Was just thinking abt how soldiers on leave during WWI (or postwar de-mobbing) experienced a strong disconnect from their families abt the horrible stuff they saw. Both They Shall Not Grow Old and 1917 touch on this briefly.

Folks at home literally had NO IDEA how bad it was. >

Some of this reflects back through the early history of how people talked or didn’t talk about shell shock. How they referred to it as a case of nerves or weak stomach. How those who hadn’t suffered in battle often used terms casting PTSD as moral weakness.

And I’m thinking now about how anti-maskers and COVID19 denialists treat doctors or people obeying the masking restrictions.

How many medical people are crying on social media, begging people to take their war seriously.

And how did many denialists, they try to cast mask wearing folks and doctors and nurses as being unnecessarily hysterical or hating freedom or exaggerating or not having the right kind of temperament.

And even those who aren’t antagonistic...but literally oblivious, they just don’t THINK about the horrors my friends on the medical front lines have experienced for the last 270 days or so.

Like...people out there still having weddings and parties while nurses talk abt dealing with multiple codes or informing families or residency students being overwhelmed or long time doctors in small towns seeing friends die.

And the difference between my medical friends accounts and my regular friends (who are at least thoughtful) and then again to the accounts of the willfully oblivious...and I’m just struck by how there’s that sense of “YOU DON’T KNOW HOW BAD,” again. Letters from the trenches.

Please please listen to the health care workers in the field. They are literally trying to tell you from the frontlines how bad it can get.

And just like any war, we can sacrifice to help them out. Wearing a mask isn’t my fav either but it’s easier than so many things.

When this is past, realise that we literally will have a generation of health care workers who have to deal with the trauma of this war.

Some of them will have PTSD. Some of them will have debilitating long Covid. And a bunch of regular civilians will have NO IDEA HOW BAD.

We need to work on reducing stigma around mental health and disability bc once again, a group of frontline fighters will be bearing the brunt of a war. They will have been through a crucible. Not all of them will have survived. But we owe it to those who do, to do better by them.