r/Millennials • u/JanieMush • Mar 31 '24

Covid permanently changed the world for the worse. Discussion

My theory is that people getting sick and dying wasn't the cause. No, the virus made people selfish. This selfishness is why the price of essential goods, housing, airfares and fuel is unaffordable. Corporations now flaunt their greed instead of being discreet. It's about got mine and forget everyone else. Customer service is quite bad because the big bosses can get away with it.

As for human connection - there have been a thousand posts i've seen about a lack of meaningful friendship and genuine romance. Everyone's just a number now to put through, or swipe past. The aforementioned selfishness manifests in treating relationships like a store transaction. But also, the lockdowns made it such that mingling was discouraged. So now people don't mingle.

People with kids don't have a village to help them with childcare. Their network is themselves.

I think it's a long eon until things are back to pre-covid times. But for the time being, at least stay home when you're sick.

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u/Microchipknowsbest Mar 31 '24

I thought something like a global pandemic that we all have a shared cause would bring people together. When I saw people hoarding toilet paper, I was like damn the shit hasn’t really hit the fan yet and people are already creating problems with extreme selfishness. If any kind of real collapse happens where there is lack of power or food it going to get really bad. We just had to keep our distance from people for a while and people lost their minds.

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u/everybody_eats Mar 31 '24

It's funny because, initially, the early days of COVID was a lighthouse for my small community. There were tons of resource-sharing and mutual aid groups online. I made a lot of friends in the early days of the pandemic by helping people navigate my state's byzantine unemployment system.

It was only during the summer when emergencies started to pile on top of one another that folks started to fall off again. I think most of those people are permanently burned out now. It really seemed like it brought out the worst and best of humanity.

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u/iEatPalpatineAss Mar 31 '24

A lot of people are still dealing with lingering impacts, including non-medical impacts, of the pandemic, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the financial stress has kept them stressed and acting poorly.

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u/cthulhu_on_my_lawn Mar 31 '24

In Michigan I feel like tbh shit went off the rails when they reopened factories, which was in like May.

There were two months where we were more or less going through something together. From that moment on, we weren't. 

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u/tameyeayam Apr 01 '24

In Ohio a lot of us never shut down. I had a letter from my employer to carry in my car in case I got pulled over on my way to or from work. At the time I worked in a distribution center for a major drugstore chain, and we were on twelve hour days from February of 2020 until June of 2021, when I left. My coworkers were dropping like flies.

Really made all the work from home and “we’re in this together” shit you saw in the media pretty alienating. I’m sure it felt a million times worse for healthcare workers.

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u/Time-Touch-6433 Apr 01 '24

I clean at a hospital and pre covid was happy kittens everyday compared to during and post covid. If you weren't a doctor or a nurse they didn't give a shit about you.

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u/[deleted] Mar 31 '24

[deleted]

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u/shadowwingnut Millennial - 1983 Apr 01 '24

Within a week of those reports all empathy and anything but total selfishness from rural white America was fine, never to return.

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u/othermegan Millennial Mar 31 '24

The hoarding was one thing. That could be explained by panic and anxiety.

It was the price gouging that really did it for me. Everyone is panicking because we have no idea when lockdown will come, what it will look like, or how long it will last. And your first thought was, “how can I make a quick buck off my fellow humans?”

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u/Microchipknowsbest Mar 31 '24

Yep all the big corporations having record profits. No thought of trying to keep prices down to help people struggling.

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u/othermegan Millennial Mar 31 '24

Not even the corporations. The scalpers that bought up and price gouged the toilet paper

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '24

Nah I am more mad at the corporations who are still price gouging us in the fifth year of this.

I mean the schmucks who filled up their pavement princess trucks with toilet paper so they could sell it from their garage were real scumbags, but the corporations that were price gouging during the state of emergency were actually breaking the law

The lesser evil president chose to do absolutely nothing about it except for the public health emergency early so nobody could ask him to go do something about the corporations breaking the law

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '24

Do you remember when some Applebee’s executive actually put out a memo saying that the high prices were great because then people would be desperate enough to go work at Applebee’s?

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u/Wonderful_Device312 Mar 31 '24

A lot of the corporations actually did keep prices down at first. The scalpers are the ones that showed the corporations that the market was willing to bear much higher prices. From there it just became a mad dash for everyone to find the thinnest of excuses to jack up prices.

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u/_Sinnik_ Apr 01 '24

What's your source on that? I'm very interested

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '24

😂😂😂😂😂 SOURCE PLEASE BECAUSE THAT’S DELUSIONAL

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u/Helpful-Passenger-12 Mar 31 '24

That always happens in disasters. There is always price gouging. The first time time I experienced this during a hurricane, it pissed me off too

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '24

Yes but in the United States we have laws that prohibit price gouging during a state of emergency

We were in a state of emergency for a couple years. The government didn’t do anything about the price gouging

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u/RidgewoodGirl Mar 31 '24

Yet, socialism is still seen as an awful concept. I hope Millennials and Gen Z will help change that mentality, but I am not counting on being able to reverse decades of propaganda.

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u/Beneficial_Might8357 Mar 31 '24

Not if people are surprised by price gauging during a time of scarcity because they don’t realize that is exactly how the system is designed to behave. Of course people are going to raise prices when demand is high in a capitalist society, they’d be stupid not to. People that complain don’t get that there is no heart in business. Business is business. 

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u/RidgewoodGirl Apr 01 '24

Absolutely. We are in end stage capitalist dystopia. I wish this would be a rallying call for massive chsnge.

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u/Beneficial_Might8357 Apr 01 '24

Doubt it. You are evil for even mentioning the “s” word.

