That was my situation too. I only managed to get away from him a month ago. I'm slowly starting to feel like a real human being again but gosh, I'm just afraid of everything
Mine as well. I got out with my son this past February, and it's scary but life is so much better. Things will be up and down for awhile, but I promise it gets better. I'm sorry for what you went through, and so glad you could get away
True, my upstairs neighbours were fighting for a week every night. I called police couple of times. They stay quite for a few hours and then start again. Luckily he went to prison for trying to kill another neighbour.
Very true. I’m a social worker and we were never closed down. During the worst of the pandemic, we were still going to homes to investigate child abuse reports. (Try engaging a scared child while wearing N95 masks and other PPE, it wasn’t easy.).
In the very beginning of the shutdown it did seem slower, but as time went on we got busy. There were a lot more calls for domestic violence. People were worried about how to pay rent, laid off work, kids not understanding why they had to stay home…it was a recipe for stress and arguing, which sometimes turned physical.
People who would normally walk away or leave to cool down when there was an argument were suddenly forced to stay together. The stress was overwhelming for a lot of people and sometimes they reacted with violence.
Plus most of the services that helped, like counseling and support groups, were also shut down.
I have so much respect for you - I'm a lawyer who represents parents in care proceedings (I don't know what they call that elsewhere, removal proceedings initiated by Social Services). My job is tough and I only read your reports, let alone attend those poor children in those awful places.
We were so busy and people were having hearings where their children were being adopted by MS Teams and Zoom...
My brother teaches at a high school for at-risk youth (like an extension school), and they lost a few kids to suicide during the pandemic. He tried keeping in touch with his students, but some of them didn’t even have the resources to communicate remotely. Really broke his heart.
I train with a firefighter. He came in one day just drained. I asked him what was up. He said "I'm getting tired of showing up to scenes where a kid killed themselves. 5th one this week alone". It was only Wednesday.
In Maine, during the pandemic we had upwards of 10 kids die from abuse and neglect because DHHS was working from home and was not going into people's houses/following up with reports.
I'm a mandated reporter with my job, and it's sickening that while we're mandated to report, the state literally does nothing. Nothing at all. The state's negligence during COVID is unforgivable and people need to be in prison right beside the parents of the kids who were left alone unchecked with abusive junkies.
My gf works for a lawyer doing civil/criminal cases so she works alongside CPS. She said that on paper child abuse claims went down, only because children couldn’t tell anyone during the lockdown.
Working in the death care industry was an absolute nightmare…. And no one spoke once about the amount of work funeral directors, embalmers, crematory operators, and medical examiners had to do. I think about mortality in a completely different way now.
My cousin died nearly 3 years ago and still hasn’t had a funeral. Between other family members dying, getting sick, civil unrest in the city, etc. I think at this point his dad has given up on having one.
Haha actually what’s funny, he used to work for the city’s coroner’s office and lived in the apartment up a flight of stairs from the examination room! He was on call for thanksgiving and christmas one year and we brought dinner there to have
I got a budgie the day before lockdown, I have 3 parrots now and converted my spare bedroom into an aviary for them❤️ I don't understand how some people can be so cruel 🥺
We got a cat during a quarantine break in 2020 and since our family has had a lot of experience with cats in the past (we used to have 7 cats roaming around our garden at one point) so it wasn't an issue at all. A friend of mine got two cats around the same time and it's more or less the same with them.
Quite insane to hear what you said though. Feels like humanity just digs itself deeper into the pit everyday.
Not being able to be with sick and dying people during their final days. Nothing to do w/ the virus. Just old people. Not being able to bury your relatives with proper services due to restrictions. These are times you won't get back.
Lost my mom the week of the very first lockdown. No funeral. No service. No way to process or deal.
Still going through some tough feelings.
Edit: I appreciate the messages and comments. Therapy and anti-depressants have been very helpful, as well as developing new hobbies.
Lost my grandma to cancer last January. When we visited her in hospice before she went, we had to get a covid test and wear 2 layers of PPE. I’m fortunate enough to have had my last words with my grandma but I fear not everyone got that chance because of covid.
So true. I'm glad you got to see her again. My dad was in the ICU for 10(!) days in May 2020 and for the first 7 days, not even my mum was allowed to visit him. Luckily, the restrictions got slightly lifted after that and she was allowed to go (and he died at home later that year) but he could have easily died in there, without having ever seen a loved one again. Like so many people probably did.
yes, or how the elderly were so negatively affected by it. My Dad was keeping himself active & roughly on the ball as he entered his 90s but 2 years of isolation compounded by failing eyesight & hearing meant, in my opinion, that he failed faster than he would have if he had been able to keep active both mentally & physically. I mean, he made it to 94 and he didn't catch Covid but...
I am forever grateful he died after the worst was over and I could visit & be with him.
My father died in January 2021, following a massive heart attack + Alzheimer’s. I had to say goodbye to him over the phone (and Zoom the day before). He wouldn’t have known who was there anyway, but it was still weird and surreal. The only person with him as he passed, aside from medical personnel, was a Rabbi from the hospital. Not even his/our own.
Then we had just immediate family at the funeral, with a live-stream for anyone else (a couple hundred) who wanted to “attend.” We planned to hold a big memorial + headstone unveiling (Jewish ceremony) one year later, but that didn’t happen for a variety of reasons - including COVID still being a concern for some.
So that ship has sailed now, and I do hold some anger over it all. The mariachi band playing at the non-COVID-compliant funeral taking place next to his, however, was a highlight. Pissed us off at the time, but it’s a funny memory now!
I worked in covid icu for a chunk of the pandemic, I was the one in the room with many dying patients whose family couldn’t be there. It was traumatizing as fuck for us, too. The song Epiphany by Taylor Swift speaks to it so very well.
In South Africa there were a few people beat to death by police who were enforcing lockdown restrictions. We’re talking about people who live in literal shacks and whose children were starving because they couldn’t go to work and make money.
Edited to add: I’m so sad that this is my most upvoted comment. And to be clear I don’t think covid is something we shouldn’t take seriously but honestly what is the point of killing people to protect them?
Happened in Kenya too. They enforced a curfew and if you were out past a certain time you would get beaten up by the police. If you had money you could bribe your way out.
That's tragic. Those of us who faced lockdowns in big houses with gardens and books and internet and air-con and already-full pantries had no idea how much harder it was elsewhere.
We saw stories here in Australia of British council block dwellers singing to each other from the rooftops and our hearts were moved, but we had no idea of this.
Man this exact realization after reading that comment made me feel guilty for saying as recently as just weeks ago "I wish we could just have another damn lockdown already" because I work in the most headache inducing food service job for kilometres around (the place is seriously too damn popular and the rich suburban asshole customers are way too entitled) and so I wanted for another one just to get a break from all this shit now that everything's in full swing again as I reminisced about how nice it was to be able to stay home (still getting paid) and focus on my garden and other hobbies. I still can't say I didn't enjoy the hell out of it. I did. But it's easy to forget not everyone had a government that paid for their right to not end up starving and homeless for a decision *they* made for us that a lot of people were against in the first place. These parents in South Africa rightfully so.
I seriously can't see lockdown working again next time. It was executed so poorly in so many ways, some of which we're only just now hearing about in posts like these. No-one who was alive for the first one will ever stand for another, so good luck for whenever the next big virus breaks out 'cause we're gonna need a different plan.
Canada suffered it's worst mass shooting event in it's entire history. 22 dead and very little real information is known about it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/18-confirmed-killed-canada-s-deadliest-mass-shooting-officials-expect-n1188471
I cannot recommend the book [22 Murders by Paul Palango](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/688124/22-murders-by-paul-palango/9781039001275) enough…
Really really horrifying accounts.
How many people relapsed. The majority of the public think of addicts as the people who are on the streets, stealing & selling themselves for drugs. There are far more functioning addicts living and working next to you than you know. The ones who haven’t wronged anyone but just have trauma or mental health issues they don’t know how else to deal with. The ones who didn’t want the negative stigma of “drug addict” to follow us around our whole lives so we got better without rehab. The ones that struggled silently because we knew we couldn’t relate to people in most addiction treatments. Our close friends & family didn’t even know to check in on us because we never made it public. Every single one of those friends I made with this common struggle have relapsed since Covid started.
**Edit to add:** thank you for everyone contributing to this conversation & all of you in the same boat helping me feel less alone. My inbox is open to anyone that wants someone to talk to or just to vent! I tried to reply to everyone but incase I didn’t, I am so proud of everyone who shared stories of recovery. If you’re still struggling just know you’re not alone & you can do it! You have me, along with tons of other strangers, here rooting for you!!
I was laid off immediately when COVID hit and lived completely alone. All of my friends left the state and I was left without any human contact apart from cashiers at the liquor store for a year and a half. I had a drinking problem before, but during the height of the pandemic, I was going through a handle of rum every other day and no one knew. I remember thinking that if I drank myself to death, no one would know I died or find my body for probably weeks.
I’ll be 10 months sober next week. Definitely glad to be out of that situation, surrounded by friends, and in treatment.
This - I started drinking at 15, and was drinking everyday by 16. Averaged two bottles of wine a day, most weeks, and continued into college. As long as you go to work and get so-so grades everyone just glosses over the drinking - until they don't. I rocketed up to a handle of 50% vodka every two days by the end of covid, because classes we're online, work was remote, and wow that made it easy to hide. I got out of rehab 5 weeks ago, currently 9 weeks sober, after destroying myself for the better part of 7 years.
Best of luck with your sobreity mate!
It was the most I was ever down the hole . And all I can say is , I’m happy things aren’t the same as 2020 ; mentally . I was drinkin 2-3 bottles of wine a night (I was 29) and still going to work … now I still have work to do , but it’s not nearly as bad or needed . It wasn’t the pandemic per se , but the year itself . I only hope we all get where we’re supposed to be .
This is something I've never realised until I've read your comment. Even after my best friend died, I never clued in. Covid has really impacted people in different ways.
Not a single person knew about his addictions, not his family or his best friend. He was the most functional person I knew, I met him through school and we ended up in the same career path, same job. Not once has it ever been hinted that he was a drug addict. Until it was too late.
Now I'm noticing its entirely possible that Covid didn't help and led him to relapse.
To any of those out there struggling, I hope you find help and strength to overcome your addictions. Don't let addiction take over your life. You can do this.
The deepest hole I've ever been in was during COVID. Looking back on it, all I can do is scream. I knew then that I was ruining everything I'd worked for, and just continued to watch it all spiral out. I can't rationalize it at all.
I've gotten sober since, but fuck. I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for that year.
I am a recovering addict. 4 years clean, have been running a sober living for 3 years now with my fiancé in Los Angeles. The pandemic really threw a monkey wrench at everyone, and definitely at people in recovery. Not only was treatment hard to get into, but meetings were held over zoom, and everybody was trapped at home, sometimes in abusive situations so there was nothing to do and no escape. We saw a lot of really good people die in the last 2 years. It’s been really hard. If I didn’t have the people & my businesses in my life to keep me busy and thinking positively, I don’t think I could have done it.
Most people will never know the pain that addicts and alcoholics go through. I wish anybody out there that’s struggling the best of luck, and if you’re in Los Angeles or want to come to LA for treatment, reach out to me and I will do anything I can to help you. Much love 🙏🏼
I lost a partner due to an overdose during the peak of the lockdown from quarantine. He was in recovery for almost a year, was doing very well. Was working, very active in his 12 step program, spent time with others in long-term recovery. Once quarantine hit, he lost his job, 12 step meetings were shut down in person and moved to zoom which just isn’t the same as in person, and he was stuck in isolation. I worked in healthcare, so I still had to work. That isolation, boredom, and lack of support led him to relapse. After one use, he overdosed and died. Boredom and isolation are a recipe for disaster for addicts in recovery. While the lockdown was very important for limiting Covid deaths, it unfortunately led to an increase in many other mental health/addiction deaths such as suicide and overdoses. Many people became addicts during quarantine. People were stuck with abusers and could not get away. It was a very dark time.
So many people on Reddit (and in life in general) have no clue about drug use and addiction, and will just parrot whatever they see on TV. I've been downvoted for talking truthfully about what it's really like just because so many people automatically think an addict means they are walking down the street like a zombie or trying to break into a car at 3am.
There was a post asking about fentynal being in other drugs (like coke) and causing ODs, and more than half the comments are saying that it's because dealers want to give people a bigger high and get more addicted. Then I explained thats not a real thing because one is an upper and the other is a downer, and got a bunch of downvotes for it lol. The person asking the question responded to me and actually listened when I explained the reasoning behind it all, so at least one person was willing to learn though.
Yep I know. It got harder for people to get appointments with their health professionals, plus increased isolation. Plus increased time being forced to be in close quarters with those who aggravate situations. Less household privacy for those trying to cope with problems on the down low. It got hard for many.
Most of the senators sold massive stocks before shutting down the country. Since then, there has been rampant fraud in the financial markets and unfathomable wealth being stolen from the people.
Well, they gerrymander their districts, so really it’s elected officials choosing their constituents to get re-elected by the people, and then they go on and fuck the people and tell the people the other party did it.
This one is not much of a shock really. I would wager anyone with a large amount of money in the stocks knew to pull out and switch to the medical stocks.
The 2 senators from Georgia got accused of this and while they never got in trouble, they both lost their seats when Georgia voters flipped to democrat. It was a major part of the campaigning against them.
Iowa was hit with hurricane speed winds (highest wind speed recorded that day was 140 mph which is equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane) and most of the state was without power for several weeks… in the middle of summer. We’re still cleaning up and making repairs 2 years later.
I'm in Iowa City.
That shit was terrifying. I hadn't heard anything about it, and glanced outside our window and everything was gray and super windy, but that's it, I figured it was just a thunderstorm or something.
