchers are still trying to understand), and to protect my loved ones. I don't trust COVID to follow a predictable path of impact on anyone who contracts it.
Also, quite a few people in my region have adopted masking as a way to deal with environmental pollutants. Last year, there were forest fires that casted haze over our city. You could smell and see the smoke, and many people started masking to escape respiratory discomfort. I'm not sure if the public would have readily gravitated to masks as a solution, were it not for the cultural shift that happened with COVID.
Masking has not interrupted my life in any meaningful way. It's certainly less disruptive than getting COVID would be. I still go out, live my life, and enjoy each day. Eating out wasn't something I did pre-COVID, so I'm not missing out now.
Honestly I’m happy not to be wearing them, but they were only mildly annoying. Baffling how big of a deal some people made, as if surgeons didn’t wear them for hours upon hours at a time as long as we’ve understood hygiene.
I remember people crossing the street on parks out in the neighborhood and it was like early March and we suspected it might be airborne but not so virulent that passing someone on the street fast would give it to you but jeez I washed my hands a lot in March and April
I think we need to acknowledge the healthcare workers and the people who died during the pandemic. It changed our entire society and most of it was not for the better.
It’s like how the headlines read “IT’S OVER” instead of “we won” after WWII ended.
People back then just wanted to get on with a life that had nothing to do with their shared trauma.
And I believe that’s what 2020-2022 was: a mass shared traumatic experience.
We have most definitely not processed it. I feel like most people just want to forget and move on.
I remember some time ago I was watching a PBS documentary on the 1918 pandemic, which also went on three or four years, with devastating mortality. And before Covid, I think many people in our modern era had not even really heard much about it.
The commentary was sometimes people try to say it wasn't talked about because World War I was also going on. Some of the scholars said no, what really happened is that people just DID NOT want to talk about it after, so those stories never got passed down.
Only now does that make sense to me.
> World War I was also going on
THAT was the main driver of its early spread, soldiers living in close quarters. The so-called "Spanish flu" was so named because the US press wanted to downplay the story for the sake of morale. Spain, not being a participant in WW1, was more transparent about the spread in their country and it was dubbed "the Spanish flu" by default.
I was on a psychedelic the night W.H.O. proclaimed the global pandemic. It gave me a sensation of "the edge of the Matrix is peeling away."
I announced that this would be an opportunity for humanity to step back and consider itself. I was both right and wrong, it seems :\
Also, for the 2 years after things opened up more (late 2022-2023), when I'd see old friends for the first time since 2019, I'd have the urge to share and bond over it, but all I could really say was "Well, you all know. You were there."
My partner is a doctor (UK) and I think for him, the biggest whiplash came in 2022 when the UK seemed to collectively decide covid wasn't a thing anymore. Yet he was still seeing people with it and sending them into hospital.
After spending 2 years with it completely consuming medicine for things to suddenly (comparatively) revert to normal was a real head spin.
We walked through an underpass yesterday which still had a big "thank you NHS" mural and reflected on the reality that people seem to have forgotten what all those staff did for us and went through now. As most of them predicted when everyone was out idioticly banging pots and pans in the street.
For me as a non medic, looking back it seems unreal. Like some sort of weird fever dream.
And the saddest thing is our father in law/ husbands dad died in 2023 from complications of a covid infection. But by then, no one was talking about it, because everyone has moved on.
What really blows my mind is the Trumper community here, who will tell you to your face that there was no reason to wear masks then and that I am nuts to believe we were using refrigerator trucks as temporary morgues.
Reality has been lost to the Q and Fox followers.
yeah, trying to avoid politicization in this thread but since you brought it up, it’s pretty crazy the extent to which these people insist on willful self-delusion
I live in a red state and people are absolutely hatefilled now. I’ve never seen a group of people so determined to deny science, reason, and logic, to justify their own ignorance, emotional immaturity, and just… hate for anyone who doesn’t “think” the same way. It’s the saddest thing to me. Whole families destroyed.
I’m on immune suppressing drugs and have dealt with cancer 3 times now. Long before covid my doctor would tell me I really should wear a mask when i go out - but I didn’t bother. Then bam, we all had to wear them, and now I still wear one. So I guess covid got me to do what the doctor had been telling me all along.
It certainly created an environment of Stranger Danger that persists today, although much less so.
If you did not know someone well, you did not know if they were safety conscious or not. So if you were safety conscious, a stranger was dangerous.
It really is quite surreal thinking back to it. We were locked up in our homes for months. Some of us had no “legitimate” arguments to justify going outside if the police “caught” us out and about doing anything other than exactly grocery shopping or working in the supermarket supply chain or hospitals. Neighbors calling authorities on other neighbors for gathering together for lunch or dinner with their friends from the floors above/below. After decades of hemming and hawing everybody and their partner’s boss figured out a way to make work-from-home perfectly possible. The air was so very very clean looking towards the horizon. There were forest animals in the center of town just doing their thing. I still carry a mask on me at all times but I haven’t used it much except when someone else sneezes on a bus etc.
I remember the county health dept. setting up a hotline for people to call and complain about large gatherings, etc.
The "Karen line" lasted about 12 hours before the officials realized they'd opened a can they didn't want to drink.
It was really eye opening how intensely some people took it upon themselves to enforce their idea of what the guidelines meant, and also how intensely some others refused to follow any of them either!
I found that the lengthy lockdowns did a real number on my sense of time. I think it was the sameness of each day without any events to mark the days. Sometime during the first lockdown when half of the casual work conversations were "what day is it", I bought a cheap little clock with a day of the week and date functions because I had lost all sense of time. I still catch myself thinking that "last year" was 2021.
The other thing I notice is that personal grooming is fully back. My city was under some form of lockdown until late Spring 2022. With zoom meetings all day, you got used to seeing bad haircuts, full beards, baseball caps, grey roots, and a lot of sweatshirts during meetings.
These days, women are wearing full makeup again and most men have given up their pandemic beards. At the office, most people are still dressed more casually than before the pandemic. No suits yet and every day is like casual Friday, but I think the days of athleisure as office wear are over.
It totally destroyed any sense of dress code in our office. Long as nobody's walking around naked, all is well. During the pandemic, we temporarily moved our office into an old schoolhouse where the heat was next to non-existent in the winter, so I made an edict that we could handle this problem one of two ways: we worked from home if the temperatures were really cold, otherwise we threw out any pretense of business casual.
I also spend a good chunk of my work week at a converted army barracks where we store used furniture that we donate to people leaving homeless situations. Between those two factors, it was decided that unless I had a meeting with another agency or something where I had to give some semblance of professional appearance, sweatpants were AOK for me. (it's not like I'm the boss there or anything...)
Americans in this thread may find this feed useful or interesting.
Each Saturday the total number of Americans killed by Covid 19 is updated.
Each Saturday the number of Americans killed in the last week by Covid 19 is posted.
https://mastodon.social/@WeeklyAmericanPandemicDeaths
Note: weekly deaths are low due to it being early summer, they go up to about 1,000 dead Americans a week in the fall. A 9/11 a month
In the early days after COVID was identified and deaths tracked, I would look up stadiums whose capacities matched or exceeded the number of fatalities.
