5 - the increasing oligarchy and loss of rights, often willingly, by people panicked by false stats and real fears of contracting a disease that is no more harmful than the flu for the vast majority of people . The CDC says the denominator of cases is understated by 2X -13X, meaning half or more of the country has already had Covid and almost all have recovered, almost all on their own.
6 - The creeping normalization of virtual culture, at the expense of people being able to socialize in person (thankfully, that appears to be waning, at least in NYC, and for now). This has profound implications for everything from job and life satisfaction to even the reproduction of the species.
7 - Rising income/wealth inequality due to centralization of "protective" policies by elite super-authorities who favor their own through policies like endless QE, tax breaks, and "sparing the hospitals" which really has more to do with cutting costs than supporting first responders, who are currently being laid off even as the pandemic ramps up again.
8 - The rise of a Phama-Immunity Complex (PIC) that is a combination of government support, Big Pharma vaccinations, and a panicked public permanently distrustful of their own innate ability to ward off diseases. This goes beyond vaccinations known to protect against plagues of the past and is a rise of keep-us-safe-at-all-costs philosophy, which is simply counter to everything known about life; i.e. it always ends in death.
9 - the rise of a new political and cultural division of vaxed vs. unvaxed people. The rise of virtue-signaling is literally costing people their lives; already, people are resisting what used to be uncontroversial vaccines for the flu and childhood diseases. This attitude is a spillover from distrust of the Covid vaccines, egged on by fringe groups - both Left and Right - who twist the reaction stats & disregard the disease stats. To be fair, there really ARE a lot of things wrong with reliance on vaccines alone to end Covid; they won't.
10 - The collateral damage of job loss, opiod addiction, dying from other causes left untreated due to fear of hospitals (me too!), international suspicion and blaming, is just beginning to be calculated but probably exceeds or will exceed the toll from Covid, when adjusted for who is actually mostly dying or getting very sick from Covid; it's not random and includes mostly elderly or other people with short lifespan prognoses already.
Each of these top 10 points could be several articles on their own and there are probably other changes from Pandemic Culture I missed.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
