April 26, 2024 • 49 mins
On this episode of The Middle we're asking you: are you still feeling the effects of COVID? We're joined by economist Diane Swonk and psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman. The Middle's house DJ Tolliver joins as well, plus callers from around the country. #COVID #pandemic #longCOVID #anxiety #depression #WFH
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Middle is supported by Journalism Funding Partners, a nonprofit
organization striving to increase the sustainability of local journalism by
building connections between donors and news organizations. More information on
how you can support the Middle at listen to Themiddle
dot com. Welcome to the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson, joined
(00:22):
as always by our house DJ Tolliver. Hey Tolliver, Hi,
I'm doing well and you know, it has been a
little over four years since the world shut down because
of COVID nineteen. Do you remember the moment when you
realized how life changing of a virus this.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Was going to be?
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Yeah, it was actually after I attended my first Zoom
comedy show, because like, nothing will make you miss people
in a bad Zoom comedy show.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, er, I do remember a lot of things on
a Zoom that. I mean, I didn't even have heard
of Zoom before the pandemic, and then there we were
and here we are. So at this point a lot
of us, of course, would like to forget that the
pandemic happened. But what we want to know from you,
if you're listening, is are you still feeling its effects,
whether that's economic, mental, or physical. Health or in another way.
That is our question this hour, and our number is
(01:06):
eight four four four Middle that is eight four four
four six four three three five three. We're gonna get
to your calls in a moment. But first, last week
we asked whether or not marijuana legalization is working. A
lot of calls from a lot of different sides on
this issue. Take a listen to some of the voicemails
that came in.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
Hi.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
My name is Jane. I live in Adam, Michigan.
Speaker 6 (01:27):
Hi.
Speaker 7 (01:28):
My name is Richard and I'm calling him from Alaska.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Hi.
Speaker 7 (01:31):
My name is Tina from Chicago, Illinois.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Hi. This is Bill and Palmeadow, Florida. I think that,
just like with alcohol, education is the key. I think
we need to be educating our children as far as
alcohol and marijuana usage.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
The marijuana issue in Michigan in schools is out of
control completely. When I spoke to a high school principle recently,
he said he thought about fifty percent of students were
hooked on mostly vaping and.
Speaker 7 (02:04):
Weed pens over the last few years. They legalized it,
specifically Anchorage, and I know multiple growers who quit because
of the legalization. I have crowned disease.
Speaker 8 (02:14):
I'm thrilled to have a legal, safe access to marijuana now.
Speaker 7 (02:20):
It's been a great drug for that disease.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well, thanks to everyone who called and wrote in. So
this hour we're asking how are you still feeling the
effects of COVID nineteen. It has been four years since
once in a century pandemic brought the world to a
stand still. More than a million Americans died. Obviously, schools
and businesses closed, and we were all isolated from one another.
So now four years later, while you may not notice
(02:45):
the acute effects like you used to, we are still
living with many of the after effects. Grocery bills are
more than twenty five percent higher than they were pre pandemic.
Trying to buy a house or renting is much more expensive.
COVID has changed the way we talk and interact with
one another. It has deepened our political divisions, and of
course there are people dealing with long COVID and mental
(03:07):
health challenges as well. So we want to know how
it's playing out in your life. Taliver, how can people
reach us?
Speaker 3 (03:12):
You can call us at eight four four four Middle
that's eight four four four six four three three five three.
You can also email us at Listen to the Middle
dot com.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Let's meet our panel. Diane Swank is chief economist at
KPMGUS and is one of the nation's top economic analysts
and an old friend. She's in Evanston, Illinois. Diane, welcome
to the Middle.
Speaker 9 (03:30):
It's great to be here. It's good to hear you
again too.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Jeremy, it's great to hear you as well. And doctor
Richard Friedman is with us. He's a psychiatrist and director
of the psychopharmacology Clinic at wild Cornell Medicine in New York. Richard,
welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 10 (03:44):
Thank you. It's great to be here well.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
And you co wrote a piece in The Atlantic magazine
about how we all have unprocessed COVID grief. What do
you mean by that?
