My opinion of the general public dropped quite a bit. I firmly believe an accelerator of collapse in the US (if it happens) is going to be due in large part from the fast spread of misinformation on social media. If our COVID response is in any way indicative of the response we will have to future disasters/calamities that require us to work together in unity, we are going to be screwed.

The bad:

So I read somewhere that the pandemic was an accelerant. If a particular relationship was going well it tended to bring people closer. If it wasn't going well, or had many issues under the surface all of that came to the top and made things harder (I've heard about lot's of divorce as a result).

This describes my experiance pretty well. Our boys (adopted through foster care for context) weren't doing great before the pandemic. Suddenly having them home 24/7 and neither us nor them having any kind of reprieve from each other was not good. It actually pushed things so far as my older son requiring inpatient care at a child psych facility.

It was also very hard on my marriage. The were underlying issues that had previously been serious but easy to ignore that now showed up as cracks under this additional pressure. Not only were we dealing with the pandemic as a couple, we were also dealing with our special needs kids spiraling out of control. This caused us individualy to spiral out of control, which caused our marriage to spiral out of control like a stack of dominoes.

The Good:

All this to say that it forced us to either bail on everything or work to make it better. It hasn't been easy, but we are in a much better place now. Not because of a reduction in stress (hint: I live in a county that's surge has made national news), but because we've actually addressed the real issues successfully.

The best thing that happened for our marriage was not marriage counseling (tried that before with little success), but rather individual counseling for both of us. I also had a sort of Watershed moment about a month ago. There had been some serious issues in my marriage (issues specifically on my part) that I had been in major denial about. I "saw the light" so to speak and realized I had put up major walls between my wife and I years ago. I had totally lost empathy for her. She could be in tears and I would feel nothing. Realizing this has enabled me to identify the source of these wall and work to resolve them.

All of this has resulted in my marriage being in a better place than it ever has been before. Our kids are still really struggling, but at least we are doing a better job as parents as a result of our marriage improving and us working better as a team.

I have great hope for the first time in a long time for my family, and honestly for our family going through the hardship of the pandemic was worth it for the result in the end.

I've been in lockdown for a cumulative total of 185 days (exactly 6 months!) over the course of the pandemic, including one unbroken stretch of 16 weeks in lockdown.

A few years ago, stressful life events gave me anxiety to the point where I had one panic attack, and quite a few close calls. I got some therapy, and had improved - and then the lockdowns came along and undid all that progress, and even made things worse.

Six weeks into my first lockdown, I had a panic attack when I read the phrase "skin hunger" in an article. Until that moment, I hadn't realised how much I was being affected by the total lack of human contact I'd been enduring. (I live with one person, who actively dislikes touching or being touched by other people. When I needed a hug to calm me down after that panic attack, I had to teach him how, and it was very awkward - not comforting at all.) During the later 4-month lockdown, I made arrangements with a "lockdown buddy", to get me through.

Coming out of that long lockdown, I had major anxiety issues about human contact. I found myself counting the number of days since someone had last touched me, and the number of days until I was likely to get touched again. I couldn't last more than about 3 or 4 days without touch: I would start getting edgy and panicky.

So, back into therapy I went. That's helped.

Even so, I've noticed that, these days, I'm a bit more desperate to get human contact. I've become a hugger, which I wasn't before. More than that, I've become needy for touch. For example, I went into the office earlier this week, after yet another short lockdown (12 days), and I hugged one co-worker and just couldn't let go. I plan my week around opportunities to get hugs. It's annoying.

I've become more jaded.

I've stopped caring about things I used to care about more, like climate change (we can't stop it), or equality between anyone. It's gotten more about making sure that me and the people I love and like are safe, it's all I care about now.

I've also kinda stopped caring about covid. I think that as soon as everyone had a chance to vaccinate, we should stop restricting people. It's not going to lead to anything. I want to live my life again. If people don't want to protect themselves with the vaccine, I can't help them anymore.

Someone already linked to it, but a few months ago I wrote this post about how I felt like my social skills were suffering after a year inside.

Since then, since I'm fully vaccinated, I've been out and I've had a few conversations with strangers. It felt a bit odd at first. But, quickly, it felt normal again. It felt like if the pandemic hadn't happened at all.

I do want to answer the question as well, about how I felt internally throughout the pandemic and how I currently feel.

