alt Hacker NewsHow is the author of this piece going to cite a graph that shows an extreme increase in time spent at home that begins in 2020 and not mention COVID? We had social media in the 2010s. COVID made spending time outdoors/around other people an actual physical danger for over a year, and the psychological effects of that are lingering. Does anyone remember that one political cartoon where the guy is walking down the street, and everyone around him just looks like a virus particle? I think a lot of people consciously or subconsciously still see the world that way. If you don’t believe, reflect on how you would feel about attending a crowded indoor gathering in 2010 vs now, or how much unease you would feel if someone at the table next to you started coughing.
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If you're stressed out all week and you pick up an infection then your immune system might not settle into fight mode until the weekend, because you can't afford to be down for the count when what you really need right now is to run from the bear, except it's not a bear, it's just the grind.
If there are more potential infections out there than there were before (also, greater population sizes to communicate them) that's a higher concentration of weekends lost to sickness.
That's gonna have an impact on how often you go to a friend's house... squared, because it's both you and that friend. Like the network effect's evil twin.
For me it's indeed around COVID where my habits changed. That deserves more attention indeed. Something about the vibe changed. Could be just me, and could be just a coincidence that is happened around COVID. But it's worth considering.
I noticed that too. It's unreasonable to extrapolate anything from that graph when it only ends at 2022.
The chart cutting off in 2022 makes it hard to glean too much.
I no longer worry at all about attending a crowded indoor gathering - those would be impossible to avoid in NYC - but enjoying “a night in” without kids is a distinctly post-COVID phenomenon for myself and many people I know
The risk has not gone away. What's gone away is our willingness to acknowledge it or do anything about it.
> COVID made spending time outdoors/around other people an actual physical danger for over a year, and the psychological effects of that are lingering.
It actually never stopped being a physical danger. The only thing that changed is how long it takes for the damage to unfold.
At the start of COVID, people were rightfully shocked that hospitals and morgues were overflowing, and they reacted accordingly. That's no longer an issue (for now) with these latest strains, but acquiring Long COVID and dealing with its effects is definitely still a real concern.
Long COVID is vastly underdiagnosed. You might not get it until your 4th/5th/6th re-infection. That reinfection might also be asymptomatic, and/or Long COVID doesn't set in until weeks or months afterward, meaning people often don't link the two events. People not taking precautions (majority) are getting re-infected on average once per year since immunity from a previous infection typically wanes after 6 months, and there are about two waves per year for any given area.
Vaccines are of limited utility since they don't prevent transmission. A consistently worn N95 in public spaces is the only reliable means of defense, and everybody in your household needs to do that in public for it to be effective within your household.
There should be a name for the amnesia people seem to experience for the covid era. For 2 years, more or less, most forms of social activity were frowned upon or (in some states) made outright illegal. I feel strongly that this has affected our collective psyche more than anything since WW2. My sister (10 years my junior) seems to have had an extremely different early-adulthood from me. The lack of reflection on it is strange...