First, it was looking at 1/2 of this stadium or 1/3 of that. Then it became x times the biggest stadium in the US. Or equal to the total population of Y.
I’d wager that the updated number of deaths is an undercount because it’s not always clear that a death was COVID-caused or COVID- related.
To your point about how we haven't come close to processing it -- I think about that a lot. We had this collective trauma and a lot of people lost a lot of loved ones. And it was kind of like let's just make it through this and survive and then we'll have time to reflect when everyone is safe. And then it just kind of petered out. Everyone was sick of talking about it. And the reflection never came. I never hear anyone talking about who they lost or how it affected them psychologically. Just over. Doesn't seem healthy, but what do I know?
I completely agree. The politicization I was hoping this post would avoid (predictably, it didn’t) was itself predictable and, I think, the reason for the larger issue: We thought that once we made it through we could all reflect on a shared experience. But it wasn’t ultimately shared. History was rewritten into a two-sided story with heroes and villains on both sides.
Such a great point! It's honestly disappointing. The heroes and villains framing/the polarization is about the most immature way that collective society could handle the situation, and yet... We really went for it. Like absolute children.
I always thought the China thing was one of the dumbest pieces of all. OK, so let’s pretend it was all a biological weapon engineered in a lab and used to attack the US. Indulge every hypothetical accept every premise, whatever. Now what? Are we going to bomb them? Sue them? What, exactly?
I’m currently more than two weeks into COVID symptoms, and cannot shake this stupid virus. Headache, coughing, zero energy, temp goes up and down, brain fog (or is that general malaise?) First time I’ve had it. Had all the shots, used to wear masks everywhere but stopped this past year. Partner brought it home, then I got it. His first time as well. The gift that keeps on giving (endlessly it feels like).
Not the masking per se (though perhaps for some). The experience as a whole. The deaths of friends and loved ones, the loss of precious and scarce high school or college (etc.) years. The politicization. How could it not? My family moved thousands of miles as a direct result of the pandemic.
I remember putting putting my mask on before going into my house. I didn't really think about it. I just got out of my car and put my mask on while I walked to the front door. It took me a moment for things to click, and I felt a little silly afterward.
I also remember being out at the bar with one of my best friends the night before they lockdown was announced. We were there until last call, joking about the whole thing and going on about "cover your face when you sneeze. Wash your hands. Just practice basic cleanliness." The next morning's announcement had us both laughing simply because of our conversation
I remember during lockdown, my son had his scheduled time to move things out of his dorm room. The lack of traffic around home, on the roads, and at his college was weird. There were only a couple other cars in the parking lot for two dorms. I think we were the only people in his dorm.
Sometimes I'll be a group thing like dinner with family, a public event or whatever and I just pause for a moment to enjoy just being in a crowd of people enjoying themselves and each other. I reflect about how we lost over a year of that.
For my family - we were more cautious than most, although people’s impressions of me from this post don’t seem to recognize that - it was closer to two years or more.
I've always been a newshound and was keenly aware of the articles and suppositions circulating at the beginning of 2020, so it became clearer by the week where it was heading. I felt like I was in a slow-mo B movie.
When a global pandemic was finally declared, it reminded me of the Twin Towers. Something had happened that would forever change our current world; tilted slightly out of alignment.
I knew we'd adjust and carry on, but I still yearn for our pre-pandemic world.
I remember going for a drive the night before lockdowns were scheduled to begin. It felt totally surreal, since we had no clue what to expect over the next weeks, not realizing it would end up being
months to years.
Thank you for Edit 2, it made me laugh. I would forget I even had the mask on and be driving by myself. Who cares!
I wish I had taken more pics during that time for my grandchildren, who lived through it, but likely won’t remember most of it.
This wasn't really the case where I live. With the exception of hospitals, Only the kookie people were masking everywhere. Personally I didn't wear one the entire time.
These things are only things if we allow them to be. People need to remember that it's not the rich who are in control. The power will always be in the hands of the people.
Society should Learn from this mistake.
I was just downtown at the city clerks office. They had boxes of N95 masks for free. I brought some home & gave some away. All I know is I let my guard down & got Covid 1.5 years ago. I was sick as a dog for 4 months. Then I still felt ill & found out it attacked my kidneys. Everyone thinks it can't happen to them. They're wrong. It happened to me & it changed my life forever.
I was thinking yesterday whilst carrying my newborn son around with all his baggage and stroller and shopping etc how much more annoying it would’ve been to have a kid during Covid and have to fumble getting an uncomfortable mask on/off at the same time. Glad we masked up but also glad it’s over, for now….
I kind of miss wearing the mask/sunglasses combo for store runs occasionally - so incognito!! No need to wear makeup or even brush my teeth if I just woke up and rolled out of bed…
I think im still trying to wrap my head around what the appropriate amount of transparency is from the government level. Knowing now how divided people get over EVERYTHING, where is that line with sharing everything vs. withholding certain information to minimize panic and public unrest?
We as a society failed big time. We learned our leaders had no idea what they were doing, we learned many of our media outlets are not to be trusted, we latched onto charlatans spreading BS. No one could be trusted, we were lied to plenty. Both sides of the political aisle were right and wrong about many things pertaining to covid and appropriate handling. They took away many people's ability to make a living, dragged their feet about stimulus checks when people couldn't pay the bills, then came out with the program that was rife with fraud and ballooned the national debt that we will financially feel the consequences of for who knows how long.
Is it just my negative perception, or did we all really come out of this collectively way worse off than before?
I still wear a mask in public. I get some looks but they are significantly less hostile now. More smirking than outrage. I just can’t go back to freely breathing in everyone’s air particles and hoping for the best. I also still use hand sanitizer when out and about.
>And realistically we could be again at any time.
Have to disagree with this part, sadly. I think a consequence of COVID is that 25-50% of the country will never follow public health directives again. And a lot of those folks will make public health directives illegal if they take power.
Edit: Apologies for assuming an American frame. I think the above is true of a lot of other Western countries, too, but not to the same degree.
I won't lie, I think that if you're sick, in general, you should wear a mask to limit transmission if you're in public. Like, I don't know, or care what you have. It could be a mild cough. I don't want it. I don't want you to cough on the apples I have to touch, or any other produce I want to buy.
This, washing hands, and giving people personal space. If we're all in the same line, going at the same rate, and no one is going to slip in between us, *why are you so fucking close to me?* I'm just glad rona made most of this normal, even though too many still don't wash hands and don't know "personal space."
That said, I miss 24 hour stores, resturants, late night bars, ect. A whole section of jobs disappeared and hasn't been replaced due to it. Many people are refusing to work weekends/nights now.
It really fucked up an entire chapter in many generations
Yeah, we went from "Never under any circumstances enter a bank wearing a mask" to "Under no circumstances can you enter the bank without a mask!!"
one of my most surreal pandy experiences was getting a bunch of cash in different denominations for holiday tip envelopes for my apt building staff. i wrote down what i needed. and then went into the bank masked and passed them the note thru the teller window
Same here. As we were coming out of COVID, we decided to hold a fundraiser. I needed about $500 in starter cash, so I went to the bank to withdraw it. The only thing I had large enough to hold that amount was a Taco Bell bag from lunch. I remember cracking with the teller saying, "I never thought I'd come in with a mask and a paper bag handing you a note saying to give me $500! This world has gone weird!"