Before the pandemic, I was already going through a very stressful time. I was having a fight with my family where, because I didn't want my sister's fiance to live in our house, I was castigated as the villain. And I was being emotionally ignored by my mom, and both my mom and my sister started treating me a certain way and started saying things that were incredibly hurtful to me. I was essentially alone. I couldn't talk to anyone about what was going on because I was always the bad guy. And on top of that, I had to live with a guy I didn't like, and I had very little privacy. My emotions had gone all over the place from the isolation I felt. But, eventually, my sister and her fiance moved out and I felt a lot of relief. To the point where I felt like I was recovering back to normal.

When the pandemic first hit I got severely depressed. I couldn't do anything, I was in my last semester of college and I couldn't be bothered to do any school work. I rarely felt like getting out of bed, and I was pointlessly scrolling through Twitter. Any progress I had made regressed, my emotions, and my personality, became even more erratic in the months to come.

I think I entered a manic period in the summer, where I was taking on multiple artistic projects. This was also the period where I was addicted to Twitter the most. And I would spend countless mind-numbing hours scrolling through a bunch of nonsense. And it was all changing the way I thought, and the way I felt. Even physically I felt like something was off. Almost like I was really hot, and my mind couldn't stop jumping all over the place.

This all led to a moment where I was canceled on my corner of Twitter. And that brought me a lot of stress. That led me to re-evaluate not only my relationship with Twitter but also all of the people and all the topics I had interacted with on Twitter. And so I deleted my account.

I embarked on a journey to broaden my mind. So I started reading again, I started watching more movies. It took a few months for me to return to a sense of normalcy. Where I wasn't thinking about Twitter drama, and I've come to the point where I've forgotten a lot of the people I had interacted with on there.

Now, I feel like a person again. Something which I hadn't felt in a while. I feel more like me before all the stress of college and my life had brought me to my knees. In other words, I feel more like myself. This also unlocked a lot of memories I had stored away. And suddenly I started remembering more of my life from before the pandemic.

So, I guess to summarize. I changed a lot throughout the pandemic and came out remembering who I was.

My anxiety is worse. I've had health anxiety for a while - being chronically ill with very little explanation as to why can do that. What if [random symptom] is another really bad thing wrong with me? Etc.

But the pandemic heightened it. The very mild contamination anxiety I gained from organic chemistry and microbiology lab classes was... Initially helpful for infection control, but now after a year is less helpful and more of a hindrance. I'm also still anxious about long COVID, because my illness started in my teens after I had a mild cough, and my symptoms match a lot of long COVID symptoms. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume I'm more vulnerable to disabling, long term effects from infections like COVID, even mild ones. So I don't know how helpful my vaccine will be for avoiding increased disability.

I live in a current major hotspot, so I don't really go out. I've put a pause on the minor outings that I'd started to feel comfortable with, like going to the library and doctor appointments. I was already a hermit before the pandemic because I lacked energy to both go out and go to work, but at this point it is starting to get a bit more wearing.

Edit: this sounds so gloomy, but some good things have happened in my life the past year, they just weren't related to the pandemic. My partner moved down and we're now living together, which is the best, and I'm slowly working on an online web development certificate that's going well.

Finally got a bipolar diagnosis that changed everything for me

Generally speaking, I haven't changed a lot simply because ---If I may pretend to sound poetic--- I managed to spend so much of my life in my home with my cellphone that, when the lockdown came, I was already accustomed to it.

But I feel more serious about socializing than I had before, and I think the pandemic helped push that.

A month or so into the pandemic, it dawned on me that, since I was in 9th grade and that was the final grade that my school taught, if this pandemic lasted until the end of the year, that day in March was the last day I saw my classmates I had been alongside for the last 9 years, even if I never liked most of them that much. (I didn't bother with Facebook and still mostly don't. I don't bother with any other social media platforms focused on IRL relationships.) Generally speaking, when a month takes a fairly long amount of time to pass, life seems pretty endless. But it isn't and there do come ends where fundamental change to your life occurs (at least as a teenager), and given what I've heard of adult socialization, plus the fact that I now go to the psychologist, where I can actually get advice I can believe in for social situations does give me an actual motivation to try to socialize which I simply didn't have before, and I partly credit the pandemic for this.

Also, this post about a self-described sociable person saying a year of the pandemic has made them behave in ways I personally find fairly relatable actually, gives me the feeling that, if they can fall (back, apparently) into the hole I reckon I've lived in for as long as I can remember, surely I can get out of this place, which is closer to hope than I can say about the overwhelming majority of things in my life.

I lost 20 lbs. I maybe shouldn't have. When the pandemic seemed like it was about to end then didn't, I lost interest in food, have settled in to constant pain, spend every day waiting on some thing that used to materialize with alacrity.

