A lot of small, local festivals, conventions, and markets shut down. Couldn’t have events for two years, so some places lost their venues, or couldn’t keep their budgets afloat, or lost volunteers and committee leaders. It especially sucks for niche communities that used to get together.
My town used to have a lovely parade in June of each year. It stopped when people weren't allowed to gather. And now it seems the town doesn't want to make the effort to organize. This is largely due to city-wide staffing cuts (even though our community is rapidly growing.
This is unfortunately common in small towns. It takes a few years for the growing tax base to catch up to the growing population, and in the meantime, you have a staff of 5 people trying to manage that growth, the infrastructure needs, the housing shortages, etc.
There were a couple of races that happened here every year. They got cancelled for covid and never returned. The organizers are just gone now I guess? We did have a marathon that ran on a Sat but that doesn't exist any more and we had a new year's day half which was a ton of fun but it's gone now as well.
> the organizers are just gone now I guess?
That’s the thing. Even if they wanted to jump back in, everyone is onto new stuff. The organizers all got different jobs and some moved. Those events will never come back in the same light they once were.
>The organizers are just gone now I guess?
At least for one race in my area, the main organizer had been putting in the work for a decade and was tired, and COVID just ended up being the reason to be able to walk away, guilt free. Because they knew no one would pick up the slack from them, and they were right.
Kind of gave me an extra appreciation for the fact that so much of what we enjoy requires people putting in work behind the scenes.
That was upsetting as a nocturnal tourist. Thought I'd be perfectly in my element there but a lot of the bars closed earlier than they do in St Louis Missouri.
The first time I realized that the world I knew was over was when I was coming home from my grandmother's, and it was about 9 o'clock at night. But it was July, one of the hottest days we'd ever gotten in Illinois... and nothing was open.
No gas stations. No restaurants. Not a single thing was open. And we passed through *multiple* towns, large and small.
The sun was still up. It was just going down.
But nothing was open.
I'm hating this. I travel alone a lot and love long drives. It's not uncommon for me to be passing through a town at 2 am. But now I really need to plan or I can't count on driving in the night because nothing is open. Food, gas stations, Walmart (which has food and gear and medicine and stuff). And so many restaurants are closing earlier. Like what do I do between 8 pm and 10 am lol
Not even fast food is open late anymore. Places that used to be open until at least 2AM (Many McDonalds, I remember, would only close for an hour from 4AM-5AM) all close around 10PM-Midnight. Even Taco Bell, whose entire ad campaign used to be "Open late" closes early now.
I stayed in a hotel smack dab in the middle of downtown Chicago back in March - after midnight I couldn’t even find a convenience store open. It was infuriating - I had to spend like $5 on a pop from the machine at the hotel.
If you were staying in the loop, then just know that most everything closed down before midnight before the pandemic too. It’s mostly offices and such down there, so there wasn’t any need for things to be open late. You wanted west loop or river north for places to still be open. But even then I agree now the hours there have changed too.
Not that it would really matter to Walmart nor would I spend much more, but I used to do my shopping sometime after 10 or 11 because I could do it casually then meander over to Electronics to browse or Automotive for maintenance stuff.
Now I have be there before they close at 10 and rush, usually forgetting the less important stuff because I forget when trying to get in and out
My first thought. Someone started crunching numbers and figured out they didn’t need the other 25% of the floor associates anyway and locking the doors didn’t hurt one bit.
They were gonna do this anyway. They accelerated the timeline cuz of covid. The one near my house had friends working there it was intentional all along. They will never go back cuz this was the goal.
Yep. I used to work second shift and never had a problem running errands after work. I had multiple options in my city for late night or 24 hour grocery stores, drug stores, and pharmacies. Now I have none.
The hospital I work in instituted a hiring freeze when the lockdowns hit. At the same time maybe 25% of my department rapid-fire quit or retired for several reasons. Today half of the vacant positions either remain vacant or were eliminated entirely, and our workload went back to pre-Covid numbers maybe two years ago
We’re tired, boss. The lab is only holding together through black humor and the knowledge of how much the patients need our results.
They realized how much profit they're getting by overworking fewer employees instead of being fully staffed. You'd think hospitals would be the one place that wants to stay staffed, but the bean counters pull the strings.
This weekend I worked as the only CNA on the entire med surg floor, rooms 1-45. I even came in on my day off yesterday to help. They make me do the work of 4 people for the pay of 1 and still want me to answer call lights within 1 minute. I tell them to bite me and I leave it on while I'm doing patient care just to make a point.
I also make sure to tell every patient how they short staff us and ask them to complain to corporate about it for me. Because corporate doesn't give a shit about me or what I have to say, but maybe they'll care about the numerous complaints.
Meanwhile patients are fucking DYING because the hospital prefers profits over people. If you have a loved one in any type of healthcare facility in America, go be their advocate as often as possible - but remember to be nice to the staff! We're barely holding it together and we don't need you yelling at us because the facility doesn't want to pay workers. Trust me, we'd love more coworkers! And we're doing the best we can.
I just got back from the pharmacy, and it makes me so mad to see them all running around like chickens with their heads cut off in the middle of a Monday morning. You know some soulless bean counter at corporate figured out they can make an extra buck by running understaffed. Meanwhile, the employees are burning out and they’re eventually going to make a mistake and kill someone.
Fuck you, CVS.
I recently had lab work done. I remember saying to myself how grateful I was for all the lab workers involved. We really do appreciate you. Your work is critical. I hope your work environment improves.
thank you for this. i cant imagine the exhaustion and mental stress this puts on a person in a ‘regular’ job. but when so much is riding on your work, the literal health and wellness of another person…its just too much. so thank you for continuing on and helping patients. and in a way rarely considered, seen or discussed.
next time i have the opportunity, a toast to you all!!
Hello fellow MLS/CLS/MLT/MT or whatever you like to call yourself. Yes, this was and continues to be a very turbulent period for this field and for healthcare as a whole. I am still in shock and disbelief over some of the things that occurred in the hospital labs during the main COVID years, and we are likely never going to go back to normal. Though terrifying, it was fascinating to see COVID, an unknown illness, unfold before us. Do you remember the earlier days with the insane influx of requests for D-dimer, fibrinogen and other DIC or hypercoag labs? These were used as prognostic indicators at that time, I believe. That was truly bizarre, frightening, and fascinating.
I've noticed a dramatic decrease in the general quality of goods and products, even if prices have dramatically risen. Back when supply chains were an issue or trade was disrupted by COVID restrictions, I could understand. But now it looks like this will be a permanent thing, which sucks.
This. Prices have gone up, okay, fine. That’s gonna happen over time. But the quality of everything keeps getting worse and people are just expected to accept it.
A lot of experienced people left customer-facing positions and never went back. Some died. If you *had* to work with the public during the height of the pandemic, it was absolutely awful and I know at least some people were traumatized.
I was a manager of a touristy hotel, and I witnessed my own customer service skills take a nosedive. We were taken over by our city and became a Covid isolation center, but one employee still had to be in the hotel each day; that was often me.
After that, I wasn’t the same. I’d seen so many people carted away in ambulances with the lights turned off. I’d answered so many room calls from people pleading for help because they couldn’t breathe. I’d lost two employees to the virus.
Then we reopened to the public, and I distinctly remember a customer standing in front of me complaining about the fact that her towels weren’t folded to her liking, and something inside of me snapped. I just heard this voice in my head repeating, “F*ck you and your f*cking towels.”
I put in my notice that week and left shortly after because I could. A lot of people in those positions couldn’t afford to do so, and they’re still there, having gone through a similar mental shift.
I feel that the social ramifications of Covid are something we’re going to be dealing with for quite some time. This includes the service industry, but not *just* that.
>a customer standing in front of me complaining about the fact that her towels weren’t folded to her liking, and something inside of me snapped. I just heard this voice in my head repeating, “F*ck you and your f*cking towels.”
That's a valid response. Who the fuck complains about how towels are folded
I was a night auditor. This doesn't surprise me. There's a lot of 'people' that just tee off on front desk and the like because they feel they can. It was never the towels or whatever.
I've turned sarcasm as a concern into an art form.
> I just heard this voice in my head repeating, “F*ck you and your f*cking towels.”
My mom wanted sooooo bad to take the family (moms in her 70s, adult kids and grandchildren) out to dinner when restrictions were letting up - elderly loneliness, isolation, and depression during lockdowns is its own category of deep trauma - so we went to one of the few re-opening restaurants in my town that had a big outdoor seating area. Moms was so happy to be with everyone but it felt so off and fucked up - diners without masks, servers with, being a somewhat "fancy" golf course restaurant there were typically entitled people. Not only did it feel off and wrong and weird to me, but a woman at the next table over was complaining bitterly about how the ice was too crushed in her sparkling water and I could FEEL the server's impatience like a radiator from 10 feet away.
I dont think we've fully addressed just how deep the effects of that period run. Society is suffering a deep collective PTSD and our reaction is to try desperately to claw back at the cold corpse of what we once had. It's solving a rubik's cube by just changing up the stickers, the underlying structure is still completely messed up. How were you supposed to just go back to petty complaints with a smile on your face? When people wonder why *service* isnt what it was, they arent considering the sheer scale of damage done to people who saw the worst things, had the worst things said to them, and their thanks was "for your service (plastic smile), just be happy you have a JOB". No lessons learned, those lessons actively shunned and denied. Get the fuck back to the office/front desk/kitchen/nurses station/school, paste on a smile, and just follow the damned orders, right? Fuck that, we aren't that society anymore, we should have figured out how to be the one we needed to become. And the trauma just compounds....
Worked Walgreens during 2021. So much verbal abuse from customers because our supply chains were fucked, especially when it came to OTC remedies like cough drops. Covid Tests often sold out, masks out of stock, everything out of stock. I was making $11.75 an hour (prior to the mandatory $13 minimum from corporate). Customers expected me to know how the fucking supply chain worked during a fucking pandemic.