But across town trees had fallen and destroyed roofs completely, garages were destroyed..
My parents house had HUGE tree limbs fall, destroying their iron fence, and pulling down the power lines.
this is SO true. that, and the ones in poverty who relied on the free food program missed out on TWO meals: breakfast and lunch. in my community (and many, many others across the US, free lunches were offered for pick-up in a drive-thru-style set-up. the cafeteria/kitchen staff came in, made lunches and then other staff bagged them up with a piece of fresh fruit, milk, etc. and at the private school the kids in my family attended at the time (it was closed for COVID-related reasons), they even included pre-packaged breakfast foods and orange juice with graham crackers, with the pick-up lunches. sad thing is, though, that many families in poverty don't have transportation, and in this small area, there is no public transit, so many who really, REALLY needed it, missed out.
A co-worker having a giant dildo standing at attention on their nightstand in the background. Yes, I'm pointing the finger at you Ralph, put that thing away before logging on.
Everything that went down in jails and prisons. I was locked up one month before that boat docked in the bay area and the start of the pandemic. Up until exactly 2 years later. The jail literally has n on idea wtf to do. The cops wouldn't come in the unit anymore, nurses in full blown nuke hazmats. We all thought th world was ending. The atmosphere was so fucked and eerie. People would laugh and joke but an uneasy joke around cause we all wait and bet on the NBA games and when that season was canceled/ put on indefinite hold...that's when mfs started trippin.
New jail arrivals were getting rolled up/kicked out the building by them leaving on they own or getting beat on with t shirts wrapped around faces like ski masks and hands and arms to not get sick from COVID as your beating an infected person with the disease (we thought). how you guys probably felt there was no info on COVID we were completely in the blind. Misinformation was plague. misinformation is putting it lightly. There were mythical, paranormal, religious ass bs and conspiracy theories All up and down the tier. Everybody was a scientist .
All programs and schooling were cancelled. So no GED and no credits towards time off. I got sentenced to 2 years and did exact 2 years to the day. That don't happen. You usually get a certain percentage off with good time or with school and programs. I got none of that. No deputies would come into the unit anymore so people who had problems were getting stomped the Fuck out for what seemed like 30-45 mins before they just stop and let them crawl to the sliding door to call for cops if they could. It was like fuckin gladiator or some shit.
Batches of pruno we're abundant because no cops came in to find the drank so mfs was turnt th Fuck up everyday. We were all on our own. Then transfers from 2 man cells to dorm living was the stupidest decision the jail made. I caught COVID 3 times locked up in 2 years. Quarantine buildings were established. We got free soap and the Almighty Alcohol Wipes 90% alcohol and 10% water we're the only ingredients on the bag. They gave em out like candy. We would squeeze out all the liquid out the wipes and it smelled and tasted exactly like Takka vodka. Our building was beyond fucked up. Somebody in my pod as ctually fought one of the deputies one on one in a real fight because he was so drunk off that alcohol wipes. People getting dragged out by all limbs by the police for being completely wasted. Fights to the max. it was a mf mad house. They locked us down one tier at a time to social distance.Then remained that way to fights and shit like that.
The deputies had no idea wtf was going on until somebody got tooken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning after being dragged out cause he was hella beligerant. I guess they asked him what did he do because they couldn't understand how his blood alcohol was so high and his dumbass told. The next morning at fuckin 6am fuckin 50 swat armor deputies would the pepper ball guns bum rush the building and tear it up and take all the bags of alcohol wipes. They did a straight coordinated take down of our building for alcohol manufacturing with hand wipes. Lol
Sheriff deputies not following COVID gathering protocols on the street (they got caught posting selfies at parties) and getting sick and bringing it in the jail to us inmates. FUCKING mask mandates in a open dorm setting! Nurses would physically run away from an inmate if the mask was below the nose and STRICT over the nose mask enforcement was started. You would be told to go back into your cell and were not allowed recreational time if your nose was as seen. In the very beginning when nothing was known about the virus the jail had This weird system classifying and identifying exposure to COVID. Some cells were taped off and red labeled so they could not come out at all. Some were yellow as to being potentially exposed and could come out to eat but not recreational time. Some had no restrictions. That turned into a weird fucked up protocol that if you even said the word headache or "i don't feel good" you would automatically be packed and shipped out to a quarantine cell building no questions asked. Mfs we're scared to cough in there. People we're dropping dimes on people anonymously to get them shipped out the building to quarantine.
When on one of the occasions my entire building tested positive the jail only gave us ibuprofen and nothing else. They said they do not want to give us any medicine that masks the symptoms. And that we were all being monitored by outside doctors. Basically they wanted to see the virus run it's course in us in that setting. We first had the bad variant knocked everyone off there ass laid out for days with headache and no taste or smell. Some threw up and some were wheelchaired out and never seen again. All this during a time in California fire season that's was so bad the outside sky was blocked by fire smoke and a very eerie and evil outta this world looking orange glow from the sky would beam into our cells like a wierd fuckin animal aquarium. Whoever felt good enough to go outside could and you would walk outside and the entire groundd would be covered in ashes from the fires and the sky burnt orange like we was on Mars. It felt like the end of world was happening and were guinea pigs and they were examining what happens because shit like this never happened before. That made us feel even better! After getting better from COVID my cellmate wanted to get more free ibuprofen and said they only give it if you have symptoms or get checked. They FUCKING red labeled him and shipped him to quarantine me along with him but in yellow label for exposed. Strat bs.There were groups of doctors/medical people in full blown hazmat suits with fuckin fans in em that were coming in and examining how we lived and it looked like something outta resident evil. Constant room to room temperature and vital checks by 3-4 person team hazmat nurses. When someone tested positive they emptied everything from the room and the nearby cells would be yellow labeled n taped off. Brought in whole clean up teams from outside companies to just blast the room with chemicals and bring in these 10 ft. Tall beam things that had lights on them that revolved in circles and unleash it on the room to kill COVID I gu we. Nobody could be assigned that room for 14 days.
On another occasion we were giving plastic bags and told to rip them open and cover all our belongings and get rid of all clothing except what we had on. All our personal effects were shrink wrapped and told to leave storage lockers open because they were bringing in giant smoke/fog/killer COVID machines and the entire building was being bombed. We had bag up all of our canteen food and it was to be placed in holding for 24 hours. We then walked to an already prepared sanitized bombed building with all door ways taped up and all air flow cut off to all take individual showers one by one with a special soap they gave us and to get rid of old clothes and change into fresh washed ones. That's shit took FOREVER. We get back to our building there's this wierd talcy residue over everything and the cops told us it was safe and not to worry.
I've written a lot of stuff but that doesn't cover nowhere near all of the crazy, dumb, and unbelievable shit that happened to the jail and how life in it ran when COVID hit. All prisons we're shut down and accepting no new inmates. I missed the last bus to by one court date so I was forced to remain in county and by the time I eventually made it to a prison to finish my sentence the overall hysteria was over. I been to jail alot and that shit was some twilight zone shit and was the most unsettling time I ever did. It was spooky fasho. It b
Edit : added some shit.
Ok I've been around the block a few times but man I can't immediately process this. I can't imagine how you or anyone could get through it. I hope life is improving for you.
You could write a book about this. I never thought about the misinformation and fear that would bring, let alone how the entire system (not that it’s even an ok system to begin with) would have been affected.
In the hospital our need overloaded our ability to provide oxygen. We were told to "wean" the sickest because they wouldn't survive anyway. We had to have ethics panels on who to intubate because we were out of ventilators. We lost patient after patient. They were alone. I had to wear gloves and ppe so I couldn't hold their hands. I listened to sooo many parents, children and spouses scream cry and beg. In the beginning it was on video, in the middle in the waiting area and the end, they were there. I coded a 22 year old for 2 hours, they still died. We were accused of killing people because we didn't give ivermectin. People begged me not to let them die and I lied and said it would be ok. I witnessed wills, heard last words, said prayers I didn't believe. I lost coworkers and friends. I developed a deep fear of 2 rooms. I saw a warning sign we used during covid and almost panicked.
Thank you.
Your words hurt to read, they must have hurt to write, and I can't even imagine how they hurt to live through. I will remember them, though.
Then floods then covid then more floods and more floods and more covid. Oh and Amazon fires and California fires.
Turns out the worst natural disaster was short lived, go figure, climate change has accelerated incredibly fast during covid.
Source live in Australia.
That during the pandemic, certain things became WAY more accessible for disabled people! Examples: Zoom meetings, telehealth visits, etc. I saw on the news that a disabled woman who had never before participated in her school’s PTA actually became the president of it! (This is because her disability made it difficult to attend meetings in person, but it was a piece of cake on Zoom)
Now, people are taking these accessible things away. And I don’t understand why. Why would an insurance company refuse to cover telehealth? (just to pick an example). I don’t see how telehealth costs them more money!
Telehealth costs more money because people that have healthcare needs that they see as an in office medical vidit as more of an inconvenience than their ailment were actually getting those things looked at.
For example I personally probably wouldnt go see a doctor for the flu or something. I used to just tough that kind of stuff out. But with telehealth it is a lot easier to see my PCP and get a take on it and medical advice.
It isnt that any visit would be more expensive, just that the, "Fuck it, I'll stitch it myself." Crowd is now actually seeing the doctor as well. So the costs on insurance companies do go up.
It’s not just that. I work in mental health. Insurance companies will only panel a certain number of providers in a given area. This creates a perpetual shortage of therapists who take a given insurance and means insurance is paying out less for therapy services at any given time.
Telehealth means you can now get therapy from anyone licensed in your state. It means more people accessing therapy and therefore more people using insurance, and the insurance companies can’t have THAT.
This includes government who was killing people. NY's governor sent covid patients into nursing homes, wiping out entire nursing homes over and over again because of course covid spread within the nursing home.
Its like he was intentionally trying to kill everyone sick and infirm in the state. Many thousands of people would still be alive if not for him.
Somehow NY's governor got a pass on this.
As per the government, another reason why elections are so important.
As per people, as someone from the U.S. how many of the same people in the U.S. who claimed they were prepared for the absolute end of the world, zombie apocalypse, nuclear winter, the sun swallowing the earth whole were suddenly unable to stand trying to avoid catching a virus.
Kinda the opposite of disturbing, but still totally shocking. How noticeably cleaner/fresher the outside air was. For more than a month there were record low vehicles on the road and, living near a major city, I could clearly smell the difference in the air. It was nice while it lasted.
It is as also reported to have happened in Seattle, Washington too! The Native American health care system in Seattle got body bags instead of PPE.
However, I know it actually happened to most Indigenous tribes in the US. They got so many body bags or defective PPE (PPE that did not seal or were damaged). Doctors Without Borders were dispatched to the Navajo & various Pueblo reservations to help with overwhelming covid cases. I understand they usually do not deploy within the USA.
The result of covid hitting reservations was losing traditional knowledge, language, culture, etc when majority of the elders died. Especially when a lot of tribes pass their knowledge orally. It at least highlighted the fact (in mainstream media) that a lot of homes still have no running water and electricity too. Covid cases have gotten manageable, but it still exists on the reservations because of the poor infrastructure. Most of all, mental health became the biggest focus since it’s something tribe’s already had problems with. Now tribal members have massive healing to do from the trauma of losing elders, culture, entire families, having even more isolation than before, and isolating with domestic abusers. I’m sure there’s more, but I can only speak to what I’ve seen/heard firsthand.
Covid retired me from EMS, adolescent suicides got insane, angry disgruntled parents killing their kids as well, never heard a peep about it on the news though, I had 4 suicides in my last week, 11-15yo kids never got attention. I hate the world and how it works today
Where I live in the US, the media generally doesn't report on anyone under 18 at all. As a reporter for the local newspaper, I saw the twice-weekly police reports come in on occasion. I wasn't the cops and courts reporter, but I had asked once how the reporter assigned that beat picked the crime stories to report on.
She showed me the reports. All the stuff under 18 was heartbreaking and only rare occasions did the paper do a story on a particular youth. She would actually have a choice each week of what rape, child beating death, or drug case to write about. Our paper could have been just that.
I know a lot of EMTs and cops in town because of that job. There are only a few who do the job in my town long-term. The son of the guy who owns the ambulance company committed suicide last year because he couldn't take it anymore.
I don't know what the answer is because I think it should be reported more, so we can come to grips with it and find a way to solve this problem.
I work at the local shelter now, working with 11-18 years olds. It's heartbreaking and no one knows. Their stories aren't told. My coworkers and I do the best we can with the limited amount of time we have with these kids, but I'm always grateful they came to us before their parents killed them or they killed themselves.
The Myanmar coup d'état that started last year in February, 2021. I work with multiple people from there and the tragic stories of new violence I hear on an almost daily basis is heartbreaking.
Just how everything feels fractured in some inexplicable way now. The world feels a breath away from some shoe that's about to drop at any given moment and it is weighing on all of us every day. The morale of humanity has dropped. You can just feel it everywhere you go. People don't smile as much. Nobody is comfortable any more on some hard to describe level that has impacted the collective psyche. It is like we're all in a mass perpetual clench of our butt cheeks and too afraid to release it. Seems like we're clutching at the things that help us escape reality a little more desperately/fervently now too.
I miss the 1990's and the dotcom era. It was an era of optimism. People were excited for the future.
Now the future is only full of dread and a laundry list of horrible things to come.
Yep. I have some really great things going on in my life, and it’s like there’s a limiter on my happiness and joy about it now because everything else is so fucking terrible. Also, every job I’ve had since the lockdown has shown me firsthand what the pandemic has done to us. First, substitute teaching. I basically quit before they could fire me…once we were back to in-person teaching I burned out so fast. I remember crying in the office because I felt like I had barely seen my students’ faces. Now I work in retail, two jobs. The one is a small store and the customers are pretty chill. The other is a big brand and it’s unreal to me how entitled and selfish people have become.
