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Did Covid blow up anyone else's relationships?


danada1
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21 hours ago, klmama said:

I haven't lost any real relationships, but it's been disconcerting to have some friends in the "it's a hoax" group and others in the "it's going to kill us all" group and everything in between. 

We met up with some old friends at a park this summer when we were traveling.  One friend let me know they don’t wear masks.  One friend let me know they always wear masks. 😂.  But I’ve never had anyone be nasty about it.  We (me and the kids) wore masks to respect my friend who worried about covid, and my other friend and her kids didn’t.  We just kept the unmasked kids the farthest from the kid who needed the mask.  It was all good, easily done, and no hard feelings. :)

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No, I do not give differences of opinion more importance than the value of friendship.  Also, I don't think I engage in virtue signaling type communication that would make others feel judged for their beliefs or actions.  I'm used to friends disagreeing with me.  Either I can discuss it like an adult, or I can change the subject.

In short, I can't think of any relationships that have weakened because of Covid.

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2 hours ago, Not_a_number said:

This is why "excess deaths" is always the best statistic. Excess deaths suggest that we're undercounting and not overcounting COVID deaths, which is almost always the case, anyway. It's hard to count everyone. 

But there were many more flu deaths this past year than usual, so that should also be taken into account.  Ultimately I doubt they are under-counting Covid, but I also don't think anyone really knows for sure.

My SIL just lost a nephew to drugs ... not sure if it was an OD or what, but it definitely was not Covid.  I hear OD deaths are on the rise ... and suicides ... and violent crimes ....

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24 minutes ago, SKL said:

No, I do not give differences of opinion more importance than the value of friendship. 

That's a rather loaded way to put it. It's merely an opinion, after all, that we shouldn't murder each other, but you'd probably decide that this opinion is worth more than friendship. 

What's an "opinion" to one person is a "value" to another. I am not arguing that my way is better, but it feels dismissive to say that someone isn't being an adult because they decide that a clash in values can lead to the end of a friendship. 

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Maybe one thing I became painfully aware of is that one or two relationships I thought were friendships may have more been "acquaintances that got together in person frequently". Once the in person meetups stopped, at first due to shutdowns and then more so because I wasn't interested in meeting up for activities with no attempts at social distancing/masks, communication wasn't very reciprocal and dried up to very minimal. So, that was disappointing. I didn't want to do any more in person meetups that didn't involve some type of current health practices, but I didn't want to entirely not communicate either.  

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For anyone who's curious, the CDC flu death estimates are 24,000 – 62,000 deaths this year. It's a wide range (maybe COVID makes it harder to estimate? I don't know if the normal range is this big), but the middle of it is a relatively normal flu season, I think. Worse than last year, better than the year before that. 

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It has been in a way comforting to hear this has been happening to others. I've felt like I'm in some type of messy middle. I think this whole thing has brought up a deep longing for some type of community that I feel more fully connected with, rather than being friendly with a lot of groups, but never  really at feeling at "home". Having been part of that "home" type of church group/social network at other times in my life makes me wish for it again.One of my good friends who is part of a more progressive church has had a pretty much across the board conscientiousness about covid health practices among her church "family". My friends/acquaintances in the homeschooling circles seem to be all in together as they dine out, have parties and huge indoor church gatherings with no distancing. I guess, lately, I've often felt like I'm friendly with different groups, but never really part of a tight group that I have really really similar values with. However, I should be very grateful that my husband and I are mainly on the same page and that my children have been mostly happy during this time. I guess it has been hard because I think in other years, social disappointment would have been offset by the comfort of family gatherings or whatever.... But everything is park or porch visits and masks, which I agree with given the current situation, but still, altogether it's not as comforting. Hoping to have a couple good cries about this and move on to be a more experienced, stronger person.

