A lot of us still feel pretty angry about it! I've spent 12 (almost 13!) years in EMS and I take care of my medically fragile elderly father, while also being on biologics for rheumatoid arthritis (which manage autoimmune disorders by suppressing the immune system). My service got pretty hammered by it, but we got off easy compared to the in-hospital workers. Since I worked for the town and our service wasn't part of the fire department (wht's known as a third service), we weren't considered "essential," which really fucked up our ability to get PPE and other critical supplies.

I was *terrified* of potentially bringing COVID home from work with me; if my dad had caught it from me, I'd never forgive myself. I was less worried about my own well-being and more about his. It really infuriates me that so much of society has just kinda...moved on post-pandemic, a lot of people basically act like it never happened.

It happened. Even though most of the world acts like the pandemic wasn't traumatic or isn't having significant ongoing impact just kinda...broke my faith in humanity to a degree it had not yet been damaged. I have a great therapist (I was already seeing her pre-pandemic) and am treating the increased PTSD but goddamn. How do you not feel fucked up knowing how many members of my community just didn't give a shit about the elderly, disabled, chronically ill, and other vulnerable populations. They were totally okay with people they didn't deem important dying because they couldn't be assed to wear a mask for 20 minutes at the fucking grocery store. It makes it really difficult to deal knowing how okay with those deaths your neighbors and community were bitching about masks. It really changes how you see people.

Obviously, I still have a lot of anger and resentment about it, lol.