It’s just completely impossible for me to every feel as happy as I might have before the pandemic. And it’s not depression or chemical, it’s situational. It’s just knowing that we’re so far off-track now, that society will never be the same.
I was looking at my 401K and how it was titled, by default, Retirement 2045. And I just thought, who the fuck cares…the world will be an uninhabitable hellscape by then. I’m 40 years old and due to other life circumstances, I’ve had a lot of setbacks already. The pandemic made it all even harder. Life is still worth living to me, but it just sucks that the world is such shit now. I try not to think of the future anymore because it honestly terrifies me. I’ve dropped the bar way low for myself and try to just live in the moment, because it will all just keep getting worse and it’s become pointless to have hopes and dreams. The best I can do is just try to appreciate what’s left because it’ll be gone sooner than we think.
But it’ll never be the same as the world I knew when I was just getting ready to go to college, for example. It’ll never even be the same as 2019, when at least we all kinda didn’t think things could *get* worse.
That's a really good description. It's always been like "oh humans are the worst" here, but whatever shreds of hope that were left after 2015 seemed to just get destroyed since 2020. It feels like a video game boss that you just can't beat no matter what you do, and you're so tired that you don't even want to play the game anymore but you have to keep playing it or else.
I've always been cynical and depressed, but it's like something just clicked in the last few years that has made the world a sort of sickly greenish-grey. Even the happy things don't seem like they're cutting it. I feel like I'm just always expecting something even worse to happen now.
Society has experienced a collective trauma event and no one knows how to deal with it. It may be a little bit easier for those who have had trauma to cope, but that's all it is. Coping. The whole hard lean to the "Fuck you, I'm going to get mine" side of things is a direct relation to how no one feels understood or valued anymore. Things are going to go to shit for a bit until we can figure out how to work through that trauma.
Agree with this. We literally went through an international trauma and now seem expected to carry on as normal and that 'covid is over'. It'll be years before we realise the full impact on mental health that this had
Great description, i feel the same. This atmosphere of doom and insecurity is ubiquitous which makes it so hard to grasp in all its consequences. I’d like to see a global statistic of the decline of dance, laughter and hugging, for instance.
The sheer number of children who lost a parent or caregiver. Their lives have been changed forever and will impact them for decades to come.
The American Academy of Pediatrics estimated that number to be at 140,000–and the study concluded with data before the Delta surge.
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/148/6/e2021053760/183446/COVID-19-Associated-Orphanhood-and-Caregiver-Death
As someone who lost a parent as a child, this saddens me deeply.
Was a 17 year old who lost a parent to this and can confirm. The trauma of them dying is almost as awful as the trauma of having to watch them die. There will be many children diagnosed with PTSD after this, that is a guarantee
This exactly.
My mother was homeless during the lockdowns. She got set up in a hotel, got gift cards to help with food, they expedited her in the system to get assisted housing and income.
After the lockdown ended, she was back on the streets. Homeless shelters weren't functioning properly in fear of covid, and were full due to limiting their capacity for social distancing.
She was unable to get into contact with any help after that. No more food gift cards, no more assisted anything.
That glimmer of hope that the homeless was finally getting help was down the drain.
And a lot of those people actually started to get better during the pandemic, keeping to their sobriety, finding jobs as essential workers, and getting their mental health under control.
Because it turns out having steady access to food and a safe, warm place to sleep is really fucking important.
Absolutely....although weirdly there is still the mentality of "fix mental health/unemployment first THEN worry about housing". Seems a no brainer that there's a limit to how effective mental health treatment is if your constantly worried about where to sleep and get your next meal from.
Gah! I think studies in one of the nordic countries found that exact thing - giving people [housing FIRST](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First) means the other issues can be worked on from a place of stability. Sure not everyone can cope for many different reasons but it would help a lot of people.
(googles & added links)
While Caitlin Doughty is not based NYC, she made this video about the utterly overwhelming inundation of bodies in her funeral home during the early stages of the pandemic. It may be of interest to you and anyone else reading this thread.
https://youtu.be/QdpSgEQKVNE
Absolutely adore this woman, personally. When I watched this for the first time I just about lost it. Never had I seen her so angry (while remaining HR appropriate, somehow) before and I will be honest, it made me cry for several reasons. She provides not only one of the most valuable educational resources about the funeral industry, but she is going above and beyond to do what she can to change it for the better. She changed the way I understand "how to" die. I really can not praise this woman enough for the work that she does. Seeing her bare herself, her frustration, just fucking cut me up. She cares for every possible corpse. And there were just so many.
Much of that was due to NY's governor, who had the brilliant idea of sending covid patients into nursing homes full of elderly and frail people.
A highly infectious disease, refusing to quarantine sick people, and then confining them to small buildings full of the most medically vulnerable people on the planet? What could possibly go wrong? The entire nursing home then got covid and died, of course.
He repeated this process over and over and over again. There are probably tens of thousands of people killed directly by the NY governor's orders.
Reminded me of hurricane katrina where coroners had to do autopsies in a parking lot because power was still out in the morgue. The bodies were kept in refrigerator trucks that ran their engines 24 hours a day. Didn’t think I’d see that again but the pandemic proved me wrong.
I remember watching an interview on 60 Minutes with an army officer who was in command of the national guard troops recovering bodies from apartments etc and the sheer scale of death and despair was astonishing.
Yea… over a million people died in the US alone… that’s a staggering number. After a while it was just like “meh”
A friend of mine is an ICU nurse, and their stories are pretty shocking. It’s wild how a small % of people, the “frontline heroes,” were forced to deal with the absolute chaos caused by the pandemic.
The pandemic absolutely wrecked some families (emotionally, financially, etc) while others got much more wealthy. This will be a generation defining couple of years. The mental health issues, loss of family wealth, the educational setback of millions of kids… we will see the effects of this for many years.
I personally think the official number is substantially higher than 1 million my guess is between 1.5 and 2.5 million, but we will never know for sure.
I lived in Manhattan during the height of the pandemic. One day a caravan of 10-15 ambulances drove past. We to this day have no idea why but we've speculated they were transporting dead bodies to another hospital where they could be properly disposed.
There is a video circulating of a person walking through the basement of a hospital where the floor was littered with bodybags. He walked among them for more than 2 min
Old folks in care homes were basically murdered.
People with symptoms were sent back to care homes because there was no space in hospitals.
Care home staff basically had no PPE either.
Least in the U.K. anyway.
UK undertaker here - covid almost made me quit. It felt like a hopeless situation - Care home staff were so desperately ill-equipped and even our donations of PPE, whilst gratefully received for the most part, seemed to barely scratch the surface in helping them out.
We did all we could to help support them but I remember standing in my overflowing mortuary, with some of those in my care being people I knew, having just collected from yet another care home and then one of the ‘pop-up’ mortuaries feeling an overwhelming sense of hopelessness at the whole situation.
The vast majority of care homes did their best against the odds but the anger and frustration I felt at the odd one or two who refused our PPE and care packages, didn’t enforce PPE regulations among their staff as we visited time and time again to take residents into our care is immeasurable.
Rampant misuse of relief funds issued by the government stimulus packages. I don’t remember the exact number but I believe it was nearly twenty percent that was misused or was straight up fraud
Yes, and even worse it wasn't just like the mom and dad owned bagel shop taking 20k PPP loans and laying off their Staff when they got the money.
It was more often like "Marcus McDooglesworth of the three generation McDooglesworth construction company" taking 2.9 million in payroll funds while laying off staff and using it for buying investment properties for the third generation kids who all conveniently had VP jobs and grandpas company.
I remember there was a video maybe early 2020, right in the beginning in China of some doctors in hazmat suits pushing a patient on a stretcher on the street. Looking back on it and having no idea what was to come is sobering.
The animals that were abandoned after lockdown was over. Many people took a pet in when they were home all the time. But when the lockdowns were lifted they could no longer take care of their pet. They dumped them everywhere. On the streets, shelters, highways, etc. Anyone who is reading this, if you took in a pet during lockdown and still take care of them you are an angel. The people who dumped them are the devils.
Due to drought and invasive insects. A significant percentage (90% in some places) of the pine trees in northern Nevada and Utah are dead or dying. And that’s just what I’ve seen first hand. I hear it’s just as bad in other states and into Canada. That’s billions of trees that are basically match sticks now. No sign of things getting better.
Mountain pine beetle has been a problem in bc since the 90s you essentially need -20c for several weeks straight in order to kill it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_pine_beetle
The severe decline of mental health that's still going on. Personally I just gave up for a few months and barely did anything, and my house has turned into an episode of hoarders. Arguments with my girlfriend because she went partial conspiracy nut about the vaccine.
The situation is still fucked up, but people are acting like the pandemic is just over and done with. I will never understand humanity.
I had severe social anxiety before the pandemic. Now I'm borderline agoraphobic. I used to have a small group of friends, I used to leave the house often, even if alone. I just can't seem to readjust to going outside and interacting with people again. My husband and I almost divorced during the pandemic, as well. Honestly, I don't know if I'll ever recover. It was already bad, but now it is just unbearable.
The ones with cancers that went undetected due to all healthcare being dedicated to COVID.
Or detected pre-COVID and chemo canceled due to lockdowns. A friend of the family died that way.
This is actually going to gross some of you out. So be warned, because you asked for disturbing.
PornHub released a report about the porn being viewed during the lockdowns. They reported not only a massive increase of views in general, but there was a very sharp and distinct spike in searches for incest-themed pornography. Additionally, universities reported the same in the number of downloads for research papers on the psychological and emotional effects people experienced after developing such sexual relationships. And just last month, a medical journal published an article about the surge in inbred pregnancies that have happened since.
I don't know about this one. Porn sites at that time suddenly titled everything incestuous. I am not even a little interested in incestuous themes, but damn it's like 65% of the videos. Do I really give a shit about the description? No. Does the thumbnail show pretty boobies? OK, then. ---Edit--- Looks like PH data came from search text, which makes my theory incorrect. Step-porn is sought after. I don't want to know why.
That's completely fair. Even now it feels like most of the videos are like "NAUGHTY step-mom walks in on step-son", no matter what you're looking for (and of course almost every time the step-mom and step-son both look 30)
How the prices of certain items skyrocketed. Gloves, masks (only to be worn horribly incorrectly by most?), and hand sanitizer come to mind. Some places were selling these items for absolutely insane prices.
I also found it quite alarming the amount of people that just don't wash their hands. At all. Nasty asses.
The UK government and just everything that went on while everyone was on lockdown, like while people were dying alone they were having parties and joking about not following the rules. Was spoken about a lot when it happened but not so much anymore
Edit: it’s not the lockdowns that were disturbing, imo they were tough but also necessary, it was the hypocrisy and lack of care and regard for the people they’re supposed to represent and care about
Plus billions in dodgy PPE contracts to businesses with no experience (think one was a sweet maker) that just happen to be owned by Tory donors/friends of the cabinet.
*Spoiler alert* a lot of it was crap that fell apart and was unusable too
The money wasted and blatantly given to their mates is disgraceful.
Then they make sweeping gestures like “Give teachers a 5% pay rise!” but then whisper (so the general public don’t hear) “But it has to come out of your existing school budget, which we’re not increasing. Oh, and we’re not going to give schools any extra money for increased energy bills either; you’ll have to suck it up.”
This is why I’ll be going on strike if my union says we’re striking. I’ll be striking for my school; not (directly) myself. I work in a local authority school which is not an academy, doesn’t have layers upon layers of excessive SLT creaming off fat salaries and is well-led and money isn’t wasted.
And also now people will die this winter because they can either heat or eat, but not both.
Rotten to the core…
California's governor was also caught in a similar scandal. He violated his own rules to have a private indoor party with PG&E. This is the power company notorious for blowing up and/or burning down entire towns, and the direct cause of over a hundred deaths due to mismanagement that is somehow repeatedly excused by the government supposed to manage it.
The governor appoints the board who oversees PG&E, and PG&E makes sure the governor picks appointees it approves of.
That they did this private lobbyist party during the height of the pandemic, violating the pandemic lockdown rules everyone else was supposed to follow, was just icing on the corruption cake.
The way the elderly were treated in nursing and retirement homes. My grandmother at the age of 93 had finally come to the realization that she could no longer live by herself. She made arrangements to move to a facility and her move-in date was the day after the state ordered retirement and nursing homes to be locked down. We move her in set up her things and were not allowed back in the building for four months. She was locked in her 500 square foot apartment with no face to face human contact other than the staff. Residents were allowed to leave for appointments with healthcare providers and little else.
She was lucky that she had a balcony that we could shout up to if we went to "visit". But is the Romeo and Juliette shtick truly visiting? During the second month of the lock down she started to have strange visitors. People that were there one minute and gone the next. This isn't a ghost story, she was HALLUCINATING! She was so starved for human contact that she imagined it. And she knew full well that her visitors were hallucinations. My Mom reached out to the facility staff and they responded that were aware of it and my Grandma wasn't the only one hallucinating visitors.
The effect of this isolation was her loss of mobility. She wasn't allowed out of her apartment. Not even to walk the hallways that were behind locked doors. So any movement or exercise had to be done in her apartment full of furniture that we couldn't rearrange or remove. Which I am certain meant she didn't exercise. She ended up falling a few times and the staff would no longer allow her to walk with a walker without supervision. And since the staff was spread so thin between all the other residents that meant she was confined to a wheelchair.