Speaker 10 (03:55):
What I mean is that we face the life threatening
traumatic event during COVID, in which more than a million
Americans were killed. And though most of us feel right
now that COVID is over psychologically, it takes time to
deal with a threat with a trauma that is represented
by COVID, and many of us are not quite over
(04:17):
it yet. And what we mean by this is there
are many, many Americans who are unhappy and anxious and
depressed and just in a plain funk. Now, and pundits
and economists are scratching their heads trying to understand why
are Americans in such.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
A sour mood.
Speaker 10 (04:35):
Well, one possible explanation is unprocessed grief and traumatic memory
related to COVID.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
And yet we don't want to think about it.
Speaker 10 (04:49):
Well, it's understandable. Nobody wants to pay attention to things
that are painful. It's adaptive to forget things. But on
the other hand, in a sense, if you can't remember them,
you can't forget them.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Diane, back in twenty twenty, you predicted that the economic
impact of COVID nineteen would outlast the outbreak of COVID nineteen.
How do you see that playing out now, Well.
Speaker 9 (05:11):
It's playing out in more ways than I ever wanted
it to play out. That this for sure. You know,
it feels kind of like at the time when COVID hit,
I was reassured by one thing, and that was that
we wouldn't let COVID be the iceberg. We got lifeboats
in the water with supplies to make sure that people
had some way to traverse those COVID tainted waters. And
(05:33):
that was really important. The side effect of that, unfortunately,
was on the other side, as we emerged out of
COVID and we reopened the economy, there was that frictions
upon re entry, and we had a lot of demand,
a lot of pen of demand. We had saved a
lot of money, both from the COVID stimulus and all
the money the government spent to make sure that we
(05:54):
didn't sink in that COVID waters as many sunk in it,
and I think that was important of an economic sense,
but it also left us with this residual inflation that
we're still struggling with today. And you know, in some ways,
you know, we'd all like twenty nineteen prices and twenty
twenty four wages. That's not going to happen. But you know,
(06:15):
the reality is out there. You know that we had
you noted it earlier, fifty percent increase since twenty nineteen
in home values, thirty percent increase in rents. Wages on
average across the country went up seventeen point six percent.
So that disparity, that difference, it can be felt. And
even though we saw increases in savings and wealth and
(06:39):
wages across income strata, in ways that we never had before.
Inequality still intensified even though those increases came. And so
I think there's a real sense too of, you know,
taking a worker that was once considered non essential making
them essential, their wages being leveled up. Remember essential workers,
(06:59):
those frontline workers at the beginning of COVID, Their wages
were leveled up, and they had their moment in the
sun from the shadows of this economy, only to be
burned by inflation. And I think that's what the real
challenge is today.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Well, and Richard, inflation has turned into such a huge
issue in our politics right now that it could be
the deciding thing in this presidential race, which has so
many other things going on. But if you think about
inflation as at its core, whether because of the pandemic
or the response to the pandemic, the pandemic and it's
(07:35):
after effects are what are going to decide maybe this
presidential election.
Speaker 10 (07:39):
Yes, people's emotional response and also, as Diana saying, I mean,
their livid reality of their economic circumstance. If they have
to go out and they realize that their purchasing power
is so much less than it was let's say, one
or two years ago, and yet you know, there's a
(08:01):
disconnect because you know, many people are you know, on
air telling Americans that the economy is really not that bad.
The unemployment rates are low, the wages have gone up,
you know, at least as fast as prices, and so
it's confusing to people because their actual reality and what
(08:23):
they're hearing from experts don't match.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
I think, oh, yeah, go ahead, Diane.
Speaker 9 (08:29):
Well, you know, I just want to dovetail on next.
I think Richard makes a really important point which I'm
always trying to struggle with. You know, we've gone through
now twenty six months, and likely next week we'll see
twenty seven months of unemployment less than four percent, the
longest span since the height of the Vietnam War in
the late nineteen sixties.
Speaker 10 (08:49):
That's great.
