We have a Covid 19 thread already but this seems different enough to warrant keeping open. Just to set some ground rules though, this thread will only be used for mental check ins. Not a place to debate about the seriousness of the virus, the appropriate measures taken, or anything like that. If you respond to someone else, only do so with positive vibes and support. :) I deal with anxiety and depression to, so it can be rough. I've actually been somewhat getting over it. I spent the last ten years or so in a funk and I was looking forward to trying to connect with people now that I'm doing better, but then the world was like "nope". Only place I've been in the past few months is to the pharmacy, and the occasional trip to the bagel/chinese food places across the street. I'm in regular contact with my 95 year old grandmother, and my parents are also on the older side. If it was just about me, I'd probably be willing to take a bit more risk, but if I was careless and infected my family members, I don't think I could live with that. Aside from that though, I've been ok. I started law school a few months before, so I was financially prepared to go without income for a little bit. Not having to commute is nice. And I'm not super social most of the time anyway. Only problem is that when the pandemic started I coped with anxiety by stress eating and put on a lot of weight that I'm in the process of taking off. On the bright side, I had a bad fast food habit that I've now sort of been forcefully weened off of, so hopefully I can take off the new weight and then some, and stay in a healthier routine. A vaccine is not going to magically make everything exactly the same, but, sadly nothing ever gets back to the same. In the US, particularly in NY, its been almost two decades since 9/11, and still everything is a bit different. But, that's not necessarily a bad thing. We live and we learn. The reason that a lot of countries in Asia are doing so well with this is that they had very bad SARS outbreaks. So, they didn't go fully back to normal, but changed things in a better way, so they'd be more equipped to handle things. Hopefully, we'll do the same.
Also, not to be annoyingly optimistic, but we live in the best time to deal with this. Pandemics are a tragedy whenever they occur, but at least we have the benefit of being able to communicate digitally, and the cabin fever is eased a bit by the technology available to us. I can't imagine how much worse it was to be quarantined in 1918. |