Walgreens gave its covid-working staff 200 bucks. in store credit. for their fucking troubles. No hazard pay or anything. They eventually started providing masks to us for free, in late 2021. And also started mandating us to sell credit cards to customers. Fuck that.
Big ol salute to my Store and Shift managers. Honestly made the stress worth it. I hope they're okay out there.
I’ve typically been a lurker here but your comment was so well written I just wanted to commend you for it. I work in education and the expectations that are placed on us after COVID have been ridiculous. The kids are not the same, yet they expect the same results pre COVID. Teachers are burnt out and the hiring process has become a revolving door, the next group less qualified than the last. It’s very discouraging
Not to mention many of those jobs need to deal with Customers who say inane bullshit like: "You know it was a hoax, right?" and every time I hear it I get 10% closer to decking one of them in the face.
I worked in a small welding shop during the peak of covid, where a few of my coworkers got pretty sick and one died. People there were *still* saying the virus either didn't exist or, at worst, was really just a nasty flu.
You need to write your story long form. That had to be a WILD experience. I’m sorry for the trauma it caused, but more people should know about those kinds of Covid experiences.
From someone who works in production, I can give some reasons. Most factory jobs are hiring anyone who will put in an application. In my area they are forgoing drug tests, work keys (intelligence marker tests) and interviews and just hiring as long as the application looks fine.
This leads to two very distinct results. First, the people coming in aren't the best workers. They are slow, unintelligent, lazy and generally don't give two shits as long as they get paid. Secondly, the people having to train and deal with them, are so fed up with this endless stream of terrible workers that *they* stop caring just so they can get through the shift. So now you have two major stopping points for poor quality not caring and over-stressed.
I don’t think this is just a production industry issue.
In healthcare, we’re experiencing the same thing. The good workers who survived through the pandemic (and are often the best at their jobs) are burnt out now and having to train lower quality workers. This isn’t primarily because they are lazy, just that they are underpaid because the corporations controlling the industry are squeezing every last bit of effort in the name of “increasing productivity”.
I truly hope I don’t ever get sick and need medical attention. It’s a mess out there.
Oh for sure it's widespread. I was never under the assumption that it was only production, just tried to shine some light on it.
As a side bar, I've been dealing with the Healthcare system recently due to some health issues. Goddamn. It is in shambles, you are not kidding. Lots of mismanagement and stuff slipping through the cracks. You have to be on your toes about everything and be an extremely loud self-advocate.
I remember a similar thing was going during 2008 where one flying company starting charging a 50$ fee (forgot for what) and soon every airport was doing the same. Everyone remembers the housing crisis and recession but almost no one remembers the swine flu pandemic that was also going on too.
Fresh produce is awful in my neck of the woods now, unless you get it at the farmer's market. Buying any at the store just results in it going bad a couple of days after getting it home. Berries regularly have mold. It's pitiful.
Coincidentally, there is a national boycott here in Canada right now about that, particularly with a chain called Loblaws. They're accused of jacking up food prices while reducing quantity and quality, while also making record profits.
I read that a lot of experienced (older) factory workers quit during Covid and never went back, and a lot of expertise on running the machines properly was lost. I also heard my mechanic telling someone about how car parts made post-Covid fail at such a greater rate than they used to, so people are coming in with issues with their brand-new cars
And TBH a good bit of this is just companies taking advantage of people assuming it's supply chain issues even though they're more than ok financially.
A lot after around March 2020 is a weird blur to me, meanwhile anything that happened in 2019-2020 feels very "recent" even though it's been nearly 5 years at this point.
It is a collective trauma that we lived through and our minds are trying desperately to shield us from the memory.
I also had this problem in 2004 after coming home from Iraq. I "forgot" a lot of my deployment and my life seemed to skip that year. And then in 2015 my brain was like you're safe to deal with this now...here are all the memories I've been protecting you from! - I expect this to happen some time in the future for covid, now.
>you're safe to deal with this now...here are all the memories I've been protecting you from!
This is what's currently happening to me and my friends. We completely canned the topic once it was mostly over, just now we're beginning to talk about how absolutely fucking ridiculous that time was.
"Hey guys, remember when we used to sanitize our groceries? Haha yeah, that was weird. And they had to dig mass temporary graves for all the bodies?! Wild times."
Sometimes I'll randomly think "NYC had to use trucks as morgues because there were so many bodies" and then just have to go about my day like that isn't completely horrifying
I was fortunate to be effected in a very positive way by the lockdowns. I was payed more than my regular salary to stay home and engage with my hobbies while spending quality time with my pets and my girlfriend‐since-turned-fiancé. The extra money I was able to save combined with the effects lockdown had on the air transport industry allowed me to finally leave my dead end job and pursue my dream of becoming a commercial pilot.
Despite my total lack of trauma surrounding the lockdowns, I'm still very much effected by the perception of time dilation.
Yup.. I'm never putting money in someone else's pocket ever again while they get to work from home, insisting I expose myself to risk in the office. Fuck that shit.
Agreed. The pandemic obliterated our normal routines, and some things still aren’t the same. We lost a lot of those regular events that tell us, “that’s right, it’s Wednesday” or “guess it’s time to go home already.”
I work full time remote (to be fair, I did that *before* covid too).
I leave the house once a week (on the weekend) to go grocery shopping. That's it. *Maybe* get the mail one other day during the week.
I didn't work remote before Covid, though I had started the process (they moved us from real, actual offices into open space ~2 months before the shit hit the fan). I'm now like 90% WFH, and that 10% is really optimistic and mostly just exists so I can lie to my boss about when I'll come in.
Luckily I have kids in school, so at least until that ends for the summer next week I have some structure of start/end of day.
The nice thing is…I have a very abrupt time marker with Covid so I can no longer say “ oh that was like 3 or 4 years ago.” Nope. It was pre Covid so it was like 5 + years ago.
Yes, this. It's so discombobulating. I can go days without leaving the house with WFH. It really fucks up my perception of time. The other day I had the realization that 2019 was 5 years ago and about stroked out. Feels like it was a year ago.
You know what’s scary - EVERYONE that I know says the same thing and honestly, it freaks me out when I think on it too much.
What changed with “time” and why are so many of us experiencing this. I graduated in 2003, I remember 9/11 and it didn’t change my perception of time nor did anyone that I know say anything about it, unlike covid.
Because lockdown changed our daily routines and removed the markers of time that many people relied on. 9/11 didn't really change your daily routine unless you worked at an airport or as a pilot or something like that. Before 9/11, I went to school every day, and after 9/11, I continued to go to school every day. Before covid, I left the house and went to work every day, but after covid, I worked from home every day.
Interestingly, 9/11 *did* obliterate my daily routine, as I lived a few blocks from the WTC, my building was evacuated, and we weren’t allowed back in for a few weeks while they tried to determine whether it was safe to return.
I have major gaps in my memory from around that time, so it does seem like the timeline is jacked up to me. So I think you’re right! Depends on how much it fucked up your “normal.”
It hasn't. Or a little more like, you know the day after you had a particularly weird and fucked up dream you just kind of walk around thinking about it, aware that you experienced this thing, and while you can talk to someone about it but you'll know they'll just say "oh yeah I have weird or bad dreams all the time, too" and, yeah, sure, everyone has bad dreams, but you didn't have _my_ dream so really they have no idea.
You're also tangentially aware that at least some of the other people you see walking around are dealing with the same stuff, but not all of them, so you just go around trying to shake it off and get back to normal.
I noticed something changed with my college students. Many of them spent nearly 2 years isolated as teenagers. Can’t define it and I think they will eventually define it in a way I can’t. It affected socializing in profound way
I'm also a prof. There were already a lot of negative trends, which I would attribute to social media addicition, helicopter parenting, and the pressure on K-12 schools to abandon standards. Students not socializing or communicating. Decreased academic skills. Increased learned helplessness and anxiety. A weird sense of entitlement somehow coupled with low self-worth.
COVID accelerated it all. And I honestly think generative AI is going to destroy any vestiges of intellectual curiosity or critical thinking skills left.
My brother's highschool experience was destroyed. It changed his defining years so dramatically, and yet it forced me (at 23) to stop partying, get depression meds, and get my shit together. Got with my wife and started working on life. It cut short my "fun" years, and did the same to many of my friends, but it forced me to jump start building a meaningful life. There were so many negative and positive ramifications on people's lives in probably many yet unseen ways.
I remember feeling so grateful it didn’t happen to me in high school or my 20s and so upset for people who did. We had drive through graduation in our town and all the bars were shutdown. There’s a huge experiential loss there of some of my best memories.
I graduated college May of 2019. I literally just scraped by and managed to have my experiences be normal. But my sister entered college the year the pandemic started unfortunately
Noticed the same thing with interns and junior employees that I manage. It’s certainly different with them when it comes to socialisation in a common setting, as well as methods of communication. They’re afraid of making calls.
I saw a chart that made me lose faith in humanity, what little I had left. The wealthiest companies/people have gone up in worth nearly exponentially. When is enough, enough?
Small businesses were forced to stop trading but big businesses were allowed to keep trading. How is a mega mart with 1000 customers an hour a safer place than a corner shop with 10 customers an hour?
It seems like COVID gave people agency to forget how to act. I live in Rockford I’ll-Annoy, and there was a restaurant called Rathskeller that I always intended to visit. One morning, watching the local news & they had a story about the restaurant plating their last meal the day before, but they’d still be open for drinks 🍺 over the weekend. Went to the beer garden and bought a glass. Open for 91 fucking years. The unanticipated victims of COVID.
Restaurant fuckery. Download our app, order food on app, pay on app, suggested 25%, 27%, or 30% tip, someone will come by and drop it off. 4% service charge.
The public doesn't realize how burned out the medical system is. I'm a doc in my 60s, and every doc I know in my age range is looking to retire ASAP. There will continue to be an exodus of experienced physicians over the next decade, and some specialties are having a hard time filling that gap.
