Like, my grandparents lived through the Great Depression and never really managed to give up their learned habits from that experience. Now, instead of “Why are you guys sitting in the dark? You can afford to turn lights on…” it’s going to be “Why do you feel guilty about going to the grocery store? You aren’t infecting anybody.”

I’m already planning to have big bottles of hand sanitizer, and gloves for the rest of my life, also I want to buy an old school freezer, you know those ones that look like a coffin? I want one, and I want to fill it with frozen meat so I never EVER have to feel this fucking terror of what I’ll do if I run out of food. 

This is an actual phenomenon called collective trauma, and yeah it can do just that.

Oh shut up, this is nothing. People are starving all around the world. Crybabys

Like really? You’re comparing this to the great depression?? You people are so privileged its disgusting

You know what? It’s not ‘nothing’ to people who have lost their jobs. It’s not ‘nothing’ to the millions of people experiencing greater food insecurity because of this. It’s not ‘nothing’ to the people trapped with their abusers. It’s not ‘nothing’ for the people with other health problems this is exacerbating. It’s not ‘nothing’ to the people worried about their loved ones. It’s not ‘nothing’ to the people who have lost loved ones. 

Economist David Blanchflower, a professor at Dartmouth, is predicting that unemployment could soon surpass numbers from the Great Depression. Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economist and historian who co-authored a book that analysed the past 800 years of economic crises, says “We are going to see a recession, at least in the short term, the likes of which we have not seen at least going back to World War II,” and that this experience is tantamount to a war or even an alien invasion. Meanwhile, several writers have published in-depth articles comparing this event to the Dust Bowl. 

On top of all that, psychologists with expertise in the realms of grief and trauma have been weighing in to explain how this will be a shared traumatic for the vast majority people:

“The scale of this outbreak as a traumatic event is almost beyond comprehension,” said Yuval Neria, the director of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and a professor of psychology at Columbia University Medical Center.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is an epidemiological crisis, but also a psychological one. While the situation provokes anxiety, stress and sadness, it is also a time of collective sorrow, says Sherry Cormier, PhD, a psychologist who specializes in grief and grief mentoring. “It’s important that we start recognizing that we’re in the middle of this collective grief. We are all losing something now. Many people are reckoning with individual losses, including illness and death due to the novel coronavirus, or loss of employment as a result of economic upheaval. But even people who haven’t lost anything so concrete as a job or a loved one are affected, Cormier says. “There is a communal grief as we watch our work, health-care, education and economic systems — all of these systems we depend on — destabilize,” she says.

Like, sorry, but if you think this is all nothing because you’re not feeling impacted, then I hate to break it to you, but the privileged person here is you. 

I lost my job and therefore have no income whatsoever, the benefits system is overwhelmed by the number of new applicants so I have no idea when I will ever see another cent, I can’t continue to access the mental health treatment that has been so beneficial in the last few months, and I’m trapped on the opposite side of the world from vulnerable family members who don’t stand a snowflake’s if they catch this virus, but yeah it’s nothing 🤷‍♀️