Soon I will change homes. I have consecrated the rest of my life to art, but lack time and tools in the present transition phase. Moving is a month of Judgment Days. Non-stop, you tell your things, "You never brought me joy as a planter box, be consigned to flames," and meanwhile reckon the weight of your own sin when six highlighter markers surface from a junk drawer still in their packaging. But, here I mock what is actually such a stressful process that I find myself pausing in doorways, supporting my standing frame there while gathering the will to endure more of it.

I wait for life to begin.

For me the pandemic has been mostly positive. Work, relationship, friends, it's all as good or better than it was in the beforetimes.

I'm a little more distant from family members that drank the qanon cool-aid, which is sad, but not a lot sad. The relationships still exist.

A few people in this thread mentioned that their faith in humanity has suffered. I've heard this a lot irl too. Makes sense, in a world of Trump and Brexit and etc. our faith in humanity was going to take a dive even without the pandemic to highlight the problems.

My view of where the human race is, in it's collective climb of maslow's pyramid and general social maturity, has definitely changed in the last half decade, with the pandemic as an accelerant.

I don't see this as a bad thing though. I think it's valuable to accept that humanity isn't, as a whole, as noble or as bright as we've liked to imagine. And that's ok. History shows us that this is nothing new. Looking at things like war, civil rights, poverty, mortality and crime, we're doing better than ever, even if it doesn't feel like it.

So ok, humanity sucks sometimes. We're an adolescent race (at best). Once you accept that, it's no longer disappointing.

Like most adolescents our priorities are confused, we're emotionally immature and we have an unrealistic view of the world. But also, we have boundless energy, we're learning and developing at warp speed and, if we don't destroy ourselves along the way, we have nearly unlimited potential.

I think there's cause for optimism. The negatives that can be found in the overall state of humanity just highlight the positives when we find them. Which is pretty often in our immediate circles. Or that's my experience anyway.

I do wonder, though, if the pandemic is this hard, how we're going to handle the much bigger global challenges that are almost certainly on the horizon. Maybe we needed a starter crisis. A generation innoculated to radical change.

I've always been a long term optimist. Not in any specific sense, but my faith that life, order, awareness, will continue to defy entropy as long as it remains possible, has always been strong. This pandemic was only dark enough to make me question it. On the other hand, trust in the future of the human race was never my bag. This certainly hasn't helped things.

Social trust feels like it's at an all-time low, and it's hard not to interpret that as a harbinger of reckoning. I don't know what that means. It could be global warfare, it could "just" be civil wars across the spectrum of societies, it could be...nothing. That end of the range of potentialities is the most worrying.

As an individual, I'm physically stronger than I ever have been, and mentally healthier than I had been in years. Maybe over a decade. Despite that, I'm as afraid to go out and meet people as I have always been. Given the circumstances, that still feels like something of a win, to not have regressed. My substance issues remain present, but certainly haven't worsened. The pandemic's been horrible for humanity, but I'm just trucking along. A life built on paranoia and isolation is remarkably resilient to a world full of infinitely dubious voices and bereft of social contact.

Lost a ton of weight. I was happy with that. Started talking intensely with this Girl on Whatsapp. After a few months, I asked her to be my girlfriend without meeting her in real life. I would never do something like that in normal circumstances. She said yes. We met, and it was great. I was hit by a car and now two small parts of my face are forever changed. Still look good though. In the recovery from the accident I gained all the weight back and then some (the doctor told me to eat ice cream, and I took the recommendation very seriously... maybe a bit too much hahaha). I moved in with my girlfriend and asked her to marry me. She said yes. Mental health is pretty much the same, which is generally bad, but I'm used to it. I miss seeing my friends, last time I saw them was 2 years ago? I can't count time anymore. We're all getting the vaccine so it'll happen soon. I became even more addicted to the internet than I already was.

So, what changed? Well first of all, I'm living with a girl for the first time and it's pretty great. I'm a bit fatter. I'm a little less handsome (which is cool, I was bit too handsome before hahaha). I stopped eating sugar (let's see how long this lasts...). A lot more internet. My moustache is really big and kinda insane. I'm proud of that.

I did not lose hope in humanity. For every ignorant selfish antimasker there are 20 smart well meaning people doing whatever they can for the collective. We're going to get out of it stronger than ever.

It took me back to my roots in a way. 21 years ago I quit my job and started my own business because I was sick of working for a company where they sold tech but none of the people in charge understood how to make tech. I worked for myself out of my home for the next 5 years. I loved working from home. After shutting down the business and going back to working for others, I still managed to work from home 1 day a week. It's been great working from home full time, and I don't want it to end. It's made me realize that there are a lot of other people who feel the same way.