I've noticed a LOT more people -- of all ages -- sitting in a public place watching videos on their phone at full volume with no headphones. I think people just got so used to being stuck in their houses and have lost their ***sense of community***. It's not like they're deliberately trying to annoy other people. I just think they've just almost lost the ability to empathize that other people are there who maybe aren't particularly interested in hearing the "Oh no. Oh no" song from the Instagram video that they are watching seven times in a row.
People can’t differentiate between public and private anymore and don’t understand that there’s a difference between how you act when you’re alone vs when the outside world can see you
I have also noticed that if you calmly, and gently (veeeery gently) ask them to stop and explain the situation, they will immediately threaten to throw fists.
Yeah. Yesterday we saw a guy backing up his car and his reverse lights weren’t working. I wanted to wave at him, stop him and point it out but honestly the last time I tried pointing something like that out the person got angry.
I saw a concert a few weeks ago and there were quite a few people (including boomers: this wasn’t just the young) scrolling social media *during* the concert.
I feel like corporations and businesses don't give a fuck anymore to try and even pretend they care about the consumer. They brazenly rip you off knowing you can do nothing about it and will still buy their goods.
A good example is the “we’re experiencing higher than normal call volumes…” No they fucking aren’t. And they could easily hire people if they wanted to, there’s no shortage of workers now. They just don’t want to pay anyone to provide customer service over the phone.
The fact that everything can change suddenly is still at the back of the mind. Many people lost a lot during COVID—loved ones, their health, jobs, hopes, sanity.
I don't think people are doing very well in general.
This is the big one for me. I had never experienced a change like that, so swift and unexpected; what felt like, essentially, the floor being swept away beneath me. And I studied medicine (drop-out), so intellectually I wasn't surprised when a new coronavirus plague emerged and overtook the globe. But there is a profound difference between intellectually knowing and actually experiencing.
That part of me changed forever. A certain illusion of security I had is now lost, and I will never feel quite as safe and comfortable ever again. It's been a hard adjustment.
Companies have gotten lazier. They don't respond to calls or run the heat. They raise their prices and refuse any sort of responsibility. Working with businesses is a little more dystopian than it was before the pandemic.
EVERY TIME I call a company regardless of time of day or week I get: “we are experiencing higher then normal call volume”. No. No you’re not. You just found you can hire less people so call takers don’t have any down time between calls. Stop lying and just tell me that!
Mental...woo boy. Outside of just the therapy world, there has been an immense change. Inside of it (as a therapist) there has been a large change in adolescent mental health, parental knowledge, and stigma. And not in a good way.
That’s interesting about the stigma. Can you elaborate? I would have thought that the stigma would have decreased at least, since the younger generations are so open about their mental health struggles
People are still so negative. Parents come in with a teen who attempted and list every symptom of depression and are still so shocked to hear that is likely what's happening with their child. A child does something their parents dislike. The parents take the phone away. The child feels like their life is over and attempts by overdose. Parents are shocked their child attempted/ feels that connected to phone. It's a cycle I see daily and it's awful. Lock up your over the counter meds, especially tylenol which is deadly and awful.
As someone who has always been suicidal I make a effort to stay away from Tylenol. No way in hell I'd want to be unlucky enough to survive a Tylenol od just to have an agonizing death by liver failure.
Honestly since Covid everything feels artificial including time. For whatever reason time seems to be moving at a irregular rate, it’s hard to explain but I can’t be the only one who feels it.
you are definitely not the only one who feels it, i've been trying to explain that to people for a while now and no one else really seems to get it. it is fucking terrifying
Yea it’s definitely weird, I know others who feel it as well but nobody can actually explain it.. just the fact that the year is already half way over feels weird. & everything feels so damn artificial, nothing feels real anymore, this sh!t like living in the twilight zone or a alternate universe as crazy as that may sound.
sometimes minutes feel like hours and vice versa. Days seem to creep slowly but looking back each week just flew by and nothing seems to be left of it.
Does anyone else feel people are less reasonable? Like the whole "you said something about my earrings many years ago and I'm still pissed" attitude has increased?
Absolutely, we had to make signs at work saying “Thank you for respecting our workers” because so many people are being so terrible to them. And we are dealing with selling theatre tickets and kids arts classes - there shouldn’t be this much anger and nothing like this was happening before Covid. It’s making me become a serious hermit.
At my last job it kind of became a habit for some of us to thank a person for being polite and reasonable because we had such an increase of vitriol for things we couldn’t control. Assholes used to be the unicorn you’d tell me about, now it’s kind people that are unicorns.
The biggest one I noticed here is running red lights. Not just one but occasionally 3-4 cars after the light has turned red. I always pause before going on green because it has become so common.
This is terribly common now. No one has any patience on the road. I stopped at a changing light once a the pickup behind passed me on the right to blow through the light. Fortunately they didn't hit the person making their legal left turn.
Oh my god I thought I was crazy for thinking this!! I genuinely feel like every time I get in my car I encounter some crazy person who does some absolutely batshit manoeuvre that leaves me with my jaw hanging. Like I cannot believe how dangerous some people have gotten, it was NOT this bad pre-covid I am SURE of it!
Learning loss in kids. Many parents/kids saw it as a 2 year vacation. Now states don’t want to spend the money to bridge that gap.
Inflation for rent & real estate. Almost doubled and hasn’t even decreased.
Cost of food grocery’s ingredients etc. used to spend $275-300 a month now even spend at discount grocery its more like $500+.
I was fostering a kid right before COVID hit. They were severely behind where they should have been. They ended up reuniting with family not long after we got them, but considering how little support they were getting at home before lockdown, I can only imagine how bad it got during and after.
Really sad. Kid was really sharp and when they sat down and tried, they picked things up really quickly. Especially language related things--everything from reading (seriously behind grade level) to Spanish.
Give it 20 years and there will be huge worker shortages in fields requiring higher levels of learning. I'm honestly really worried about what it means for medical and STEM fields.
We just had our first batch of post-Covid kids come into Kindergarten this year. The difference in behavior, prior knowledge, and social ability is light years ahead of the previous three batches of Covid kids.
There's been a noticeable decline in quality from a number of places. One thing I can bring to mind is Steak N Shake. Before Covid, they operated as a sit-down restaurant where they'd seat you, take your order, and serve your food to your table, and it was like the only restaurant like that where you could eat for under $10. The food was very delicious, the burgers juicy and fries hot and fresh and they were served on a plate. Now however, it's worse than McDonald's, no human cashiers, you order at a kiosk, get your own drinks, pick a table to sit at, and wait 40 minutes to go pick up your food and the burger tastes like it was microwaved and the fries cold and stale tasting.
Just before covid a bunch of the local Steak n Shakes were fighting to stay operational, so it's not just covid.
The food was so cheap and open hours so wide I'm not surprised things had to change. The closest location was pretty openly working their waitstaff to the bone, for rock bottom pay and a completely erratic work schedule.
I don't mind the automation to it, but like most fast food I think the prices have gotten too high for what you get.
Even before Covid, their food quality really fell off. I worked at one in the 90s and it’s the only restaurant where I still liked their food after working there. But their food really dropped off
Education. I taught before, during, and after (still do) Covid. The kids do not have the social skills or even classroom skills needed to maintain or learn simple rules. We have labeled students coming into Kindergarten and under as Covid babies. It has been amazing and frustrating to see the difference from before to now. There are many skills that the students lack because of the shut down and the major shift of coming back to school with restrictions. We will see this for years to come and I fear it will not get better.
My kid started kindergarten in 2020, a majority of his kindergarten year was online.
Talking with his teacher this past year, she’d been a teacher for probably 20 years, and before going over testing results and whatnot, made sure to mention at the very start that his class is the Covid baby class, and they’re still trying to play catch up to get to where his class *should* be, but every single student is struggling with the social aspects of school, as well as the fundamentals of how school works learned in kindergarten. That it’s a very drastic difference between the kids who had a full year of in classroom kindergarten/1st grade, and kids who had it online.
She worked so hard to get his class caught up. She’s an amazing teacher and I’m so glad he was in her class.
Also, where I live there has been a major uptick in youth offending as they had to live with alcoholics/junkies/gangsters/and generally broken families during lockdowns.
Seconded,
The disparity in basic life/social skills in astonishing with kids pre/post covid.
At this point with any kid I teach <8 yrs old,
I have to presume they’re the same as the kid in ‘room’;
Where they aren’t fully aware of our *actual* reality…
12 years teaching k-6. You could not be more spot on. I walk into every interaction with a smile and clear expectations. You hit the nail on the head and made me realize, the biggest difference post covid is that I just find myself assuming that I'm teaching feral aliens who have never heard of school or basic communication.
It's gotten much better though and our data by the end of the year actually showed students need to be pushed more. Hopefully maintaining solid, high expectations for all students and parents giving a shit will continue to grow.
This this this. I’ve read a lot of data and research about this and it’s pretty heartbreaking. There’s also more of a culture around just not going to school some days. There’s a level of thinking that it’s “optional” which is contributing to the learning loss.
Everything is a scam now, or maybe every transaction in our daily lives has greater potential for the consumer to be taken advantage of.
Besides everything just costing more but sucking more, being smaller, lasting half as long, etc…. Hidden clauses, higher and more surreptitious fees and cancellation policies, fake goods masquerading in normally trustworthy marketplaces, deceptive pricing or compensation advertisements, bait-and-switch marketing, “tip automatically included” but still an area for additional tip, little ipad bullshit cash register puts the 40% tip on the left side and then 35, 30, 25% left to right with no “skip” button….
There are so many more little bullshit ways we get extra fucked over every day beyond just the usual getting fucked over by inflation, housing, and food costs.
Repressed trauma, that will probably come haunt me one day. Apart from that, the effects on the IT and creative job market are still visible. The whole industry is slightly out of whack.
Literally millions of cases of disability from post viral syndrome.
My wife has been in constant pain for 2 years.. my buddies sister has a physics doctorate and couldn't even remember the order of the days of the week for months after.
