In one way or another, every single one of us had our lives impacted by the relatively recent Covid-19 pandemic. After all, a global virus bringing a nearly worldwide lockdown is bound to create some permanent changes in our everyday reality.
Of course, major events like this have the tendency to shake up the ground we’re standing on and change some things irreversibly. But with not all of it being obvious at first glance, one Redditor decided to dig a little deeper and ask a question about what the pandemic ruined a lot more than we realized. Scroll down to read what people online answered!
More info: Reddit
This post may include affiliate links.
It ruined the illusion I had that my fellow humans were generally smart and well adjusted. Some had weird opinions but we agreed on the basics of humanity and how to keep it together.
It is clearly not the case.
Iāve spent loads of years studying and teaching psychology as well as keeping up with what the well known + current research about human psychology shows. As sad as this sounds, it is because of this that I never had faith that most of us humans are relatively smart or well adjusted.. The pandemic just put this on tragic, global display. š„ŗ
It really feels like corporations have an even stronger grip on the United States than ever. Like we are really being squeezed in every way, and it's because our government is so heavily lobbied and controlled by corporations.
Pay rate, job security, benefits. All of these things seems to be getting objectively worse, or stagnating at best.
Corporations in USA enjoy the same Constitutional protections that the people do. Let that sink in.
A lot of smaller businesses completely died because of it.
When the Coronavirus pandemic became serious, most countries initiated nationwide lockdowns, which left the vast majority of the world’s population isolated in their homes. At first, it seemed as if our lives were put on pause.
But in reality, there is no such thing as pausing life. The time was still moving forward, and the sudden changes we had to adapt to left a massive mark on our world and on us.
My social battery. I am so drained all the time, I never want to do anything outside of work, even when itās something i previously enjoyed. Iād rather stay home.
The pandemic divided people. There were so much anger and hate between each other - vaxxed vs non-vaxxed , mask vs no mask etc.
Tipping culture expanded, tips expectation went up, and never came back down.
Tipping has gotten a bit ridiculous. Those tap screens at checkout that automatically add 20%. You haven't done anything except ring me up for my overpriced food. I think tip jars are fine, it's the automatic charge for doing nothing.
This pandemic caused us two kinds of damage: visible and invisible.
The visible type was a lot more obvious, as it was not only in front of our eyes but also a lot more directly felt. People losing their lives or receiving lifelong health complications, businesses closing, and workers losing jobs and facing poverty were just some of the most notable problems.
However, there were also the less visible issues that may have eluded our attention and crept up from behind while being dismissed as not serious. Those come from the psychological side of living through such an event.
The Social Contract. For example just being decent to one another. Thatās been on decline but post pandemic it has not recovered.
Things such as respecting public spaces or others is gone for the most part. Feels like no one cares anymore and selfishness rules.
I think this is a result of way more than just the pandemic. We elect leaders that are incapable of basic civility and their supporters see this as permission to be just as crude and thoughtless.
Cheap food.Ā The supply chain either still hasn't stabilized or it has and we are being taken advantage of.
A lot of people's basic manners.
I believe the pandemic alone wouldn't have contributed to this, but that the combination of it plus the MAGAt disregard for public health by defying common sense rules to the point of actually physically threatening employees and others trying to enforce them, all of which was instigated then encouraged by the lack of basic courtesy and couth demonstrated by the then "president" and his party, and continuing on today that created this issue. Additionally, when it comes to school age children (and I include high school in that), missing a year plus of general social contact, and being under the spotty supervision of parents who were struggling to do their own work from home---or who were in exempt jobs they still had to go in to, so not home at all---while supposedly attending classes online (so damned easy to cheat), that has led to teachers having great difficulty keeping their classrooms in order. Adults should know better, and they should know to teach their children good general courtesy. Unfortunately, there are too many who don't do this, and tbh, their children do end up suffering for it, whether they realize it or not. But, even amongst the parents who have taught their children well, you can only expect so much out of people already stretched dangerously thin trying to keep everything in their lives together and functioning in the face of the upheaval from a global pandemic.
In 2020, trying to bring attention to these equally relevant issues, Dr. Elke Van Hoof of the World Economic Forum wrote about the French approach to the aftermath of various disasters, in which they would set up two camps. One where victims would receive help with any physical injuries they might have, and in another one, they would be treated on a psychological level, as well as be evaluated for the need for further post-traumatic treatment.
