Also many of those people who didn't die will have anywhere from mild effects to serious impairments for the rest of their lives.
A huge amount of people who survive will deal with increased depression, anxiety, etc.
Even though its easy and callous to write off the lives of millions of (easily preventable) deaths with a hand-wave, there are going to be serious and long-term effects for those who didn't die and for their families, jobs, etc...
I personally know many people who are suffering from severe pandemic-related anxiety and depression who have not contracted the disease.
The current discourse and societal response to the disease seems likely to have as big or larger of a mental health effect than the immediate consequences of the disease itself.
The lack of a proper societal response to the disease, and what that reveals about the fragile state of our civilization is what's responsible for severe pandemic-related anxiety.
There's truth to this, but I don't think it's the whole picture. It's certainly possible to be concerned about the state of civilization without "doomscrolling" or checking covid death numbers each morning. These behaviors are consequences of the media landscape more than of the disease itself.
That is simply not true and just speculation - especially for a disease that has been around for less than a year. Most of the studies that reported things like heart damage and other kind of side effects were retracted, but the retraction never made it in the press and social media, just the initial poorly ran studies that got hundreds of thousands of shares. One of the so called long COVID studies was done through people recruited through Facebook groups and Reddit communities, all of them having self reported symptoms, but none having actual positive tests.
A huge amount of people who survive will deal with increased depression, anxiety, etc.
Even though its easy and callous to write off the lives of millions of (easily preventable) deaths with a hand-wave, there are going to be serious and long-term effects for those who didn't die and for their families, jobs, etc...