Speaker 9 (08:50):
It's great that people have a job. One hundred percent
of people, though, feel inflation. A small percentage, and this
is the sad part of statistics, A small percentage feel
a rise in unemployment. And so I think that's the
reality is that even though on average wages are now
outpacing inflation. Again, that's good news. But we came out
(09:14):
of a decade after the Great Financial Crisis and the
Great Recession, were wages stagnated. So again you get this
sort of sense of relativity that you got a moment
to do. Think you're doing better, and you maybe only
needed one job. Now multiple job holders are a sign
of the economy getting better instead of a sign of
(09:34):
the economy getting worse. In the nineteen nineties, it wasn't
like that you didn't need to have as an economy improved.
We actually had a narrow window in time where inequality
in the United States narrowed in the nineteen nineties, and
people didn't need those multiple jobs. Now you do.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Let's get to Fahima, who's calling from Milton, Massachusetts. Fahima,
welcome to the middle How are you still feeling, COVID?
Speaker 11 (10:00):
I actually feel great me personally, I'm really grateful that
no one I know died or anything really bad to
that happened to them. So I'm feeling grateful. But my son, Nathaniel,
he hates gym class and his gym teacher is really nice.
(10:21):
He's super like just a very friendly guy. And it's like,
why do you hate gym class that your coach is
so nice? You like your coach, You like your teacher.
They call him coach, see I think, and he says,
because people touch me, and you're not supposed to touch strangers
or people you don't know, because they'll get you sick
with germs. And it just hit me how much that
(10:44):
affected him during the worst of the pandemic.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
I have to say, I noticed going back to my
own high school late in the pandemic, maybe a year
ago or so, and how many people there were still
the students were still so concerned that they were wearing masks,
even after many people, many adults, in a lot of
places around the country had stopped doing that. Fahima, thank
(11:09):
you very much for that call, Tolliver. I know that
we're getting comments in online as well.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Becky in Minnesota says, yes, COVID still impacts our lives.
My fourteen year old has been in treatment for long COVID,
which she got in April twenty one. She started treatment
at Mayo and December of twenty one and is still
in treatment every day. It impacts her life. Wow, her
lungs and body have not recovered yet.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
You know, one of the big issues, as we said
in this year's presidential election, could be the higher cost
of everything, the inflation that came out of the pandemic
and the response to the pandemic.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Yeah, and it's not the first time inflation has been
used as a campaign issue. Listen here to Ronald Reagan
as he campaigned against Jimmy Carter in the nineteen eighty election.
Speaker 8 (11:42):
This idea that has been spawned here in our country,
that inflation somehow came upon us like a plague and
therefore it's uncontrollable and no one can do anything about it.
Is entirely spurious, and it's dangerous to say this to
the people. And mister Carter became president. Inflation was four
point eight percent, as you it had been cut in
two by President Gerald Ford. It is now running a
(12:05):
twelve point seven percent.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
And by the way, Tolliver, his slogan in nineteen eighty,
Ronald reagan slogan in nineteen eighty was also make America
grade again. Very interesting, how that inflation make America great again?
The two things that come up again and again. We'll
be right back with more of your calls on the Middle.
This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson. If you're just
tuning in the Middle is a national call in show.
(12:28):
We're focused on elevating voices from the middle geographically, politically, philosophically,
or maybe you just want to meet in the middle.
This hour, we're asking you, are you still feeling the
effects of the COVID pandemic that could be in your health,
your work life, your relationships, anything. Tolliver, what's the number to.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Call in It's eight four four four Middle. That's eight
four four four six four three three five three. You
can also write to us at Listen to the Middle
dot com or on social media.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
I'm joined by Diane swankchief economist at KPMG US and
doctor Richard Friedman, director of the Psychopharmacology Clinic at while
Cornell Medicine. And before we go back to the phones, Diane,
what about what it has done to people's work life?
So many people still working remote in this country, something
that really wasn't happening near on this scale before the pandemic.
(13:14):
And I noticed that.
Speaker 12 (13:17):
When it comes to office occupancy in cities on the
busiest days of the week, they are just sixty two
percent right now of what they were on average in
February twenty twenty, which obviously has a huge impact on
real estate.