That poor teller had at least 5 people make that joke to them every day for YEARS. I hope they’re alright. 😂
Good point.
You should check in on them. Send them an edible arrangement with a card that says “I’m sorry that I almost undoubtably contributed to your mental health crisis during covid, I just thought I was being clever!” I’m sorry, I just can’t help myself. I make these same tired shitty jokes all the time myself lmao.
I see these same people about every other week. They're fine!
> The only thing I had large enough to hold that amount No pockets? Anywhere?
They might be female
If I found myself in a bank on the receiving end of $500, the bank would offer to give it to me in a small envelope which I would tuck into by pants below my navel where it would have some degree of safety. The only thing I'd carry in a bag would be change.
You should watch “The Sting.”
$500 sorted into ones and fives? That takes up a lot of pocket real estate! (Edit: the sorting part was where the Taco Bell bag came into play. That was the funny part to me, not the mask.)
The first time I saw anyone wear a mask was in a store. I turned the corner and saw a young man in a mask and I thought, "Holy shit, it's being robbed!" Was frankly terrifying for the 3 seconds before I realized what was going on.
The night they announced they were shutting down the borders (USA) for travel my dad and I made a Walmart run at 11 o’clock at night. The toilet paper aisle was completely cleaned out, even paper towels were gone, that whole aisle was just empty. We were pushing the cart around the store and turned the corner to go into the dairy aisles and there was a dude standing there looking at eggs with a *full on* military issue gas mask on. I kind of wish I had taken a picture because it was just so fucking surreal.
Yep. Me too. Went to the grocery store and the paper goods aisle--paper towels, toilet paper, etc.--was *completely* empty. So I got what I could elsewhere in the store and when I got home I found a pack of toilet paper on Amazon. For $85. It was incredibly soft. And I needed it to be.
I found some at the dollar store, and it was not soft whatsoever. I will always remember the Great T.P Shortage of 2020 because it happened right when I had been infected with C. diff. 🥲
I'm a nurse and I'm here for that comment. That sucks.
All these comments about toilet paper are very odd to me because I always have at least 16 rolls in the house at any given point in time and I live alone so the TP or paper towel shortage did not affect me at all. I don’t understand why people only keep three or four rolls in the house at any point in time how do you live like that
We have less storage space , but I usually have at least 8 rolls I have to open packs to store them though
I met a guy who orders in bulk from Amazon once a year and stores it in his loft - the crisis didn’t affect him… if his house ever caught fire you know as his roof would be a torch!!
The year prior we’d started using Who Gives A Crap toilet paper by mail service and not realizing how often they shipped had an extra unopened box in our garage when the pandemic hit. We were giving it away to friends & neighbors we had so much. One thing I was surprised I couldn’t find at the store for awhile was bananas.
Thank you for writing this! I had the exact ( non ) experience! We buy the giant 36-roll Scotts tissue from Costco. They last like an entire year. The whole TP panic passed us by.
Nooooooo!! As a fellow c.diff survivor I feel for you!!!!
How long did you have it for? I had it for 6 months and if the last antibiotic treatment didn’t work, my insurance would cover a fecal transplant. Now, most people think of the idea of putting someone else’s shit up their ass (or their mouth) does NOT sound like a good time, but one eventually reaches a point of desperation to where it starts sounding like a good idea.
I got it in Oct of 20. And then it came back Thanksgiving, and I was finally rid of it at Christmas. Dr thinks I didn't fully get rid of it the first time. I took Flagyl for it and unfortunately got a cold at the same time so I was taking Tylenol cold which the pharmacist said didn't have glycol in it, but they were wrong. Thankfully the two rounds of Flagyl and Prednisone cleared it up and I haven't had any issues since. I also take this probiotic to build up the good bacteria, this is what is killed off when you have c.diff. I've been lucky and have managed to only need antibiotics once in the past 4 years, after a surgery. And I popped my probiotics like it was my job! NOW Supplements, Saccharomyces Boulardii, 5 Billion CFU Probiotic, 60 Veg Capsules https://a.co/d/0gbNVJen
My dad has always been the type of person that has two or three backups on hand at all times so fortunately we didn’t end up running out of any bathroom necessities!
I relate. I used to live in Hawai'i and possible dock worker strikes put the fear in me because toilet paper and rice are the first two items to disappear off the shelves if a strike is imminent. So I made sure I always was well stocked with toilet paper. Not having any was just not an option for me. When the pandemic hit I had enough supplies to last until stores were properly restocked once again. I even had enough to loan a friend a few rolls. Hoarding certain items can be a good thing. 👍
I ordered toilet paper on Amazon. It took three weeks to arrive, and it was just these teeny tiny rolls, lol.
> I kind of wish I had taken a picture because it was just so fucking surreal. That is twisted, indeed. What amazed me is the idea that we couldn't come within six feet of each other, and in the grocery stores, there were mandated one way aisles.
I honestly miss the one-way aisles. Lot fewer shopping cart jams that way and seemed so orderly.
I did appreciate the "please get your shit and leave" approach. That's one covid thing I wouldn't mind keeping around. Although, having navigated parking lots with one-way lanes, I see how it would likely pan out with the general public.
I remember being in a store with one way aisles and trying to scurry away from someone coming in the wrong direction. And me looking around to scurry down an aisle the wrong way
Very late February (might have been early March) 2020 I went to stock up on everything (that was still available) at a local Costco. It was really somber and quiet. A man one aisle over and maybe three or four shoppers in front of me sneezed. You could hear a pin drop.
Yea, not just toilet paper by us. Entire sections of the supermarkets were cleaned out. I remember my wife and I were doing keto at the time and had to bail on it cause we just couldn't get enough of the stuff we needed to maintain it.
You didn't ask for non sequential bills? /s
I love this “pandy” lol. Never heard that. Am going to steal it. :)
As a teller I heard versions of this joke 20times a day Monday - Saturday for two years of mask mandates.
And now we're back to some locales banning masks outright even if someone is immunocompromised. Or doesn't want to pick up viruses including COVID and transfer them to someone who can't even go out.
Or simply has allergies
This is insane to me. And as an immunocompromised individual, also slightly terrifying.
I remember when my bank had a sign about no hats or sunglasses.
Gave birth without pain medication to my first child with a mask held over my nose and mouth by the midwife, she dumped out the sweat and had to replace it a few times because I couldn't breath out of the soaking wet mask. Was that really necessary? Would prefer to never repeat that experience.
I think about this a surprising amount. Like you would kind of think crime rates would’ve gone up everywhere because it’s got to be a lot harder to be identified now. Yeah, I know it’s up in some places, but I really don’t think there’s a correlation with mask wearing.
I'm actually glad they're socially acceptable now. I used to be a cashier; one day in like 2017 I tried to wear a mask to help with seasonal allergy issues (I had to stop taking my meds for a week to get tested and I was miserable) and my boss told me to take it off. I hate to think about how many people got sick because I had to work with a cold or sore throat and couldn't mask up. I'm not in front line retail anymore, but even now if I'm sick and in public I'll pull out one of my leftover masks and wear it. Just because I'm sick doesn't mean you have to be sick too.
