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If you feel your mental health has changed since the pandemic started, talk a bit about how, and why.
I feel like I have gone through the whole grief cycle in the last year. First “it’ll never come over here” and “it won’t last”. Then great and anxiety about food supply chains and wishing desperately that we had room in our tiny house for a chest freezer. Then “what the hell people, wear your damn masks or we’ll all be trapped in our homes forever!” Many, many weeks of depression and palpable anxiety. And finally, in just the last week or two, something approaching acceptance. I’ve figured out a system that works for me while [my husband] is deployed, and hopefully will work for him when he gets back and we have to share the space again. E. has a good routine and social life with daycare and our daycare family bubble. I can bake amazing challah and pizza dough after making them both nearly every week for more than 50 weeks now. More and more people around me are getting vaccinated. Maybe soon I can be vaccinated. There is still a cynical voice in the back waiting to be let down or disappointed, but in general the optimist is winning.
March 21, 2021
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How has media coverage of the coronavirus influenced what you think, how you feel, or what you do?
Media coverage of coronavirus frankly has me exhausted and overwhelmed. Coverage seems to lurch from “we’re failing and falling behind in every measure and there’s no hope” to “we’re totally rocking it and outperforming the world”, from “how do we get every eligible American to take it” to “Americans need to stop being so stingy and share our abundance with the world”. And while technically all of those ideas could be true at once (and perhaps are), every story feels like it’s written in a vacuum. It’s like emotional whiplash. Then the wild sensationalism of every preprint scientific journal article regardless of caliber and quality—do this don’t do that this will save you no wait kill you no wait.... Somehow despite all this coverage, I can’t find answers to the only questions I really care about. Am I endangering my unvaccinated daycare teacher or toddler daughter every time I send her to school? Is it safe to fly across the country to visit grandparents? I know it’s not the news media’s fault that there aren’t yet hard and fast rules about what is safe and what isn’t. But for all the noise, what actual information is being shared?
April 28, 2021