Speaker 9 (13:30):
Absolutely, you know, the number of what's really been interesting
Nick Bloom and Steve Davis in univers Chicago Stanford University.
They started they've been studying work from home in hybrid
work kind of schedules four days a week for over
twenty years, and they started in May of twenty twenty
surveying over five thousand Americans on their work. And we've
(13:52):
got this continuous study that's gone on since then in
terms of and it's really just blossomed into a whole
field of understanding all the different time ways people work.
And at first, people when they pivoted online, about a
third of the time that they saved from commuting, they
actually committed to their jobs, and so they were working
more and giving more time to their jobs. The other
(14:15):
two thirds that they weren't commuting, they were spending more
time free, time with their family or walking their dogs,
or being able to run their errands, but being able
to live their life in whatever way they wanted. Now,
what we've seen is we sort of leveled out since
twenty twenty two. We have not seen change in sort
of the hybrid work from home, the number of people
(14:35):
who are not always in the office, maybe in the
office some days. The key is to be in the
office the same time the people you want to see
are in the office. But it's no longer you know
all the time, and there's this sort of leveling off
and it's not shifting, and it's not shifted in two
years now. And I think that's really important to see
(14:56):
because it's made in one way the the labor market
much more open to many more people, particularly for women,
highly educated women with small children who have childcare problems,
and we're in a childcare crisis, a care crisis more
broadly in this country. College educated women drove labor force
participation back to a record high after a twenty year hiatus.
(15:20):
When I was first driving the labor force participation for
women having children to a record high in two thousand,
it took us over twenty years to get there again.
But then on the other side of it, those people
who don't have that flexibility, women are working one hour
less than they were in twenty nineteen. So women of
color and people who have a high school career or
(15:43):
less were penalized by that and are not participating as much.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Let's go to the phones and Joanna, who's in Provo, Utah. Joanna,
welcome to the middle.
Speaker 13 (15:53):
Go ahead, Hi, thanks.
Speaker 7 (15:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 13 (15:55):
So when COVID hit, I had been at university for
a year and a half and I took a break,
and I'm still back at university now, and so the
whole lens of COVID is something that I've seen as
a university student and something that I think we're still experiencing.
Speaker 14 (16:12):
At least in Utah. And from what I've seen is
that the curriculum kind of weekend staling COVID, and understandably so,
as a way to let students know that it was
okay to be struggling, it was okay to be sick,
and things that we're going to be a little bit
easier for a second because everyone was dealing with COVID.
Speaker 7 (16:30):
But I have.
Speaker 15 (16:32):
Picked back up in.
Speaker 14 (16:33):
Terms of speed, in terms of volume of material that
we've been given to study, and it just seems as
though COVID has still been affecting us as far as
the level of education that we're receiving and the expectations
that are on the shoulders of students and professors alike.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Joanna, thank you very much for that. Richard Friedman, you're
obviously on a campus. How do you see this playing
out in education. I tend to think that the people
who were in school at any level during the pandemic
must have had one of the hardest experiences and maybe
are still feeling the effects of it now.
Speaker 10 (17:12):
Oh. I think that the effects on education in the
United States and COVID were profound. I mean, in secondary school,
kids lost and may never retrieve their learning. Kids who
were in you know, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade are
way behind in learning language and mathematics and may never
(17:34):
be able to keep up. I mean, I work in
a medical college, and you know, the impact on education
was really adverse because you know, the social and emotional
environment and learning when you're there in a classroom interacting
with people is really different I think than you know,
virtual learning, where you know you're looking at a tile
(17:57):
and you're talking one on one. You don't have the
same kind of you don't have the kind of social
behive phenomenon, and the social connection is gone in virtual
in virtuon.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
So, if we were to go through another pandemic right now,
Richard Friedman, what would you suggest happen? Should Should the
students just go into the classroom. I mean, there were
obviously real fears about spreading the virus around. But it
seems like what did happen was not a recipe for
the future.