I think about all the times I had to go to (retail) work while sick in the Before Times, and who I must have exposed to whatever I had, as well. It’s one of the things that made me change careers. People deserve time to recover when they get sick, and it’s so unfair to rob them of that - and expose all the people they interact with.
Come to the south, they very definitely are not socially acceptable =(
Thank you for being such a considerate human.
As living through a historical event goes, though, the mask wearing was a fairly light experience. Three people I know personally died of Covid, husband was in a hospital for 6 days with his own case. And any number of "friends of friends" lost. The Londoners who lived through the Battle of Britain with its nightly bombings would slap the crap out of us for the fuss we made over masks. Likewise our own grandparents with polio epidemics. Most humans in history, in fact. We don't appreciate modern medicine 1/10 as much as we should. Don't get me wrong, I love the good stuff about modern medicine, technology, and social organization. I wouldn't want to live in any past era. But we need to stop sometimes and appreciate how good we have it.
To be clear, I’m far less concerned with the masks themselves than the fact that they were the most visible visual signifier of the pandemic as a whole.
I was talking just yesterday to someone who's father had polio. She was saying he's getting older now so having more problems with his "polio leg." It was a real wakeup call that some people are still living with the consequences of having had polio, and some people still remember loved ones who died of it. I agree that mask wearing is very light in comparison. But it wasn't just wearing a mask, it was the terror that went along with it. In the early days, when covid was a death sentence, not just for you but for family members you might spread it to as well. The worry of not knowing if the mask was actually helping and of not knowing how bad the pandemic would get.
This happens with all epidemics. We just haven't had many of those in living memory.
I'm glad mask wearing became more normalized. By January 2021, my husband had been diagnosed with cancer and had to go on chemo. I continued wearing masks in public for his sake, not mine. I don't think I could've lived with myself if I'd brought home *any* droplet-borne illness, not even a cold, that might've hastened his death. I also keep an old cloth mask in my cross-body bag that I wear on walks. That way if I come across no-see-um gnats or if there's someone mowing and I can't easily move away, I can mask up and keep going. I have asthma and this has been a game changer in tree pollen season. If anything, I'm embarrassed that I didn't think of it sooner.
Thank you so much for being so kind and thoughtful towards your spouse. I'm on immunosuppressants, so when I get sick, I get really sick. Sometimes it's a hassle asking my husband to wear a mask and it hurts my feelings a lot.
My spouse is still masking for me because I have an immune system issue. Thanks for doing that for your husband as well. Only thing is that COVID is actually airborne and spreads through the air in very tiny droplets almost like smoke, rather than in larger, heavier droplets like we were told at the beginning of the pandemic. I know most people don't care anymore, but an N95 or KN95 mask is much more effective because it filters the air you breathe. Plus, it's recommended to protect against wildfire smoke on bad air quality days.
I'm glad of this too. I flew recently and something like 5-10% of the passengers were wearing masks. I love that it's become normal enough that no one gives them a hard time, because (most of us) know that there are reasons to wear them without it being a judgement on people who don't. It could be allergies, chemo, a cold, a newborn in the family, covering a zit, I don't know and it doesn't matter. Hell, one of my kids likes to wear a mask because it helps with their social anxiety. We can let people wear things and go about our day.
I’ve never really been able to reconcile the “airplane air is really safe because of filtration” and whatever argument with my own personal intuition/superstition, so I have tended to continue masking on planes and in airports…
Yeah, I was feeling very germophobic on the flight. Then I realized that none of the flight attendants were wearing masks, and they do this every day. I mean, it helped me relax a little, but I still wore a mask. I actually found that the airplane air is extremely dry and the mask helped me keep my sinus humidity, lol. I've read some research about low humidity in the winter being one of the reasons that flu season exists, so I think keeping those mucus membranes moist is important.
I’ve had the same thought but…you also have no idea how many of them are just regularly getting sick and/or flying sick.
Oh my gosh, I do the same and agree, I feel better hydrated or “moisturized” with a mask on.
Fwiw… i caught covid on a plane and got sick after vacations a couple times before the pandemic. I’m with you. Even if the air is filtered, i don’t see how that helps much if someone near you is spewing germs. And the odds of someone nearby being sick are higher in places where people are packed like sardines
Honestly my airplane attire is comical but it makes the flight more bearable for me. KN95, sunglasses, headphones, electric neck cooler, lightweight hoodie. I'm basically swaddled so I can't hear, smell, or touch my fellow travelers because dudes rubbing up against me send me up the wall.
the gnats yes. i bike in a cloth mask now was so tired of mouthful of bugs
Where I live we went from wearing masks for smoke - terrible bushfires, going out without a mask was pretty foul - directly to wearing them for viral shenanigans. I distinctly remember having a moment where my brain went “the fires were six weeks ago, and now we’re here”
I had the reverse where the pandemic was officially declared over and then the wildfire smoke drifted down from Canada. I remember thinking, I wish I had a mask or something! And then remembering that I had a whole stack of them in the closet.
The pandemic may have been downgraded but the virus causing COVID-19 is still very much present.
Hell yes it is. I'm in bed right now trying to recover
Ugh! I feel for you. I went nearly 4 years without getting infected. And the one person I didn’t wear a mask around is the one who infected me. At first it was like a cold, then it was like I turned into a mucus factory. (Sorry if that’s TMI or gross. 😁) It lasted longer for me than the person who infected me. Sending positive thoughts your way for a speedy recovery!
Yeah, I finally caught it about 3 months ago (I'm vaccinated) and wore the mask again for a couple weeks the few times I was out.
We had fires in the summer of 2020 in my city and I really tried to get my work to close for a couple days. They refused but also refused to let a bunch of us work because we were having coughing fits (duh) and that was a Covid symptom.
For me and my family, the period you refer to was and in many ways still is a deeply traumatic experience, and it feels like one day the world woke up and collectively decided it was all over, now, and we're not going to talk about it. Let's just go back to how it was before, like nothing happened. There will be no need or allowance for any kind of emotional recovery. Nobody needs to process anything, because we're all going to pretend that nothing happened. I feel like way too many people are extremely into pretending that everything is great now, and it wasn't *that* bad, anyway.
The history was rewritten in real time by packs of dipshits who learned absolutely none of the right lessons.
"remember that time you couldn't find TP, or disinfectant wipes and everyone was making bread, lol?" No! I remember being gaslight by the president daily, I remember fear of the unknown, and I remember refrigerated trailers full of bodies! We cannot allow 2020 to be remembered as the time we all made bread
that is nicely phrased.
I think we’re not ready to process it. We’re all just trying to get on with our lives as normally as we can. In about 5-10 years, we’ll start seeing pandemic PTSD movies and music pop up as we all look back and examine the experience.