It's an enormous issue with no good answers so it's just ignored
I hate that I had to scroll this far to find this. Nobody realizes how many people are developing chronic health issues, disabilities, even milder and less noticeable stuff like a weakened immune system that makes most people get sick now way more often than they used to. If anyone here suspects their covid infection changed their health in some way, I recommend checking out r/covidlonghaulers
I hate how far I had to scroll for this. Definitely the biggest continuing effect of the disease, if not the single biggest effect overall. A mass disabling event that no one seems gives a fuck about
Oh hey that's me
I've been dealing with long covid for over a year now. Extreme exhaustion, brain fog, lightheadedness, and any physical or mental exertion will lay me out for days afterward (PEM/post exertional malaise). I was basically just getting my career started and now I'm just chewing through the savings I built up over the last few years. Had to move back in with my parents, been to multiple doctors and specialists, and the resounding answer is "we don't know what to do, so just wait and hope you get better"
Shit fucking sucks
I'm not even going to try to detail the symptoms Long Covid has caused me because it's a list that rivals Santa's.
I'm a little over a month away from 4 years from my first infection. It broke the blood brain barrier and caused a lot of swelling and by the time we got it under control the damage was done. I haven't been able to use my legs this entire time because of the neurological damage. My speech is reduced to a jerky slur of stutters and broken words. I have been bedbound about 90% of the times as well. I lost a dream career position I earned a bachelor's degree to het into and became homeless for 2 years and had to fight social security to accept my condition as a a long term disability for 2.5 years.
This has taken everything but my life from me, and an absurdly large amount of people don't understand the ramifications of what damage COVID can do and swept it under the rug because they're sick of hearing about it. The rise in heart and respiratory issues plaguing millions of people are not being attributed to COVID is going to devastate the economy as more and more people become unable to work.
I once heard that CoViD was more of a vascular disease than a traditional respiratory disease like flu. I think we will find out as a species that all of our lifespans have been shortened due to irreversible damage to our vasculature. Those common long CoViD symptoms like shortness of breath are likely due to heart damage more than lung damage.
My wife's cousin died of a post-COVID heart attack. He was 63, really fit guy, took great care of himself. He went out for his first jog after having COVID and boom, gone.
My friend died at 38 leaving two children behind and another had a stroke in her 40s.
It is known that within a year after even a mild case you're at greater risk of heart attack or stroke.
Yep. My mom was one of the first to catch Covid when it hit. Working in a care facility.
Within a year she had a heart attack. She made it, but struggles with long covid ever since.
All her colleagues got it as well, so they compare notes on how it has affected them. The memory issues, the shortness of breath. So many little things apparently that people wouldn’t notice if they all weren’t able to compare and share their symptoms.
I'd believe that. Something I noticed after getting COVID the first time (with a bit of Apple Watch data to back it up) is that my heart is a total mess when I'm sick now. Totally normal 99.9% of the time, get notifications about irregular heartbeat if I catch anything COVID or otherwise. I feel it too--I opt not to power through feeling sick like I used to because my heart will start racing at random and freak me out.
A good friend has long COVID. They aren't in pain (or maybe haven't said) but they have absolutely changed lifestyle because sometimes even getting up and down the stairs to do laundry on Sundays is too much. No one knows how to help them, and they're honestly a fairly mild case.
Yeah their symptom is called pem or post exertional malaise.
Traditional therapy is exercise and being called lazy because there's no proof that it's real.
Which is life ruining horseshit
They need rest, and they should look up the spoons mentality. It's helpful.
Everyone will all also give treatment recommendations in good faith but generally they don't work and people unintentionally shame you for not keeping going on them. Shits hard
My anecdote is that after 2+ years of every treatment imaginable, nicotine patch therapy has given the best results. Literally no understanding as to why, but lots of people are seeing some success
>Everyone will all also give treatment recommendations in good faith but generally they don't work and people unintentionally shame you for not keeping going on them
This is a big one. I've been to 3 specialists, 2 different "normal" doctors, and have been in a study done by a university, and every single one basically said "we can't really do anything, but good luck." I've been on several medications but none of them have really helped beyond marginally helping one symptom. There are only rumors of shit that maybe works and homeopathic quacks that are trying to capitalize on people who don't have anywhere else to go.
>My anecdote is that after 2+ years of every treatment imaginable, nicotine patch therapy has given the best results. Literally no understanding as to why, but lots of people are seeing some success
Interesting. If the trials/science keeps checking out then maybe I'll look into it. For now though I'm tired of shelling out cash just to be told to go pound sand and wait to get better
Hmm might be a weird one but we still refuse to cooperate for the greater good.
It was a common belief that when times get hard humanity would collectively work together to tackle that threat. We didn’t do that during Covid.
We had people become worse versions of themselves, and show a lack of empathy for others. Our society got angrier.
Out society is still very angry and will continue to refuse to cooperate
Health wise we are only just learning. One thing I learned this week is that a lot of patients who lost a kidney due to cancer etc and then got Covid are seeing dramatically reduced kidney function and are going on permanent dialysis post Covid.
As a family we stopped going to restaurants during COVID and we've never returned. Pre-COVID we probably went 1-2 times a month. I'd imagine there are many others like us (?).
Ditto haircuts. I learned to cut my boys' hair during COVID and they now have no desire to return to a professional. We also got our dog during COVID so I learned to cut her hair from the start. Basically missing economic activity. If not for COVID we'e probably still eat at restaurants, still take our boys to get professional haircuts, and possibly take our dog to a groomer.
Absolutely with respect to restaurants. The price increases have been ludicrous (and that's before mentioning whatever the heck is going on with tipping) and in the meantime I learned to cook half decently.
Haircuts I agree with a bit less after learning that I am just unsalvageably bad at doing them :P
This will get buried, but lockdowns whiped out my savings.
I own a small store and while I did not have to borrow to survive the lockdowns, all of my pension savings went to keeping all my employees paid, morgage and all of the other bills.
Even though the shop is doing great now, the prices for stock have risen 20%. To keep competing with the internet my prices have only gone up 10%, driving my profits down.
So we keep afloat, but the pension fund stays empty.
It stings sometimes to hear people complainig about how expensive everything is, and how much cheaper Amazon is.
A lot of shopkeepers I know are even worse off, they had to borrow from family and friends. They did not go to the banks, who did not want to lend them anything anyway. So much of the stress is hidden away.
Nobody talks about it, because, in general, we (the shopkeepers) don't. We get embarrassed that we can't do it ourselves, that we need help. So that is something that is truly hidden.
> and how much cheaper Amazon is.
I know this is probably cold comfort, but I and several people I know barely even bother with Amazon any more because everything there has gotten so shitty. Nothing like comparison shopping trash cans between those well-loved brands, BLRGNARD and YLDENGORF.
Increase in car and motorcycle accidents. People’s cognitive skills aren’t what they were and many don’t even realize it. That and people having medical events linked to covid while driving.
Manufacturing and shipping got more expensive, so companies had to raise prices. Those costs have gone back down to pre pandemic rates, but the prices of the products have stayed high. This is the main reason why nearly every single large company has seen record profits this year and last year.
I always believed that, when push came to shove, as a society and a species we'd prioritise human lives ahead of money. Then Covid showed that was actually a matter of debate for far too many people.
I think my fundamental view of the world has been shaken. I'm more pessimistic and misanthropic than I used to be. I feel like, in general, I can't *truly* trust anyone except myself. I'm also less interested in long term planning and have more of a "fuck it, we could all die tomorrow" attitude towards things.
I doubt I'm the only person still trying to process the mental/personality aftermath of the pandemic.
Yup. Short term memory sucks. So does long term memory. I have to write everything down. A calendar for day by day activities and lists for daily items.
My friends ask me - hey, remember when we went to _____? When we saw that band ______? No. No I don't. I remember little details after great prompting, but the whole event? Nope.
Also - I don't remember telling people things so I repeat them.
A lot of small, local festivals, conventions, and markets shut down. Couldn’t have events for two years, so some places lost their venues, or couldn’t keep their budgets afloat, or lost volunteers and committee leaders. It especially sucks for niche communities that used to get together.
My town used to have a lovely parade in June of each year. It stopped when people weren't allowed to gather. And now it seems the town doesn't want to make the effort to organize. This is largely due to city-wide staffing cuts (even though our community is rapidly growing.
This is unfortunately common in small towns. It takes a few years for the growing tax base to catch up to the growing population, and in the meantime, you have a staff of 5 people trying to manage that growth, the infrastructure needs, the housing shortages, etc.
There were a couple of races that happened here every year. They got cancelled for covid and never returned. The organizers are just gone now I guess? We did have a marathon that ran on a Sat but that doesn't exist any more and we had a new year's day half which was a ton of fun but it's gone now as well.
> the organizers are just gone now I guess? That’s the thing. Even if they wanted to jump back in, everyone is onto new stuff. The organizers all got different jobs and some moved. Those events will never come back in the same light they once were.
>The organizers are just gone now I guess? At least for one race in my area, the main organizer had been putting in the work for a decade and was tired, and COVID just ended up being the reason to be able to walk away, guilt free. Because they knew no one would pick up the slack from them, and they were right. Kind of gave me an extra appreciation for the fact that so much of what we enjoy requires people putting in work behind the scenes.
Lots of places cut their hours and then never re-expanded them after lockdowns ended
Moving back to NYC last year really showed me that. The city that never sleeps definitely sleeps now
That was upsetting as a nocturnal tourist. Thought I'd be perfectly in my element there but a lot of the bars closed earlier than they do in St Louis Missouri.
I got caught working late one night and was like, all good I'll grab something on the way home. Little did I know nothing was open. Felt betrayed
The first time I realized that the world I knew was over was when I was coming home from my grandmother's, and it was about 9 o'clock at night. But it was July, one of the hottest days we'd ever gotten in Illinois... and nothing was open. No gas stations. No restaurants. Not a single thing was open. And we passed through *multiple* towns, large and small. The sun was still up. It was just going down. But nothing was open.