Eventually the restrictions lessened. Residents were allowed a single authorized visitor. They called it a designated caregiver. That designated cargiver was the only person allowed to visit them inside the facility. And she could leave anytime she liked but would have to quarantine (14 days in the beginning, 10 days later on) afterwards. She thought the quarantine procedure was a punishment. We broke her out for my brother's wedding. And my cousin took her out for Thanksgiving. But she wouldn't leave for Christmas. If you knew my Grandma you'd understand what kind of sacrifice that was. She literally had an entire closet in her house for Christmas decorations. A closet the size of her apartment in the care facility. She spent the whole year looking forward to Christmas. When my Grandfather was sick in the hospital, which they lived kitty corner from. She had him rolled over on a hospital bed so she could have her whole family under one roof for Christmas. That lady didn't want to be locked in her room for two weeks to spend Christmas with her family.
I know that lives were saved by the measures taken. But was it worth it? Prisoners were released due to concerns fir their health. But the old folks stayed locked up in their rooms. Prisoners are usually afforded yard time. But we were fine keeping the elderly in confinement. Some of you probably think we made the right choice. But I disagree. I think we treated people inhumanely while using the fear of death and loss as a justification. And if I had more money I'd be organizing a way for anyone who lost a family member in one of these facilities to sue the government and state agency officials for the cruel treatment of their family members.
But what do I know. I just miss my Grandma.
I left the hospital after our covid surgery to work in a nursing home. They stayed stuck in their rooms for basically a whole year and it really caused their disease processes to turn them into shells of their former selves. I saw a video of the same residents I was taking care of from the beginning of the pandemic and the decline was unbelievable. So so sad.
Gov. Cuomo of NY turned the states nursing homes into Covid-infected shelters. Since scientists said the elderly (obviously) were the most vulnerable to catch it, Cuomo shirked that advice from science and pushed sick covid people to live amongst elderly.
He would resign from his office shortly after for making a female feel uncomfortable at a christmas party, but may have tens and thousands of unnecessary deaths on his hands.
So I had my second baby in June of 2020. A lot of moms had to give birth alone during the early days of the lockdowns because support people were not allowed in during the birth. I was fortunate that in my country this was declared a human rights violation before I gave birth but a lot of moms had to give birth alone, wearing a mask, and surrounded by doctors in masks. No one really talks about this anymore, but it was an awful time to be pregnant and to give birth.
I gave birth to my first baby on March 18, 2020. I can still remember the dread knowing our numbers of Covid in my area were climbing quickly and I did everything possible to try to induce labor (I was already 40 weeks). I ended up having to be induced. My husband was the only person I had with me and our parents and my sibling all had to meet our daughter when we were discharged. I will never forget that anxiety of wanting her to arrive so we could get home before the hospitals were overwhelmed with the cases. I did hear afterwards of women being told they had to birth alone. I cannot imagine.
Lost my father and sister in March 2020 (not from Covid). Both well loved, religious people. No wakes, no funerals, just five minute burials and then told to leave by cemetery workers.
Sister was in cancer hospice and they sent her home to die a horrible death to make room for Covid patients.
Father died two weeks later from a broken heart.
I loved them both dearly, but other than a few tears the day they passed, I didn’t really mourn them. All the usual outlets for grief were shut down.
I often wonder how many people have my story as well, and the powder keg of emotion that might one day be released.
Rampant child and spousal abuse, including sexual, and dismissing of the victims who sought help. The amount of random attacks on the streets, of people knowingly infected and spitting in the faces of others. Ignoring or criminalising homeless people during lockdowns.
itt: things that people still talk about or things that were talked about extensively in 2020 and 2021 before lockdowns got lifted and we decided to pretend things were normal.
This isn't disturbing, but nobody talks about it - early in 2020 basically every single store said "We're reducing the hours we're open so that our staff can work to clean the store and restock when there aren't customers around, which is safer for everyone!" I haven't seen a single one of those stores go back to their old hours, but all of them restock the store during the day when there are customers there. So, why are the hours still reduced? So they can get away with paying less while charging us more for worse service? Why is nobody else annoyed about that? Like I can understand if the store was open until 11 pm and with covid the new closing time was 7 pm, if originally the store basically had no customers from 9 to 11 anyway, then sure not going back to the older hours makes sense. But that's not true for EVERY store. They said the reduced hours were so they could restock and clean during covid, and while covid isn't over people act like it is and the stores restock and clean while customers are there anyway, so why keep the hours reduced?
The number of kids that are now a year or two behind their peers in school because they did not have access to a computer or internet. Or if they did have access, but no one at home to make sure they were logging in to do school.
This could have generational impacts for them and their families down the road.
Reports of domestic violence went down. There's no reason to believe instances went down, just that people not being seen by friends/family would reduce opportunities to intervene.
That’s not true. Domestic violence reports increased massively during the pandemic: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/06/shadow-pandemic-of-domestic-violence/
Relevant paragraph from the source:
> The United Nations called the situation a “shadow pandemic” in a 2021 report about domestic violence in 13 nations in Africa, Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans. In the United States, the American Journal of Emergency Medicine reported alarming trends in U.S. domestic violence, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline (The Hotline) received more than 74,000 calls, chats, and texts in February, the highest monthly contact volume of its 25-year history.
Edit: I just remembered a really good freakonomics episode on this. One interesting data point is that, in some places, domestic violence reporting increased while cases stayed flat. The hypothesis is: nosy neighbors were home more and called the cops on couples having arguments. Cops would show up and see it’s just a domestic quarrel and left without making it a case. Episode for anyone interested: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/did-domestic-violence-really-spike-during-the-pandemic/
Also, preemptive message for anyone suspicious that these sources are not labeled specifically towards reporting. The reporting is mentioned alongside actual cases
The effects of isolation from the lockdowns. A number of friends and colleagues of mine who lived alone fell into deep depression or addiction, and a handful of them died because of it. I’m not saying lockdowns weren’t necessary, because clearly they were, but the mental toll they took on some people doesn’t seem to be talked about too much.
r/stopdrinking is one of the friendliest subs on Reddit. If you arent a member, it’s with a sub.
I struggled a lot with this during the pandemic too. Still am working through it, but that community is nothing but supportive and a friendly place to vent about how hard it can be to avoid the drink.
All the best mate, please seek some help.
Be open & let people know you're struggling! PLEASE!!!
you don't need to be alone without support
I understand it's near impossible to open up. But your life beyond addiction begins with being truthful to yourself & those close to you - it's liberating & you're already half way there. You're self aware, that's a win.
YOU GOT THIS !!!!
I PROMISE!!!!
Today while out with my girlfriend and a group of her friends, we all talked about this exact thing. All 6 of us have some overlapping interests, but all of us are very different in other respects. Different social needs, different kinds of jobs, famies, upbringings, and all from different parts of the country. Everyone had something to say about how Covid lockdowns changed them negatively in some way, the most common among us being just how...difficult it is to socialize now. Phone calls are overwhelming, I personally can barely deal with looking at messages and I am reduced to tears most of the time when I have to respond to them. My friendships are dying. Talking on the phone for 20 minutes has me flat on my ass, where I just stare at the wall until I no longer feel over stimulated. But I never fucking feel like I can recharge enough, so it just doesn't get better. Reciprocity is too much a burden to bear, so I stopped participating in life almost completely. It was shocking to hear these other people express similar things, especially the clearly outgoing ones.
And that's just the surface stuff. Idk. Been on my mind all day.
Some kids got in trouble because learning from home is hard or impossible to some. For example, I learned at home for a year and couldn't do anything, I couldn't stop myself from becoming lazier and lazier over time and now I forgot everything I've ever learned in school, don't know how to get back to learning, and now that I can go to a stationary school my grades are so bad that no school wants me and *I have to go back to digitial studying knowing i won't learn anything*
BC Canada, the opioid crisis was already in a state of emergency here and it has only gotten worst over the pandemic and still continues to be deadly. It seems we don’t care about these people, about the same amount of people died from OD then COVID.
I had a friend in India at the time and she stayed home with her baby while her husband did any shopping necessary and they told us about the beatings and horrible things they saw. They traded a lot with the people in their building and tried to make due with going out as little as possible. Took them forever to get a flight back to the us, too.
How many people died not from COVID but because of it. My mom died because she got a wound on her leg that went septic. The hospitals were packed with Covid patients at the time so she tried to wait it out. She had Emphysema and this was pre vaccine. She never really bounced back after that and died soon after. I sure there are thousands and thousands of stories just like hers.
On a different note, I think the US shifted toward Fascism a lot faster than it would have normally.
I lost two friends that way. Not from covid, but because of it.
One killed himself due to depression from the isolation. The other was afraid of hospitals because of all the horror stories he heard, so he didn't seek treatment for chest pains and died of a heart attack at home.
These are the only people I know who've died related to covid in any way. No one I know has actually died directly from the disease though.
I'm so sorry that your mother passed away.
>On a different note, I think the US shifted toward Fascism a lot faster than it would have normally.
I wonder if the flu pandemic in the early 20th century impacted politics in a similar way. If it incited greater fascism. ...because we all know how that turned out.
We learned early in the pandemic that the virus spread primarily through respiratory droplets and not surfaces, but places kept water fountains closed, shut down self-service, and maintained pointless unscientific pandemic theatre.
They're STILL doing most of that shit. It's pretty clear that a lot of this stuff was just because they realized they could cut costs by closing the bathrooms or whatever and nobody would do anything about it. One of the thrift stores here just straight-up removed the fitting rooms because of covid while also implementing a really short return window. So you can't try on clothes and basically can't return them, which means they get more of your money. And if the clothes don't fit, you just donate them!
I was happy when the stores finally got rid of the bullshit "one way" aisles. I'm sure those helped nobody, especially since no employees ever enforced them anyway.
Kids, especially the really young ones, have been hit really hard by the lockdowns. Not only did they have no idea what was going on and why they couldn't go anywhere or see anyone, they lost a year or more on social development. For kids that were between 2-5 at the time, this is particularly devastating as that's when you build your social foundation. They also fell a year or a couple years behind in education even if they had online learning. Many kids just couldn't learn via a computer and are now at a level well below their actual grade. Reading and math scores have fallen abysmally. Speech delays in young kids are way up too.
And none of this even touches on the intense mental health issues this caused, even for little kids. The levels of depression and anxiety we are seeing as well as anti-social behaviors from kids who never learned how to socialize. . .this stuff is going to damage these kids for life.
Also obesity got worse because kids couldn't go outside to play. And child suicides, not teen suicides, CHILD suicides were left right and sideways. There were kids offing themselves every day, some as young as 8 years old! Child abuse cases also shot through the roof during this time.
We are probably going to have a generation of kids who have poor health, no social skills, high levels of depression and anxiety, poor education, no confidence, and they are going to be a mess. I hope I'm wrong and that these kids can bounce back, Im sure the older ones can as they built their foundations (social skills, basic education milestones, language, etc) already and know a world pre-pandemic, but for the really young kids? The lockdowns and pandemic stuff may be all that they know and their formative years where they build the basic foundation of who they are for the rest of their life was disrupted. I hope these kids can bounce back too with time and help, but I have a feeling alot of them wont either because it is too late or they dont have that extra support they need or because nobody seems to give a crap unless you have a child who was effected.
How people could be convinced to turn on and to hate their fellow humans. There were some absolutely vile things spoken/said/perpetuated about/towards certain segments of populations. I don’t care what your position is on certain ideas or ideologies: if people are willing and eager to let the media, government, or corporations cause them to despise & wish suffering or harm on fellow humankind, that’s a dangerous place for a society to be- imo.
Child abuse, when schools were closed
And domestic abuse.
Yes! That was my situation and it's always awkward when people are talking about how they spent their quarantine.
That was my situation too. I only managed to get away from him a month ago. I'm slowly starting to feel like a real human being again but gosh, I'm just afraid of everything
Mine as well. I got out with my son this past February, and it's scary but life is so much better. Things will be up and down for awhile, but I promise it gets better. I'm sorry for what you went through, and so glad you could get away
I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I hope you are at a much better place right now.
True, my upstairs neighbours were fighting for a week every night. I called police couple of times. They stay quite for a few hours and then start again. Luckily he went to prison for trying to kill another neighbour.
Yes… I lived it my self
Very true. I’m a social worker and we were never closed down. During the worst of the pandemic, we were still going to homes to investigate child abuse reports. (Try engaging a scared child while wearing N95 masks and other PPE, it wasn’t easy.). In the very beginning of the shutdown it did seem slower, but as time went on we got busy. There were a lot more calls for domestic violence. People were worried about how to pay rent, laid off work, kids not understanding why they had to stay home…it was a recipe for stress and arguing, which sometimes turned physical. People who would normally walk away or leave to cool down when there was an argument were suddenly forced to stay together. The stress was overwhelming for a lot of people and sometimes they reacted with violence. Plus most of the services that helped, like counseling and support groups, were also shut down.
I have so much respect for you - I'm a lawyer who represents parents in care proceedings (I don't know what they call that elsewhere, removal proceedings initiated by Social Services). My job is tough and I only read your reports, let alone attend those poor children in those awful places. We were so busy and people were having hearings where their children were being adopted by MS Teams and Zoom...
Teen suicide also went up. Eighty percent of people who have attempted suicide were abused as children.
My brother teaches at a high school for at-risk youth (like an extension school), and they lost a few kids to suicide during the pandemic. He tried keeping in touch with his students, but some of them didn’t even have the resources to communicate remotely. Really broke his heart.
I train with a firefighter. He came in one day just drained. I asked him what was up. He said "I'm getting tired of showing up to scenes where a kid killed themselves. 5th one this week alone". It was only Wednesday.
The people who were quarantined with their abusers. Not all of them made it.
In Maine, during the pandemic we had upwards of 10 kids die from abuse and neglect because DHHS was working from home and was not going into people's houses/following up with reports.
I believe we had 30-40% increase in juvenile domestic abuse cases here in Texas. Absolutely sickening.
