Have to admit that covid was for me the final nail in my radicalization five years ago. Been lurking the longhauler sub all this time and it’s been a place of both incredible “just throw money at it and you’ll be fine” takes and takes that show how people are becoming more class conscious due to the conditions they are in with longcovid.
The latest example is this discussion and considering that this is from reddit I’d say it looks like that people keep moving left when they have to live with the fallout of capitalism, even from more privileged positions.
This mask bloc, maskbloc.htx on insta started a community grief circle around covid. They’ve only had one so far and plan more for the future. You don’t have to be living in Houston to attend and it’s always virtual.
It sure as hell radicalised me more.
[TW: trauma dump]
spoiler
I might be soft or weak or something, but I legit still get “triggered” for lack of a better word, by talk of covid. Like I actually get flashbacks to hearing about millions dying everyday. But the thing that was the most traumatising for me was just how ready everyone was to sacrifice millions to be socially murdered rather than give up business as usual for a few years. It changed how I viewed my fellow human beings in a way that I don’t know if I can ever get back. It made me feel surrounded by wolves who would sacrifice me the moment they smelled weakness.
This is the same thing that happened to me. The camaraderie of my friend group during the height of lockdowns and stuff is what helped me survive. However as soon as I started to see the general public start to pivot back towards “normalcy”, I began to realize that I was being left behind because of my continued precautionary behavior. Watching everyone go back to their crowded concert venues and packed sports bars without even an inkling of concern was really tough to deal with. I started to resent everyone around me except my wife, who was on the same page as me. I knew we were losing a massive part of our social lives and I’ve been mourning that ever since.
Now, 5 years later I have a very similar gut response whenever COVID comes up. It makes me physically anxious and upset to think about how apathetic everyone was to the situation once they got bored of it. At the end of the day it proves to me how little anyone actually cares about each other’s wellbeing when it’s not within the context of their own lives or aligning with their world view.
I’m ranting, sorry. I still have really really big feelings about this topic and this community is the only place besides my marriage that I don’t feel I’m being judged for my honesty around COVID and what we’ve lost to it.
Thank you for voicing all this, I definitely agree and feel the same. I’ve often thought about how lucky I am to have a partner who is 100% on the same page on covid, because I know from the covid forums that people have ended up in horrible situations when their partner decides to consent for covid for them. But at the same time we truly are an island now, it is very scary sometimes.And then I think about all the people who are fully alone with this and it makes me so sad.
I don’t think all the covid related trauma that people are just carrying around now can ever even be unpacked properly now. The wrongdoing is so fundamental. I think it’s good to vent about it, it too is a show of solidarity. It feels very lonely, but here we are, talking about it together
…people have ended up in horrible situations when their partner decides to consent for covid for them.
This situation makes me so angry! I’ve heard first hand so many people talk about this dynamic and in my eyes this behavior is malicious. It really brings into question how much they care about their partner’s mental and physical health.
I don’t think all the covid related trauma that people are just carrying around now can ever even be unpacked properly now. The wrongdoing is so fundamental.
Me neither, mostly because it’s still compounding… I still work in an office 3 days a week and mask for all 8-9 hours of it unless I’m eating alone in the corner or I’m outside eating or taking a walk. Still, after 3 years of working with these people I get weird looks and comments about my mask. Sometimes it’s an acknowledgment where they apologize for crowding my space when they notice, which I can appreciate. Although there is one guy that still goes “oh still, wearing a mask?” every now and then. That irks me beyond belief…
I think it’s good to vent about it, it too is a show of solidarity. It feels very lonely, but here we are, talking about it together
Agreed! This comm and its moderation is amazing for that. I mean it when I say it’s the only place besides my home that lets me express this without the judgement and gaslighting.
I am ND in a country in which eugenics never really went away, I knew for a long time that the average person (in the west) is very willing to let other people die/be brutalized if they are a “nuisance” or a “burden”.
