I never caught COVID, and yet I have so many post-pandemic symptoms.
Difficulty focusing and organizing my thoughts? Yes!
Reluctance to rejoin my usual social network, even to leave the house? Yes!
Wearing the same clothes, shaving and showering less frequently? Yes!
Feeling trapped in the same general day for months on end? Yes!
A sense of disengagement from my own future? Yes!
Articles documenting these and other consequences — weight gain, alcohol consumption, broken marriages, job loss, heightened anxiety, political tribalism — will probably be relevant for another six months or so as social critics diagnose who we are and what we became as we lapsed into quarantine and lurched out of it.
I am not particularly interested in the diagnoses themselves in my own case. They are not difficult to make. Cartoons already depend on their easy recognition.
What is difficult for me is deciding whether those post-pandemic symptoms are a diversion from normal or a return to it.
I acknowledge that my sense of lethargy is “not normal.” I am not usually one to stay inside when it’s a nice day out. I am usually fairly organized. Traditionally I have not, by way of example, found it oppressively…