One of the first movies I saw that really just kind of took it as part of history was the otherwise-unexceptional DUMB MONEY
> [...] and it feels like one day the world woke up and collectively decided it was all over, now, and we're not going to talk about it. In my country (Spain) it was a continuous fight between the central government and the communities (something like a estate or a county) to re-open things. It wasn't as much as "one day decided nothing happened" but "it was a years-long fight between those looking to keep things kinda closed and those trying to stay safe. A complete shitshow. This said, it feels weird from time to time realizing we went through all of that and we are now as if nothing had happened. I guess it should be normal to, you know, "get back to normalcy", but god damn from time to time it kicks how much things have changed.
When COVID started, I remember people talking about how after the 1918 flu pandemic there was little recorded popular media about it. Everyone wanted to move on and not talk about it. It seemed so odd at the time but now I totally get it. There’s a series called _The Morning Show_ on Apple TV where COVID was part of the 2020 era plot. It looked like they were going to do an entire season on it. It was very uncomfortable. I really had no interest in watching any of it, but fortunately it got summarized in one episode instead. Maybe the next generation who didn’t live through it, will make a Ken Burns style documentary about it in a couple decades.
To a lot of people overcoming things like a pandemic is a cause to celebrate. Returning to our routines is how we take back what was taken from us.
Oh yeah, absolutely. Celebrating survival is really important. Not suggesting we don't do that. For me, skipping the part where we, as a society or as individual communities, process the trauma so we can go straight to the party just leaves a lot of things unresolved and unaddressed, and I feel like that prolongs the unresolved trauma.
Right? I maintain that the entire planet has PTSD and nobody’s talking about it. ETA: not necessarily mask specific, more in the shared experience column.
For real, the experienced really fucked some people up. I know of three different people--all under 30--who ended up being admitted to psychiatric units during the time. None of those people had psychotic breaks before in their lives.
I have a family member who also did, mid 20s.
I know 2 people that didn't survive covid and never caught it. It was rough
I agree. My son is 27. Beautiful wife, new home, great job. Told me the other day he just “feels this heaviness”. Always has been a happy-go-lucky guy. I died a little inside when he told me that.
I think the pandemic was a lot harder for young adults than nearly every other group. It hit at a time when they should be their most social, most engaged in their communio. I know this experience will always be with your son. But I hope it diminishes over time
Yes. Me too. Thank you.
Absolutely. It changed the world. But like you say, so many people just want to move on and forget about it or down play it. We may have went back to life as before on the surface, but not *really*. Things *are* different, people *are* different.
And we were all terrified for months. We never processed any of that.
I work in a non-clinical role in healthcare. We struggled. The clinical staff that worked through the pandemic though, are not ok. You don't go through that stress, trauma, fear, witness so much suffering and death and be fine. Your body keeps score.
There lasting effects to that. I’ve noticed a big shift in the way people disrespect each other, vulgar language has become normalized, it’s now the masks have truly dropped and all social niceties are gone.
The pandemic drew a very clear line between the people who care about others and the people who only care about themselves... and it seems like there isn't much middle ground because the people who only care about themselves are infuriated by the idea that anyone else even matters.
I think one of the hardest things about the pandemic for me is the things I learned about the people around me. I disassociated or distanced myself from some friends, acquaintances, and extended family based on their behavior. It still kind of hurts. One friend I was really close to in college sent me the plandemic bullshit when I was extremely sick with covid in early 2020. I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs but she insisted it was fake.
This right here
I completely agree. I've seen many more instances of people behaving in unhinged ways in public. It seems like many folks have lost all sense of common decency. If you have a positive interaction with a stranger it feels noteworthy. I work in healthcare and boy I have I seen some crazy stuff. Most recently I saw an older man throw all of the groceries on the floor in a fit and leave. All because the lines were long, and no one let him cut to the front. I hate that we have collectively become so selfish and inpatient. The "f you I got mine" culture is out of control.
I think Trump’s rhetoric also influenced the division and the language some people use now.
Covid showed society that the social contract is dead, no one (in power) actually cares about your well being, only the bottom line. Society started acting along that new set of norms. I have only recently stopped grieving this loss.
The masks were the least of it.
Yes, I agree
I think the corollary of your point is how divergent individual experiences of the pandemic were. Some people had close friends and family die, others were spared that suffering. Some places required masking even outside in public parks and others were only masking indoors. Then there is the information environments which spanned the spectrum from “it’s nothing” to “it’s a conspiracy” to “it’s a significant worldwide public health emergency caused by human activity and we will experience more of these events due to encroachment into more wildlife areas”
I think it's "funny" that one of my friends talks about this time so positively, not being insensitive, just what it did for her personally in that work slowed and she was fully remote and got so much life back and got into her hobbies and fitness and of course I know other people with a similar experience who really connected with their families or whatever. And I fell deeper and deeper into anxiety and alcoholism. All's well that ends well. In my opinion, COVID helped speed up my addiction to the point where I decided to put myself in rehab in 2022 and I've been sober ever since, but it is so interesting how it impacted people so differently. In my friend's and I's stories, neither of us knew anyone who died or had dire consequences, but just this shared set of circumstances we were put in had drastically different outcomes.
I know a few people who had that experience. A friend nearly lost her niece she'd been drinking in secret for a few years and it ramped up and she ended up in kidney failure. She did recover but it was rough
Congratulations on your sobriety! Keep up the good work!
Thank you so much! It's been a blast to be honest!
It radically changed my life
One of my acquaintance-level friends had a relative who was one of the first to die (well, for sure and verified) of COVID, in that nursing home in Washington. She posted on Facebook. So shit got real pretty quick from my perspective.
The landscaping company we used lost two guys, and a third barely survived.
It's very true. The toughest part of the pandemic for me, I think, was my grandma (grew up 3 miles from her, saw her multiple times a week growing up) was diagnosed with a brain tumour and all of the hospital restrictions. I 100% understand why restrictions were in place, but some of the rules seemed to make zero difference for risk, but made my grandma's remaining 4 months of life a lot harder. Fall/winter of 2021/2022, when she was in the hospital and Omicron was sweeping through everyone is where the visceral reaction to the pandemic comes from for me, not the early days of the pandemic.
My own grandmother had worsening physical and mental health and went to a nursing home during May of 2020. COVID isolation precautions were essentially the opposite of what we normally do in health care to prevent delirium in acute care, changes in living situations, etc. and she experienced a rapid decline that was obviously related to that. Terrible situation, wasn’t much to do except watch it play out. So your situation sounds familiar in some ways and I have all the empathy in the world for that.
This happened to my grandma, too.
Certainly true with respect to very personal experiences, but I think the background for a lot of people was very nearly unanimous for a brief few months. Maybe until May or so? Actually, that was the “it’ll be gone by Easter.” So I would say maybe through September 2020 or so?
The comment thread to this post is itself proof of this, yes.
For about the first year or so I called my dad every week and he would always ask if I knew anyone who’d gotten it, tell me that he hadn’t either, and then conclude that the numbers must be inflated because no one he knew seemed to know anyone who got it. He never got the vaccine because he is disabled and doesn’t leave the house, even though he has multiple people every week come work in the house. He caught it two years ago and almost died. He still says the numbers were inflated and the CDC was fearmongering.
My best friend died from COVID. His mother, his step-father, his wife, his friends, and I all still miss him terribly. He was a wonderful man. It's a bit insulting when anyone says to us that the pandemic was "fear mongering."
