Because of information overload and the monotony of pandemic life, your brain may already be forgetting parts of the covid years.

Article by Richard Sima of the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/03/13/brain-memory-pandemic-covid-forgetting/?utm_campaign=wp_to_your_health&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_tyh

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Although COVID restriction have long vanished from our part of the USA, COVID hasn't. Where we live is currently in the "Orange" level (increased risk) and a few "close by" counties away are considered "Red" for very high COVID transmission. People are still getting severe COVID and some of them are dying. Disabling LONG COVID is on the increase with stats saying that between 20 to 25% of those who get the virus will suffer a myriad of unpleasant to downright horrendous effects (some that will eventually lead to premature death) long after the active virus is out of their bodies.

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Meanwhile, most everyone these days (not currently impacted by loss or by lasting COVID aftereffects) now act like the pandemic never existed. A large majority of people are trying to their lives as if nothing is different than the way things were back in 2019 before COVID.

Beyond political divisions (that ironically - for some reason - came along with the virus), one must wonder why so many (who shared this worldwide trauma of living through a pandemic) now chose to totally ignore what really happened. The Washington Post article above explains a lot about human nature and how people process things.

Some in the US always believed that the pandemic was fictional or a conspiracy or something beyond the reality of what really was happening. Obviously, it is easy for them to move on as if COVID never existed. Others (unless currently & personally impacted in a negative way) now just chose to forget. Society has given them permission. Forgetting is easier on the psyche.

Three years ago, 10 US citizens dying from COVID during a couple of month's time was far more noteworthy (and alarming to most) than 200 to 400 Americans still dying from COVID on a daily basis today. As a society, we have grown numb. And those (who are NOT in a higher risk category for COVID complications) really no longer care to think anything about the 4000 Americans that were once dying each day in 2021. They also now have little feelings about those others who this virus can still devastate. After all, 400 deaths is not as great as an unimaginable 4,000 deaths each day. Plus, as long as it is someone else, who cares about any of it???

Unless I go back through my own photo blog that I kept here, I also tend forget just how bad things really once became around the world; especially here in the USA. Things were so horrific that (unless one was directly affected), it was almost too much to really comprehend. I started to keep this photo history because I knew that I would eventually be like everyone else, and my memories would start to fade. It's not because I didn't care about my fellow man. It's not because I don't recognize a continuing risk. However, when possible, people tend to hold on to good memories more than they do bad ones.

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I vaguely remember my grandmother's sadly talk about the Great Pandemic of 1918. She lost a lot of family. Nevertheless, she also was spared herself & moved on to have children & pretty much forget most of the bad in her youth. To me, as a younger generation, I felt that her stories couldn't have possibly been as bad (for even those who lived through the events) later claimed. It was unfathomable. Today, I now finally understand her tales from the past. Will future generations understand the COVID pandemic of 2019-2023??? Until another pandemic hits, probably not. Are we truly done with the COVID-19 pandemic. Probably not. Yet the forgetting has already started.