i remember as covid was starting to lighten up, i thought the entire situation was so strange and offputting and also something that everyone dealt with. i wanted to see what people did during it out of genuine curiosity. my life also got very weird during that time as i separated from my wife like six or seven weeks before it all started.  i found that people just didn't want to talk about it. it's like people who survived a city getting bombed or living through soviet era, people just want to put it behind them. there's also a lot of shame to it, like your grandma died because andrew cuomo put a bioweapon in her room, how do you deal with that? the same people are in charge now and you can see it. you can't actually do anything about it. it's tremendously demoralizing. and they do count on this reaction and have studied it extensively.
United States