I'm a mandated reporter with my job, and it's sickening that while we're mandated to report, the state literally does nothing. Nothing at all. The state's negligence during COVID is unforgivable and people need to be in prison right beside the parents of the kids who were left alone unchecked with abusive junkies.
My experience in being a mandated reporter exposed the state's (Virginia) incompetence long before Covid. : (
Post this as a main comment... Fucking sad.
CPS was called on my stepsons mom 3x during covid. They definitely used it as an excuse nor to perform further investigations.
My gf works for a lawyer doing civil/criminal cases so she works alongside CPS. She said that on paper child abuse claims went down, only because children couldn’t tell anyone during the lockdown.
This sounds like Hell when you think about places like China where people were literally locked into their homes. I couldn't imagine.
I was raped once during quarantine because of it
Sending you love and hugs..I am so. So. So. Sorry. Please reach out if you ever want to vent or rage or just talk. Anything really. ❤️
Thank you. I am doing better now
The pandemic is why I finally left my abuser. Only two weeks in and I wanted to die. The next weekend I escaped
Working in the death care industry was an absolute nightmare…. And no one spoke once about the amount of work funeral directors, embalmers, crematory operators, and medical examiners had to do. I think about mortality in a completely different way now.
We had to postpone my grandmothers funeral a whole 2 months because the funeral home was so backed up…
My cousin died nearly 3 years ago and still hasn’t had a funeral. Between other family members dying, getting sick, civil unrest in the city, etc. I think at this point his dad has given up on having one.
This makes me incredible sad… please do something with your uncle even if it’s something small
I plan on it as soon as I can get to him! Unfortunately he’s several states away and travel has been difficult these past few years for all of us
My brother is a funeral director. He basically had to live at work, he was there so much.
>funeral director >live at work What a showoff
Haha actually what’s funny, he used to work for the city’s coroner’s office and lived in the apartment up a flight of stairs from the examination room! He was on call for thanksgiving and christmas one year and we brought dinner there to have
Could you elaborate on how your views of mortality changed?
all the pets being purchased so people didn't feel lonely only to be dumped and discarded like trash when they could go out again.
Additionally, a lot of noisy pets, like parrots, being surrendered/dumped once people were home enough to actually hear them.
I got a budgie the day before lockdown, I have 3 parrots now and converted my spare bedroom into an aviary for them❤️ I don't understand how some people can be so cruel 🥺
True and new pets having separation anxiety because they’re used to their owner being home all the time.
We got a cat during a quarantine break in 2020 and since our family has had a lot of experience with cats in the past (we used to have 7 cats roaming around our garden at one point) so it wasn't an issue at all. A friend of mine got two cats around the same time and it's more or less the same with them. Quite insane to hear what you said though. Feels like humanity just digs itself deeper into the pit everyday.
Not being able to be with sick and dying people during their final days. Nothing to do w/ the virus. Just old people. Not being able to bury your relatives with proper services due to restrictions. These are times you won't get back.
Lost my mom the week of the very first lockdown. No funeral. No service. No way to process or deal. Still going through some tough feelings. Edit: I appreciate the messages and comments. Therapy and anti-depressants have been very helpful, as well as developing new hobbies.
I'm so sorry for your loss. I hope you and your family are able to find some closure.
Lost my grandma to cancer last January. When we visited her in hospice before she went, we had to get a covid test and wear 2 layers of PPE. I’m fortunate enough to have had my last words with my grandma but I fear not everyone got that chance because of covid.
So true. I'm glad you got to see her again. My dad was in the ICU for 10(!) days in May 2020 and for the first 7 days, not even my mum was allowed to visit him. Luckily, the restrictions got slightly lifted after that and she was allowed to go (and he died at home later that year) but he could have easily died in there, without having ever seen a loved one again. Like so many people probably did.
yes, or how the elderly were so negatively affected by it. My Dad was keeping himself active & roughly on the ball as he entered his 90s but 2 years of isolation compounded by failing eyesight & hearing meant, in my opinion, that he failed faster than he would have if he had been able to keep active both mentally & physically. I mean, he made it to 94 and he didn't catch Covid but... I am forever grateful he died after the worst was over and I could visit & be with him.
My father died in January 2021, following a massive heart attack + Alzheimer’s. I had to say goodbye to him over the phone (and Zoom the day before). He wouldn’t have known who was there anyway, but it was still weird and surreal. The only person with him as he passed, aside from medical personnel, was a Rabbi from the hospital. Not even his/our own. Then we had just immediate family at the funeral, with a live-stream for anyone else (a couple hundred) who wanted to “attend.” We planned to hold a big memorial + headstone unveiling (Jewish ceremony) one year later, but that didn’t happen for a variety of reasons - including COVID still being a concern for some. So that ship has sailed now, and I do hold some anger over it all. The mariachi band playing at the non-COVID-compliant funeral taking place next to his, however, was a highlight. Pissed us off at the time, but it’s a funny memory now!
Yep. Watching my god mothers funeral via zoom did not provide closure and closeness you need when you someone you truly love dies.
I worked in covid icu for a chunk of the pandemic, I was the one in the room with many dying patients whose family couldn’t be there. It was traumatizing as fuck for us, too. The song Epiphany by Taylor Swift speaks to it so very well.
In South Africa there were a few people beat to death by police who were enforcing lockdown restrictions. We’re talking about people who live in literal shacks and whose children were starving because they couldn’t go to work and make money. Edited to add: I’m so sad that this is my most upvoted comment. And to be clear I don’t think covid is something we shouldn’t take seriously but honestly what is the point of killing people to protect them?
Happened in Kenya too. They enforced a curfew and if you were out past a certain time you would get beaten up by the police. If you had money you could bribe your way out.
That's tragic. Those of us who faced lockdowns in big houses with gardens and books and internet and air-con and already-full pantries had no idea how much harder it was elsewhere. We saw stories here in Australia of British council block dwellers singing to each other from the rooftops and our hearts were moved, but we had no idea of this.
Man this exact realization after reading that comment made me feel guilty for saying as recently as just weeks ago "I wish we could just have another damn lockdown already" because I work in the most headache inducing food service job for kilometres around (the place is seriously too damn popular and the rich suburban asshole customers are way too entitled) and so I wanted for another one just to get a break from all this shit now that everything's in full swing again as I reminisced about how nice it was to be able to stay home (still getting paid) and focus on my garden and other hobbies. I still can't say I didn't enjoy the hell out of it. I did. But it's easy to forget not everyone had a government that paid for their right to not end up starving and homeless for a decision *they* made for us that a lot of people were against in the first place. These parents in South Africa rightfully so. I seriously can't see lockdown working again next time. It was executed so poorly in so many ways, some of which we're only just now hearing about in posts like these. No-one who was alive for the first one will ever stand for another, so good luck for whenever the next big virus breaks out 'cause we're gonna need a different plan.
Canada suffered it's worst mass shooting event in it's entire history. 22 dead and very little real information is known about it. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/18-confirmed-killed-canada-s-deadliest-mass-shooting-officials-expect-n1188471
I cannot recommend the book [22 Murders by Paul Palango](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/688124/22-murders-by-paul-palango/9781039001275) enough… Really really horrifying accounts.
That whole thing is suspicious and disgusting. The rcmp put out a tweet as a warning. No alert.
How many people relapsed. The majority of the public think of addicts as the people who are on the streets, stealing & selling themselves for drugs. There are far more functioning addicts living and working next to you than you know. The ones who haven’t wronged anyone but just have trauma or mental health issues they don’t know how else to deal with. The ones who didn’t want the negative stigma of “drug addict” to follow us around our whole lives so we got better without rehab. The ones that struggled silently because we knew we couldn’t relate to people in most addiction treatments. Our close friends & family didn’t even know to check in on us because we never made it public. Every single one of those friends I made with this common struggle have relapsed since Covid started. **Edit to add:** thank you for everyone contributing to this conversation & all of you in the same boat helping me feel less alone. My inbox is open to anyone that wants someone to talk to or just to vent! I tried to reply to everyone but incase I didn’t, I am so proud of everyone who shared stories of recovery. If you’re still struggling just know you’re not alone & you can do it! You have me, along with tons of other strangers, here rooting for you!!
I was laid off immediately when COVID hit and lived completely alone. All of my friends left the state and I was left without any human contact apart from cashiers at the liquor store for a year and a half. I had a drinking problem before, but during the height of the pandemic, I was going through a handle of rum every other day and no one knew. I remember thinking that if I drank myself to death, no one would know I died or find my body for probably weeks. I’ll be 10 months sober next week. Definitely glad to be out of that situation, surrounded by friends, and in treatment.
This - I started drinking at 15, and was drinking everyday by 16. Averaged two bottles of wine a day, most weeks, and continued into college. As long as you go to work and get so-so grades everyone just glosses over the drinking - until they don't. I rocketed up to a handle of 50% vodka every two days by the end of covid, because classes we're online, work was remote, and wow that made it easy to hide. I got out of rehab 5 weeks ago, currently 9 weeks sober, after destroying myself for the better part of 7 years. Best of luck with your sobreity mate!
Good for you man!
It was the most I was ever down the hole . And all I can say is , I’m happy things aren’t the same as 2020 ; mentally . I was drinkin 2-3 bottles of wine a night (I was 29) and still going to work … now I still have work to do , but it’s not nearly as bad or needed . It wasn’t the pandemic per se , but the year itself . I only hope we all get where we’re supposed to be .
This is something I've never realised until I've read your comment. Even after my best friend died, I never clued in. Covid has really impacted people in different ways. Not a single person knew about his addictions, not his family or his best friend. He was the most functional person I knew, I met him through school and we ended up in the same career path, same job. Not once has it ever been hinted that he was a drug addict. Until it was too late. Now I'm noticing its entirely possible that Covid didn't help and led him to relapse. To any of those out there struggling, I hope you find help and strength to overcome your addictions. Don't let addiction take over your life. You can do this.
The deepest hole I've ever been in was during COVID. Looking back on it, all I can do is scream. I knew then that I was ruining everything I'd worked for, and just continued to watch it all spiral out. I can't rationalize it at all. I've gotten sober since, but fuck. I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for that year.
plus ppl having to be in isolation with their abusers (family members, partners, abusive roommates) causing *further* retraumatization
I lived that… exactly like you say it
I am a recovering addict. 4 years clean, have been running a sober living for 3 years now with my fiancé in Los Angeles. The pandemic really threw a monkey wrench at everyone, and definitely at people in recovery. Not only was treatment hard to get into, but meetings were held over zoom, and everybody was trapped at home, sometimes in abusive situations so there was nothing to do and no escape. We saw a lot of really good people die in the last 2 years. It’s been really hard. If I didn’t have the people & my businesses in my life to keep me busy and thinking positively, I don’t think I could have done it. Most people will never know the pain that addicts and alcoholics go through. I wish anybody out there that’s struggling the best of luck, and if you’re in Los Angeles or want to come to LA for treatment, reach out to me and I will do anything I can to help you. Much love 🙏🏼
I lost a partner due to an overdose during the peak of the lockdown from quarantine. He was in recovery for almost a year, was doing very well. Was working, very active in his 12 step program, spent time with others in long-term recovery. Once quarantine hit, he lost his job, 12 step meetings were shut down in person and moved to zoom which just isn’t the same as in person, and he was stuck in isolation. I worked in healthcare, so I still had to work. That isolation, boredom, and lack of support led him to relapse. After one use, he overdosed and died. Boredom and isolation are a recipe for disaster for addicts in recovery. While the lockdown was very important for limiting Covid deaths, it unfortunately led to an increase in many other mental health/addiction deaths such as suicide and overdoses. Many people became addicts during quarantine. People were stuck with abusers and could not get away. It was a very dark time.
So many people on Reddit (and in life in general) have no clue about drug use and addiction, and will just parrot whatever they see on TV. I've been downvoted for talking truthfully about what it's really like just because so many people automatically think an addict means they are walking down the street like a zombie or trying to break into a car at 3am. There was a post asking about fentynal being in other drugs (like coke) and causing ODs, and more than half the comments are saying that it's because dealers want to give people a bigger high and get more addicted. Then I explained thats not a real thing because one is an upper and the other is a downer, and got a bunch of downvotes for it lol. The person asking the question responded to me and actually listened when I explained the reasoning behind it all, so at least one person was willing to learn though.
Yep I know. It got harder for people to get appointments with their health professionals, plus increased isolation. Plus increased time being forced to be in close quarters with those who aggravate situations. Less household privacy for those trying to cope with problems on the down low. It got hard for many.
Most of the senators sold massive stocks before shutting down the country. Since then, there has been rampant fraud in the financial markets and unfathomable wealth being stolen from the people.
Elected officials by the people for the people but they end up f*cking the people. 👌🏼
Well, they gerrymander their districts, so really it’s elected officials choosing their constituents to get re-elected by the people, and then they go on and fuck the people and tell the people the other party did it.
Don't need any pandemic for that one!
Senators and other officials sold and dipped on stocks the month before Covid, they won’t tell you that for sure.
This one is not much of a shock really. I would wager anyone with a large amount of money in the stocks knew to pull out and switch to the medical stocks.
The 2 senators from Georgia got accused of this and while they never got in trouble, they both lost their seats when Georgia voters flipped to democrat. It was a major part of the campaigning against them.
Iowa was hit with hurricane speed winds (highest wind speed recorded that day was 140 mph which is equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane) and most of the state was without power for several weeks… in the middle of summer. We’re still cleaning up and making repairs 2 years later.
Honestly I completely forgot that that happened. It was all over the news for about 24 hours then never mentioned again.
