Sharing another response found online that resonated to the post. It’s hard to imagine the future staying like this, when it’s the people who feel genuinely alive with that make the challenges of the world more bearable.
There are real evidence based reasons for feeling like the world is “off.” One big piece nobody really wants to talk about: COVID actually does stuff to the brain, and the damage adds up at a population level.
Very short version:
COVID isn’t just a lung bug. It’s a vascular/neurological infection that can shrink and injure parts of the brain, mess with blood vessels, and raise the risk of long term cognitive and mental health problems. And each new infection seems to stack more risk on top.
Important points:
We have before/after brain scans. There’s a big UK Biobank study where they scanned people before COVID, then again after they got infected. Even in people who were never hospitalized, they found measurable loss of grey matter and tissue damage in areas linked to smell, memory, and emotion, plus overall brain shrinkage and slightly worse thinking-speed on tests.
Large data sets show long-term brain/mental effects. Huge health-system studies (hundreds of thousands of people) show that in the years after COVID, people are more likely than non infected controls to develop:
memory and concentration problems
anxiety, depression, and other mood issues
strokes, brain bleeds, movement disorders, etc. And this isn’t just ICU patients. It shows up even in people who were “mild” or never hospitalized.
The risk looks cumulative with repeat infections. There are studies on reinfection that basically say: every extra round of COVID increases your risk of death, hospitalization, clots, heart/brain issues, etc., compared with just one infection or none at all. So “I already had it, I’m fine now” isn’t how it seems to work. It’s more like repeated hits to the same system.
Mechanism wise, it makes sense. COVID can:
inflame and damage blood vessels (including in the brain)
disrupt the blood brain barrier
cause weird, persistent microclots that mess with oxygen delivery All of that is a recipe for “brain fog,” fatigue, mood swings, and slower thinking.
Now imagine that a large chunk of the planet has had COVID multiple times:
more people walking around with subtle cognitive decline
more fatigue, burnout, low frustration tolerance
worse impulse control and attention
higher background rates of anxiety, depression, and anger
Combine that with everything else (economic stress, social media, polarization, AI craziness, etc.), and yeah the world is going to feel different:
People seem flakier, less focused, more irrational.
Institutions feel dumber and more chaotic.
Public conversation feels more shallow and reactive.
That doesn’t mean every change you’re noticing is because “COVID brain”, but it is very plausible that a mass, repeated brain injuring virus is part of why society seems like it’s lost a step.
So if you feel like something fundamental shifted after 2020: You’re not imagining it. Part of what you’re seeing might literally be millions of slightly more brain damaged, more exhausted humans trying to run the same systems as before.
There’s no denying that this is our reality now and it sucks.