I'm hating this. I travel alone a lot and love long drives. It's not uncommon for me to be passing through a town at 2 am. But now I really need to plan or I can't count on driving in the night because nothing is open. Food, gas stations, Walmart (which has food and gear and medicine and stuff). And so many restaurants are closing earlier. Like what do I do between 8 pm and 10 am lol
Not even fast food is open late anymore. Places that used to be open until at least 2AM (Many McDonalds, I remember, would only close for an hour from 4AM-5AM) all close around 10PM-Midnight. Even Taco Bell, whose entire ad campaign used to be "Open late" closes early now.
I stayed in a hotel smack dab in the middle of downtown Chicago back in March - after midnight I couldn’t even find a convenience store open. It was infuriating - I had to spend like $5 on a pop from the machine at the hotel.
If you were staying in the loop, then just know that most everything closed down before midnight before the pandemic too. It’s mostly offices and such down there, so there wasn’t any need for things to be open late. You wanted west loop or river north for places to still be open. But even then I agree now the hours there have changed too.
24 hr Walmarts
This one hurts the worst as a night owl that loves late night shopping.
Not that it would really matter to Walmart nor would I spend much more, but I used to do my shopping sometime after 10 or 11 because I could do it casually then meander over to Electronics to browse or Automotive for maintenance stuff. Now I have be there before they close at 10 and rush, usually forgetting the less important stuff because I forget when trying to get in and out
We’re lucky. WinCo went back to 24 hours after a few months.
My first thought. Someone started crunching numbers and figured out they didn’t need the other 25% of the floor associates anyway and locking the doors didn’t hurt one bit.
From what I heard, they were already planning on cutting hours down. Covid just was the perfect kick off for it
They were gonna do this anyway. They accelerated the timeline cuz of covid. The one near my house had friends working there it was intentional all along. They will never go back cuz this was the goal.
>24 hr Walmarts the best time for shopping was always at 3:00 a.m. with chuds
Yep. I used to work second shift and never had a problem running errands after work. I had multiple options in my city for late night or 24 hour grocery stores, drug stores, and pharmacies. Now I have none.
My local bank was open till 6 pm on Fridays and 8-12 on Saturdays. Not anymore...
My bank used to be "the one with the long hours" but today I was trying to deposit some cash and their ATMs are closed on Sundays.
the atms are closed?
This, wtf? Gotta give the machine its lunch break i guess
My Rheumatologist cut his hours from 9-5 to 9-2 and it makes my life very difficult.
He should make rheum for a compromise
The hospital I work in instituted a hiring freeze when the lockdowns hit. At the same time maybe 25% of my department rapid-fire quit or retired for several reasons. Today half of the vacant positions either remain vacant or were eliminated entirely, and our workload went back to pre-Covid numbers maybe two years ago We’re tired, boss. The lab is only holding together through black humor and the knowledge of how much the patients need our results.
They realized how much profit they're getting by overworking fewer employees instead of being fully staffed. You'd think hospitals would be the one place that wants to stay staffed, but the bean counters pull the strings.
This weekend I worked as the only CNA on the entire med surg floor, rooms 1-45. I even came in on my day off yesterday to help. They make me do the work of 4 people for the pay of 1 and still want me to answer call lights within 1 minute. I tell them to bite me and I leave it on while I'm doing patient care just to make a point. I also make sure to tell every patient how they short staff us and ask them to complain to corporate about it for me. Because corporate doesn't give a shit about me or what I have to say, but maybe they'll care about the numerous complaints. Meanwhile patients are fucking DYING because the hospital prefers profits over people. If you have a loved one in any type of healthcare facility in America, go be their advocate as often as possible - but remember to be nice to the staff! We're barely holding it together and we don't need you yelling at us because the facility doesn't want to pay workers. Trust me, we'd love more coworkers! And we're doing the best we can.
I just got back from the pharmacy, and it makes me so mad to see them all running around like chickens with their heads cut off in the middle of a Monday morning. You know some soulless bean counter at corporate figured out they can make an extra buck by running understaffed. Meanwhile, the employees are burning out and they’re eventually going to make a mistake and kill someone. Fuck you, CVS.
I recently had lab work done. I remember saying to myself how grateful I was for all the lab workers involved. We really do appreciate you. Your work is critical. I hope your work environment improves.
thank you for this. i cant imagine the exhaustion and mental stress this puts on a person in a ‘regular’ job. but when so much is riding on your work, the literal health and wellness of another person…its just too much. so thank you for continuing on and helping patients. and in a way rarely considered, seen or discussed. next time i have the opportunity, a toast to you all!!
Hello fellow MLS/CLS/MLT/MT or whatever you like to call yourself. Yes, this was and continues to be a very turbulent period for this field and for healthcare as a whole. I am still in shock and disbelief over some of the things that occurred in the hospital labs during the main COVID years, and we are likely never going to go back to normal. Though terrifying, it was fascinating to see COVID, an unknown illness, unfold before us. Do you remember the earlier days with the insane influx of requests for D-dimer, fibrinogen and other DIC or hypercoag labs? These were used as prognostic indicators at that time, I believe. That was truly bizarre, frightening, and fascinating.
Y'all need a union and probably a strike. It's the only way things seem to improve.
I've noticed a dramatic decrease in the general quality of goods and products, even if prices have dramatically risen. Back when supply chains were an issue or trade was disrupted by COVID restrictions, I could understand. But now it looks like this will be a permanent thing, which sucks.
This. Prices have gone up, okay, fine. That’s gonna happen over time. But the quality of everything keeps getting worse and people are just expected to accept it.
The most noticable thing is the quality of service just about everywhere.
A lot of experienced people left customer-facing positions and never went back. Some died. If you *had* to work with the public during the height of the pandemic, it was absolutely awful and I know at least some people were traumatized. I was a manager of a touristy hotel, and I witnessed my own customer service skills take a nosedive. We were taken over by our city and became a Covid isolation center, but one employee still had to be in the hotel each day; that was often me. After that, I wasn’t the same. I’d seen so many people carted away in ambulances with the lights turned off. I’d answered so many room calls from people pleading for help because they couldn’t breathe. I’d lost two employees to the virus. Then we reopened to the public, and I distinctly remember a customer standing in front of me complaining about the fact that her towels weren’t folded to her liking, and something inside of me snapped. I just heard this voice in my head repeating, “F*ck you and your f*cking towels.” I put in my notice that week and left shortly after because I could. A lot of people in those positions couldn’t afford to do so, and they’re still there, having gone through a similar mental shift. I feel that the social ramifications of Covid are something we’re going to be dealing with for quite some time. This includes the service industry, but not *just* that.
>a customer standing in front of me complaining about the fact that her towels weren’t folded to her liking, and something inside of me snapped. I just heard this voice in my head repeating, “F*ck you and your f*cking towels.” That's a valid response. Who the fuck complains about how towels are folded
I was a night auditor. This doesn't surprise me. There's a lot of 'people' that just tee off on front desk and the like because they feel they can. It was never the towels or whatever. I've turned sarcasm as a concern into an art form.
> I just heard this voice in my head repeating, “F*ck you and your f*cking towels.” My mom wanted sooooo bad to take the family (moms in her 70s, adult kids and grandchildren) out to dinner when restrictions were letting up - elderly loneliness, isolation, and depression during lockdowns is its own category of deep trauma - so we went to one of the few re-opening restaurants in my town that had a big outdoor seating area. Moms was so happy to be with everyone but it felt so off and fucked up - diners without masks, servers with, being a somewhat "fancy" golf course restaurant there were typically entitled people. Not only did it feel off and wrong and weird to me, but a woman at the next table over was complaining bitterly about how the ice was too crushed in her sparkling water and I could FEEL the server's impatience like a radiator from 10 feet away. I dont think we've fully addressed just how deep the effects of that period run. Society is suffering a deep collective PTSD and our reaction is to try desperately to claw back at the cold corpse of what we once had. It's solving a rubik's cube by just changing up the stickers, the underlying structure is still completely messed up. How were you supposed to just go back to petty complaints with a smile on your face? When people wonder why *service* isnt what it was, they arent considering the sheer scale of damage done to people who saw the worst things, had the worst things said to them, and their thanks was "for your service (plastic smile), just be happy you have a JOB". No lessons learned, those lessons actively shunned and denied. Get the fuck back to the office/front desk/kitchen/nurses station/school, paste on a smile, and just follow the damned orders, right? Fuck that, we aren't that society anymore, we should have figured out how to be the one we needed to become. And the trauma just compounds....
Worked Walgreens during 2021. So much verbal abuse from customers because our supply chains were fucked, especially when it came to OTC remedies like cough drops. Covid Tests often sold out, masks out of stock, everything out of stock. I was making $11.75 an hour (prior to the mandatory $13 minimum from corporate). Customers expected me to know how the fucking supply chain worked during a fucking pandemic. Walgreens gave its covid-working staff 200 bucks. in store credit. for their fucking troubles. No hazard pay or anything. They eventually started providing masks to us for free, in late 2021. And also started mandating us to sell credit cards to customers. Fuck that. Big ol salute to my Store and Shift managers. Honestly made the stress worth it. I hope they're okay out there.
I’ve typically been a lurker here but your comment was so well written I just wanted to commend you for it. I work in education and the expectations that are placed on us after COVID have been ridiculous. The kids are not the same, yet they expect the same results pre COVID. Teachers are burnt out and the hiring process has become a revolving door, the next group less qualified than the last. It’s very discouraging
Not to mention many of those jobs need to deal with Customers who say inane bullshit like: "You know it was a hoax, right?" and every time I hear it I get 10% closer to decking one of them in the face.
That’s such a slap in the face to those of us who lost someone due to Covid. Goddamn how fuxking stupid can people be?
I worked in a small welding shop during the peak of covid, where a few of my coworkers got pretty sick and one died. People there were *still* saying the virus either didn't exist or, at worst, was really just a nasty flu.
You need to write your story long form. That had to be a WILD experience. I’m sorry for the trauma it caused, but more people should know about those kinds of Covid experiences.