But outside of work, I also got back to making music. I went through my old audio cassettes of stuff I recorded 25 years ago and copied it to the computer so I can keep listening to it. In doing so, I also managed to hear a lot of things I couldn't hear at the time I recorded it. So that was pretty fun. I've been writing some songs since then, and I really want to do it more, but I know I could let it fill up all of my free time, so I'm trying to find a balance between that and, you know, interacting with my family and stuff.

On the down side, it's made me fairly cynical and cautious of others in my community. Between the overly entitled far-right people living nearby, and the people who (rightfully) don't trust the government because of their past, it's a lot less safe than I would have hoped. It's just sad, really. It doesn't have to be this way.

I got furloughed, then quit my job when it was almost time to come back because I didn't see a point to going back to my job for a year only to quit after I graduate. I lucked out on an internship at a great company that should turn into a full-time opportunity in a field I want to work in.

I got even more doughy, gaining 20lbs (peaking at a fully clothed 300lb), and lost the strength and cardio I had from my pre-covid life: cycling to a physical job and school.

I was forced to confront some issues, mostly alcoholism and immediate family issues. I drank more than is strictly healthy before, but it never really impacted me until I wasn't burning off enough energy to go to sleep at night (and whatever other benefits there are for leading a normal life). I was never a day drinker or anything, but it did impact things like leaving me groggy enough to be late registering for classes one semester (pre-pandemic, but I managed to stay on track), and becoming fairly useless after about 10PM. I learned about the potential biological component to alcoholism, and kept drinking, but paid attention to what I did and why if I found myself spiraling into a heavy night. I decided not to quit drinking, but just not do it at home, as I never overdo it in public where I can't just pour another glass and need to be functional.

An annoyingly literal answer but the pandemic didn’t really change me at all. It pointed out a lot of the things I disliked about myself, what I disliked about the way I was living my life, and the things I want to do differently. Once things open back up, that’s when the rubber meets the road. Which unfortunately means all the hard work and change still lays ahead.

For the worse.

I've become more cynical, less energetic and less happy overall. I constantly get this impression that people don't actually like me and merely tolerate my presence, or just interact when they want something from me. Very hard to explain without going into a whole thesis of people who I once thought were friends.

Doesn't help that I was recently laid off from a job where I saw the coworkers as a second family, yet seldom interact with many of them.

During the pandemic I think I've come closer to realising why I'm timid and awkward around women and maybe give the impression of disinterest. Somewhat recent events reminded me of bullying and harassment I received from girls back in high school.

Relationships have been a major thorn in my side, and I still feel resentment towards exes who have just blatantly used me with no intent of actually being with me. I'm 29, still a virgin and feel like nobody finds me attractive.

I have been trying to do something about it. Hitting the gym, doing 2 to 3 sets to failure of as many weight exercises as I can. Drinking tonnes of protein shakes. But progress has been slow.

Spending a lot of time with myself forced me to 1. realize that I'm more extroverted than I thought, and 2. really come to terms with my mental issues and where they come from. I finally have an initial appointment with a psychiatrist for medication; it's two days after I plan to drive >700 miles back to campus before the semester starts. Hopefully they can do it remotely? Point is, my changes have mostly been good progress, but there's still a lot of kinks to figure out.

Unsure about the mental effects, but the combination of staying in all the time and moving out for the first time led to me finally losing a bunch of weight.

The big one is my health anxiety went all over the map for a bit. I think I have it mostly under control now, sorted out what's a digestive issue, what's a muscle issue, sorted the UTI for now and that ache in my foot is most likely an ingrown toenail and not me having broken my foot without my knowledge. Little stuff like that.

I used to be on the fence or unsure about vaccines, but the COVID vaccines have shown me that, at least in some cases, they are legit.

I ended a relationship, moved across the state (US), dates and broke up with someone else (we constantly checked in on our social distance measures) and went back to school during the pandemic. My mental health has fluctuated; I go from feeling great to terrible with no trigger or precipitating event. Now that I'm vaccinated I've started going out in socaly settings and dating. But now with rises in variants I'm starting to feel the constant anxiety again from being around people. I understand I probably won't get hospitalized but the idea of getting long covid scares me. Like Algernon said above, I may seek out a pandemic buddy to help with physical touch. I wish I could relax for longer than a couple months but until we all follow proper procedures this will keep happening.

@kfwyre, are you not going to answer your own question?

It's an interesting question to think about.

Apparently I am not the only one who has become a lazy home body and feels pessimistic for humanities future.