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My dad and his wife didn't come to my daughter's wedding which was just the bride's and groom's families plus grandparents, pastor, and organist.  He said his dr said it was too risky.  Too risky for him to catch covid even driving and staying in the parking lot in his car so he could see her in her wedding dress (which is what other people did that couldn't come in to the service).  Yet, it's not risky for him to go to art classes, other people's homes, stores, and restaurants, etc.  Oh, it was also too risky to even call us to ask how it went.  You know those covid germs are small enough to pass through the phone waves.

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12 hours ago, Patty Joanna said:

I'm sorry for your loss.  :0(

I think it makes a big difference when one's personal experience matches the public narrative.  In my life, there is a lot of dissonance--I personally know one person who has had COVID, and yet I have a LOT of experience with people who are depressed, out of work, lonely,  or sick-with-life-threatening-cancer-and-are-all-alone-in-their-struggles because of the lockdown/shutdown and all that has come along with it.  

Another example:  My friend's cousin entered hospice, dying of cancer, and within a week contracted COVID, and a week later her cause of death was recorded as COVID.  This makes me less trustful of the numbers...not just by "a unit of 1" but in general.

I don't mean in any way to minimize the seriousness of COVID or the losses people have experienced.  
I do want to point out that there are reasons people have different reactions to the situation, and different levels of trust in the authorities and media narratives.  


While I’m sure there can be “gray areas” in individual cases re: cause of death, I haven’t found anyone yet who can offer any other explanation for all the excess deaths that have occurred since April. 
 

image.thumb.png.e18c1ad9927dd118553b451398b46492.png

Link to CDC Excess Deaths page

Edited by Happy2BaMom
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14 hours ago, Patty Joanna said:

I'm sorry for your loss.  :0(

I think it makes a big difference when one's personal experience matches the public narrative.  In my life, there is a lot of dissonance--I personally know one person who has had COVID, and yet I have a LOT of experience with people who are depressed, out of work, lonely,  or sick-with-life-threatening-cancer-and-are-all-alone-in-their-struggles because of the lockdown/shutdown and all that has come along with it.  

Another example:  My friend's cousin entered hospice, dying of cancer, and within a week contracted COVID, and a week later her cause of death was recorded as COVID.  This makes me less trustful of the numbers...not just by "a unit of 1" but in general.

I don't mean in any way to minimize the seriousness of COVID or the losses people have experienced.  
I do want to point out that there are reasons people have different reactions to the situation, and different levels of trust in the authorities and media narratives.  

Not sure if this will help with concerns about numbers, but we have had at least 2 people on our small unit who we were sure had covid but did not test positive, early days when testing was difficult, and their deaths were definitely not counted as covid. 

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Covid, a certain person's disregard of risk, and their purposeful actions, was the straw that ended a relationship here. It was inevitable. The relationship was dying a slow death anyways. The day I got into a fight with them because they didn't understand that I didn't want their selfish behavior to KILL me, was the push I needed to end it.  I didn't die, so they are surely smug and saying I am foolish to have been concerned. At the end of the day, it wasn't whether or not any of us got sick, it was that they were willing to gamble with all of our lives, just so they could have some fun.  

Covid didn't kill the relationship, but it put some pressure on this person, and they broke under their own selfish disregard. Pressure didn't turn coal into a diamond. It just left a dirty, crumbled, broken lump of coal.  

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On 9/23/2020 at 3:21 PM, Sneezyone said:

Just wait a little longer and see how much numbers matter. From what I've observed, accurate numbers as a concern fade rapidly when COVID comes knocking on your door. 200K souls in 6 months and counting.

We lost 2 relationships with tutors/coaches who  had worked closely with my son since he was 4 years old over their refusal to wear masks and beliefs that this virus was not a big deal. Saying goodbye was sad and my son took a long time to get over the fact that he will not see them and he had to get used to new teachers. Now, both of these teachers have been affected by covid deaths in their families and are starting to wear masks. Things are changing, but, apparently some people needed to see their loved ones suffer and die before believing that this is not a hoax. 200,000 people who would have been alive today are gone... can’t imagine what winter season will bring.

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