Can we please have some calm, stable, boring years please, before I'm dead? The last 5 years have already been "wild" enough. The world is unrecognizable. I'm unprepared for further wildness.

Excluding the batshit insane political side, I don't actually think it's been as nuts as people think, or at least not uniformly so.

I have a lot of friends in the tech sector, but outside the FANNG/silicone valley/startup bubbles. It's been largely business as normal across the board. Twitter and social media warps our perspective I think.

there was a whole pandemic

And there’s still biggest war in Europe since ww2. Israel and Gaza. Iran standoff. Tariffs.

Not really whole. COVID was at best like a quarter pandemic.

It depends where you lived. In my city (harshest/longest restrictions in the world), we were not allowed to leave the house for more than 30 minutes a day for 2.5 years unless we were out buying groceries. No large gatherings allowed at our homes. Mask usage enforced everywhere in public.

In the city in my country reknowned for having a much higher level of hypochrondria before the pandemic, imagine the mental health issues my city is going through now.

Ok, sure, but that's a political/social problem, rather than the pandemic.

Stow the propaganda. 1) it's not over, the pandemic continues and will likely continue for a long time 2) it's already the fifth deadliest pandemic in known history. "Quarter pandemic" is an insane thing to think let alone say out loud.

1. It is pretty much over. Covid has become (for me at least) indistinguishable from a common cold.

2. Gemini says covid-19 killed 0.086% of world population (over several years). That's about as mild as it gets. More than sharks, but less than anything that usually kills people, like air polution (estimated about 0.095% yearly), cancer (est 0.12% every damn year) or cardiovascular disease (est 0.25% a year). Peak covid was still killing less than business-as-usual cancer or cardiovascular disease.

As far as pandemics go, the deadliest ones kill double digit percentage of people who contract them. That's two orders of magnitude more than covid. Even the single-digit percentage pandemics must be extremely rough. We were lucky[0].

[0]: Not the ones who died or have lasting consequences, but "we" as humanity, were rather lucky with covid. It could've been something much worse.

How many dead bodies you need to see to even flinch? Millions not enough?

One is enough to make me flinch. But the 7 millions are just a statistic, and a drop in the bucket compared to cancer or cardiovascular disease.

Cancer and heart disease together kill the same number of people as the whole covid pandemic every 10-12 days.