@Geoffberner

I hate to say it, but, time. I've been saying this for two years now, and it sure feels like it'll never happen, but, people are still convinced that it's just been "a couple of bad years" or that their health issues are coincidental to occurring in a global pandemic. Once they don't go away and people get tired of being sick all of the time public sentiment will begin to change, I think. Once people start to wistfully think about pre-pandemic times when they weren't sick so often. It *feels* like it's been forever, but it's really still a blip on the radar for a lot of people.

I was actually just talking to an older family member who I hadn't talked to since before the pandemic yesterday. She was telling me that her husband died in 2020 of COVID. But then she started talking about her health problems, and her daughter's been struggling, and her granddaughter's been sick practically constantly for the last 15 months. I don't usually bother, but since she'd mentioned COVID first, I asked if she thought the "rough few years" she was discussing had anything to do with COVID.

She thought about it...and thought about it...and said that it hadn't crossed her mind, but, they had all had COVID in 2020 and again in 2021 and it certainly made sense. It literally hadn't even crossed her mind to that point. She's just trying to survive day to day without her husband and around sick family members.

There's just not a constant drum beat of information out there telling people what's really going on at this point and they largely haven't figured it out on their own yet.

Or never...guess we'll find out.

@BE @Geoffberner
blows my mind people can’t figure it out, but then again makes total sense

once had sudden awful hives & it took me an entire 3 months to figure it out…& forgot exactly how i did

but went practically mental & tried everything to figure it out until that moment💡

people probably think it’s aging or “lockdown” “immunity debt” 🙄 Its not their faults per se… but at the same time don’t understand how you don’t keep looking💔

@Lorrrraaaaine @Geoffberner

Aging's a tough one, because you certainly believe that you were going to age anyway. Take one of my friends since we were kids, for example. Whole family was super COVID cautious until his job required him back in the office, and traveling all over the country, beginning in around January of 2022. So, they decide to send the kids back to school, etc and just give up entirely on trying to avoid COVID. Of course, a few weeks later they all have COVID. They all feel better and start talking about how it really is "just a cold" and everything's fine and they can't believe spent so much time quarantining.

Anyway, 6 weeks later he starts telling me about this crippling arthritis that came out of nowhere. I mentioned it could happen post-COVID, but he really didn't want to hear that. His doctor backed up that belief and told him that COVID doesn't do that and he's just getting older and he should get used to it. We argued about it and simply haven't mentioned "COVID" again between us since, beyond the fact that they've now had it at least three or four times. A year later he still doesn't have the arthritis under any sort of control and he went from a guy running miles every early morning before work, for decades, to gaining 75 pounds and being unable to do much at all physically.

Aging? COVID? I know what I believe, but it's hard when *maybe* it's a coincidence, that's probably easier to believe since you made the decision to get COVID, and then your doctor tells you it is. We're mostly all getting crappy input from doctors and "experts" and so it's really no wonder that by and large we're wandering blindly down this path.