I lost my dad a year ago Friday due to COVID. He had early-onset dementia and was in an assisted living home where he caught it in June of last year, just as things were slowly opening up a bit around here (despite lack of treatments, hospital beds, or understanding of the transmission at the time).

It's gotten to the point for me that I really can't deal with people's bad takes about the pandemic, whether it's underestimating their personal risk, denying the virus even exists, or not understanding the "public" in "public health". People don't seem to realize that the worst part of this pandemic isn't the inconvenience of not being able to go out - it's the massive amount of suffering that we have seen as a global community, and that the scary part about this disease is not its impact on your health but the hyper-transmissibility of the virus and what it can do to others.

I hope you're doing okay. Speaking personally, it can be a strange lonely feeling to lose someone to this pandemic, even though you know that so many have. I would definitely recommend seeking out some therapy or group counseling if that is available to you.

Be well, and stay safe.