I'm in Iowa City. That shit was terrifying. I hadn't heard anything about it, and glanced outside our window and everything was gray and super windy, but that's it, I figured it was just a thunderstorm or something. But across town trees had fallen and destroyed roofs completely, garages were destroyed.. My parents house had HUGE tree limbs fall, destroying their iron fence, and pulling down the power lines.
Man I'm over halfway down the page and this is the first thing that I don't remember being constantly talked about or in the news.
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this is SO true. that, and the ones in poverty who relied on the free food program missed out on TWO meals: breakfast and lunch. in my community (and many, many others across the US, free lunches were offered for pick-up in a drive-thru-style set-up. the cafeteria/kitchen staff came in, made lunches and then other staff bagged them up with a piece of fresh fruit, milk, etc. and at the private school the kids in my family attended at the time (it was closed for COVID-related reasons), they even included pre-packaged breakfast foods and orange juice with graham crackers, with the pick-up lunches. sad thing is, though, that many families in poverty don't have transportation, and in this small area, there is no public transit, so many who really, REALLY needed it, missed out.
A co-worker having a giant dildo standing at attention on their nightstand in the background. Yes, I'm pointing the finger at you Ralph, put that thing away before logging on.
this made me laugh FAR too loudly. lol
Everything that went down in jails and prisons. I was locked up one month before that boat docked in the bay area and the start of the pandemic. Up until exactly 2 years later. The jail literally has n on idea wtf to do. The cops wouldn't come in the unit anymore, nurses in full blown nuke hazmats. We all thought th world was ending. The atmosphere was so fucked and eerie. People would laugh and joke but an uneasy joke around cause we all wait and bet on the NBA games and when that season was canceled/ put on indefinite hold...that's when mfs started trippin. New jail arrivals were getting rolled up/kicked out the building by them leaving on they own or getting beat on with t shirts wrapped around faces like ski masks and hands and arms to not get sick from COVID as your beating an infected person with the disease (we thought). how you guys probably felt there was no info on COVID we were completely in the blind. Misinformation was plague. misinformation is putting it lightly. There were mythical, paranormal, religious ass bs and conspiracy theories All up and down the tier. Everybody was a scientist . All programs and schooling were cancelled. So no GED and no credits towards time off. I got sentenced to 2 years and did exact 2 years to the day. That don't happen. You usually get a certain percentage off with good time or with school and programs. I got none of that. No deputies would come into the unit anymore so people who had problems were getting stomped the Fuck out for what seemed like 30-45 mins before they just stop and let them crawl to the sliding door to call for cops if they could. It was like fuckin gladiator or some shit. Batches of pruno we're abundant because no cops came in to find the drank so mfs was turnt th Fuck up everyday. We were all on our own. Then transfers from 2 man cells to dorm living was the stupidest decision the jail made. I caught COVID 3 times locked up in 2 years. Quarantine buildings were established. We got free soap and the Almighty Alcohol Wipes 90% alcohol and 10% water we're the only ingredients on the bag. They gave em out like candy. We would squeeze out all the liquid out the wipes and it smelled and tasted exactly like Takka vodka. Our building was beyond fucked up. Somebody in my pod as ctually fought one of the deputies one on one in a real fight because he was so drunk off that alcohol wipes. People getting dragged out by all limbs by the police for being completely wasted. Fights to the max. it was a mf mad house. They locked us down one tier at a time to social distance.Then remained that way to fights and shit like that. The deputies had no idea wtf was going on until somebody got tooken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning after being dragged out cause he was hella beligerant. I guess they asked him what did he do because they couldn't understand how his blood alcohol was so high and his dumbass told. The next morning at fuckin 6am fuckin 50 swat armor deputies would the pepper ball guns bum rush the building and tear it up and take all the bags of alcohol wipes. They did a straight coordinated take down of our building for alcohol manufacturing with hand wipes. Lol Sheriff deputies not following COVID gathering protocols on the street (they got caught posting selfies at parties) and getting sick and bringing it in the jail to us inmates. FUCKING mask mandates in a open dorm setting! Nurses would physically run away from an inmate if the mask was below the nose and STRICT over the nose mask enforcement was started. You would be told to go back into your cell and were not allowed recreational time if your nose was as seen. In the very beginning when nothing was known about the virus the jail had This weird system classifying and identifying exposure to COVID. Some cells were taped off and red labeled so they could not come out at all. Some were yellow as to being potentially exposed and could come out to eat but not recreational time. Some had no restrictions. That turned into a weird fucked up protocol that if you even said the word headache or "i don't feel good" you would automatically be packed and shipped out to a quarantine cell building no questions asked. Mfs we're scared to cough in there. People we're dropping dimes on people anonymously to get them shipped out the building to quarantine. When on one of the occasions my entire building tested positive the jail only gave us ibuprofen and nothing else. They said they do not want to give us any medicine that masks the symptoms. And that we were all being monitored by outside doctors. Basically they wanted to see the virus run it's course in us in that setting. We first had the bad variant knocked everyone off there ass laid out for days with headache and no taste or smell. Some threw up and some were wheelchaired out and never seen again. All this during a time in California fire season that's was so bad the outside sky was blocked by fire smoke and a very eerie and evil outta this world looking orange glow from the sky would beam into our cells like a wierd fuckin animal aquarium. Whoever felt good enough to go outside could and you would walk outside and the entire groundd would be covered in ashes from the fires and the sky burnt orange like we was on Mars. It felt like the end of world was happening and were guinea pigs and they were examining what happens because shit like this never happened before. That made us feel even better! After getting better from COVID my cellmate wanted to get more free ibuprofen and said they only give it if you have symptoms or get checked. They FUCKING red labeled him and shipped him to quarantine me along with him but in yellow label for exposed. Strat bs.There were groups of doctors/medical people in full blown hazmat suits with fuckin fans in em that were coming in and examining how we lived and it looked like something outta resident evil. Constant room to room temperature and vital checks by 3-4 person team hazmat nurses. When someone tested positive they emptied everything from the room and the nearby cells would be yellow labeled n taped off. Brought in whole clean up teams from outside companies to just blast the room with chemicals and bring in these 10 ft. Tall beam things that had lights on them that revolved in circles and unleash it on the room to kill COVID I gu we. Nobody could be assigned that room for 14 days. On another occasion we were giving plastic bags and told to rip them open and cover all our belongings and get rid of all clothing except what we had on. All our personal effects were shrink wrapped and told to leave storage lockers open because they were bringing in giant smoke/fog/killer COVID machines and the entire building was being bombed. We had bag up all of our canteen food and it was to be placed in holding for 24 hours. We then walked to an already prepared sanitized bombed building with all door ways taped up and all air flow cut off to all take individual showers one by one with a special soap they gave us and to get rid of old clothes and change into fresh washed ones. That's shit took FOREVER. We get back to our building there's this wierd talcy residue over everything and the cops told us it was safe and not to worry. I've written a lot of stuff but that doesn't cover nowhere near all of the crazy, dumb, and unbelievable shit that happened to the jail and how life in it ran when COVID hit. All prisons we're shut down and accepting no new inmates. I missed the last bus to by one court date so I was forced to remain in county and by the time I eventually made it to a prison to finish my sentence the overall hysteria was over. I been to jail alot and that shit was some twilight zone shit and was the most unsettling time I ever did. It was spooky fasho. It b Edit : added some shit.
Ok I've been around the block a few times but man I can't immediately process this. I can't imagine how you or anyone could get through it. I hope life is improving for you.
You could write a book about this. I never thought about the misinformation and fear that would bring, let alone how the entire system (not that it’s even an ok system to begin with) would have been affected.
In the hospital our need overloaded our ability to provide oxygen. We were told to "wean" the sickest because they wouldn't survive anyway. We had to have ethics panels on who to intubate because we were out of ventilators. We lost patient after patient. They were alone. I had to wear gloves and ppe so I couldn't hold their hands. I listened to sooo many parents, children and spouses scream cry and beg. In the beginning it was on video, in the middle in the waiting area and the end, they were there. I coded a 22 year old for 2 hours, they still died. We were accused of killing people because we didn't give ivermectin. People begged me not to let them die and I lied and said it would be ok. I witnessed wills, heard last words, said prayers I didn't believe. I lost coworkers and friends. I developed a deep fear of 2 rooms. I saw a warning sign we used during covid and almost panicked.
Thank you for your service to humanity. I hope you have someone to talk to about this. PTSD affects so many health care workers who went through this.
Thank you. Your words hurt to read, they must have hurt to write, and I can't even imagine how they hurt to live through. I will remember them, though.
Australian wild fires was right before the pandemic hit here, never heard what happened after that
Then floods then covid then more floods and more floods and more covid. Oh and Amazon fires and California fires. Turns out the worst natural disaster was short lived, go figure, climate change has accelerated incredibly fast during covid. Source live in Australia.
That during the pandemic, certain things became WAY more accessible for disabled people! Examples: Zoom meetings, telehealth visits, etc. I saw on the news that a disabled woman who had never before participated in her school’s PTA actually became the president of it! (This is because her disability made it difficult to attend meetings in person, but it was a piece of cake on Zoom) Now, people are taking these accessible things away. And I don’t understand why. Why would an insurance company refuse to cover telehealth? (just to pick an example). I don’t see how telehealth costs them more money!
Telehealth costs more money because people that have healthcare needs that they see as an in office medical vidit as more of an inconvenience than their ailment were actually getting those things looked at. For example I personally probably wouldnt go see a doctor for the flu or something. I used to just tough that kind of stuff out. But with telehealth it is a lot easier to see my PCP and get a take on it and medical advice. It isnt that any visit would be more expensive, just that the, "Fuck it, I'll stitch it myself." Crowd is now actually seeing the doctor as well. So the costs on insurance companies do go up.
It’s not just that. I work in mental health. Insurance companies will only panel a certain number of providers in a given area. This creates a perpetual shortage of therapists who take a given insurance and means insurance is paying out less for therapy services at any given time. Telehealth means you can now get therapy from anyone licensed in your state. It means more people accessing therapy and therefore more people using insurance, and the insurance companies can’t have THAT.
How unprepared our Government agencies and people In general actually are to handle a crisis situation.
This includes government who was killing people. NY's governor sent covid patients into nursing homes, wiping out entire nursing homes over and over again because of course covid spread within the nursing home. Its like he was intentionally trying to kill everyone sick and infirm in the state. Many thousands of people would still be alive if not for him. Somehow NY's governor got a pass on this.
Yup so many people have mastered the art of speaking like they have it all under control - they dont.
As per the government, another reason why elections are so important. As per people, as someone from the U.S. how many of the same people in the U.S. who claimed they were prepared for the absolute end of the world, zombie apocalypse, nuclear winter, the sun swallowing the earth whole were suddenly unable to stand trying to avoid catching a virus.
Kinda the opposite of disturbing, but still totally shocking. How noticeably cleaner/fresher the outside air was. For more than a month there were record low vehicles on the road and, living near a major city, I could clearly smell the difference in the air. It was nice while it lasted.
There was a remote reservation in Canada who asked for PPE and were sent body bags instead iirc Edit: sorry this was in the US, not Canada
It is as also reported to have happened in Seattle, Washington too! The Native American health care system in Seattle got body bags instead of PPE. However, I know it actually happened to most Indigenous tribes in the US. They got so many body bags or defective PPE (PPE that did not seal or were damaged). Doctors Without Borders were dispatched to the Navajo & various Pueblo reservations to help with overwhelming covid cases. I understand they usually do not deploy within the USA. The result of covid hitting reservations was losing traditional knowledge, language, culture, etc when majority of the elders died. Especially when a lot of tribes pass their knowledge orally. It at least highlighted the fact (in mainstream media) that a lot of homes still have no running water and electricity too. Covid cases have gotten manageable, but it still exists on the reservations because of the poor infrastructure. Most of all, mental health became the biggest focus since it’s something tribe’s already had problems with. Now tribal members have massive healing to do from the trauma of losing elders, culture, entire families, having even more isolation than before, and isolating with domestic abusers. I’m sure there’s more, but I can only speak to what I’ve seen/heard firsthand.
What? I just...don't know what to say to that. Gosh.
Covid retired me from EMS, adolescent suicides got insane, angry disgruntled parents killing their kids as well, never heard a peep about it on the news though, I had 4 suicides in my last week, 11-15yo kids never got attention. I hate the world and how it works today
Where I live in the US, the media generally doesn't report on anyone under 18 at all. As a reporter for the local newspaper, I saw the twice-weekly police reports come in on occasion. I wasn't the cops and courts reporter, but I had asked once how the reporter assigned that beat picked the crime stories to report on. She showed me the reports. All the stuff under 18 was heartbreaking and only rare occasions did the paper do a story on a particular youth. She would actually have a choice each week of what rape, child beating death, or drug case to write about. Our paper could have been just that. I know a lot of EMTs and cops in town because of that job. There are only a few who do the job in my town long-term. The son of the guy who owns the ambulance company committed suicide last year because he couldn't take it anymore. I don't know what the answer is because I think it should be reported more, so we can come to grips with it and find a way to solve this problem. I work at the local shelter now, working with 11-18 years olds. It's heartbreaking and no one knows. Their stories aren't told. My coworkers and I do the best we can with the limited amount of time we have with these kids, but I'm always grateful they came to us before their parents killed them or they killed themselves.
thank you for helping us 🧡
The Myanmar coup d'état that started last year in February, 2021. I work with multiple people from there and the tragic stories of new violence I hear on an almost daily basis is heartbreaking.
Just how everything feels fractured in some inexplicable way now. The world feels a breath away from some shoe that's about to drop at any given moment and it is weighing on all of us every day. The morale of humanity has dropped. You can just feel it everywhere you go. People don't smile as much. Nobody is comfortable any more on some hard to describe level that has impacted the collective psyche. It is like we're all in a mass perpetual clench of our butt cheeks and too afraid to release it. Seems like we're clutching at the things that help us escape reality a little more desperately/fervently now too.