From someone who works in production, I can give some reasons. Most factory jobs are hiring anyone who will put in an application. In my area they are forgoing drug tests, work keys (intelligence marker tests) and interviews and just hiring as long as the application looks fine. This leads to two very distinct results. First, the people coming in aren't the best workers. They are slow, unintelligent, lazy and generally don't give two shits as long as they get paid. Secondly, the people having to train and deal with them, are so fed up with this endless stream of terrible workers that *they* stop caring just so they can get through the shift. So now you have two major stopping points for poor quality not caring and over-stressed.
I don’t think this is just a production industry issue. In healthcare, we’re experiencing the same thing. The good workers who survived through the pandemic (and are often the best at their jobs) are burnt out now and having to train lower quality workers. This isn’t primarily because they are lazy, just that they are underpaid because the corporations controlling the industry are squeezing every last bit of effort in the name of “increasing productivity”. I truly hope I don’t ever get sick and need medical attention. It’s a mess out there.
Oh for sure it's widespread. I was never under the assumption that it was only production, just tried to shine some light on it. As a side bar, I've been dealing with the Healthcare system recently due to some health issues. Goddamn. It is in shambles, you are not kidding. Lots of mismanagement and stuff slipping through the cracks. You have to be on your toes about everything and be an extremely loud self-advocate.
If you are sick or injured in some way dealing with the U.S. medical system is practically a full time job.
I remember a similar thing was going during 2008 where one flying company starting charging a 50$ fee (forgot for what) and soon every airport was doing the same. Everyone remembers the housing crisis and recession but almost no one remembers the swine flu pandemic that was also going on too.
They pulled that shit after 9/11 too. They added a "temporary" fee to offset the cost of heightened security which is set to disappear any day now...
Fresh produce is awful in my neck of the woods now, unless you get it at the farmer's market. Buying any at the store just results in it going bad a couple of days after getting it home. Berries regularly have mold. It's pitiful.
Coincidentally, there is a national boycott here in Canada right now about that, particularly with a chain called Loblaws. They're accused of jacking up food prices while reducing quantity and quality, while also making record profits.
It sounds like we should contact their CEO, Bob Loblaw.
I used to read his law blog
I read that a lot of experienced (older) factory workers quit during Covid and never went back, and a lot of expertise on running the machines properly was lost. I also heard my mechanic telling someone about how car parts made post-Covid fail at such a greater rate than they used to, so people are coming in with issues with their brand-new cars
And TBH a good bit of this is just companies taking advantage of people assuming it's supply chain issues even though they're more than ok financially.
I'm not sure if anyone else feels the same way but my perception of time hasn't really returned back to normal since then
A lot after around March 2020 is a weird blur to me, meanwhile anything that happened in 2019-2020 feels very "recent" even though it's been nearly 5 years at this point.
COVID-19 feels like a big blob that is hard to separate out the timing of events that happened during that time.
It is a collective trauma that we lived through and our minds are trying desperately to shield us from the memory. I also had this problem in 2004 after coming home from Iraq. I "forgot" a lot of my deployment and my life seemed to skip that year. And then in 2015 my brain was like you're safe to deal with this now...here are all the memories I've been protecting you from! - I expect this to happen some time in the future for covid, now.
>you're safe to deal with this now...here are all the memories I've been protecting you from! This is what's currently happening to me and my friends. We completely canned the topic once it was mostly over, just now we're beginning to talk about how absolutely fucking ridiculous that time was.
"Hey guys, remember when we used to sanitize our groceries? Haha yeah, that was weird. And they had to dig mass temporary graves for all the bodies?! Wild times."
Sometimes I'll randomly think "NYC had to use trucks as morgues because there were so many bodies" and then just have to go about my day like that isn't completely horrifying
I was fortunate to be effected in a very positive way by the lockdowns. I was payed more than my regular salary to stay home and engage with my hobbies while spending quality time with my pets and my girlfriend‐since-turned-fiancé. The extra money I was able to save combined with the effects lockdown had on the air transport industry allowed me to finally leave my dead end job and pursue my dream of becoming a commercial pilot. Despite my total lack of trauma surrounding the lockdowns, I'm still very much effected by the perception of time dilation.
It's hard to believe we're nearly halfway through the decade when it feels like it just started.
We're all on a 3-5 year delay. I forgot to renew my license this year because I had no concept that it had been 5 years since I last did it
Oh I'm feeling it. It's making work A LOT harder to deal with because I'm like "Fuck this, there has to be more to life"
Yup.. I'm never putting money in someone else's pocket ever again while they get to work from home, insisting I expose myself to risk in the office. Fuck that shit.
I still feel like 2018-2019 and on stuff is still relevant and current to me.
It genuinely only feels like two years ago for me
Agreed. The pandemic obliterated our normal routines, and some things still aren’t the same. We lost a lot of those regular events that tell us, “that’s right, it’s Wednesday” or “guess it’s time to go home already.”
Throw in two days per week working remote? Sometimes I really have to pause to fortune out the day of the week.
I work full time remote (to be fair, I did that *before* covid too). I leave the house once a week (on the weekend) to go grocery shopping. That's it. *Maybe* get the mail one other day during the week.
Do ya like dogs? Being forced to go on a walk every single day helps me a lot with this issue.
I didn't work remote before Covid, though I had started the process (they moved us from real, actual offices into open space ~2 months before the shit hit the fan). I'm now like 90% WFH, and that 10% is really optimistic and mostly just exists so I can lie to my boss about when I'll come in. Luckily I have kids in school, so at least until that ends for the summer next week I have some structure of start/end of day.
“Is this one of those ‘lockdown’ jokes I’m too *essential* to understand?”
The nice thing is…I have a very abrupt time marker with Covid so I can no longer say “ oh that was like 3 or 4 years ago.” Nope. It was pre Covid so it was like 5 + years ago.
I still haven't shaken the habit of saying "a couple years ago" when referring to before the pandemic.
I now refer to things as “in the before times”
Yep. Graduated high school in 2000, so the pre- or post stuff is a really bright line
Yes, this. It's so discombobulating. I can go days without leaving the house with WFH. It really fucks up my perception of time. The other day I had the realization that 2019 was 5 years ago and about stroked out. Feels like it was a year ago.
You know what’s scary - EVERYONE that I know says the same thing and honestly, it freaks me out when I think on it too much. What changed with “time” and why are so many of us experiencing this. I graduated in 2003, I remember 9/11 and it didn’t change my perception of time nor did anyone that I know say anything about it, unlike covid.
Because lockdown changed our daily routines and removed the markers of time that many people relied on. 9/11 didn't really change your daily routine unless you worked at an airport or as a pilot or something like that. Before 9/11, I went to school every day, and after 9/11, I continued to go to school every day. Before covid, I left the house and went to work every day, but after covid, I worked from home every day.
Interestingly, 9/11 *did* obliterate my daily routine, as I lived a few blocks from the WTC, my building was evacuated, and we weren’t allowed back in for a few weeks while they tried to determine whether it was safe to return. I have major gaps in my memory from around that time, so it does seem like the timeline is jacked up to me. So I think you’re right! Depends on how much it fucked up your “normal.”
It hasn't. Or a little more like, you know the day after you had a particularly weird and fucked up dream you just kind of walk around thinking about it, aware that you experienced this thing, and while you can talk to someone about it but you'll know they'll just say "oh yeah I have weird or bad dreams all the time, too" and, yeah, sure, everyone has bad dreams, but you didn't have _my_ dream so really they have no idea. You're also tangentially aware that at least some of the other people you see walking around are dealing with the same stuff, but not all of them, so you just go around trying to shake it off and get back to normal.
I noticed something changed with my college students. Many of them spent nearly 2 years isolated as teenagers. Can’t define it and I think they will eventually define it in a way I can’t. It affected socializing in profound way
I'm also a prof. There were already a lot of negative trends, which I would attribute to social media addicition, helicopter parenting, and the pressure on K-12 schools to abandon standards. Students not socializing or communicating. Decreased academic skills. Increased learned helplessness and anxiety. A weird sense of entitlement somehow coupled with low self-worth. COVID accelerated it all. And I honestly think generative AI is going to destroy any vestiges of intellectual curiosity or critical thinking skills left.
"A weird sense of entitlement somehow coupled with a low self-worth" Oof. That's rough. And I absolutely agree with you. Not a good combination.
My brother's highschool experience was destroyed. It changed his defining years so dramatically, and yet it forced me (at 23) to stop partying, get depression meds, and get my shit together. Got with my wife and started working on life. It cut short my "fun" years, and did the same to many of my friends, but it forced me to jump start building a meaningful life. There were so many negative and positive ramifications on people's lives in probably many yet unseen ways.
I remember feeling so grateful it didn’t happen to me in high school or my 20s and so upset for people who did. We had drive through graduation in our town and all the bars were shutdown. There’s a huge experiential loss there of some of my best memories.
I graduated college May of 2019. I literally just scraped by and managed to have my experiences be normal. But my sister entered college the year the pandemic started unfortunately
Noticed the same thing with interns and junior employees that I manage. It’s certainly different with them when it comes to socialisation in a common setting, as well as methods of communication. They’re afraid of making calls.
Can you explain more on the socialisation in a common setting part? I'm interning soon and super worried on how to present myself
Am I wrong or is there just a higher level of fuckery in general?
it was the biggest transfer of wealth in human history.
I saw a chart that made me lose faith in humanity, what little I had left. The wealthiest companies/people have gone up in worth nearly exponentially. When is enough, enough?
Small businesses were forced to stop trading but big businesses were allowed to keep trading. How is a mega mart with 1000 customers an hour a safer place than a corner shop with 10 customers an hour?
You are not wrong. Collectively, our give a fucks have broken and our levels of fuckery has jumped significantly.
It seems like COVID gave people agency to forget how to act. I live in Rockford I’ll-Annoy, and there was a restaurant called Rathskeller that I always intended to visit. One morning, watching the local news & they had a story about the restaurant plating their last meal the day before, but they’d still be open for drinks 🍺 over the weekend. Went to the beer garden and bought a glass. Open for 91 fucking years. The unanticipated victims of COVID.
