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from the would-you-like-to-talk-about-it? dept.
How to keep your sanity when you feel like the world is going crazy:
Hi there. How are you feeling today?
It's a loaded question right now. Many of us are having extraordinary feelings in response to extraordinary times. Hundreds of millions of people here in the United States and around the world are doing their best to help contain the spread of novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 by following World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control guidelines and, bluntly, staying the heck away from other people.
Even for a born introvert like yours truly, the era of prolonged, enforced social distancing is hard. Folks are either stuck at home alone, stuck at home with their families, or still having to go out into the world every day to work—either because their work is vital or their employers are being stubborn—and all the while, we're being buffeted by government warnings and endless waves of frightening news.
In short: right now, we're all exchanging some measure of our mental health in order to preserve our own and others' physical health, and that has limits. We're all in this together, for several weeks and months, if not longer, and basically, we need to avoid driving ourselves and each other crazy if we're going to get through it.
That, of course, is easier said than done. To that end, we called up mental health experts to ask what, realistically, we should all be doing to help ourselves and others.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by edIII on Monday March 23 2020, @04:40AM (7 children)
The reason have to be panicking is precisely what you laid out. Complete and total lack of leadership at the top. Outright lies, although I guess we call them "fervent wishes" to be kind. "Truth" is not coming from the top, and those we can trust (the doctors) are sounding the alarm bells louder and louder. Instead of the law being used to fund private companies making what we need (wartime powers), none of those orders have been given. We have Senators more interested in dumping stock, participating in political theater that there is no real threat, and buying up teleworking companies. Half the government goes along with an insane child that believes a virus is a political weapon aimed at him. Question him about it, and you're a nasty person interested in sensationalism.
Trump may bullshit his supporters, but he can't bullshit the stock market. We've never seen anything like this since 1929. Nothing on the horizon to to make it better.
The "I'm not responsible" attitude, combined with desperate pleas for medical supplies from governors who get rebuked because of optics, desperate please by doctors and scientists, and we're all left with a scary fucking truth. We don't have a real president, and now it's showing more than ever. This is not fighting over political points, but pointing out that there is an entire side bereft of any confidence whatsoever in the future. That cannot be fixed by anything less than a new president, or the removal/death of the current one.
Has the administration or Congress figured out the bailout has to be Main Street this time? We've been pushed too far, and our society was already in a fragile state. More fragile than we care to admit, both physically with our infrastructure and social safety nets, and mentally. There is no morale left.
Panick? It would help to have reasons to believe in the future. Continuing reports by the CDC, doctor's associations, the Faucci guy, and plenty of sources completely non-partisan, all paint a scary ass picture desperate for leadership. Obama could've given us some confidence at least. Even his most fervent detractors would've believed Obama could've handled this better. So would Bush. You know who definitely would've had the leadership nailed? Reagan.
We don't have a real president. It's an actual fact, and while there are many Trump supporters desperate to not acknowledge this, or happy with the ends justifying the means, they're not fooled either. I'm sure that has an awful lot to do with the economy, and mental stress, of every American. This isn't a dirty fight over control over our politics anymore, or religion controlling the Alphabet people, or how to fix our government. We're dealing with an incredibly serious problem, one as serious as world War II an any invasion of American soil. We're at war with a biological threat, and no longer have the luxury for internecine bullshit. The asteroid is 113 days away, and time keeps getting shorter.
I've already gone through my five stages for this country. I'm at acceptance that our country already hit critical failure and died when checks and balances abjectly and utterly failed us. The top of the country is wholly owned by an incredibly corrupt and brazen group that flaunts the lack of accountability now. The Justice department is owned by the Emperor now, and it interferes with investigations and squashes justice. Our checks and balances are unable to remove the cancer within. It was truly the moment of death for our social experiment, our America.
This feels like the beginning of the end of society, and maybe many societies around the world. I've come to terms with that. It's not panick anymore, just grim acceptance that this is our world now.
I just take things one day at a time. Like I suspect anyone does in the dystopic movie that is our world now.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2020, @04:53AM
Yep. You're mostly spot on.
But as I said:
I'm over 50 but don't have any underlying conditions or a compromised immune system, so I'll probably be okay.
But I also have an elderly mother and other family members who are older or have compromised immune systems. I'm scared for them, and for others in the same boat. Which is why, regardless of the lack of leadership from the Federal government, I'm glad that many states are pushing hard to *slow down* the spread of the virus.
And most people seem to be on the same page too. We don't want our fellow Americans to die. If we can slow the spread enough, we can actually save lives. I can't speak for anyone else, but I believe that's a worthy goal.
Fuck Trump and fuck anyone else who makes the suffering of our fellow humans worse. We're better than that. Many, many people are rising to the occasion and that gives me hope.
But hope isn't always enough -- I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2020, @06:17AM (4 children)
I'll just leave this here:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united-states-public-health-emergency-response/ [foreignpolicy.com]
Note that the article above was published on 31 January, a full *six weeks* before jackass started taking this seriously and stopped calling it a Democratic hoax.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2020, @11:16AM (3 children)
This man on Twitter looks and sounds like a doctor and he finds the virus suspicious: https://mobile.twitter.com/ROHLL5/status/1241900290783109121 [twitter.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 23 2020, @08:17PM (2 children)
So you're linking to a Twitter expert? Don't you have something better to do?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @12:27AM (1 child)
The video was posted by someone who was retweeted 7 times by @realdonaldtrump who has 75 million followers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:14PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by digitalaudiorock on Monday March 23 2020, @02:33PM
While that's mostly true, I found this little bit of optimism (from someone who knows what they're talking about) interesting:
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-22/coronavirus-outbreak-nobel-laureate [latimes.com]
While he clearly thinks the current social distancing is critical, his take on how this will play out is less dire than other predictions, and his previous predictions seem to have panned out.