Trivialising this to fear of vaccines misses the point. The lack of human communication being the new normal, cut friendships and shattered communities are the real killer here. Especially for ones that didn’t have a lot of social life or family to begin with.

The lack of human connection has been a trend for many decades now, covid just accelerated it all at once. Not like there was much choice, lots of people died, we did what we had to.

The communities that did exist were always running on fumes, basically only existing due to inertia. When the inertia was cut, even if only for a couple weeks in some places, they were done. That’s it.

The social damage has been here, and we’ve been zombie-ing our way through it. Covid just let the undead stay dead, and turns out we can’t revive it.

And the massive damage this did to children's education. I think people who didn't have a child in the school system at the time might not understand how poorly the schools functioned during that time.

My child had two intelligent and supportive parents, including a stay-at-home mother, and it was still rough. Many of her classmates just flat-out lost a year of education. There's still obvious effects on her cohort years later.

Almost every single meetup group in Northern Virginia was completely destroyed and did not grow back. I watched as dozens of local meetups, several running for many years, disappeared over night. I managed one as well and my crew held on to ours for as long as we could. We managed to keep it running online for several more years. But the social damage was done. After running the thing for 12 years, not being able to find anywhere that was willing to host us in-person again, and all of us original organizers having moved to different cities, there was nobody willing to take over.

> Trivialising this to fear of vaccines misses the point.

We had concerted anti-vaccine campaign. Literally trying to make you feel afraid of vaccines or feel sorry for kids that might get them. And yes, it was fear spread by men who fancy themselves manly men.

> The lack of human communication being the new normal, cut friendships and shattered communities are the real killer here.

I am particularly salty about this one. Because the exact same ideological and political groups who are throwing complete temper tamptrum over lockdown are the ones who want women to be stay at home moms. I did not, lockdowns were easier, you had a lot more communication and everybody was in the same position so you could realate.

Lockdowns were an easy mode compare to the thing they want force women into.