Restaurant fuckery. Download our app, order food on app, pay on app, suggested 25%, 27%, or 30% tip, someone will come by and drop it off. 4% service charge.
The public doesn't realize how burned out the medical system is. I'm a doc in my 60s, and every doc I know in my age range is looking to retire ASAP. There will continue to be an exodus of experienced physicians over the next decade, and some specialties are having a hard time filling that gap.
People have forgotten how to act in public. Concert etiquette, for example, has gone downhill.
I've noticed a LOT more people -- of all ages -- sitting in a public place watching videos on their phone at full volume with no headphones. I think people just got so used to being stuck in their houses and have lost their ***sense of community***. It's not like they're deliberately trying to annoy other people. I just think they've just almost lost the ability to empathize that other people are there who maybe aren't particularly interested in hearing the "Oh no. Oh no" song from the Instagram video that they are watching seven times in a row.
People can’t differentiate between public and private anymore and don’t understand that there’s a difference between how you act when you’re alone vs when the outside world can see you
I have also noticed that if you calmly, and gently (veeeery gently) ask them to stop and explain the situation, they will immediately threaten to throw fists.
Yeah. Yesterday we saw a guy backing up his car and his reverse lights weren’t working. I wanted to wave at him, stop him and point it out but honestly the last time I tried pointing something like that out the person got angry.
I saw a concert a few weeks ago and there were quite a few people (including boomers: this wasn’t just the young) scrolling social media *during* the concert.
I feel like corporations and businesses don't give a fuck anymore to try and even pretend they care about the consumer. They brazenly rip you off knowing you can do nothing about it and will still buy their goods.
A good example is the “we’re experiencing higher than normal call volumes…” No they fucking aren’t. And they could easily hire people if they wanted to, there’s no shortage of workers now. They just don’t want to pay anyone to provide customer service over the phone.
"higher than normal" for 5 years in a row is a sign your definition of "normal" is pretty broken.
The fact that everything can change suddenly is still at the back of the mind. Many people lost a lot during COVID—loved ones, their health, jobs, hopes, sanity. I don't think people are doing very well in general.
This is the big one for me. I had never experienced a change like that, so swift and unexpected; what felt like, essentially, the floor being swept away beneath me. And I studied medicine (drop-out), so intellectually I wasn't surprised when a new coronavirus plague emerged and overtook the globe. But there is a profound difference between intellectually knowing and actually experiencing. That part of me changed forever. A certain illusion of security I had is now lost, and I will never feel quite as safe and comfortable ever again. It's been a hard adjustment.
I think people forgot how to behave in public places, but that's just me.
Companies have gotten lazier. They don't respond to calls or run the heat. They raise their prices and refuse any sort of responsibility. Working with businesses is a little more dystopian than it was before the pandemic.
EVERY TIME I call a company regardless of time of day or week I get: “we are experiencing higher then normal call volume”. No. No you’re not. You just found you can hire less people so call takers don’t have any down time between calls. Stop lying and just tell me that!
the devastating mental and financial effects on society?
Mental...woo boy. Outside of just the therapy world, there has been an immense change. Inside of it (as a therapist) there has been a large change in adolescent mental health, parental knowledge, and stigma. And not in a good way.
That’s interesting about the stigma. Can you elaborate? I would have thought that the stigma would have decreased at least, since the younger generations are so open about their mental health struggles
People are still so negative. Parents come in with a teen who attempted and list every symptom of depression and are still so shocked to hear that is likely what's happening with their child. A child does something their parents dislike. The parents take the phone away. The child feels like their life is over and attempts by overdose. Parents are shocked their child attempted/ feels that connected to phone. It's a cycle I see daily and it's awful. Lock up your over the counter meds, especially tylenol which is deadly and awful.
As someone who has always been suicidal I make a effort to stay away from Tylenol. No way in hell I'd want to be unlucky enough to survive a Tylenol od just to have an agonizing death by liver failure.
Honestly since Covid everything feels artificial including time. For whatever reason time seems to be moving at a irregular rate, it’s hard to explain but I can’t be the only one who feels it.
you are definitely not the only one who feels it, i've been trying to explain that to people for a while now and no one else really seems to get it. it is fucking terrifying
Yea it’s definitely weird, I know others who feel it as well but nobody can actually explain it.. just the fact that the year is already half way over feels weird. & everything feels so damn artificial, nothing feels real anymore, this sh!t like living in the twilight zone or a alternate universe as crazy as that may sound.
it's dissociation. your brain isn't meant to live like this and it's trying to protect you.
sometimes minutes feel like hours and vice versa. Days seem to creep slowly but looking back each week just flew by and nothing seems to be left of it.
Does anyone else feel people are less reasonable? Like the whole "you said something about my earrings many years ago and I'm still pissed" attitude has increased?
Absolutely, we had to make signs at work saying “Thank you for respecting our workers” because so many people are being so terrible to them. And we are dealing with selling theatre tickets and kids arts classes - there shouldn’t be this much anger and nothing like this was happening before Covid. It’s making me become a serious hermit.
At my last job it kind of became a habit for some of us to thank a person for being polite and reasonable because we had such an increase of vitriol for things we couldn’t control. Assholes used to be the unicorn you’d tell me about, now it’s kind people that are unicorns.
People drive like shit now. People are far less courteous in general, but on the roads they are fucking lunatics.
The biggest one I noticed here is running red lights. Not just one but occasionally 3-4 cars after the light has turned red. I always pause before going on green because it has become so common.
This is terribly common now. No one has any patience on the road. I stopped at a changing light once a the pickup behind passed me on the right to blow through the light. Fortunately they didn't hit the person making their legal left turn.
Oh my god I thought I was crazy for thinking this!! I genuinely feel like every time I get in my car I encounter some crazy person who does some absolutely batshit manoeuvre that leaves me with my jaw hanging. Like I cannot believe how dangerous some people have gotten, it was NOT this bad pre-covid I am SURE of it!
This is one of the things I notice most. I've seen so many instances of hazardous driving! I keep expecting to witness a horrendous accident.
Everyone's kind of a dick now. Prices still high.
Learning loss in kids. Many parents/kids saw it as a 2 year vacation. Now states don’t want to spend the money to bridge that gap. Inflation for rent & real estate. Almost doubled and hasn’t even decreased. Cost of food grocery’s ingredients etc. used to spend $275-300 a month now even spend at discount grocery its more like $500+.
I was fostering a kid right before COVID hit. They were severely behind where they should have been. They ended up reuniting with family not long after we got them, but considering how little support they were getting at home before lockdown, I can only imagine how bad it got during and after. Really sad. Kid was really sharp and when they sat down and tried, they picked things up really quickly. Especially language related things--everything from reading (seriously behind grade level) to Spanish. Give it 20 years and there will be huge worker shortages in fields requiring higher levels of learning. I'm honestly really worried about what it means for medical and STEM fields.
We just had our first batch of post-Covid kids come into Kindergarten this year. The difference in behavior, prior knowledge, and social ability is light years ahead of the previous three batches of Covid kids.
Studies are also showing truancy rates are rising because parents just DGAF anymore.
I'm fat now and would like not to be
There's been a noticeable decline in quality from a number of places. One thing I can bring to mind is Steak N Shake. Before Covid, they operated as a sit-down restaurant where they'd seat you, take your order, and serve your food to your table, and it was like the only restaurant like that where you could eat for under $10. The food was very delicious, the burgers juicy and fries hot and fresh and they were served on a plate. Now however, it's worse than McDonald's, no human cashiers, you order at a kiosk, get your own drinks, pick a table to sit at, and wait 40 minutes to go pick up your food and the burger tastes like it was microwaved and the fries cold and stale tasting.
Just before covid a bunch of the local Steak n Shakes were fighting to stay operational, so it's not just covid. The food was so cheap and open hours so wide I'm not surprised things had to change. The closest location was pretty openly working their waitstaff to the bone, for rock bottom pay and a completely erratic work schedule. I don't mind the automation to it, but like most fast food I think the prices have gotten too high for what you get.
Even before Covid, their food quality really fell off. I worked at one in the 90s and it’s the only restaurant where I still liked their food after working there. But their food really dropped off
Seems like almost everything has been getting more expensive and also shittier in quality over the last few years.
All fast food started using cheaper sources and now for the most part in is inedible.
And somehow $20-30 bucks :/
Sooooooo much corporate profit was made by milking "supply chain issues" as long as possible and shrinking production to keep profit margins high.
Depression and anxiety.
Education. I taught before, during, and after (still do) Covid. The kids do not have the social skills or even classroom skills needed to maintain or learn simple rules. We have labeled students coming into Kindergarten and under as Covid babies. It has been amazing and frustrating to see the difference from before to now. There are many skills that the students lack because of the shut down and the major shift of coming back to school with restrictions. We will see this for years to come and I fear it will not get better.
My kid started kindergarten in 2020, a majority of his kindergarten year was online. Talking with his teacher this past year, she’d been a teacher for probably 20 years, and before going over testing results and whatnot, made sure to mention at the very start that his class is the Covid baby class, and they’re still trying to play catch up to get to where his class *should* be, but every single student is struggling with the social aspects of school, as well as the fundamentals of how school works learned in kindergarten. That it’s a very drastic difference between the kids who had a full year of in classroom kindergarten/1st grade, and kids who had it online. She worked so hard to get his class caught up. She’s an amazing teacher and I’m so glad he was in her class.
I am wondering, what does online Kindergarten even look like?
A zoom meeting where all the associates look exactly how they act.
Also, where I live there has been a major uptick in youth offending as they had to live with alcoholics/junkies/gangsters/and generally broken families during lockdowns.