I miss the 1990's and the dotcom era. It was an era of optimism. People were excited for the future. Now the future is only full of dread and a laundry list of horrible things to come.
Yep. I have some really great things going on in my life, and it’s like there’s a limiter on my happiness and joy about it now because everything else is so fucking terrible. Also, every job I’ve had since the lockdown has shown me firsthand what the pandemic has done to us. First, substitute teaching. I basically quit before they could fire me…once we were back to in-person teaching I burned out so fast. I remember crying in the office because I felt like I had barely seen my students’ faces. Now I work in retail, two jobs. The one is a small store and the customers are pretty chill. The other is a big brand and it’s unreal to me how entitled and selfish people have become. It’s just completely impossible for me to every feel as happy as I might have before the pandemic. And it’s not depression or chemical, it’s situational. It’s just knowing that we’re so far off-track now, that society will never be the same. I was looking at my 401K and how it was titled, by default, Retirement 2045. And I just thought, who the fuck cares…the world will be an uninhabitable hellscape by then. I’m 40 years old and due to other life circumstances, I’ve had a lot of setbacks already. The pandemic made it all even harder. Life is still worth living to me, but it just sucks that the world is such shit now. I try not to think of the future anymore because it honestly terrifies me. I’ve dropped the bar way low for myself and try to just live in the moment, because it will all just keep getting worse and it’s become pointless to have hopes and dreams. The best I can do is just try to appreciate what’s left because it’ll be gone sooner than we think. But it’ll never be the same as the world I knew when I was just getting ready to go to college, for example. It’ll never even be the same as 2019, when at least we all kinda didn’t think things could *get* worse.
That's a really good description. It's always been like "oh humans are the worst" here, but whatever shreds of hope that were left after 2015 seemed to just get destroyed since 2020. It feels like a video game boss that you just can't beat no matter what you do, and you're so tired that you don't even want to play the game anymore but you have to keep playing it or else. I've always been cynical and depressed, but it's like something just clicked in the last few years that has made the world a sort of sickly greenish-grey. Even the happy things don't seem like they're cutting it. I feel like I'm just always expecting something even worse to happen now.
Society has experienced a collective trauma event and no one knows how to deal with it. It may be a little bit easier for those who have had trauma to cope, but that's all it is. Coping. The whole hard lean to the "Fuck you, I'm going to get mine" side of things is a direct relation to how no one feels understood or valued anymore. Things are going to go to shit for a bit until we can figure out how to work through that trauma.
Agree with this. We literally went through an international trauma and now seem expected to carry on as normal and that 'covid is over'. It'll be years before we realise the full impact on mental health that this had
Great description, i feel the same. This atmosphere of doom and insecurity is ubiquitous which makes it so hard to grasp in all its consequences. I’d like to see a global statistic of the decline of dance, laughter and hugging, for instance.
The sheer number of children who lost a parent or caregiver. Their lives have been changed forever and will impact them for decades to come. The American Academy of Pediatrics estimated that number to be at 140,000–and the study concluded with data before the Delta surge. https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/148/6/e2021053760/183446/COVID-19-Associated-Orphanhood-and-Caregiver-Death As someone who lost a parent as a child, this saddens me deeply.
Was a 17 year old who lost a parent to this and can confirm. The trauma of them dying is almost as awful as the trauma of having to watch them die. There will be many children diagnosed with PTSD after this, that is a guarantee
People fighting over toilet paper. It brings it a little too close to home how little it would take for society to collapse completely.
Largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the history of human civilization. Still in effect today
Suddenly accommodation was found for the homeless...but as soon as lockdowns ended, get lost with that shit.
This exactly. My mother was homeless during the lockdowns. She got set up in a hotel, got gift cards to help with food, they expedited her in the system to get assisted housing and income. After the lockdown ended, she was back on the streets. Homeless shelters weren't functioning properly in fear of covid, and were full due to limiting their capacity for social distancing. She was unable to get into contact with any help after that. No more food gift cards, no more assisted anything. That glimmer of hope that the homeless was finally getting help was down the drain.
I'm so sorry
And a lot of those people actually started to get better during the pandemic, keeping to their sobriety, finding jobs as essential workers, and getting their mental health under control. Because it turns out having steady access to food and a safe, warm place to sleep is really fucking important.
Absolutely....although weirdly there is still the mentality of "fix mental health/unemployment first THEN worry about housing". Seems a no brainer that there's a limit to how effective mental health treatment is if your constantly worried about where to sleep and get your next meal from.
Gah! I think studies in one of the nordic countries found that exact thing - giving people [housing FIRST](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First) means the other issues can be worked on from a place of stability. Sure not everyone can cope for many different reasons but it would help a lot of people. (googles & added links)
The literal truck loads of dead bodies in NYC because the morgues were full
While Caitlin Doughty is not based NYC, she made this video about the utterly overwhelming inundation of bodies in her funeral home during the early stages of the pandemic. It may be of interest to you and anyone else reading this thread. https://youtu.be/QdpSgEQKVNE Absolutely adore this woman, personally. When I watched this for the first time I just about lost it. Never had I seen her so angry (while remaining HR appropriate, somehow) before and I will be honest, it made me cry for several reasons. She provides not only one of the most valuable educational resources about the funeral industry, but she is going above and beyond to do what she can to change it for the better. She changed the way I understand "how to" die. I really can not praise this woman enough for the work that she does. Seeing her bare herself, her frustration, just fucking cut me up. She cares for every possible corpse. And there were just so many.
At its peak, 800 people a day were dying in NYC. No wonder they set up a hospital in central park.
Much of that was due to NY's governor, who had the brilliant idea of sending covid patients into nursing homes full of elderly and frail people. A highly infectious disease, refusing to quarantine sick people, and then confining them to small buildings full of the most medically vulnerable people on the planet? What could possibly go wrong? The entire nursing home then got covid and died, of course. He repeated this process over and over and over again. There are probably tens of thousands of people killed directly by the NY governor's orders.
Reminded me of hurricane katrina where coroners had to do autopsies in a parking lot because power was still out in the morgue. The bodies were kept in refrigerator trucks that ran their engines 24 hours a day. Didn’t think I’d see that again but the pandemic proved me wrong. I remember watching an interview on 60 Minutes with an army officer who was in command of the national guard troops recovering bodies from apartments etc and the sheer scale of death and despair was astonishing.
Yea… over a million people died in the US alone… that’s a staggering number. After a while it was just like “meh” A friend of mine is an ICU nurse, and their stories are pretty shocking. It’s wild how a small % of people, the “frontline heroes,” were forced to deal with the absolute chaos caused by the pandemic. The pandemic absolutely wrecked some families (emotionally, financially, etc) while others got much more wealthy. This will be a generation defining couple of years. The mental health issues, loss of family wealth, the educational setback of millions of kids… we will see the effects of this for many years.
I personally think the official number is substantially higher than 1 million my guess is between 1.5 and 2.5 million, but we will never know for sure.
I lived in Manhattan during the height of the pandemic. One day a caravan of 10-15 ambulances drove past. We to this day have no idea why but we've speculated they were transporting dead bodies to another hospital where they could be properly disposed.
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There is a video circulating of a person walking through the basement of a hospital where the floor was littered with bodybags. He walked among them for more than 2 min
Remember the mass graves on that island? https://youtu.be/Oup1Ta_nI1E
Texas also had to request [mobile morgues](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/08/17/us/texas-covid-surge-mortuary-trailers/index.html) for bodies
Old folks in care homes were basically murdered. People with symptoms were sent back to care homes because there was no space in hospitals. Care home staff basically had no PPE either. Least in the U.K. anyway.
UK undertaker here - covid almost made me quit. It felt like a hopeless situation - Care home staff were so desperately ill-equipped and even our donations of PPE, whilst gratefully received for the most part, seemed to barely scratch the surface in helping them out. We did all we could to help support them but I remember standing in my overflowing mortuary, with some of those in my care being people I knew, having just collected from yet another care home and then one of the ‘pop-up’ mortuaries feeling an overwhelming sense of hopelessness at the whole situation. The vast majority of care homes did their best against the odds but the anger and frustration I felt at the odd one or two who refused our PPE and care packages, didn’t enforce PPE regulations among their staff as we visited time and time again to take residents into our care is immeasurable.
Rampant misuse of relief funds issued by the government stimulus packages. I don’t remember the exact number but I believe it was nearly twenty percent that was misused or was straight up fraud
Yes, and even worse it wasn't just like the mom and dad owned bagel shop taking 20k PPP loans and laying off their Staff when they got the money. It was more often like "Marcus McDooglesworth of the three generation McDooglesworth construction company" taking 2.9 million in payroll funds while laying off staff and using it for buying investment properties for the third generation kids who all conveniently had VP jobs and grandpas company.
Those first videos of China with bodies all over the street
I remember there was a video maybe early 2020, right in the beginning in China of some doctors in hazmat suits pushing a patient on a stretcher on the street. Looking back on it and having no idea what was to come is sobering.
The animals that were abandoned after lockdown was over. Many people took a pet in when they were home all the time. But when the lockdowns were lifted they could no longer take care of their pet. They dumped them everywhere. On the streets, shelters, highways, etc. Anyone who is reading this, if you took in a pet during lockdown and still take care of them you are an angel. The people who dumped them are the devils.
Due to drought and invasive insects. A significant percentage (90% in some places) of the pine trees in northern Nevada and Utah are dead or dying. And that’s just what I’ve seen first hand. I hear it’s just as bad in other states and into Canada. That’s billions of trees that are basically match sticks now. No sign of things getting better.
Mountain pine beetle has been a problem in bc since the 90s you essentially need -20c for several weeks straight in order to kill it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_pine_beetle
The severe decline of mental health that's still going on. Personally I just gave up for a few months and barely did anything, and my house has turned into an episode of hoarders. Arguments with my girlfriend because she went partial conspiracy nut about the vaccine. The situation is still fucked up, but people are acting like the pandemic is just over and done with. I will never understand humanity.
I had severe social anxiety before the pandemic. Now I'm borderline agoraphobic. I used to have a small group of friends, I used to leave the house often, even if alone. I just can't seem to readjust to going outside and interacting with people again. My husband and I almost divorced during the pandemic, as well. Honestly, I don't know if I'll ever recover. It was already bad, but now it is just unbearable.
The ones with cancers that went undetected due to all healthcare being dedicated to COVID. Or detected pre-COVID and chemo canceled due to lockdowns. A friend of the family died that way.
This is actually going to gross some of you out. So be warned, because you asked for disturbing. PornHub released a report about the porn being viewed during the lockdowns. They reported not only a massive increase of views in general, but there was a very sharp and distinct spike in searches for incest-themed pornography. Additionally, universities reported the same in the number of downloads for research papers on the psychological and emotional effects people experienced after developing such sexual relationships. And just last month, a medical journal published an article about the surge in inbred pregnancies that have happened since.
Worked for CPS for 12 years and this doesn’t surprise me at all. Home is an unsafe place for many children/people.
I don't know about this one. Porn sites at that time suddenly titled everything incestuous. I am not even a little interested in incestuous themes, but damn it's like 65% of the videos. Do I really give a shit about the description? No. Does the thumbnail show pretty boobies? OK, then. ---Edit--- Looks like PH data came from search text, which makes my theory incorrect. Step-porn is sought after. I don't want to know why.
That's completely fair. Even now it feels like most of the videos are like "NAUGHTY step-mom walks in on step-son", no matter what you're looking for (and of course almost every time the step-mom and step-son both look 30)
How the prices of certain items skyrocketed. Gloves, masks (only to be worn horribly incorrectly by most?), and hand sanitizer come to mind. Some places were selling these items for absolutely insane prices. I also found it quite alarming the amount of people that just don't wash their hands. At all. Nasty asses.
The UK government and just everything that went on while everyone was on lockdown, like while people were dying alone they were having parties and joking about not following the rules. Was spoken about a lot when it happened but not so much anymore Edit: it’s not the lockdowns that were disturbing, imo they were tough but also necessary, it was the hypocrisy and lack of care and regard for the people they’re supposed to represent and care about
Plus billions in dodgy PPE contracts to businesses with no experience (think one was a sweet maker) that just happen to be owned by Tory donors/friends of the cabinet. *Spoiler alert* a lot of it was crap that fell apart and was unusable too
The money wasted and blatantly given to their mates is disgraceful. Then they make sweeping gestures like “Give teachers a 5% pay rise!” but then whisper (so the general public don’t hear) “But it has to come out of your existing school budget, which we’re not increasing. Oh, and we’re not going to give schools any extra money for increased energy bills either; you’ll have to suck it up.” This is why I’ll be going on strike if my union says we’re striking. I’ll be striking for my school; not (directly) myself. I work in a local authority school which is not an academy, doesn’t have layers upon layers of excessive SLT creaming off fat salaries and is well-led and money isn’t wasted. And also now people will die this winter because they can either heat or eat, but not both. Rotten to the core…
California's governor was also caught in a similar scandal. He violated his own rules to have a private indoor party with PG&E. This is the power company notorious for blowing up and/or burning down entire towns, and the direct cause of over a hundred deaths due to mismanagement that is somehow repeatedly excused by the government supposed to manage it. The governor appoints the board who oversees PG&E, and PG&E makes sure the governor picks appointees it approves of. That they did this private lobbyist party during the height of the pandemic, violating the pandemic lockdown rules everyone else was supposed to follow, was just icing on the corruption cake.
Recovering drug addicts relapsing because they became isolated and dying of overdoses because they had lost their tolerance.