Speaker 10 (18:27):
Well, I think each each one of these kinds of
pandemics has to be taken on its own. I mean,
we did the best we could with the available data
and science we had. I think looking back, hindsight is
always perfect. You can say, you know, we made terrible
decisions because the risk was actually lower than we thought
it was. I mean, the risk for young people was
(18:48):
much much smaller, most of them. Mortality from COVID occurred
in people who are sixty five and older, but we
couldn't have known that at the time, and there were
people who were highly critical in the absence of having
any data whatsoever. So people errate on the side of safety,
which is completely understandable.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
We've got a caller actually with an education background, Leela
in Chicago, joins us, Leela, go ahead.
Speaker 16 (19:14):
Yeah, what I see in my line of work is
we have a lot more students with anxiety, kind of
generalized anxiety. I'm afraid to do things more independently, whether
it's their work or uh work. Yeah, mostly like work
and class work and homework. And we're also seeing younger
(19:38):
kids difficulty with following the group plan and being part
of a group and needing more in wanting more individualized attention.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
How are you dealing with that now four years after
the start of the pandemic.
Speaker 16 (19:54):
Well, I think we just we're trying to provide as
much you know, h social emotional support in the school
as we can, and just you know, working with students
in like a social group kind of curriculum, like how
do we talk, how do we stay together with the plan?
(20:16):
What is our plan? You know, how can we work
together cooperatively and meet uh, meet our needs as a group,
but also work towards individual needs.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Leelah, Thank you, Diane Swank your thoughts on that issue
in the education system, but also probably in the workplace.
There have got to be social differences now versus several
years ago pre pandemic.
Speaker 9 (20:40):
Oh absolutely, And you know the education and the workplace,
you really see we see anxiety in fact, and every
single one of our offices now we actually have mental
health people on staff in on site one because people
need the extra help and the support and we're in
a mental health care which I'm sure Richard could attest to.
(21:02):
But it's really hard for a lot of our people
to get access to the mental health professionals that they
need to get access to. And in fact, when we
saw after the big hiring frenzy that occurred as things
started to slow down and people started to stay in
one place, they started to use their benefits more. And
one of the parts of their benefits that really shot
(21:22):
up was of course, their use of their mental health
care benefits. And it's good that they had those benefits,
but then trying to even find we've actually had to
sort of help them source, to find mental health professionals
to match them up with those people, and that is
a real shift. I mean, I spent a lot of time.
I've got a team that I came into that was hired.
(21:44):
Most of them that came with me knew me in
the office, and then those that I joined are a
team that we're hired all across the country during COVID,
and we've never worked in the same office together. And
so I spent a lot of time talking with them
and supporting them as well. And you know, what does
it mean? You know a lot of times I try
(22:05):
to not spend time on screen as I'm not with
you right now, but I actually get on the phone
because people have forgotten how to use the phone. And
I go and walk with them and talk with them,
and you know, we work on brainstorming together, and you
try to find all these different creative ways to connect
with the person that isn't just with this odd little
box in front of you.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yeah. Actually, I called a friend today and he told
me that I'm the only person besides his mom that
he has voice calls with.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
I just started practicing.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
People are writing in on on social media. What are
they say?
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Yeah, Laura writes, I was in grad school when COVID hit.
I got sick in March twenty twenty, very early in
the pandemic, before testing, way before vaccines. I was very
sick for sixty two days. I missed multiple semesters, and
I'm just now getting back into my research. Yeah, where
I left off that first March. I had to pay
extra money now to retake classes. I already completed four years.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Let's go to Jordan, who's in Lake Forest, Illinois. Welcome
to the middle. How are you still feeling the effects
of COVID.
Speaker 17 (23:05):
So, firstly, I'd just like to acknowledge your unfamiliarity with
voice calls, as a millennial. It's not something that is
in my programming, but I feel like the lasting effects
of COVID for me, at least, I feel as though
I'm constantly exhausted, much earlier in the day than I
(23:27):
normally have been. I feel like I get much less
distance out of a great night's sleep, which I, you know,
am blessed to have fairly frequently. But I think that well, firstly,
I had absolutely no idea how much I touched my
face prior to the pandemic, and so I think that,
you know, that first instance being what I would consider
(23:49):
like a negative consequence, I think that a positive lasting
effect is just I'm much more acutely aware of the
like micro andsions that I have and can have on
my surroundings and my environment, just with the smallest gesture.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
What do you mean by that, Give me an example.
