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Social A look back on the impacts of the pandemic/lockdowns
- Thread starter TailGlowVM
- Start date
pandemic messed with my self image for the latter half of 2020!! i was already working in a hospital before the pandemic started and while my working life didn't change too much (i wasn't in a position that required extra PPE protocols) it became toxic to my psyche that the one place i got to go to to leave my apartment was also a place actively struggling with the pandemic in the most acute sense, otherwise i was on campus but that time is even less your own than on the clock imo, so it just added stress, even (and especially when) all that stress had to be taken home with me when courses all went online
i graduated virtually in june for class of 2020 (lol) and i moved in august 2020 to downtown seattle which was super bizarre because it was a ghost town. i had lived an hour south of seattle for a few years before moving but still had visited the city several times, and knew FULL well what the city was like when life was "normal." i left seattle before anything really opened up, so it's strange cataloguing my time actually living there as distinctly suffocated by the pandemic.
in the midst of my time living in seattle i stopped working with that hospital group and only had school work to focus on before i found another job in december, but it was in september 2020 that i shaved my head!!!! this was a super bucket list thing for me to do, and seeing as i was depressed, didn't care about how i dressed when i went outside, amongst other personal things, i did it. no ragrets! i had developed some pretty persistent body dysmorphia about my hair— it was to my shoulders and full but when i regarded it it felt like looking at a wig. i was so detached from it because i love my hair as self-expression but all i had to express was: not much. cutting it all off helped my daily life a LOT because it was like a box i got to uncheck on my daily list of things to tend to, and i looked great with a buzz so more than anything i was satisfied finally doing something i had wanted to do at least ONCE in my life!! no more shaved heads in my future though!!!! or i'll never get back to mermaid status...
currently my climate is much sunnier and i'm vaccinated and generally in a healthier environment, in all senses of the word. i'll probably still wear a mask on the days i want to block the world from interacting with me haha, although it will be nice to return to a living state where wearing one is not innately required... but i admit i have enjoyed seeing humanity's egregious lack of compassion for one another wreak hubris-laded havoc against the worst perpetrators, as i believe in balance overall
i graduated virtually in june for class of 2020 (lol) and i moved in august 2020 to downtown seattle which was super bizarre because it was a ghost town. i had lived an hour south of seattle for a few years before moving but still had visited the city several times, and knew FULL well what the city was like when life was "normal." i left seattle before anything really opened up, so it's strange cataloguing my time actually living there as distinctly suffocated by the pandemic.
in the midst of my time living in seattle i stopped working with that hospital group and only had school work to focus on before i found another job in december, but it was in september 2020 that i shaved my head!!!! this was a super bucket list thing for me to do, and seeing as i was depressed, didn't care about how i dressed when i went outside, amongst other personal things, i did it. no ragrets! i had developed some pretty persistent body dysmorphia about my hair— it was to my shoulders and full but when i regarded it it felt like looking at a wig. i was so detached from it because i love my hair as self-expression but all i had to express was: not much. cutting it all off helped my daily life a LOT because it was like a box i got to uncheck on my daily list of things to tend to, and i looked great with a buzz so more than anything i was satisfied finally doing something i had wanted to do at least ONCE in my life!! no more shaved heads in my future though!!!! or i'll never get back to mermaid status...
currently my climate is much sunnier and i'm vaccinated and generally in a healthier environment, in all senses of the word. i'll probably still wear a mask on the days i want to block the world from interacting with me haha, although it will be nice to return to a living state where wearing one is not innately required... but i admit i have enjoyed seeing humanity's egregious lack of compassion for one another wreak hubris-laded havoc against the worst perpetrators, as i believe in balance overall
I live in New Mexico U.S.A and they just lifted the mask mandate last week. I think we were one of the last states to lift it but then again idk, cus all the rules are different in each state
IMO one of the biggest ramifications of the pandemic is how it definitively changed how biowarfare is waged and understood. Traditionally, biowarfare involved the production of pathogens. However, pathogens are now readily available in the environment. As a result, biowarfare has shifted from production to encouraging the dissemination of existing pathogens AND undermining target healthcare infrastructure. The principal means of achieving these strategic goals has been disinformation operations, which are meant to change audience perceptions of the novel coronavirus to conflict with health officials' messaging, AS WELL AS confidence in pandemic measures (vaccines, masking, distancing, lockdowns). By changing perceptions, you change behaviour. In the context of disinformation operations' goals, that behaviour ranges from a greater willingness to risk infection, to refusing vaccines, to attacking people for following pandemic measures, to attacking healthcare assets like hospitals or supply shipments. Covid disinformation is now a massive industry that enjoys the support of several state actors with competing and conflicting interests, and has consequently permanently damaged our species' capabilities to prevent future outbreaks.
The outbreak of the novel coronavirus also resulted in massive recovery plans oriented towards relieving unemployment and inflation. A massive injection of liquidity into consumers' bank accounts led to organised irrational market actions targeting major hedge funds' overleveraged short positions. IMO this was a pretty heavy blow to the prevailing notion of markets as being "rational" systems, although I don't think it's going to change any dogmatists' views lol. There was also an explosion in tech sector and platform investing that has since started deflating following worldwide interest rate hikes (except in Turkey, where the government is intentionally devaluing the Turkish lira by lowering interest rates).
The outbreak of the novel coronavirus also resulted in massive recovery plans oriented towards relieving unemployment and inflation. A massive injection of liquidity into consumers' bank accounts led to organised irrational market actions targeting major hedge funds' overleveraged short positions. IMO this was a pretty heavy blow to the prevailing notion of markets as being "rational" systems, although I don't think it's going to change any dogmatists' views lol. There was also an explosion in tech sector and platform investing that has since started deflating following worldwide interest rate hikes (except in Turkey, where the government is intentionally devaluing the Turkish lira by lowering interest rates).
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