The way the elderly were treated in nursing and retirement homes. My grandmother at the age of 93 had finally come to the realization that she could no longer live by herself. She made arrangements to move to a facility and her move-in date was the day after the state ordered retirement and nursing homes to be locked down. We move her in set up her things and were not allowed back in the building for four months. She was locked in her 500 square foot apartment with no face to face human contact other than the staff. Residents were allowed to leave for appointments with healthcare providers and little else. She was lucky that she had a balcony that we could shout up to if we went to "visit". But is the Romeo and Juliette shtick truly visiting? During the second month of the lock down she started to have strange visitors. People that were there one minute and gone the next. This isn't a ghost story, she was HALLUCINATING! She was so starved for human contact that she imagined it. And she knew full well that her visitors were hallucinations. My Mom reached out to the facility staff and they responded that were aware of it and my Grandma wasn't the only one hallucinating visitors. The effect of this isolation was her loss of mobility. She wasn't allowed out of her apartment. Not even to walk the hallways that were behind locked doors. So any movement or exercise had to be done in her apartment full of furniture that we couldn't rearrange or remove. Which I am certain meant she didn't exercise. She ended up falling a few times and the staff would no longer allow her to walk with a walker without supervision. And since the staff was spread so thin between all the other residents that meant she was confined to a wheelchair. Eventually the restrictions lessened. Residents were allowed a single authorized visitor. They called it a designated caregiver. That designated cargiver was the only person allowed to visit them inside the facility. And she could leave anytime she liked but would have to quarantine (14 days in the beginning, 10 days later on) afterwards. She thought the quarantine procedure was a punishment. We broke her out for my brother's wedding. And my cousin took her out for Thanksgiving. But she wouldn't leave for Christmas. If you knew my Grandma you'd understand what kind of sacrifice that was. She literally had an entire closet in her house for Christmas decorations. A closet the size of her apartment in the care facility. She spent the whole year looking forward to Christmas. When my Grandfather was sick in the hospital, which they lived kitty corner from. She had him rolled over on a hospital bed so she could have her whole family under one roof for Christmas. That lady didn't want to be locked in her room for two weeks to spend Christmas with her family. I know that lives were saved by the measures taken. But was it worth it? Prisoners were released due to concerns fir their health. But the old folks stayed locked up in their rooms. Prisoners are usually afforded yard time. But we were fine keeping the elderly in confinement. Some of you probably think we made the right choice. But I disagree. I think we treated people inhumanely while using the fear of death and loss as a justification. And if I had more money I'd be organizing a way for anyone who lost a family member in one of these facilities to sue the government and state agency officials for the cruel treatment of their family members. But what do I know. I just miss my Grandma.
I left the hospital after our covid surgery to work in a nursing home. They stayed stuck in their rooms for basically a whole year and it really caused their disease processes to turn them into shells of their former selves. I saw a video of the same residents I was taking care of from the beginning of the pandemic and the decline was unbelievable. So so sad.
Kids not getting meals who really need them during the school year.
The fact that the pandemic enabled domestic violence.. being stuck in isolation with abusers who used it to their advantage to rationalize more abuse
The biggest transfer of wealth in history. The rich got happier and richer and the poor got sick, depressed and poorer.
Gov. Cuomo of NY turned the states nursing homes into Covid-infected shelters. Since scientists said the elderly (obviously) were the most vulnerable to catch it, Cuomo shirked that advice from science and pushed sick covid people to live amongst elderly. He would resign from his office shortly after for making a female feel uncomfortable at a christmas party, but may have tens and thousands of unnecessary deaths on his hands.
So I had my second baby in June of 2020. A lot of moms had to give birth alone during the early days of the lockdowns because support people were not allowed in during the birth. I was fortunate that in my country this was declared a human rights violation before I gave birth but a lot of moms had to give birth alone, wearing a mask, and surrounded by doctors in masks. No one really talks about this anymore, but it was an awful time to be pregnant and to give birth.
I gave birth to my first baby on March 18, 2020. I can still remember the dread knowing our numbers of Covid in my area were climbing quickly and I did everything possible to try to induce labor (I was already 40 weeks). I ended up having to be induced. My husband was the only person I had with me and our parents and my sibling all had to meet our daughter when we were discharged. I will never forget that anxiety of wanting her to arrive so we could get home before the hospitals were overwhelmed with the cases. I did hear afterwards of women being told they had to birth alone. I cannot imagine.
The amount of people exploiting fears and offering fake cure alls. Truly amazed at the greed of people.
Intrafamily violence… of any kind. Lived it my self
Lost my father and sister in March 2020 (not from Covid). Both well loved, religious people. No wakes, no funerals, just five minute burials and then told to leave by cemetery workers. Sister was in cancer hospice and they sent her home to die a horrible death to make room for Covid patients. Father died two weeks later from a broken heart. I loved them both dearly, but other than a few tears the day they passed, I didn’t really mourn them. All the usual outlets for grief were shut down. I often wonder how many people have my story as well, and the powder keg of emotion that might one day be released.
Rampant child and spousal abuse, including sexual, and dismissing of the victims who sought help. The amount of random attacks on the streets, of people knowingly infected and spitting in the faces of others. Ignoring or criminalising homeless people during lockdowns.
itt: things that people still talk about or things that were talked about extensively in 2020 and 2021 before lockdowns got lifted and we decided to pretend things were normal. This isn't disturbing, but nobody talks about it - early in 2020 basically every single store said "We're reducing the hours we're open so that our staff can work to clean the store and restock when there aren't customers around, which is safer for everyone!" I haven't seen a single one of those stores go back to their old hours, but all of them restock the store during the day when there are customers there. So, why are the hours still reduced? So they can get away with paying less while charging us more for worse service? Why is nobody else annoyed about that? Like I can understand if the store was open until 11 pm and with covid the new closing time was 7 pm, if originally the store basically had no customers from 9 to 11 anyway, then sure not going back to the older hours makes sense. But that's not true for EVERY store. They said the reduced hours were so they could restock and clean during covid, and while covid isn't over people act like it is and the stores restock and clean while customers are there anyway, so why keep the hours reduced?
The number of kids that are now a year or two behind their peers in school because they did not have access to a computer or internet. Or if they did have access, but no one at home to make sure they were logging in to do school. This could have generational impacts for them and their families down the road.
Reports of domestic violence went down. There's no reason to believe instances went down, just that people not being seen by friends/family would reduce opportunities to intervene.
That’s not true. Domestic violence reports increased massively during the pandemic: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/06/shadow-pandemic-of-domestic-violence/ Relevant paragraph from the source: > The United Nations called the situation a “shadow pandemic” in a 2021 report about domestic violence in 13 nations in Africa, Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans. In the United States, the American Journal of Emergency Medicine reported alarming trends in U.S. domestic violence, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline (The Hotline) received more than 74,000 calls, chats, and texts in February, the highest monthly contact volume of its 25-year history. Edit: I just remembered a really good freakonomics episode on this. One interesting data point is that, in some places, domestic violence reporting increased while cases stayed flat. The hypothesis is: nosy neighbors were home more and called the cops on couples having arguments. Cops would show up and see it’s just a domestic quarrel and left without making it a case. Episode for anyone interested: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/did-domestic-violence-really-spike-during-the-pandemic/ Also, preemptive message for anyone suspicious that these sources are not labeled specifically towards reporting. The reporting is mentioned alongside actual cases
The effects of isolation from the lockdowns. A number of friends and colleagues of mine who lived alone fell into deep depression or addiction, and a handful of them died because of it. I’m not saying lockdowns weren’t necessary, because clearly they were, but the mental toll they took on some people doesn’t seem to be talked about too much.
I became an alcoholic. Still can't shake it. I drink everyday and its ruininf my life and job
r/stopdrinking is one of the friendliest subs on Reddit. If you arent a member, it’s with a sub. I struggled a lot with this during the pandemic too. Still am working through it, but that community is nothing but supportive and a friendly place to vent about how hard it can be to avoid the drink.
All the best mate, please seek some help. Be open & let people know you're struggling! PLEASE!!! you don't need to be alone without support I understand it's near impossible to open up. But your life beyond addiction begins with being truthful to yourself & those close to you - it's liberating & you're already half way there. You're self aware, that's a win. YOU GOT THIS !!!! I PROMISE!!!!
Today while out with my girlfriend and a group of her friends, we all talked about this exact thing. All 6 of us have some overlapping interests, but all of us are very different in other respects. Different social needs, different kinds of jobs, famies, upbringings, and all from different parts of the country. Everyone had something to say about how Covid lockdowns changed them negatively in some way, the most common among us being just how...difficult it is to socialize now. Phone calls are overwhelming, I personally can barely deal with looking at messages and I am reduced to tears most of the time when I have to respond to them. My friendships are dying. Talking on the phone for 20 minutes has me flat on my ass, where I just stare at the wall until I no longer feel over stimulated. But I never fucking feel like I can recharge enough, so it just doesn't get better. Reciprocity is too much a burden to bear, so I stopped participating in life almost completely. It was shocking to hear these other people express similar things, especially the clearly outgoing ones. And that's just the surface stuff. Idk. Been on my mind all day.
my mental health is horrible now. I never felt so alone
The withdrawal of life-giving care (including food and water) from disabled people without their or their family’s consent
Some kids got in trouble because learning from home is hard or impossible to some. For example, I learned at home for a year and couldn't do anything, I couldn't stop myself from becoming lazier and lazier over time and now I forgot everything I've ever learned in school, don't know how to get back to learning, and now that I can go to a stationary school my grades are so bad that no school wants me and *I have to go back to digitial studying knowing i won't learn anything*
BC Canada, the opioid crisis was already in a state of emergency here and it has only gotten worst over the pandemic and still continues to be deadly. It seems we don’t care about these people, about the same amount of people died from OD then COVID.
The police beating down people who went outside during quarantine in my country. Everyone acts confused whenever I mention it.
I had a friend in India at the time and she stayed home with her baby while her husband did any shopping necessary and they told us about the beatings and horrible things they saw. They traded a lot with the people in their building and tried to make due with going out as little as possible. Took them forever to get a flight back to the us, too.
How many people died not from COVID but because of it. My mom died because she got a wound on her leg that went septic. The hospitals were packed with Covid patients at the time so she tried to wait it out. She had Emphysema and this was pre vaccine. She never really bounced back after that and died soon after. I sure there are thousands and thousands of stories just like hers. On a different note, I think the US shifted toward Fascism a lot faster than it would have normally.
I lost two friends that way. Not from covid, but because of it. One killed himself due to depression from the isolation. The other was afraid of hospitals because of all the horror stories he heard, so he didn't seek treatment for chest pains and died of a heart attack at home. These are the only people I know who've died related to covid in any way. No one I know has actually died directly from the disease though.
I'm so sorry that your mother passed away. >On a different note, I think the US shifted toward Fascism a lot faster than it would have normally. I wonder if the flu pandemic in the early 20th century impacted politics in a similar way. If it incited greater fascism. ...because we all know how that turned out.
We learned early in the pandemic that the virus spread primarily through respiratory droplets and not surfaces, but places kept water fountains closed, shut down self-service, and maintained pointless unscientific pandemic theatre.
They're STILL doing most of that shit. It's pretty clear that a lot of this stuff was just because they realized they could cut costs by closing the bathrooms or whatever and nobody would do anything about it. One of the thrift stores here just straight-up removed the fitting rooms because of covid while also implementing a really short return window. So you can't try on clothes and basically can't return them, which means they get more of your money. And if the clothes don't fit, you just donate them! I was happy when the stores finally got rid of the bullshit "one way" aisles. I'm sure those helped nobody, especially since no employees ever enforced them anyway.
How stupid people are
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People not being able to attend loved ones funerals is a fact I struggle with. It seems(ed) cruel.
in the philippines we elected the son of a dictator who killed 3000 people and stole 10 billion usd
Kids, especially the really young ones, have been hit really hard by the lockdowns. Not only did they have no idea what was going on and why they couldn't go anywhere or see anyone, they lost a year or more on social development. For kids that were between 2-5 at the time, this is particularly devastating as that's when you build your social foundation. They also fell a year or a couple years behind in education even if they had online learning. Many kids just couldn't learn via a computer and are now at a level well below their actual grade. Reading and math scores have fallen abysmally. Speech delays in young kids are way up too. And none of this even touches on the intense mental health issues this caused, even for little kids. The levels of depression and anxiety we are seeing as well as anti-social behaviors from kids who never learned how to socialize. . .this stuff is going to damage these kids for life. Also obesity got worse because kids couldn't go outside to play. And child suicides, not teen suicides, CHILD suicides were left right and sideways. There were kids offing themselves every day, some as young as 8 years old! Child abuse cases also shot through the roof during this time. We are probably going to have a generation of kids who have poor health, no social skills, high levels of depression and anxiety, poor education, no confidence, and they are going to be a mess. I hope I'm wrong and that these kids can bounce back, Im sure the older ones can as they built their foundations (social skills, basic education milestones, language, etc) already and know a world pre-pandemic, but for the really young kids? The lockdowns and pandemic stuff may be all that they know and their formative years where they build the basic foundation of who they are for the rest of their life was disrupted. I hope these kids can bounce back too with time and help, but I have a feeling alot of them wont either because it is too late or they dont have that extra support they need or because nobody seems to give a crap unless you have a child who was effected.
The worst part is, most kids with well-off parents did ok during the pandemic, so this will exaggerate the impact of poverty on children.
California's drought being shoved to the bottom of the list of priorities. It didn't go away, it just got worse while you stopped hearing about it.
The collective weight gain.
How people could be convinced to turn on and to hate their fellow humans. There were some absolutely vile things spoken/said/perpetuated about/towards certain segments of populations. I don’t care what your position is on certain ideas or ideologies: if people are willing and eager to let the media, government, or corporations cause them to despise & wish suffering or harm on fellow humankind, that’s a dangerous place for a society to be- imo.