For a while now, I’ve been wrestling with a paradox:
POINT: Stress is bad for my health. It can trigger serious exacerbations for me. I need to stay off social media, stop doomscrolling, and stop reading the news, if I want a chance at being healthier
COUNTERPOINT: Being uninformed is bad for my health. Caving to friends and family who pressure me with lines like nobody’s masking anymore and Covid is over and Honestly? I just don’t think about it anymore is also bad for my health.
One of the ways I’ve found to hold onto my sanity in the face of constant gaslighting is to continuously re-inoculate myself with the truth: Just look at this terrifying new study, these awful new statistics — see? Covid really IS that bad, and I still need to be cautious with masking!
Connecting with folks online who are covid-conscious reminds me to be vigilant, on my guard, and meticulous about masking, in spite of constant pressure. And right now, for me that means…doomscrolling.
It’s been a difficult paradox, and sometimes I feel like I am failing at taking care of myself no matter what I do. My health keeps falling further and further down the well, and my mental health too.
On the one hand, as Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
On the other hand, I can’t do much to heal society if I’m dead.
My Great-Uncle William fought for 7 years in World War Two. In the 80’s and 90’s, my mother would visit him in Boston and bring me along.
To say he was “eccentric” is a vast understatement. Uncle William couldn’t go more than 5 minutes without breaking into a war story. When I was in grade school, he’d tell me grizzly stories about the times his commanding officer committed war crimes by shooting POW’s. And one story became infamous enough in our family that I heard it repeatedly: the time during the Battle of the Bulge, when his unit was freezing in inadequate clothing, so they were all ordered to “shoot themselves a coat.”1
Uncle William was peculiar, disturbed even, and while he managed to otherwise live an ok life, he never really healed from the war’s effects, or stopped being obsessive about his trauma.
I felt sorry for Uncle William; I think we all did. From time to time, I thought about how sensitive I am. I remember being grateful that I hadn’t had to live through something as traumatizing as 7 years at war.
Who knows what I would have become, in that situation?
But recently I realized that in this age of Covid, I’ve now become Uncle William.
Every morning, I think about Covid. Every evening, I think about Covid. Every news story, every government announcement, every personal update I hear, I view in terms of Covid — even things that, at first glance, appear unrelated:
There’s a housing shortage —> Not for long, because pretty soon everybody’s going to be too sick with Long Covid to pay a mortgage, and they’ll have to double up with relatives or become homeless
It’s sad how restaurants have cut back their hours --> Yeah that’s because Covid killed and crippled front-line workers, and made the jobs unappealing to those who are left
I have to get a routine medical procedure done —> Let’s hope you don’t end up catching Covid in the mask-free hospital and end up crippled for life! Know that if you do, you won’t be able to sue, because we’ve all just collectively decided that ADA and OSHA regulations are no longer enforceable, somehow!
Homeless people can be arrested now —> So: Get Covid…Get Long Covid…Lose Your Job….Become Homeless…Get Arrested. FanTAStic.
TLDR: It’s not a fun time in my head.
Do you know the things I used to think about? I used to think about song lyrics. I used to think about nature, and Latin, and the architecture of the buildings I saw when I went on long walks (back when I could go on long walks). I thought about the etymological roots of words, and people I had crushes on, and beautiful melodies, and books that moved me, and NPR stories, and The Odyssey, and so forth.
But not anymore! Now I just think about all the people who are trying to kill me.
Some of the killers are doing it on purpose, like government officials who peddle disinformation to boost their poll numbers and “quell panic.” Some are the small-time sociopaths and other other disordered individuals whose vicious antics used to only affect their families and workplaces, filling the boards of r/JUSTNOMIL and Captain Awkward etc.2 But now they are clearly thrilled to have the power to hurt others in a state-approved fashion, by doing the easiest thing in the world: Nothing!
But most of the maskless public are not sociopaths. They’re acting out of some combination of ignorance, peer pressure, mental overwhelm and sheer laziness. Regardless of the intent, however, the danger is just the same.
The present is…crazy-making. As a logical and rational person, at the beginning of the pandemic I thought that the biggest problems would be the science of thing: finding good interventions and getting better vaccines. And also money: retrofitting, say, every school in the country with top-notch HEPA filters is an expensive proposition. But hey, we’re America! We can do it!
But as with climate change, the problem ended up being less about getting the science right and more about squishy and huge and complicated things. The problems are humans, emotions, and power. The problems are propaganda, misinformation, the (abnormal) psychology of crowds, mass denial, memory holing to deal with trauma, in-group/out-group dynamics, and so forth and so on.
The result is quite frightening. It’s like you’re in a zombie movie, but the CDC is now being run by the mean girls from high school: “Oh. Mah. Gawd. Becky, look at her mask!”
Here’s the problem: I do need to attune myself to something outside of myself, something closer to truth and accuracy and holding the line, and far away from the Mean Girl Zombies I encounter every day. But right now, the main things I have to sync myself to are massively stressful, and disruptive to my parasympathetic nervous system.
I’ll be talking about possible tiny alternatives, possible tiny improvements in how to deal with the triple fires of pandemic, propaganda, and mental health, in my next post.
He wore that German Officer’s coat — a Nazi coat — around Boston for the next 40 years. He frequently commented on how well-constructed it was. One time, a man saluted him in the middle of Boston Common.
For one of the more chilling / juicy takes on the Psychopaths Who Walk Amongst Us, look no further than this story of the mother-in-law who was poisoning her daughter-in-law. Beware: it is very easy to lose hours to the internet rabbit hole of “mothers-in-law who are poisoning their daughters-in-law.”
"Do you know the things I used to think about? I used to think about song lyrics. I used to think about nature, and Latin, and the architecture of the buildings I saw when I went on long walks (back when I could go on long walks). I thought about the etymological roots of words, and people I had crushes on, and beautiful melodies, and books that moved me, and NPR stories, and The Odyssey, and so forth.
But not anymore! Now I just think about all the people who are trying to kill me."
I actually still think about most of the things you listed (song lyrics, nature, etc.) these days, while also taking practical measures such as wearing respirators in all public indoor spaces. Sure, I also think about covid on a daily basis, but not so much that it crowds out pretty flowers.
It helps a lot that I live in a household where everyone takes covid seriously and takes reasonable measures to keep it out. That means my home feels like a safe space, both in the sense that I don't believe I'm going to catch any airborne viruses here, and emotionally safe in that the people I live with validate my concerns. Sometimes I do stop 'doomscrolling' and absorbing so much covid-related content because, unless there's a major scientific advance or a major change in society (such as having good ventilation and/or air filtration in all public indoors spaces), I'm not going to change my everyday choices (and if there is such a major change, I think I'll find out without constant updates). If I lived alone and had no one to offer in-person moral support, or worse, if I lived with people who minimized covid, it might be harder to hold headspace for the beautiful things in life. Oh, and while I have health problems, I don't have long covid, which also makes everything easier.