The Pandemic Of Hypochondriacs

Living In The Cage That COVID Built

It has been three years since COVID-19 became widespread, and most evaluations of the disease show that this virus isn’t going anywhere. It is now endemic, and thanks to many doctors, we have a better understanding of this virus and how to treat it. We have vaccines and medications (if you feel you need them), and although COVID keeps mutating, many experts are stating that the virus is becoming milder, with fewer reported issues with long-Covid.

The elderly, obese, and immunocompromised continue to be the most affected, but as medicine continues to advance, and as the virus continues to grow milder, the future looks good!

Yet many people are still stuck in the year 2020, to the growing impatience of their family members and friends as they refuse to enjoy life again. 

I’m no psychologist, but it seems to me that Hypochondria, also known as “illness anxiety disorder” may be playing a role. This disorder is when an individual worries excessively that they are or may become seriously ill, and test results and conversations with doctors, rather than assuring them, do nothing to ease their anguish. It has become so common for people to worry excessively about COVID in particular that the internet has nicknamed people who exhibit these symptoms “the Branch Covidians” or “the Covidians” for short. 

One particular Covidian named Taylor Lorenz is still laboring under the false pretense that the pandemic isn’t over and expressed on social media that the rest of us are selfish for not continuing to mask and “take basic precautions”, as this is apparently her fourth Christmas since the pandemic began where she hasn’t celebrated with her friends and family because “infection has been normalized.”

But, immunocompromised people have always lived among us, without masks for the most part, but regardless the mask is their own personal choice. Quite frankly if you are super immunocompromised, any doctor will tell you that anything from a rare cancer to the flu, to even a common cold can in fact kill you. What did she do before COVID? 

Also, how can a virus be simultaneously airborne without normalizing the fact that you are going to be infected? Isn’t the purpose of vaccine and medication to prevent bad outcomes when you do get infected? 

What’s even scarier is that the Covidians seem to congregate in an echo chamber on social media, and what this thread on X (formerly known as Twitter) shows is that any effort to introduce logic such as “we have medical technology” and “it’s getting milder” and “the pandemic is over” seems to be met with skepticism and the bizarre notion that you are actually projecting your fears onto others.

Encouraging people to come outside, and enjoy life again, is met with hostility and anger. Families and friendships injured because of vaccination statuses are now supposed to be forgotten, yet the Covidians are still out here, lashing out. 

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Even going to the grocery store can be hazardous. My husband encountered a woman blocking an entire aisle, and when he attempted to go down it to get the things we needed, she began yelling at him to wear a mask and that he was killing people. This was the second time he encountered a Covidian at the grocery store.

I can empathize because, well, I was a Covidian once. There are pictures of my husband and I in masks out in public and I was wearing two. I remember the anger that I had towards the maskless, and that anger would often turn on my husband who I feared wasn’t taking things seriously enough and kept yanking it down below his nose.

Truth is I was jealous…jealous of the freedom that they had from a cage that, unbeknownst to me, I built. It never occurred to me that the experts could be wrong, or that I had a choice in the matter. I just wanted to live, and not kill my parents, and public health experts assured me that not killing my parents was entirely up to me.

After I was injured by the COVID vaccine, I began to question everything that I was doing, and I examined the data with a more critical eye. That’s when I realized that I, a healthy 29-year-old woman, was at a much lower risk than I previously thought. What’s more, my mother after getting vaccinated stopped wearing her masks, and decided to go out again. She said, “I’m not going to continue to live like this.”

I apologized to my husband for our arguments about his personal mask usage. Although my husband stopped wearing his mask almost immediately after our conversation, it took me a while to let go of my mask, let go of my fear, and regain my freedom. 

And slowly but surely my friends and family returned to life as normal. The ones who were more hesitant I invited to things, and simply waited until they were ready to let go of the fear, and return to normal. Most of my family and friends have, although things are not the same. I, like many others, still have loved ones who are still held back.

But how do you convince someone that their fear of a virus has become unhealthy and that they should seek counseling when for many years the media and public health experts told everyone how deadly it was? How do you convince people who have lost family members that it’s time to move on? How do you point out to someone that since they Trust The Science, shouldn’t they trust the science now, when experts are telling us it’s only getting better?

Now that the pandemic is over, we have a new pandemic: a pandemic of hypochondriacs, suffering from a mass delusion, who are angry at those of us who have moved on. Rather than engaging with how their anxiety over this illness has taken over their life, they continue to lash out in anger at those of us who are no longer held in the cage that COVID built.

And I have no suggestions for how to handle it going forward.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.