Definitely a widespread trauma response of suppression.
How Hollywood handles its related optics says everything:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1ncmclw...
Apparently everyone was attending mass largely because everyone else was.
If you are letting fear of disease get in the way of living a healthy and fulfilling life today, that's an unhealthy trauma response.
This is demonstrably untrue.
We in the US are in the 13th covid wave since the pandemic started from tracking wastewater data which is our most accurate way of determining transmission (fortunately at a much smaller peak as of right now than most waves)[1]. The past four years have had far higher covid transmission rates on average than the two years we consider societally "when covid was happening". It does not strictly follow seasonal patterns like the flu, we routinely get summer waves that peak quite highly. The flu does not do this. Millions of Americans have ME/CFS like symptoms after covid, some extremely severe.[2]
[1]https://www.pmc19.com/ [2]https://academic.oup.com/ooim/article/6/1/iqaf010/8379704?lo...
...doesn't prevent transmission
> acquired immunity
...only lasts 6 months or so, wanes, and a new variant arrives
> the general drop in the number of effected people
Long COVID is severely underdiagnosed
> that's an unhealthy trauma response
The precautionary principle is a rational response, especially what we already know about the widespread systemic damage that repeat COVID infections cause.
The only reliable protection right now is consistent N95 usage in public spaces, and very few people are doing that (though some certainly are, as I see them every day).
I no longer worry at all about attending a crowded indoor gathering - those would be impossible to avoid in NYC - but enjoying “a night in” without kids is a distinctly post-COVID phenomenon for myself and many people I know
It actually never stopped being a physical danger. The only thing that changed is how long it takes for the damage to unfold.
At the start of COVID, people were rightfully shocked that hospitals and morgues were overflowing, and they reacted accordingly. That's no longer an issue (for now) with these latest strains, but acquiring Long COVID and dealing with its effects is definitely still a real concern.
Long COVID is vastly underdiagnosed. You might not get it until your 4th/5th/6th re-infection. That reinfection might also be asymptomatic, and/or Long COVID doesn't set in until weeks or months afterward, meaning people often don't link the two events. People not taking precautions (majority) are getting re-infected on average once per year since immunity from a previous infection typically wanes after 6 months, and there are about two waves per year for any given area.
Vaccines are of limited utility since they don't prevent transmission. A consistently worn N95 in public spaces is the only reliable means of defense, and everybody in your household needs to do that in public for it to be effective within your household.
I’m not a Covid denier or anything either. I masked up and stayed in during the pandemic, I got the vaccine, etc. I had original first year Covid confirmed by a test, and I’m positive I’ve had it at least once again since then though didn’t get a test confirmation, so I’m 100% positive Covid is real (I feel like this is an obvious statement but I’m sure some people out there believe it’s a hoax or something). However I’ve seen exactly zero evidence other than online anecdotes that Long Covid exists or ever existed.
If it’s “vastly under diagnosed” I should personally know multiple people with it and should likely have family members with it (at least extended family) and yet I don’t. Not a single person. Honestly I think it’s one of those terminally online things that gets repeated a lot but only online.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/ooim/article/6/1/iqaf010/8379704?lo...
Part of the issue is it's unclear what long covid is, if it's the same thing as chronic fatigue syndrome, and who even knows enough about this to be worth listening to
It's just another post-acute infection syndrome that can occur from pretty much any contagious illness (flu, etc.). Most people reading this have probably experienced this. Ever had a cough that persisted multiple weeks after the rest of your illness went away? That's not because your cold permanently damaged your lungs or even that the virus is still around. It's because your immune system will sometimes get confused and continue to wage war in your throat (or whatever it thought was infected) long after the virus has been eliminated.
Probably for the aforementioned reasons: people aren't making the link.
Long COVID can lead to major bodily dysfunctions including heart disease, stroke, kidney impairment, neurological issues, autoimmune conditions, etc.
People are getting sick more often and not just with COVID, because recurring COVID infections have nuked their immune systems. There are studies proving how it impacts T-cell depletion, etc.
> If it’s “vastly under diagnosed” I should personally know multiple people with it
Are you not aware of your blatant contradiction here?
All that said: I don't do it myself, but I don't judge people who choose to mask up regularly when going out in public. It's a semi-normal thing in Asian communities, and I have two close (non-Asian) friends who do it. If nothing else, COVID de-stigmatized that practice here in the US.
As somebody who masks regularly in 2026, I definitely don't judge people who don't. Most people don't know the true risks, and even for those who do, the two lifestyles come with some important tradeoffs that I don't think should be forced on anybody, one way or the other.
Or how many medical professionals continue to be medical professionals while knowing it has an elevated risk of suicide.
Here's a Canadian researcher who still masks and explains how the many 'mistakes' were made in order to convince people to throw caution to the wind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCft7qu1Iv4
For the US version, this is a decent timeline of events:
https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co...
The best part was after that extended disinformation campaign, lawmakers asked people what they wanted to do, then told them what they wanted to hear:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240802024326/https://docs.hous...
But that didn't make the threat go away. People just pretended that it did. Group psychology is weird like that. Further compounding matters is the fact that neverending COVID reinfections impacts the part of the brain responsible for executive function, making it that much easier for people to not care. The more common and palatable term is "brain fog." Toxoplasmosis has a similar known reinforcing effect.
My personal calculation is the reward of enhanced expressiveness when interacting with others is worth the risk of infectious disease in 2026. In 2020, the variables were different!
Again, it's undercounted. Furthermore, LC is more comparable to AIDS than it is run of the mill influenza in the systems it affects and how. Also, note it took years of denial and lag before people finally acknowledged the long-term damage that AIDS caused. Except here it's not sexually transmitted but instead airborne year round.
Anyway, do you what want. I'm just pointing out most people have been misled, so they can't even make informed decisions. People with LC live with this regret.