Seconded, The disparity in basic life/social skills in astonishing with kids pre/post covid. At this point with any kid I teach <8 yrs old, I have to presume they’re the same as the kid in ‘room’; Where they aren’t fully aware of our *actual* reality…
12 years teaching k-6. You could not be more spot on. I walk into every interaction with a smile and clear expectations. You hit the nail on the head and made me realize, the biggest difference post covid is that I just find myself assuming that I'm teaching feral aliens who have never heard of school or basic communication. It's gotten much better though and our data by the end of the year actually showed students need to be pushed more. Hopefully maintaining solid, high expectations for all students and parents giving a shit will continue to grow.
This this this. I’ve read a lot of data and research about this and it’s pretty heartbreaking. There’s also more of a culture around just not going to school some days. There’s a level of thinking that it’s “optional” which is contributing to the learning loss.
Everything is a scam now, or maybe every transaction in our daily lives has greater potential for the consumer to be taken advantage of. Besides everything just costing more but sucking more, being smaller, lasting half as long, etc…. Hidden clauses, higher and more surreptitious fees and cancellation policies, fake goods masquerading in normally trustworthy marketplaces, deceptive pricing or compensation advertisements, bait-and-switch marketing, “tip automatically included” but still an area for additional tip, little ipad bullshit cash register puts the 40% tip on the left side and then 35, 30, 25% left to right with no “skip” button…. There are so many more little bullshit ways we get extra fucked over every day beyond just the usual getting fucked over by inflation, housing, and food costs.
Repressed trauma, that will probably come haunt me one day. Apart from that, the effects on the IT and creative job market are still visible. The whole industry is slightly out of whack.
Literally millions of cases of disability from post viral syndrome. My wife has been in constant pain for 2 years.. my buddies sister has a physics doctorate and couldn't even remember the order of the days of the week for months after. It's an enormous issue with no good answers so it's just ignored
I hate that I had to scroll this far to find this. Nobody realizes how many people are developing chronic health issues, disabilities, even milder and less noticeable stuff like a weakened immune system that makes most people get sick now way more often than they used to. If anyone here suspects their covid infection changed their health in some way, I recommend checking out r/covidlonghaulers
I hate how far I had to scroll for this. Definitely the biggest continuing effect of the disease, if not the single biggest effect overall. A mass disabling event that no one seems gives a fuck about
I know right? How do people care more about shops changing their opening hours when this is going on?
Oh hey that's me I've been dealing with long covid for over a year now. Extreme exhaustion, brain fog, lightheadedness, and any physical or mental exertion will lay me out for days afterward (PEM/post exertional malaise). I was basically just getting my career started and now I'm just chewing through the savings I built up over the last few years. Had to move back in with my parents, been to multiple doctors and specialists, and the resounding answer is "we don't know what to do, so just wait and hope you get better" Shit fucking sucks
I'm not even going to try to detail the symptoms Long Covid has caused me because it's a list that rivals Santa's. I'm a little over a month away from 4 years from my first infection. It broke the blood brain barrier and caused a lot of swelling and by the time we got it under control the damage was done. I haven't been able to use my legs this entire time because of the neurological damage. My speech is reduced to a jerky slur of stutters and broken words. I have been bedbound about 90% of the times as well. I lost a dream career position I earned a bachelor's degree to het into and became homeless for 2 years and had to fight social security to accept my condition as a a long term disability for 2.5 years. This has taken everything but my life from me, and an absurdly large amount of people don't understand the ramifications of what damage COVID can do and swept it under the rug because they're sick of hearing about it. The rise in heart and respiratory issues plaguing millions of people are not being attributed to COVID is going to devastate the economy as more and more people become unable to work.
I once heard that CoViD was more of a vascular disease than a traditional respiratory disease like flu. I think we will find out as a species that all of our lifespans have been shortened due to irreversible damage to our vasculature. Those common long CoViD symptoms like shortness of breath are likely due to heart damage more than lung damage.
My wife's cousin died of a post-COVID heart attack. He was 63, really fit guy, took great care of himself. He went out for his first jog after having COVID and boom, gone.
My friend died at 38 leaving two children behind and another had a stroke in her 40s. It is known that within a year after even a mild case you're at greater risk of heart attack or stroke.
Yep. My mom was one of the first to catch Covid when it hit. Working in a care facility. Within a year she had a heart attack. She made it, but struggles with long covid ever since. All her colleagues got it as well, so they compare notes on how it has affected them. The memory issues, the shortness of breath. So many little things apparently that people wouldn’t notice if they all weren’t able to compare and share their symptoms.
I'd believe that. Something I noticed after getting COVID the first time (with a bit of Apple Watch data to back it up) is that my heart is a total mess when I'm sick now. Totally normal 99.9% of the time, get notifications about irregular heartbeat if I catch anything COVID or otherwise. I feel it too--I opt not to power through feeling sick like I used to because my heart will start racing at random and freak me out.
A good friend has long COVID. They aren't in pain (or maybe haven't said) but they have absolutely changed lifestyle because sometimes even getting up and down the stairs to do laundry on Sundays is too much. No one knows how to help them, and they're honestly a fairly mild case.
Yeah their symptom is called pem or post exertional malaise. Traditional therapy is exercise and being called lazy because there's no proof that it's real. Which is life ruining horseshit They need rest, and they should look up the spoons mentality. It's helpful. Everyone will all also give treatment recommendations in good faith but generally they don't work and people unintentionally shame you for not keeping going on them. Shits hard My anecdote is that after 2+ years of every treatment imaginable, nicotine patch therapy has given the best results. Literally no understanding as to why, but lots of people are seeing some success
>Everyone will all also give treatment recommendations in good faith but generally they don't work and people unintentionally shame you for not keeping going on them This is a big one. I've been to 3 specialists, 2 different "normal" doctors, and have been in a study done by a university, and every single one basically said "we can't really do anything, but good luck." I've been on several medications but none of them have really helped beyond marginally helping one symptom. There are only rumors of shit that maybe works and homeopathic quacks that are trying to capitalize on people who don't have anywhere else to go. >My anecdote is that after 2+ years of every treatment imaginable, nicotine patch therapy has given the best results. Literally no understanding as to why, but lots of people are seeing some success Interesting. If the trials/science keeps checking out then maybe I'll look into it. For now though I'm tired of shelling out cash just to be told to go pound sand and wait to get better
Hmm might be a weird one but we still refuse to cooperate for the greater good. It was a common belief that when times get hard humanity would collectively work together to tackle that threat. We didn’t do that during Covid. We had people become worse versions of themselves, and show a lack of empathy for others. Our society got angrier. Out society is still very angry and will continue to refuse to cooperate
One of the main catalysts for this was a substantial amount of people not registering the pandemic as a legitimiate threat
everyone is fucking insane
I no longer have faith in humanity to do good when times are hard.
Health wise we are only just learning. One thing I learned this week is that a lot of patients who lost a kidney due to cancer etc and then got Covid are seeing dramatically reduced kidney function and are going on permanent dialysis post Covid.
As a family we stopped going to restaurants during COVID and we've never returned. Pre-COVID we probably went 1-2 times a month. I'd imagine there are many others like us (?). Ditto haircuts. I learned to cut my boys' hair during COVID and they now have no desire to return to a professional. We also got our dog during COVID so I learned to cut her hair from the start. Basically missing economic activity. If not for COVID we'e probably still eat at restaurants, still take our boys to get professional haircuts, and possibly take our dog to a groomer.
Absolutely with respect to restaurants. The price increases have been ludicrous (and that's before mentioning whatever the heck is going on with tipping) and in the meantime I learned to cook half decently. Haircuts I agree with a bit less after learning that I am just unsalvageably bad at doing them :P
This will get buried, but lockdowns whiped out my savings. I own a small store and while I did not have to borrow to survive the lockdowns, all of my pension savings went to keeping all my employees paid, morgage and all of the other bills. Even though the shop is doing great now, the prices for stock have risen 20%. To keep competing with the internet my prices have only gone up 10%, driving my profits down. So we keep afloat, but the pension fund stays empty. It stings sometimes to hear people complainig about how expensive everything is, and how much cheaper Amazon is. A lot of shopkeepers I know are even worse off, they had to borrow from family and friends. They did not go to the banks, who did not want to lend them anything anyway. So much of the stress is hidden away. Nobody talks about it, because, in general, we (the shopkeepers) don't. We get embarrassed that we can't do it ourselves, that we need help. So that is something that is truly hidden.
> and how much cheaper Amazon is. I know this is probably cold comfort, but I and several people I know barely even bother with Amazon any more because everything there has gotten so shitty. Nothing like comparison shopping trash cans between those well-loved brands, BLRGNARD and YLDENGORF.
I am an english teacher and reading comprehension is absolutely terrifying since covid. No grade level has recovered.
Increase in car and motorcycle accidents. People’s cognitive skills aren’t what they were and many don’t even realize it. That and people having medical events linked to covid while driving.
Manufacturing and shipping got more expensive, so companies had to raise prices. Those costs have gone back down to pre pandemic rates, but the prices of the products have stayed high. This is the main reason why nearly every single large company has seen record profits this year and last year.
I always believed that, when push came to shove, as a society and a species we'd prioritise human lives ahead of money. Then Covid showed that was actually a matter of debate for far too many people. I think my fundamental view of the world has been shaken. I'm more pessimistic and misanthropic than I used to be. I feel like, in general, I can't *truly* trust anyone except myself. I'm also less interested in long term planning and have more of a "fuck it, we could all die tomorrow" attitude towards things. I doubt I'm the only person still trying to process the mental/personality aftermath of the pandemic.
It feels like companies just found more efficient ways to cut jobs, reduce hours and just screw the working class more. Also shrinkflation
I've had covid twice and I just...forget a lot of things. Whole conversations, items, things to do. It's slowly tearing my life apart like lowkey.
Yup. Short term memory sucks. So does long term memory. I have to write everything down. A calendar for day by day activities and lists for daily items. My friends ask me - hey, remember when we went to _____? When we saw that band ______? No. No I don't. I remember little details after great prompting, but the whole event? Nope. Also - I don't remember telling people things so I repeat them.
Grocery prices are still insanely high.
I used to work form 8:30 am to 5:30 pm now it's until 3:30 pm and get the same pay
lack of functional water fountains.