If enforced correctly, this type of strategy could’ve prevented, or at least weakened, the negative mental health effects that Covid left for most of us. It could’ve also helped the world economy recover faster and more effectively.
But alas, probably no one could’ve foreseen just how big this pandemic would become, and thus, we were caught underprepared. While the world was doing its best to build a sufficient number of ‘tents’ for the physically ill, mental health was, more often than not, neglected.
Availability. Iām a night owl and used to grocery shop at 2 am just by myself me and my headphones it was glorious.
I used to grocery shop at like 3 am too. I'd often see the same people shopping every week and we'd just nod and keep ignoring each other. Now I order my groceries, which I might like better.
Our media literacy/trust wasnāt great pre-pandemic, but post weāre completely screwed. Nobody knows who or what to believe anymore. Objective truths are no longer objective truths, theyāre instead pieces of a larger conspiracy or agenda.
This, to me, is one of our biggest problems. How can you have discussion/debate when no one can agree on a common reality?
The death count was metric focused on, but each of those deaths probably ruined the lives of many others. Not to mention those that survived but didnāt fully recover. The real number of people f****d up by death, disability, or loss of loved ones is huge.
I think the stat for suicides is that on average, 7 other people are deeply and permanently affected by each one.
Most of those mental health problems came from people being isolated for a prolonged amount of time. Being alone, of course, can actually be quite beneficial, and, in the years since Covid hit, more and more of us have been able to do tasks from home that we previously couldn’t, giving us the opportunity to leave less often.
However, as Kendra Cherry of Very Well Mind shared, people are social creatures, and remaining alone for extended periods can eventually harm our mental and even physical well-being.
According to the article, isolation has often been linked to a higher risk of various medical conditions, like heart and immune system issues, stress, depression, anxiety, and others. People who experience these problems are more likely to abuse alcohol and various substances while having lower life satisfaction.
My sense of time. I'm at a point now where I'll be thinking of something from a couple months ago and then I'll be corrected that it actually happened nearly 3 years ago.
That's just a normal part of getting older, nothing to do with the pandemic.
Ruined the social skills of a whole lot of kids. Kids started kindergarten and then basically got yanked out of that for two years and stuck at home. Some struggle just to read 'cuz they missed those years.
Cause parents are not good at teaching and teachers needs more pay? And homeschooling is not a good thing in normal situation..
The economy never really went back to the way it was pre pandemic. Prices never normalized and the selection of products is much more narrow then it used to be. So everything now is more expensive, for smaller amounts of less selection of worse quality.
In the end, Coronavirus might have ruined a lot of things, but the past is something that none of us can change. And yet, looking back at it may not be pointless after all because as long as we learn from the situations and our mistakes made along the way, we will most likely be better prepared if we ever have to deal with something like this again.
What did you think about this story? Do you have anything else you’d like to add to this list? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Trust in the Government. It wasnāt 100% before by any means but it certainly took a nose dive during and after COVID.
Healthcare. The industry and the people in it who saw a lot of preventable dying and sickness are broken.
Itās not the same as it was before, and it probably wonāt ever be.
During the pandemic we had a decrease in patients for radiation treatment. Now if this had meant there were less patients with cancer I would have been extatic. However THIS WAS NOT THE CASE! There were as many cancer patients as always, they just did not get treatment. Why? Because their cancer was not detected in a timely manner bc everything and anything was a symptom of COVID. A lot of times patients were just not seen and told to quarantine. The year after we treated more patients for cancer than in any year before the pandemic. And a lot of those were no longer curative as they would have been had the patients been seen by a specialist earlier. Yes, I'M STILL FREAKING MAD ABOUT THAT! š¤¬
Dining out. Ridiculous prices, bad/no service, and lousy food. I donāt think any other industry has been as wrecked.
Businesses' cleanliness and hours.
Go to some local box store, like Target. Walk around and see just how trashy it looks now. Clothes on the floor, because they don't have enough staff to pick up the mess. Half empty shelves. It's like they're in a perpetual state of closing down.
Also, lots of late night stores and restaurants cut hours and never returned them. There's nowhere for a night owl to shop at a grocery store near me anymore. Used to have a 24 hour grocery, now they close at 10 or something.
They realized customers will put up with sub-par services and have made it the norm. They're raking in massive profits by cutting staff and couldn't care less whether we like it or not.
