I usually hate anecdotal stories, especially as it’s the tool of the right to defend pseudoscience. However, there’s a heap of scientific evidence behind us.
In the last six months, I’ve a lot of older people and family passed due to heart troubles, including my dad. I would never say anything out loud, as it’s just rude, as people are grieving and I don’t know for 100% sure (the fecking burden of not being a reactionary). Like a friend’s mum died of heart failure 3 months after a COVID infection, and I thought to myself “this is a very good chance that COVID increased her risk” but I’m not going to be a knob and say that out loud. You know who didn’t fail to give their opinion? Fucking antivaxxers everywhere. “Did you mother get the jab?” “Fuck off her last vaccine was in 2021”.
The other massive glaring thing I see every day is my students. Exam scores are way down, while behavioural and emotional problems (including medication) is up. COVID infections definitely can hurt kids’ cognitive ability and cause an increased risk of neurological problems. I’ve just see way more fighting, anger, and serious emotional troubles in school than I ever have in my 20+ years of teaching. Students are missing way more school due to illnesses like COVID but also other viral stuff like the cold and flu than they ever used to, and they’re falling behind because of it.
Total shot in the dark, but I see more of my close friends struggling with depression, anxiety, and low energy than I ever remember. I don’t mean to downplay the genuine struggle that is mental health, people definitely had symptoms before COVID and many other issues are completely unrelated to COVID. I’m just seeing an increase across the board with people I know, especially people who I previously considered to be a rock.
I know that anecdotal evidence isn’t worth considering, but we’ve being posting hard science for years, and I think it’s fair that we start to notice patterns in our community.
I’ve had coworkers show up literally wheezing. No mask, no distancing. And my job has PSL too but they’d rather use that on vacation.
Ultimately this is a systemic and cultural failure. But it’s hard not to be bitter at the individual manifestations of the social rot.
Anecdotally, any injury or illness seems worse and takes longer to recover than it used to. Some of that is age for sure, but like… Seems like 10-15 years of aging in the last 4 years.
Can’t go anywhere in public without hearing a chorus of productive coughs. And some of them may not even have covid; colds and allergies and changes in temperature are enough to trigger the cough I’ve intermittently had since early 2020.
Ironically I wonder if covid’s effect on the brain and risk analysis / decision making causes people to take it less seriously, not even think about the potential consequences. Like a human toxoplasmosis.
Hope it at least accelerates the collapse of the first world
The ambient lead poisoning of the 21st century.
I’ve been reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. I don’t know if it contains anything particularly revelatory, but it does do really well to line up all the evidence that tech (and our culture more generally) is designed to wreck our ability to concentrate. Anecdotally, my partner teaches and the number of kids who have issues with their phones and video games seems pretty high. COVID is probably accelerating the development of all these problems.
Also speaking anecdotally, I haven’t had any major illnesses since the pandemic started and I’ve been massively struggling with mental health. I think we’re just able to sense that our culture and society are both in a terrible place and that’s causing a lot of mental strain.
I really benefitted from reading that book, but Johann Hari has been extremely controversial in his field (actually, he has no credentials, so (pop) psychology is not his field at all). He is a journalist, not a Doctor.
So if any one thing is helpful, fine, just know his conclusions are drawn far more from his own anecdotal experience and his empirical sources really don’t support his conclusions.
He is also a serial plaigarist and his book on depression is absolute dog-water.
Another takedown that specifically talks about Stolen Focus here
Well shoot, thanks for the heads up.
The Stuart Ritchie piece adds some useful context for the turn into the anti-medication takes at the end of the book.
Thanks! Here is that article link in case anyone wants it: https://unherd.com/2022/01/johann-haris-stolen-ideas/
Pretty good except for the Anti-anti-Capitalist jabs.
There’s a book by Neil Postman titled Amusing Ourselves to Death which was published in 1985(!!) that examines the shift in people’s ability to focus which you might be interested in reading.
Of course in some respects it’s hopelessly outdated given that it was written in the era where TV stations first started switching to 24/7 broadcasting rather than shutting down at night (lol) but it’s also interesting to consider the arguments the book puts forward and it’s a good waypoint to measure what a critical examination of the state of affairs was like some 40 years ago to use as a point of comparison to today.
I will check it out, thanks!
I have noticed that people generally seem more rude and selfish, whether that’s behind the wheel or on a sidewalk or in a grocery store. is it due to cognitive changes from covid or because the pandemic drilled into their heart that nobody gives a fuck about them? 😞
I finally have it, and this “just a flu” thing is such horseshit. I know you all know already, but jfc. my brain is a disaster, my lungs hurt like I just chain-smoked a pack of Red 100s, and I get winded walking to the kitchen 😑 the only times I’ve been more tired involved opiate withdrawal or parenting a newborn.
❤️ thank you
Girlfriend just got another round of it.
It’s always funny when people are like “how is this still a thing?” And it’s just like … it was everywhere and then we did nothing and declared it Not Our Problem anymore.
Can’t imagine why it’s not all wrapped up.
I wish more people around where I am would ask “how is this still a thing?” It at least means you can give them the answer, exactly like you just did, which might in turn give them something to think about. Instead what I see from most people is more like this kind of sentiment: “Of course it’s still a thing, it’s just how things are now. Really it’s always been like this. Colds happen, flu happens, covid happens. It’s a fact of life, get used to it and get over it being a thing. You’re still wearing a mask? What are you, some kind of hypochondriac who scrubs their hands raw every time someone sneezes?”