You are neither soft nor weak. You’re human, in the best sense, because the thought of sacrificing millions to the economy should make everyone sick. Don’t be too hard on yourself, your reaction was right
Same, so much the same.
spoiler trauma
I still feel this crushing despair (and admittedly also rage) when I talk to my dead-eyed relatives or friends about covid. I have developed a sort of trauma from the silence, othering and gaslighting I received when it was me who took up masking first and kept up with the science (still do) and tried informing people around me of the danger. Me, my kid and partner masked before anyone did here and the summer of 2020 we got to feel the fascism around us really well for the first time. It just got worse from there. I’ve been yelled at for “ruining the vibes”, left out and ignored for five years now. And they have given me and my partner covid, twice. My partner has developed type 2 diabetes from it, we both have longcovid symptoms and the first years were really bad for both of us.
In maybe 2021-2022 I had to return to in-person studies and had to use public transport again. I was the only one in a mask. Same at uni. The entire world around me was talking about how it “just kills the weak, sick and elderly who would die anyway, so its ok”. Also a lot of talk about how those who get it or die from it are somehow at fault. And this is when I truly and deeply understood how deeply fascist the country I live in is. Like fundamentally culturally fascist. I realized the supposed “dark humor” and phrases everyone has used all their lives are really just fascism in plain sight.
Everyone went with not giving a fuck, old people the most willfully. They took pride in their ignorance and now covid is never even talked about. I still talk about it, but it isn’t even mentioned anywhere now. I keep bringing up the dangers to my family, but it falls into those dead eyes, even though these peoples children seem sick and I bet they have some form of longcovid now too. Most of these people do. Plus our doctors and experts came out as fully fascist with covid, I have no trust left for them or my fellow humans after already knowing this by having lived in the body of a larger woman and trying to access healthcare.
I’ve also noticed that the normies are really struggling now. We (me and my partner) have been doing a hibernating life for five years now, we hike and do nature stuff, but we minimize the growds still and use masking and layered protection. We don’t do movies, eat out or any of that, I got a desktop air purifier for my in-office days and stuff like that. And despite the longcovid problems we both now have, many of these normalizers seem to not remember anything, seem to struggle with basic cognitive tasks and they apparently have no idea it’s happening to them. My sister no longer remembers things we have talked about just days before.
I know I should feel empathy for them and I do tbh, but I struggle with it because I am also eternally angry. Each of these people have probably had people in their lives who have raised the alarm and they chose and choose to ignore it. Many would also have the financial privilege of caring, but they don’t.
I have no anger for the delivery driver who was forced to get covid so these same people can complain about actually having to be with their kids and raise them for once, like they did when they had to stay home for like two weeks. I have lived poor, I never travelled or could afford going out in the ways these people mean and that makes me even angrier.
It definitely broke and keeps breaking something in me. And I agree, I don’t think it can ever be fixed again.
See the anger, the fucking rage, is what’s most radicalizing for me. Being in the public health system got me on the path to communism but seeing this shit go on for 6 years and continue to get WORSE? That’s got me ready to burn this motherfucker to the ground.
Yup, a slow burning dumbster fire is what it is.
I am in the public sector too and my studies are in social work. The disappointment and anger I have felt when ALL of my fellow students and workers unmasked as soon as possible is out of this world. In uni I asked for accomodations due to my longcovid and legitimate fear of getting it again and got forced to coming in to lectures with visibly sick people attending after getting humiliated by having to disclose my health status and beg for accommodation. I was the only one in a mask and someone with fever and tested covid sat in the next row, because if we didn’t show up we would fail the course. I then tried to ask for remote study possibilities as I thrived studying at home. My grades took a dip as soon as we were forced back in person in 2022. It radicalized me more as I understood how audhd me will always get fucked by this system.
I had been led to believe that it is the social and health sectors who are on the side of the people, as per the welfare state propaganda. That it is social workers especially who side with the vulnerable. And yet we were made to do client work maskless. To this day I cancel all my appointments or do them remote if I feel even a little under the weather or someone around me is sick, but nobody else does. The people I work with are the most at risk and yet people come to work sick, never even mention covid and take no responsibility for the people they supposedly side with.
