What are the long term mental health impacts of Covid?

A story about a masked girl on a hot summer day.

Today I’m going to talk a bunch of trash about a complete stranger in a most unfair way. I hope you’ll forgive me.

Yesterday as I was leaving my local grocery store, I saw a young woman in the parking lot wearing one of those N-95 masks that were made famous in the early days of Covid. The ones that are so hot and uncomfortable that some say if you can stand to wear it for over a half an hour, you’re probably wearing it incorrectly.

I just kind of gawked. We don’t see many masks anymore here in Las Vegas. Also, it is summer. It was over 100 degrees in Las Vegas yesterday.

This woman was in her 20s or early 30s by the look of her. Relatively tall for a girl. Overweight, but not morbidly so. And wearing a medical mask. Outside. In the oppressive heat of Las Vegas.

Has she been masking up everywhere she goes every day for over 4 years?

I suppose she could have extenuating circumstances. She looked perfectly healthy, but maybe she isn’t. Maybe she has some kind of condition or co-morbidity or compromised immune system situation that makes an abundance of caution appropriate.

Maybe she’s been wearing N-95 masks every day of her life. Maybe she’s “the girl in the very leaky and ineffective bubble” (awkward hat-tip to John Travolta).

But I doubt it.

I felt terrible for this girl. Is she going to wear that hot, uncomfortable thing on her face for the rest of her life?

My very first post on this Substack was about how the Covid lockdowns and closures and mask and vax mandates ruined so many lives and livelihoods. But of course, there were many many other costs.

Many children lost years of education. Many lives were lost as our medical system went crazy as cancer screenings were cancelled and heart problems went undiagnosed as we monomaniacally focused on a single medical threat.

And then there’s what was done to this poor young woman — and who knows how many others. The government and the media must have scared this woman out of her wits.

When she sees all those other unmasked faces around her these days, what must she be feeling? Some kind of horror? She must consider every human around her as a deadly delivery vehicle for a pathogen.

Did the propaganda turn her into a younger, much less affluent, Howard Hughes? The late-state Howie, I mean. The one who was a terrified germaphobe.

How has she been treating other people this whole time? As we’ve learned, fear makes people very nasty towards one another.

I don’t know. This is all speculation, and terribly unfair speculation at that.

But still. I saw that girl, sweltering in the heat in that oppressive mask, breathing back in her own exhalations in that hot Las Vegas parking lot. I saw her, and I had to think about her.

And now you get to think about her too.

Naturally,

Adam

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