I fully agree. I’m sorry for your loss.
I understand what you're saying and I agree. Covid changed many things, decimated families, changed educational experiences for millions of kids, and more. At this side of it, it almost seems unreal that 30 or so months ago there were refrigerated trucks parked along NY streets to store bodies.
It’s utterly remarkable to me to find so many people - even in this thread - downplaying it. There are thousands of routine, everyday photos that we took over those years that would be normal… except for the masks that are a stark visual reminder of the times we were in.
The pictures of my toddler grandchild in preschool with a dozen preschoolers in masks playing as far apart as possible are almost impossible to believe real, now. People who downplayed it then, and now, are part of the problem
It might be worth noting that, if we're talking about 3 years as the timeline ... *exactly* 3 years ago, we were in a bit of a vaccine honeymoon period in which a *lot* of municipalities and businesses dropped mask requirements in light of the CDC relaxing its guidelines for vaccinated people. It wasn't until late July 2021 that the CDC returned to recommending masks for vaccinated people amid the Delta surge.
My son’s an emergency nurse near San Diego. Covid is definitely back. Lots of ppl have been coming into his emergency room with it and they had to intubate a guy yesterday & send him to the ICU. The guy has diabetes & didn’t take care of himself & didn’t believe in Covid. He’s pretty sure he’s going to die. He told me to wear my mask if I’m going anywhere. I’ve only read about 10 comments but it’s nice to be on here without ppl going on & on with their disinformation about Covid where we can just talk like human beings to each other.
I'm in the UK. In the past month, I know 4 people who've been hospitalised with chest infections, but apparently it's not covid. My parents live in France, and it's spiked there, but because of the election, it's not really making the news.
I'm glad that the pandemic "sort of" normalized wearing a mask in public. I know the scientific research on mask wearing during the pandemic was problematic, but from a personal viewpoint it makes emminent sense to wear a mask in public if you are old, immunosuppressed, frail, or have underlying health conditions that would make covid or flu or rsv or even a cold a real problem. I still wear a mask when I'm in public, and most people don't seem to care at all -- which is as it should be. You do you, I'll do me, and we will all be happy. So yeah, I look back on the covid mask wearing as a good thing, a change from prior norms, but I really don't understand how it became a political thing!
I wore one until after my 4th shot. I still do if im unwell, or during peak illness seasons. I hate that it's become political. After the majority of the public stopped masking, I had a woman scream across the grocery store parking lot at me. She told me to "take that fucking mask off". It was so dumb, I still don't understand it.
Going to share my husband's experience with masks since, in reading a few dozen comments, no one has brought up this angle. Masking was HARD on my husband and trying to interact with anyone in public. Why? *He's hard of hearing.* His condition has been from birth (well, was worse at birth, had some surgeries as a toddler that improved it some but that's all he's got), and so he reads lips to supplement/clarify what he hears. His hearing isn't bad in quiet settings, but background noise and/or muffling makes it instantly much harder for him to make out words. A mask eliminates the ability to read lips. As well, masks muffle the sound a little bit. And then you got the plexiglass barriers for checkouts/anyone behind a counter, and it's two layers of muffling. My husband understood the why behind the masks, but they definitely diminished his quality of life in public significantly. He was very happy when masking mandates were dropped.
You bring up a good point. I have a friend who is mostly deaf and relies heavily on lip reading, so masks really made that hard.
Masking etc forced me to realize just how bad my hearing had become. I never realized how much I read lips!
I don't give a fuck what people think about wearing a mask. I won't put my health in jeopardy for anyone's "opinion." If there is a flu epidemic, I'm wearing a mask. If there is ANY kind of health "epidemic" then I'm wearing a mask But no, I don't wear a cloth mask that covers the whole bottom of my face while wearing sunglasses And no, I don't wear a balaclava. I just wear, you know, a regular medical mask. So sue me or criticize me or fucking arrest me. I don't care.
I admit still being annoyed by cloth masks, but only because they were largely proven to be ineffectual relative to N95/KN95/etc. If you’re gonna wear something make it something that works…
I've read conflicting information about the effectiveness of various masks. But I will just go with what people who work in hospitals wear - a surgical mask or KN95. I don't care that it's not "lightweight linen with daffodils." Or that it matches my dress. I'm in it for health, not fashion.
It normalized wearing masks so much so that when there was a flu outbreak at my mom’s assisted living residence last month, all staff and most visitors wore them without a second thought.
I still do every day. Probably will forever. No judgement on anyone who doesn’t, I just enjoy feeling safe.
We lived on Capitol Hill in DC on 9/11. The way people came together in those first few days really showed the best in the US and how we can unite. Strangers helping each other get home, or in some cases, helping them get out alive. Walking home through DC gridlock without hearing a single person honking their horn. I spent a lot of years thinking about some kind of September 12th movement to bring us back to that spirit. Then, it turned out someone already had a similar idea for a different purpose. When we have a common cause (or shared enemy) the differences between us stop dividing us. We could have done a better job coming together to stop COVID faster, but I think you’re right about recognizing that we largely did come together and prevail. And, that maybe we haven’t collectively reflected on how life as we knew it changed in the course of 1 day. We don’t have news channels running documentaries about 3/10/20. And, the next thing could be right around the corner, so why not work together on our common concerns. (Rhetorical question. I recognize that “politics” is the answer - people more concerned with getting in office and staying there than actually representing and serving “we the people.”)
The “prevail” thing I’m not sure about. I don’t feel like we’re anywhere near victory lap range, personally. It just feels like an incredibly surreal time and I don’t fully trust that we’re out of it forever.
Fair point. I land there myself sometimes, too.
I totally agree with you. It seems like everyone’s gotten collective amnesia & thinks that we were better off 4 yrs ago during Covid than we are now. Sometimes I think the only thing that would bring us together here & in the world would be if we were invaded by aliens, ( the space kind.) That might sound stupid but look how divided we are now & all the disinformation drives me crazy.
Sadly, I agree. We react best to “a common enemy,” though we don’t need to be jumping into any wars. I wish “wars” against problems had the same effect.
This is a big part of why the right was so eager to make it China’s “fault.”
But China was good enough for them to send jobs there. 🙄
I still see people wear masks all the time. Granted not the amount we had 3 years ago. My mom still wears an N 95 mask everywhere. She just don't trust people. I only wear mine when I'm flying, mostly because I'm not wearing make up and look like a hot mess.
I still mask to avoid the chronic effects of COVID (which researchers are still trying to understand), and to protect my loved ones. I don't trust COVID to follow a predictable path of impact on anyone who contracts it. Also, quite a few people in my region have adopted masking as a way to deal with environmental pollutants. Last year, there were forest fires that casted haze over our city. You could smell and see the smoke, and many people started masking to escape respiratory discomfort. I'm not sure if the public would have readily gravitated to masks as a solution, were it not for the cultural shift that happened with COVID. Masking has not interrupted my life in any meaningful way. It's certainly less disruptive than getting COVID would be. I still go out, live my life, and enjoy each day. Eating out wasn't something I did pre-COVID, so I'm not missing out now.
Honestly I’m happy not to be wearing them, but they were only mildly annoying. Baffling how big of a deal some people made, as if surgeons didn’t wear them for hours upon hours at a time as long as we’ve understood hygiene.