Just last week our organizations HR ghouls gave a big speech on “sick leave culture” and how despite their best neoliberal efforts the amount of sick days taken keeps going up. Not a single mention is ever made about infectious disease apart from mandatory flu shots, because those are the norm. This is an organization that is essentially the entire health and social care field plus fire departments in an area. These are your “frontline workers”.
I am rarely sick because I do my work remote as much as possible. I don’t socialize at work if I have to be there in person and always eat alone. I protect my clients and meet them at their homes or outside, it can be done. If they are sick, I mask and offer others a mask too, nobody has ever taken one. Not even when we enter homes with the sort of serious stuff where you would want one just for the smells that you need to be able to deal with. The fascism is hegemonic.
This stuff isn’t fixable by reform. China did the right thing (at first) and was fully demonized for it.
I have long covid and it makes me unable to participate in most physical praxis, despite my radicalization :(
I feel angry about being someone who needs constant support from his community when I want so badly for it to be going in the other direction. Not because I don’t love and appreciate them, but because I feel useless and like a drag, like I’m derelict in my duty to help others
I understand, but want to remind you that all praxis is valuable, not just physical. You did not choose this, none of us did.
Thank you for your kind words
it’s just been a difficult transition to lose a lot of ability that I used to have and the identity that goes with it.Generally I’m not in bad spirits about it, and I have family and friends who understand and help me, but yes, the widespread disregard for the ongoing spread of covid is continually radicalizing for me
I hear you, my longcovid ended most of my previously favourite physical stuff too and the grief and loss has forever changed me as well.
personal infodumb
Like I can’t run anymore, because it gave me severe plantar fasciitis and completely fucked up my left leg and can’t do any hard exercise like I used to or I get pain and exhaustion. I can’t really run away from a potential nazi anymore and that worries me.
Not to mention going to a gym or group exercise classes which turned out to be some of the most toxic and also dangerous places with covid, because the people in those are some of the worst.
We got ourselves a small home gym setup and I am able to do basic light lifts there, but I get too sore and broken if I go heavy like I used to. If I try running, my leg just falls apart again. I used to be a gym instructror and loved my martial arts. All gone. And I still know I got of easy, because I am able to do my current work and these days I can mostly walk again too, the hikes just can never be as long as they used to be or there is pain.
It’s been a hell of a time, it’s definitely forever radicalizing.
That’s funny, I have a whole squat rack and everything in my garage that has hardly been touched since I got sick. Honestly I’m faced with the thought of selling my equipment which feels blasphemous to me, but at this point it seems like I’m hanging onto it for sentimentality and self-image more than practical use.
I used to be, and still think of myself as, a bit of a meathead, but my body looks and feels very different these days. My garage setup was like a temple for me, and lifting certainly contributed to my concept of my masculinity. I’m still reckoning with the loss of that. And like, being the guy that friends call to help move furniture and play sports and stuff. It’s minor compared to what others have lost, but it’s big to me.
Anyway. I’m glad to have the online community here where people actually acknowledge how destructive covid has been, and where this kind of vulnerability is ok.
That resonates with me a lot, I used to always be the strong girl and lifting was one of the ways of affirming my larger bodysize and conflicts I felt with my gender as well, I took pride in being strong more than in how I look.
It has resulted in all kinds of soul searching that tbh revealed a lot of things about myself that I didn’t like, mainly attitudes, bodily norms and self stigma. These days I am working to be kind and loving to my body and accept it as it is. It has been through so much.
I suspect there’s a dopamine thing at play too with working out. I’ve realized that now as due to covid I no longer get that buzz or good feeling from working out much at all. That has been one of the hardest losses and I now understand I worked out so much and so hard to keep making it and to stay sane in this hellworld. Sometimes way too much. This has been replaced with class consciousness and a kinder outlook towards myself, but I do miss that high. But it also affirmed my understanding of undiagnosed neurodiversity which also came to me from all of this and covid.
Talking about all of this feels healing, I agree that it’s great that this comm is here and I am very happy that you chose to have this discussion with me. This is stuff that is wholly marginalized in the daily world.
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