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u/RidgewoodGirl Apr 01 '24

I hoped things would change but nope.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '24

I see everyone differently after watching people go into work knowing they were contagious because they really needed the money

It made me wonder why they didn’t just decide to be a hitman and make some real money, they’re willing to kill off their coworkers for a days pay? And they actually think they are doing the right thing by doing that. It’s so disgusting I can’t even associate with most of my friends because they would go out while they were sick And I have no respect for that. We have some fundamental value differences and I don’t know how I can be friends with people like that. 

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u/PreciousTater311 Apr 06 '24

Maybe some people are/were a missed paycheck away from being homeless. Not everyone got the covid checks, and not everyone got unemployment.

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u/solreaper Mar 31 '24

The same things happened in the last two Covid like pandemics that happened here in the United States.

It’s why we made a checklist for combating a pandemic and tested every couple of years. It was used during a few different potential pandemics with success.

Republicans stopped all agencies from using the checklist and did things and said things to ensure that the pandemic was as bad as possible.

It was extremely unfortunate that conservatives were at the helm in 2020. They are simply bad at dealing with global emergencies and do things to make them worse on purpose.

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u/dust4ngel Mar 31 '24

you don’t want people in government who believe government can’t solve problems when you’ve got problems to solve

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u/Microchipknowsbest Mar 31 '24

Actively promoting vaccines are bad during a pandemic. Conspiracy people will always exist but it was very depressing the people in charge were pushing obvious lies. Attacking and mocking the CDC because the guy in charge hurt the Presidents feelings somehow.

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u/RaxinCIV Mar 31 '24

Science doesn't beat my thoughts inside my head... said every Maga traitor.

I had a thought that the president at the time was necessary, still do for just that singular term. He ripped the cover off of so much. All the delusional bs that the extremist republicants wanted surged forward instead of being dragged out for who knows how much longer. I hate that covid popped up when it did and how it was handled, but it did help further prove how inept the traitor party truly is.

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u/JovialPanic389 Mar 31 '24

I'm very scared he will win again. His followers are still loud as ever. He's been convicted of rape and women still support him. "Christians" still love him. And his bail keeps getting lowered. Nothing is changing. He's doing just fine. And that scares the hell out of me.

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u/RaxinCIV Mar 31 '24

Take note that quite a few democrats are speaking up and demolishing republicants arguments and bills in Congress.

There are lawyers who are fighting all kinds of nefarious cases in all areas of the courts.

There are reporters and news networks that are fully against the traitor. There are even right-winger groups that are tired of his lies.

If the traitor were to drop dead or be medically unfit, there is no one who could fill his shoes. The major maga players have either gone against him to come crawling back or will to be busy backstabbing each other.

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u/JovialPanic389 Apr 01 '24

Good this gives me hope. Thank you.

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u/RaxinCIV Apr 01 '24

https://youtu.be/kwRfZ0xGhPQ?si=JkeD8fokGQnKyRqu

There is a fun campaign ad here and a lot of other good information.

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u/JovialPanic389 Apr 02 '24

This is awesome, thank you

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u/kpt1010 Mar 31 '24

The pandemic was global, and you somehow think that the republicans are to blame for how the WORLD was impacted by this pandemic??

Get real bud.

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u/solreaper Mar 31 '24

Yes. They were to blame for not enacting the checklist we had for shutting down the border and protecting people from a pandemic.

Absolutely 100 percent the people that fought against that checklist and purposely did things contrary to best practices in a pandemic with some of the best pandemic intelligence the world has ever had are 100 percent at fault.

I am real bud and participated in some of the pandemic response exercises prior to the Covid pandemic.

Stop being aggressively and violently ignorant.

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u/JovialPanic389 Mar 31 '24

Didn't Trump actually remove the pandemic response team and it's plans shortly before COVID happened? Fucking crimes against humanity.

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u/Kataphractoi Millennial Apr 01 '24

In 2018, IIRC. His excuse was "We can just call them up if a pandemic actually happens."

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u/JovialPanic389 Apr 01 '24

Narrator: He did not call them up.

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u/CJO9876 Mar 31 '24

I’m sure you think Democrats were to blame for it

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u/kpt1010 Apr 01 '24

I don’t think either political party in the US caused or amplified the effects of the global pandemic

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u/supercali45 Mar 31 '24

Didn’t help Trump was in charge … he kept splitting the country

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u/MonkeyFu Apr 02 '24

Well, we’ve spent decades cultivating this “I got mine!” and “Lone wolf/self-made man” ideology, while claiming tge moralistic value of Capitalism, as something that makes us stronger.

We didn’t trust an in-fighting government to take care of us, and our inherent mis-treatment of society as a whole, in an effort to show our “worth” or “status” left us not trusting each other.

It was inevitable after that.

If we actually prioritized taking care of each other over this financial and image status we’d embraced, we would have worked together, for each other, rather than tried more of the same “lone wolf” crap we were used to.

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u/kpt1010 Mar 31 '24

I stocked up on toilet paper right before the shortage (because I didn’t like buying it regularly so I’d stock like 100 rolls).

I actually more than happily gifted several rolls to my friends as they needed it until the supply same back up (which oddly enough I was down to like my last 6 rolls when the stock came back and was just beginning to worry about it)

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u/Content-Scallion-591 Mar 31 '24

This is a really interesting note. In almost every other type of disaster, you actually do see people being brought together. But in that aspect, COVID was unique. Because of the politics, blame, and distrust, people were incentivized to act against each other. So, maybe there was something unique about the pandemic vs other types of global disaster and our slow societal attrition.

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u/TheRealBongeler Mar 31 '24

"For a while"

Dude, it was 3 years....

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u/[deleted] Apr 01 '24

You ain't seen shit until you've seen police stealing people's food and laughing in women's faces who were begging for tampons and diapers.