Speaker 17 (24:10):
I just mean like being more aware of how I
am interacting with even the most mundane things like how
I am holding a door open for somebody and making
sure to you know, be sensitive to the fact that
they may have a little bit more rigid understanding of
(24:32):
personal space than the person that you know came before them.
And so I just I find that I'm more aware.
I'm just more dialed in. I guess you would say.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Jordan, thank you for that call. Richard Friedman a lot there.
But one of the things is that obviously Jordan has
actually had COVID and still feeling the health effects of it.
What do we know about the physical and mental effects
of long COVID or people that had it and now
still have effects from the disease.
Speaker 10 (25:02):
Well, we know it's a huge problem that affects many
millions of Americans who were infected with COVID, who are
over the acute infection but then have long lasting medical
and neuropsychiatric effects, including things like Jordan is saying, fatigue,
disrupted sleep. And while we have some idea that it
has to do with an overactive immune system that's playing
(25:26):
out in various systems of the body, we don't actually
know really what's going on or how to treat it.
And it's a target of an enormous amount of research
that's being funded to try to understand this. But it's
a huge public health problem.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Let's go to Katie and Saint Louis. Hi, Katie, welcome
to the middle.
Speaker 17 (25:45):
Go ahead, Hi, nice to see you.
Speaker 6 (25:48):
So I am a nurse. I was a nurse during COVID,
I walked beside I took care of COVID patients. Since then,
my career has actually taken me in the past of
virtual care. So the lasting effects that I felt from
COVID is how it has propelled the healthcare system into
really incorporating virtual care and telehealth into maybe not daily activities.
(26:13):
Yet it's still as much as COVID has propelled it forward.
It's still pretty new and evolving. But it's really exciting
to be a part of it. And how virtual nurses
and virtual patient observers in the hospital, but also just
the regular person using telehealth appointments to see their doctors
from home and get prescription resales. It's really interesting to
(26:37):
see it develop and it's really exciting to be a
part of it, and really nerve wracking as well. So
when we start talking about AI use in the workplace,
and you know, what are the pros and cons, and
we have to be really careful about, you know, taking
these steps forward because patient safety is paramounts of course,
and there is a limit to what you can do virtually.
(26:58):
You can't replace you know, an nurse or a doctor's
you know, healing touch on present. So it's a balance
that it's really exciting to get to be a part
of it.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Katie, Thank you. Diane Swank, what do you make of
that the change in the healthcare business and industry, and
I'm sure there are many other industries that have changed
dramatically because of COVID nineteen.
Speaker 9 (27:20):
Yeah, and well, you know, I had my own personal
experience with this because I had thirteen surgeries during COVID,
so I know it only too well, both virtually and
in the hospitals. But I think one of the things
that's really important is healthcare in this country, the demand
for health care, and we talked about it with mental health,
but we're chasing a moving target. We have aging demographics.
(27:42):
We have retired people that are retiring, but with aging
demographics you have more people with aging diseases. We also
have long COVID, and we have millennials twelve thousand a
day turning thirty five, and many of those millennials are
now having families and they're also utilizing the healthalth care system.
And it's really just slammed the healthcare system with demand
(28:04):
at a time when we need to scale up and
so the idea of being able to leverage virtual is
part of the answer, but it really does underscore the
mismatch between the number of healthcare professionals and the demand
for their services. And we talked about it in mental health,
but it really spans a whole spectrum, and it's showing
up in inflation. I mean, you know, medical care costs
(28:26):
are going up, healthcare premiums are going up. We're also
seeing a lot of hospital costs are starting to finally
catch up to those earlier cost pressures that were felt
as a result of COVID, and that's part of the
inflation problem as well. But it's you know, that collision
between or the gap between supply and demand that causes
(28:47):
that heat. And it really is hard because you're seeing
long cues. People can't even get into a doctor, their
regular doctor if they've got a cold. The waiting time
can be enormous, you know, and that those are the
kinds of things you want to see more solutions do,
and I think we are seeing more solutions, but at
the moment, it really is a mismatch. And I'm sure
(29:09):
Richard has seen that, you know more firsthand.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Richard, briefly, your thoughts.