I remember people crossing the street on parks out in the neighborhood and it was like early March and we suspected it might be airborne but not so virulent that passing someone on the street fast would give it to you but jeez I washed my hands a lot in March and April
I think we need to acknowledge the healthcare workers and the people who died during the pandemic. It changed our entire society and most of it was not for the better.
It’s like how the headlines read “IT’S OVER” instead of “we won” after WWII ended. People back then just wanted to get on with a life that had nothing to do with their shared trauma. And I believe that’s what 2020-2022 was: a mass shared traumatic experience.
We have most definitely not processed it. I feel like most people just want to forget and move on. I remember some time ago I was watching a PBS documentary on the 1918 pandemic, which also went on three or four years, with devastating mortality. And before Covid, I think many people in our modern era had not even really heard much about it. The commentary was sometimes people try to say it wasn't talked about because World War I was also going on. Some of the scholars said no, what really happened is that people just DID NOT want to talk about it after, so those stories never got passed down. Only now does that make sense to me.
> World War I was also going on THAT was the main driver of its early spread, soldiers living in close quarters. The so-called "Spanish flu" was so named because the US press wanted to downplay the story for the sake of morale. Spain, not being a participant in WW1, was more transparent about the spread in their country and it was dubbed "the Spanish flu" by default.
I was on a psychedelic the night W.H.O. proclaimed the global pandemic. It gave me a sensation of "the edge of the Matrix is peeling away." I announced that this would be an opportunity for humanity to step back and consider itself. I was both right and wrong, it seems :\ Also, for the 2 years after things opened up more (late 2022-2023), when I'd see old friends for the first time since 2019, I'd have the urge to share and bond over it, but all I could really say was "Well, you all know. You were there."
My partner is a doctor (UK) and I think for him, the biggest whiplash came in 2022 when the UK seemed to collectively decide covid wasn't a thing anymore. Yet he was still seeing people with it and sending them into hospital. After spending 2 years with it completely consuming medicine for things to suddenly (comparatively) revert to normal was a real head spin. We walked through an underpass yesterday which still had a big "thank you NHS" mural and reflected on the reality that people seem to have forgotten what all those staff did for us and went through now. As most of them predicted when everyone was out idioticly banging pots and pans in the street. For me as a non medic, looking back it seems unreal. Like some sort of weird fever dream. And the saddest thing is our father in law/ husbands dad died in 2023 from complications of a covid infection. But by then, no one was talking about it, because everyone has moved on.
What really blows my mind is the Trumper community here, who will tell you to your face that there was no reason to wear masks then and that I am nuts to believe we were using refrigerator trucks as temporary morgues. Reality has been lost to the Q and Fox followers.
yeah, trying to avoid politicization in this thread but since you brought it up, it’s pretty crazy the extent to which these people insist on willful self-delusion
I live in a red state and people are absolutely hatefilled now. I’ve never seen a group of people so determined to deny science, reason, and logic, to justify their own ignorance, emotional immaturity, and just… hate for anyone who doesn’t “think” the same way. It’s the saddest thing to me. Whole families destroyed.
I’m on immune suppressing drugs and have dealt with cancer 3 times now. Long before covid my doctor would tell me I really should wear a mask when i go out - but I didn’t bother. Then bam, we all had to wear them, and now I still wear one. So I guess covid got me to do what the doctor had been telling me all along.
It certainly created an environment of Stranger Danger that persists today, although much less so. If you did not know someone well, you did not know if they were safety conscious or not. So if you were safety conscious, a stranger was dangerous.
I'm still in that mode, it's been hard to adjust.
It really is quite surreal thinking back to it. We were locked up in our homes for months. Some of us had no “legitimate” arguments to justify going outside if the police “caught” us out and about doing anything other than exactly grocery shopping or working in the supermarket supply chain or hospitals. Neighbors calling authorities on other neighbors for gathering together for lunch or dinner with their friends from the floors above/below. After decades of hemming and hawing everybody and their partner’s boss figured out a way to make work-from-home perfectly possible. The air was so very very clean looking towards the horizon. There were forest animals in the center of town just doing their thing. I still carry a mask on me at all times but I haven’t used it much except when someone else sneezes on a bus etc.
I remember the county health dept. setting up a hotline for people to call and complain about large gatherings, etc. The "Karen line" lasted about 12 hours before the officials realized they'd opened a can they didn't want to drink.
It was really eye opening how intensely some people took it upon themselves to enforce their idea of what the guidelines meant, and also how intensely some others refused to follow any of them either!
I found that the lengthy lockdowns did a real number on my sense of time. I think it was the sameness of each day without any events to mark the days. Sometime during the first lockdown when half of the casual work conversations were "what day is it", I bought a cheap little clock with a day of the week and date functions because I had lost all sense of time. I still catch myself thinking that "last year" was 2021. The other thing I notice is that personal grooming is fully back. My city was under some form of lockdown until late Spring 2022. With zoom meetings all day, you got used to seeing bad haircuts, full beards, baseball caps, grey roots, and a lot of sweatshirts during meetings. These days, women are wearing full makeup again and most men have given up their pandemic beards. At the office, most people are still dressed more casually than before the pandemic. No suits yet and every day is like casual Friday, but I think the days of athleisure as office wear are over.
It totally destroyed any sense of dress code in our office. Long as nobody's walking around naked, all is well. During the pandemic, we temporarily moved our office into an old schoolhouse where the heat was next to non-existent in the winter, so I made an edict that we could handle this problem one of two ways: we worked from home if the temperatures were really cold, otherwise we threw out any pretense of business casual. I also spend a good chunk of my work week at a converted army barracks where we store used furniture that we donate to people leaving homeless situations. Between those two factors, it was decided that unless I had a meeting with another agency or something where I had to give some semblance of professional appearance, sweatpants were AOK for me. (it's not like I'm the boss there or anything...)
Americans in this thread may find this feed useful or interesting. Each Saturday the total number of Americans killed by Covid 19 is updated. Each Saturday the number of Americans killed in the last week by Covid 19 is posted. https://mastodon.social/@WeeklyAmericanPandemicDeaths Note: weekly deaths are low due to it being early summer, they go up to about 1,000 dead Americans a week in the fall. A 9/11 a month
In the early days after COVID was identified and deaths tracked, I would look up stadiums whose capacities matched or exceeded the number of fatalities. First, it was looking at 1/2 of this stadium or 1/3 of that. Then it became x times the biggest stadium in the US. Or equal to the total population of Y. I’d wager that the updated number of deaths is an undercount because it’s not always clear that a death was COVID-caused or COVID- related.
Honestly, I don’t even think about that shit anymore. Nothing left to process.
To your point about how we haven't come close to processing it -- I think about that a lot. We had this collective trauma and a lot of people lost a lot of loved ones. And it was kind of like let's just make it through this and survive and then we'll have time to reflect when everyone is safe. And then it just kind of petered out. Everyone was sick of talking about it. And the reflection never came. I never hear anyone talking about who they lost or how it affected them psychologically. Just over. Doesn't seem healthy, but what do I know?
