People who downplay the threat of this pandemic are as deadly as the disease itself

If there's one thing that everyone can agree on, it's that being in a pandemic sucks.
However, we seem to be on different pages as to what sucks most about it. Many of us are struggling with being separated from our friends and loved ones for so long. Some of us have lost friends and family to the virus, while others are dealing with ongoing health effects of their own illness. Millions are struggling with job loss and financial stress due to businesses being closed. Parents are drowning, dealing with their kids' online schooling and lack of in-person social interactions on top of their own work logistics. Most of us hate wearing masks (even if we do so diligently), and the vast majority of us are just tired of having to think about and deal with everything the pandemic entails.
Much has been made of the mental health impact of the pandemic, which is a good thing. We need to have more open conversations about mental health in general, and with everything so upside down, it's more important now than ever. However, it feels like pandemic mental health conversations have been dominated by people who want to justify anti-lockdown arguments. "We can't let the cure be worse than the disease," people say. Kids' mental health is cited as a reason to open schools, the mental health challenges of financial despair as a reason to keep businesses open, and the mental health impact of social isolation as a reason to ditch social distancing measures.
It's not that those mental health challenges aren't real. They most definitely are. But when we focus exclusively on the mental health impact of lockdowns, we miss the fact that there are also significant mental health struggles on the other side of those arguments.
For one, what about the mental and emotional distress of watching people you love die of a preventable disease? If lockdowns are hard on mental health, what do we think allowing the virus to spread unchecked (even more than we already have) and kill even more people would do? People talk about lockdowns causing economic distress as if the alternative would eliminate mental health struggles. I don't see how a drastically increased death toll would be better.
The top five life stressors, according to University Hospitals, are:
- Death of a loved one
- Divorce
- Moving
- Major illness or injury
- Job loss
Only one of those stressors comes with lockdowns (unless you count divorce from being cooped up with your spouse, but relationship troubles are even being reported from countries without lockdowns). Two of them at least, death of a loved one and major illness, would be experienced far more without public health measures.
The pandemic was always going to be a choice between a rock and a hard place. There was never a way to avoid suffering here—we were either going to have mass death or mass economic strife (or both, as we've found out the hard way by really screwing up the response). And both of those options come with a mental health toll.
Arguably, however, the economic struggles are preferable to the deaths in every way. The government can choose to help citizens financially, thereby easing the mental health burden of a job loss until the economy rebounds. The government can't undo the death of a loved one, and that impact is permanent.
Then, what about the mental health impact of losing our faith in our fellow citizens?
We've spent the past year going through the largest mass death event of our lifetime, and half of us have spent that year trying to convince the other half that it's actually happening. Not even trying to convince them of the best way to handle it, but simply that it's real. The constant battling of denial and misinformation is exhausting and demoralizing. Handling the pandemic would be hard enough if we were all on the same page. But seeing and hearing people treat 400,000+ dead Americans as either not real or not a big deal is enough to make you lose your mind.
And then there's the emotional toll of realizing that a number of your fellow countrymen see elderly/disabled/overweight/Black/Latino people as expendable, that an unreal number of Americans would rather see hundreds of thousands of us die than wear a mask, and that a disturbing percentage are far more likely to listen to conspiracy theorists than the world's most respected scientists. The ignorance and paranoia are hard to take. The inhumanity of it all is devastating.
So now people who already struggled with their mental health also have to process a loss of faith in humanity. That kind of existential stress is hard to quantify, but it's real. Some of us have tried to teach our children that most people are good and kind, that selfishness and self-interest are the exceptions and not the rules. Now we're stuck with this daily deluge of evidence that a startling number of people simply aren't willing to sacrifice at all for the greater good, and trying to explain why that is to our kids.
As a result, we feel less safe and secure. We feel frustrated and angry. We feel sad and weary because it didn't have to be like this. We struggle to find hope that we'll be able to turn this thing around. Watching our fellow Americans insist that basic public health measures are tyranny, that their individual liberty is more important than collective freedom and well-being no matter what the cost, and that objective reality isn't real—and then seeing all of this result in far more sickness and death than there needs to be—has an emotional impact every single day.
So yes, let's keep talking about mental health in the pandemic, but let's not pretend that people are only struggling due to lockdowns and social distancing. The inhumanity we've seen from far too many is taking its toll as well.
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There's a reason why some people can perfectly copy accents, and others can't
Turns out, there's a neurodivergent link.
A woman in black long sleeve shirt stands in front of mirror.
Have you ever had that friend who goes on vacation for four days to London and comes back with a full-on Queen's English posh accent? "Oooh I left my brolly in the loo," they say, and you respond, "But you're from Colorado!" Well, there are reasons they (and many of us) do that, and usually it's on a pretty subconscious level.
It's called "accent mirroring," and it's actually quite common with people who are neurodivergent, particularly those with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). According Neurolaunch, the self-described "Free Mental Health Library," "Accent mirroring, also known as accent adaptation or phonetic convergence, is the tendency to unconsciously adopt the accent or speech patterns of those around us. This linguistic chameleon effect is not unique to individuals with ADHD, but it appears to be more pronounced and frequent in this population."
Essentially, when people have conversations, we're constantly "scanning" for information—not just the words we're absorbing, but the inflection and tone. "When we hear an accent, our brains automatically analyze and categorize the phonetic features, prosody, and intonation patterns," writes Neurolaunch. For most, this does result in copying the accent of the person with whom we're speaking. But those with ADHD might be more sensitive to auditory cues. This, "coupled with a reduced ability to filter out or inhibit the impulse to mimic…could potentially explain the increased tendency for accent mirroring."
While the article explains further research is needed, they distinctly state that, "Accent mirroring in individuals with ADHD often manifests as an unconscious mimicry of accents in social situations. This can range from subtle shifts in pronunciation to more noticeable changes in intonation and speech rhythm. For example, a person with ADHD might find themselves unconsciously adopting a Southern drawl when conversing with someone from Texas, even if they’ve never lived in the South themselves."
People are having their say online. On the subreddit r/ADHDWomen, a thread began: "Taking on accents is an ADHD thing?" The OP shares, "My whole life, I've picked up accents. I, myself, never noticed, but everyone around me would be like, 'Why are you talking like that??' It could be after I watched a show or movie with an accent or after I've traveled somewhere with a different accent than my 'normal.'
They continue, "Apparently, I pick it up fast, but it fades out slowly. Today... I'm scrolling Instagram, I watch a reel from a comedian couple (Darcy and Jeremy. IYKYK) about how Darcy (ADHD) picks up accents everywhere they go. It's called ADHD Mirroring??? And it's another way of masking."
(The OP is referring to Darcy Michaels and his husband Jeremy Baer, who are both touring comedians based in Canada.)
Hundreds of people on the Reddit thread alone seem to relate. One comments, "Omfg I've done this my whole life; I'll even pick up on the pauses/spaces when I'm talking to someone who is ESL—but English is my first language lol."
Sometimes, it can be a real issue for those around the chameleon. "I accidentally mimicked a waitress's weird laugh one time. As soon as she was out of earshot, my family started to reprimand me, but I was already like 'oh my god I don’t know why I did that, I feel so bad.'"
Many commenters on TikTok were shocked to find out this can be a sign of ADHD. One jokes, "Omg, yes, at a store the cashier was talking to me and she was French. She's like 'Oh are you French too? No, I'm not lol. I'm very east coast Canada."
And some people just embrace it and make it work for them. "I mirror their words or phrase! I’m 30. I realized I start calling everyone sweetie cause my manager does & I work at coffee shop."