I think it’s part COVID but also just part stress. Stress is absolutely a killer, extremely well documented. Who isn’t more stressed these days at least in the western world? Everything is more uncertain. Things are expensive. Jobs are harder to get and keep. Wages are lower. Medicine and healthcare is harder to get. Society is literally collapsing around all of us in real time. That HAS to increase the general stress level of the population and that increased stress would absolutely lead to a lot of these things I think a lot of us are anecdotally seeing.
Definitely not saying COVID isn’t part of that…it absolutely is, even if just “one more Big Illness going around constantly making life harder for everyone.” That increases stress too and makes all of the other shit even worse. COVID is definitely one piece of the puzzle. It should be an easy piece to solve too… vaccination and masking and quarantines…but here we are.
Has anyone pointed out that people are treating COVID like they’re playing with house money? They don’t care 'cause they think it only harms people other than themselves.
I got the jab today. My arm hurts. 😢
Don’t know, man, last four years are globally fucked up, disaster after disaster, I don’t blame the virus, I blame how it was handled and where that led us in the end. No wonder we’re all fucked up.
Not helpful to you, but anyone else reading, the Novavax didn’t give me nearly as much soreness or other side effects. I used to have a mini-Covid from the boosters for at least 2 days. Felt fine with this one, hopefully the protection is adequate compared with MRNAs
The COVID conscious Twitter community is convinced that Novavax provides better long term protection than Pfizer and Moderna, although I haven’t spent enough time looking into it to form an opinion.
It seems that we only have Pfizer’s here in my country. Some things are impossible to boycott.
Yeah, the number one injury among Covid conscious people for the foreseeable future is gonna be a bitten tongue. Last big visit I had with friends for a birthday was a lot of conversations about all the people we know getting sick and how everyone is dying so young all of a sudden. No mention of Covid, just me sitting there in my lone mask.
COVID damaged my lungs, I have brain fog which combines with my ADHD to make thinking damn near impossible sometimes and I’m always so tired. I have sleep apnea but it seems worse now than it did before.
the only connection i made up till now was that before covid i used to get a cold or flu like once a year and it was always a very similar pattern where you would be back up in a couple days. post covid tho it just feels like i’m sick all the time, i think i’ve been out with a cold/flu like 4 times this year already and there’s a quarter left.
but for the past couple years my ADHD has also been incredibly difficult. it hasn’t been this bad my whole life and i assumed that it was just because of circumstances. but it would be useful to see if this is a common experience post covid
Are the constant attacks of breathlessness and gut-punch waves of terror because we have long covid or because we just 4 years ago had our faces clockwork-orange bad-dogged into the streaming pile of shit that is our material condition?
we just 4 years ago had our faces clockwork-orange bad-dogged into the streaming pile of shit that is our material condition
That’s a good way to put it. It’s hard to fathom, but everyone universally suffered loss during COVID. The luckiest only lost experiences and opportunities, but that still sucks a fucking lot. And we were all expected to move on and never deal with those feelings. I know I personally feel like we’re still just in the 54th month of March 2020
My sibling, who was already dying of cancer, died a lot sooner and suffered so much more from a covid infection that almost definitely came from his nurse.
I cant talk to anyone about it because my adoptive family is very antivaxx and anti mask
Sorry that happened to them. Absolutely evil that so many healthharm workers refuse to mask up around patients, all patients, but especially such very vulnerable populations as cancer patients!
You wouldn’t believe how many people weren’t wearing masks or wearing them incorrectly in the oncology unit
that is awful
It is
My grandma is pretty old…like 90, but I really feel like she’s experienced some major cognitive decline since she got Covid.
My ~40 year old friends are suffering from strokes and coming down with rare forms of cancer left and right.
I was 39 when I had my stroke. 100% believe it was COVID related.
Sorry that happened to you, and yes, it didn’t used to happen this young unless people were chain smoking alcoholics.
I think we should be careful about saying that sort of thing. Strokes did happen to some otherwise healthy people at that age, it was just rare. The rate of strokes in younger people has been growing at least since the 90s. What would be really helpful knowledge would be to find out what the statistics are on the rate of strokes in otherwise healthy people under 60 over a really long time and see if there’s an uptick around 2020. I’d bet anything that there is. The question I’d have is how big the difference is between pre and post 2020.
Edit: Sure enough.
One study published in JAMA in April 2021 found that the risk of stroke was more than twice as high for COVID-19 patients when compared to people of the same age, sex, and ethnicity in the general population—82.6 cases per 100,000 people compared to 38.2 cases for those without a COVID-19 diagnosis.
In another Swedish study published in the August 14, 2021 issue of The Lancet, researchers found that within a week of a COVID-19 diagnosis, a person’s risk of heart attack was three to eight times higher than normal, and their risk of stroke was three to six times higher. The study revealed these risks remained high for at least a month. The average age of people in the study was only 48 years.
https://healthcare.utah.edu/healthfeed/2022/01/covid-19-increasing-stroke-risks-people-of-all-ages
As information about COVID-19 has unfolded since the first cases were seen in the U.S., doctors in New York City have been noticing a troubling trend. Some young people who were mildly ill or had no noticeable coronavirus symptoms developed blood clots – and experienced strokes when those clots blocked blood vessels in the brain.
https://www.templehealth.org/about/blog/young-adults-covid-stroke-risk
Oh yeah, there’s been a huge increase. I seen similar info for cancer (I’m at work rn or I’d dig it up). But it’s not just anecdotal.
Thread has convinced me to go get the latest shot right now, because it sounds like I’ve been absurdly lucky putting it off this long
I’m really glad something good came out of this, then. Sorry af that that the shots are expensive and difficult.