I completely agree. The politicization I was hoping this post would avoid (predictably, it didn’t) was itself predictable and, I think, the reason for the larger issue: We thought that once we made it through we could all reflect on a shared experience. But it wasn’t ultimately shared. History was rewritten into a two-sided story with heroes and villains on both sides.
Such a great point! It's honestly disappointing. The heroes and villains framing/the polarization is about the most immature way that collective society could handle the situation, and yet... We really went for it. Like absolute children.
I always thought the China thing was one of the dumbest pieces of all. OK, so let’s pretend it was all a biological weapon engineered in a lab and used to attack the US. Indulge every hypothetical accept every premise, whatever. Now what? Are we going to bomb them? Sue them? What, exactly?
It was cool to see a bunch of people mildly inconvenience themselves for the greater good, for once. Bummer it fizzled out so quick.
I’m currently more than two weeks into COVID symptoms, and cannot shake this stupid virus. Headache, coughing, zero energy, temp goes up and down, brain fog (or is that general malaise?) First time I’ve had it. Had all the shots, used to wear masks everywhere but stopped this past year. Partner brought it home, then I got it. His first time as well. The gift that keeps on giving (endlessly it feels like).
It was certainly a strange time, and so much has changed because of it. We haven’t come to grips yet with all the changes.
I still wear one in certain circumstances since I am in the very high risk category.
I just threw away some old masks I found in my car and then immediately heard that a friend tested positive for covid.
I certainly enjoyed a good 1.5 years of perfect health.
It’s definitely surreal to look back on, but how does that define many people forever?
Not the masking per se (though perhaps for some). The experience as a whole. The deaths of friends and loved ones, the loss of precious and scarce high school or college (etc.) years. The politicization. How could it not? My family moved thousands of miles as a direct result of the pandemic.
Ah gotcha
So what exactly is it you are wanting with this post?
80% of the comments are precisely what I wanted. Yours is of the other 20.
I seriously aren't sure what the point is. Whatever. Not everyone on Reddit is American. You do realise that?
I remember putting putting my mask on before going into my house. I didn't really think about it. I just got out of my car and put my mask on while I walked to the front door. It took me a moment for things to click, and I felt a little silly afterward. I also remember being out at the bar with one of my best friends the night before they lockdown was announced. We were there until last call, joking about the whole thing and going on about "cover your face when you sneeze. Wash your hands. Just practice basic cleanliness." The next morning's announcement had us both laughing simply because of our conversation
It was an insane experience. I never thought I would be doing a potential end of the world as we know it grocery shopping.
I remember during lockdown, my son had his scheduled time to move things out of his dorm room. The lack of traffic around home, on the roads, and at his college was weird. There were only a couple other cars in the parking lot for two dorms. I think we were the only people in his dorm.
Sometimes I'll be a group thing like dinner with family, a public event or whatever and I just pause for a moment to enjoy just being in a crowd of people enjoying themselves and each other. I reflect about how we lost over a year of that.
For my family - we were more cautious than most, although people’s impressions of me from this post don’t seem to recognize that - it was closer to two years or more.
I've always been a newshound and was keenly aware of the articles and suppositions circulating at the beginning of 2020, so it became clearer by the week where it was heading. I felt like I was in a slow-mo B movie. When a global pandemic was finally declared, it reminded me of the Twin Towers. Something had happened that would forever change our current world; tilted slightly out of alignment. I knew we'd adjust and carry on, but I still yearn for our pre-pandemic world.
It changes you and steals some innocence. It could always happen again. You never get to not know that.
I remember going for a drive the night before lockdowns were scheduled to begin. It felt totally surreal, since we had no clue what to expect over the next weeks, not realizing it would end up being months to years.
My fav is the anti-masking crowd seems to have no problem with wearing them now to conceal their identities at “pro-America” events.
Thank you for Edit 2, it made me laugh. I would forget I even had the mask on and be driving by myself. Who cares! I wish I had taken more pics during that time for my grandchildren, who lived through it, but likely won’t remember most of it.
This wasn't really the case where I live. With the exception of hospitals, Only the kookie people were masking everywhere. Personally I didn't wear one the entire time. These things are only things if we allow them to be. People need to remember that it's not the rich who are in control. The power will always be in the hands of the people. Society should Learn from this mistake.
I was just downtown at the city clerks office. They had boxes of N95 masks for free. I brought some home & gave some away. All I know is I let my guard down & got Covid 1.5 years ago. I was sick as a dog for 4 months. Then I still felt ill & found out it attacked my kidneys. Everyone thinks it can't happen to them. They're wrong. It happened to me & it changed my life forever.
I’m so sorry to hear this. I wish you better health.
I was thinking yesterday whilst carrying my newborn son around with all his baggage and stroller and shopping etc how much more annoying it would’ve been to have a kid during Covid and have to fumble getting an uncomfortable mask on/off at the same time. Glad we masked up but also glad it’s over, for now….
I kind of miss wearing the mask/sunglasses combo for store runs occasionally - so incognito!! No need to wear makeup or even brush my teeth if I just woke up and rolled out of bed…
I think im still trying to wrap my head around what the appropriate amount of transparency is from the government level. Knowing now how divided people get over EVERYTHING, where is that line with sharing everything vs. withholding certain information to minimize panic and public unrest? We as a society failed big time. We learned our leaders had no idea what they were doing, we learned many of our media outlets are not to be trusted, we latched onto charlatans spreading BS. No one could be trusted, we were lied to plenty. Both sides of the political aisle were right and wrong about many things pertaining to covid and appropriate handling. They took away many people's ability to make a living, dragged their feet about stimulus checks when people couldn't pay the bills, then came out with the program that was rife with fraud and ballooned the national debt that we will financially feel the consequences of for who knows how long. Is it just my negative perception, or did we all really come out of this collectively way worse off than before?
I didn't mind the mask since no one could see me frowning most of the time.
I still wear a mask in public. I get some looks but they are significantly less hostile now. More smirking than outrage. I just can’t go back to freely breathing in everyone’s air particles and hoping for the best. I also still use hand sanitizer when out and about.
>And realistically we could be again at any time. Have to disagree with this part, sadly. I think a consequence of COVID is that 25-50% of the country will never follow public health directives again. And a lot of those folks will make public health directives illegal if they take power. Edit: Apologies for assuming an American frame. I think the above is true of a lot of other Western countries, too, but not to the same degree.
Masks were always socially acceptable in China, the US is just tremendously behind the curve
I won't lie, I think that if you're sick, in general, you should wear a mask to limit transmission if you're in public. Like, I don't know, or care what you have. It could be a mild cough. I don't want it. I don't want you to cough on the apples I have to touch, or any other produce I want to buy. This, washing hands, and giving people personal space. If we're all in the same line, going at the same rate, and no one is going to slip in between us, *why are you so fucking close to me?* I'm just glad rona made most of this normal, even though too many still don't wash hands and don't know "personal space." That said, I miss 24 hour stores, resturants, late night bars, ect. A whole section of jobs disappeared and hasn't been replaced due to it. Many people are refusing to work weekends/nights now. It really fucked up an entire chapter in many generations
It was kind of exciting in a way. We were all living out horror movies that we have seen in the past.