Mental health. i get services from a free clinic, but they're absolutely overworked. one of my previous therapists was dealing with like 70 patients. i have no idea how she lasted as long as she did.
I have dissociative motor disorder, that presents like severe tourette's, that gets worse the more anxious I get. Before covid there were specialised hairdresser that went at a slower pace allowing my arms to move or for me to stand in a corner if I needed to. But they all disappeared and a standard hairdresser does not have the liability to bring a sharp object by a person that finds it hard to stay perfectly still.
I feel like the stuff I do for money has come to feel so f*****g meaningless. I press buttons and guide other people on pressing those buttons so some other people can print packaging. Everything's so big a business needs 25 other businesses to survive. We've created millions of problems to sell made up solutions.
I don't think I'm alone in this?
My lungs. I've had a chronic cough since the first time I caught it. Never been the same since.
Same...my sense of smell and taste has been diminished tremendously since getting COVID. But sure, it's just a cold...
Alcoholism. It became normalized to drink at home, alone, during the day...etc. I know a lot of people who have maintained that habit even now.
The education and future of every kid born between 2006-2010. Ask any teacher. Itās a lost generation. Theyāre years behind, if even still in school.
Does that kid in the striped shirt have bones in his legs? My legs ache just looking at how he is sitting.
Restaurant menus.
You mean the lack of menus and those QR codes? I have a really old/crappy phone that doesn't do QR and it drives me nuts.
Communication. The shutdown caused us to lean heavily on new less efficient communication methods to get by and now that we're back, people haven't stopped leaning on them.
We have zoom meetings with people in the same building as us instead of walking 20 feet to their office. We block off hours for meetings that should be a sentence just to hang out on videocalls. People will g-chat (Gmail instant message )me to set up a zoom meeting with our cameras off for a single question. . . .AKA a phonecall with extra steps.
Everything is a meeting now . People end up missing one meeting because they're double booked in a second meeting while running late for a third. Meanwhile not one of them needed to be a meeting
Everyone also expects immediate response from everyone at any time a day while also somehow being entirely unavailable themselves.
The business needs a come-to-Jesus meeting with the entire company. I remember when my company fully addressed instant messaging for all employees. Within a year, the director had a meeting and very calmly told people that they needed to ignore those during meetings, to be present during meetings and not be multi-tasking. Coming from the director, it had a very big, positive impact.
Driving on roads, apparently there is a backslide ~~and~~ in how good we are at it and we've never recovered.
The ability for young people to acquire the same quality of life that their parents and grandparents have.
More indoors activities than it was before.
Everyone's teeth
Can't get a dentists appointment.
In the US, I can get appointments, but can't afford them. Got a small raise and *poof* family of 5 kicked off medicaid. All 3 kids had their cleanings, cost $500 after insurance. Need a couple cavities filled, gonna cost us about $6000. ETA my son is young and special needs, so we have to pay to have him put under. The 6000 also doesn't cover whatever the orthodontist will cost us.
90% of this page relates to issues in the US. Most of the rest of the world is doing as well as it was before. Sure there have been a few minor changes to how we do things, and a greater acceptance of working from home, but generally the rest of us are doing just fine.
Yet another US centric article. There is a whole world beyond the USA but you'd never think so. Any mention of government is accompanied by a picture of the White House, any mention of shopping mentions Target. Articles like this that only consider life from an American perspective should say so. In other parts of the world the effects of the pandemic were different as are the post pandemic challenges. If you aren't at least going to consider the rest of the world at least have the grace not to present the US experience as a global one!
As usual, a big list of things that may be true in the states but absolutely not in the rest of the world, without any indication or even awareness of this geographical particularity.
90% of this page relates to issues in the US. Most of the rest of the world is doing as well as it was before. Sure there have been a few minor changes to how we do things, and a greater acceptance of working from home, but generally the rest of us are doing just fine.
Yet another US centric article. There is a whole world beyond the USA but you'd never think so. Any mention of government is accompanied by a picture of the White House, any mention of shopping mentions Target. Articles like this that only consider life from an American perspective should say so. In other parts of the world the effects of the pandemic were different as are the post pandemic challenges. If you aren't at least going to consider the rest of the world at least have the grace not to present the US experience as a global one!
As usual, a big list of things that may be true in the states but absolutely not in the rest of the world, without any indication or even awareness of this geographical particularity.