Speaker 10 (29:15):
Oh yeah, I think on the one hand, telehealth was
a godsend and we discovered something that we should have
been doing long long ago. In important not only because
it extends the reach of what we can do, but
there's such a now distribution of resource, especially to mental health.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Tulliver. You know, one way to process grief and the
COVID grief that Richard was talking about is through humor.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Absolutely, yeah, but it can take a while. Here's a
clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail with the
Great Eric Idol telling people to bring out their dead
as he walks along with the Cardiff bodies in the
midst of a plague.
Speaker 10 (29:51):
Bring today, I'm not dead.
Speaker 17 (29:56):
Well, nothing us, but I'm not dead, he says, he's
not dead.
Speaker 8 (30:01):
Yes he is, he isn't.
Speaker 18 (30:03):
Body will be soon, he's very well, No, you're not.
Speaker 15 (30:06):
You'll be stone dead in a moment.
Speaker 8 (30:08):
Oh, can't take him, not that this is against regulations.
I don't want to.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Can't take him.
Speaker 18 (30:15):
I feel fine.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
I am so happy that we were able to play
that Cliff on this show.
Speaker 6 (30:20):
That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I've never heard that.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
You've never seen money Python in The Holy Grail. You
got it. Check that out Tolliver. You've got to check
that out. And by the way, if you do, go
to our website Listen to the Middle dot com. You
can also make a contribution to the Middle, which is
really important to us as we try to do our
shows every single week leading up to the election and
head out on the road. And by the way, we're
going to be in Saint Louis at Saint Louis Public
(30:42):
Radio on May the ninth, We're going to be in
Connecticut in June. We're going to be in Alabama in July.
So we're doing all this stuff and the money really
does help, so any amount tax deductible. Listen to the
Middle dot com and we'll be right back with more
on the Middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
We're asking you this hour, are you still feeling the
effects of the COVID pandemic in your health, your work life, economically,
(31:04):
in your relationships. You can call us at eight four
four four Middle, that's eight four four four six four
three three five three. You can reach out at listen
toothemiddle dot com. We're joined this hour by Diane Swank,
chief economist at KPMG US and doctor Richard Friedman, a
psychiatrist and director of psychopharmacology at Wild Cornell Medicine. And
(31:26):
let's go back to the phones and we'll go to
Louis Thomas in Nashville, Tennessee. Hi Thomas, welcome to the middle.
Speaker 18 (31:36):
Hi, thanks playing my call.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Yeah, go ahead, So uh.
Speaker 18 (31:41):
I, like many people in Nashville, am part of the
live event industry, and as you can imagine, gathering large
numbers of people in one place was one of the
first things to get shut down in one of the
last things to come back. So on top of the
primatize mental image of just not knowing when we can
(32:03):
come back to work. Ever since, COVID just been like
a sprint to catch back up because when venues were
opened backed up, the floodgates were open, and just there
is a massive thirst for live entertainment, which is great,
but so many people left the workplace and we've just
(32:24):
been trying to play catch up ever since.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, and Andre, have you had any success in doing
that at this point? Are you feeling good about it now?
Are things in the right direction?
Speaker 18 (32:36):
Things are certainly moving in the in the right direction.
It just it's still it's just throttles wide open. It
seems like we can just almost never catch up. I mean, again,
a lot of people took this as kind of an
omen to retire or to move to a different industry,
So there's just a massive labor shortage, just like many
other things. But again, this demand was just it just
(33:00):
came back in such fury that I don't think anyone
was really anticipating that.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Thomas. Thank you Richard Friedman. On that issue of people
deciding to take this moment to retire, there are probably
many other people who also took this moment to get married,
get divorced, take a look at their life and make
a big change because of COVID.
Speaker 10 (33:19):
Nineteen absolutely, I mean one of the effects I think
of COVID was people who ordn'tarily wouldn't have spent as
much time around one another. Spouses were suddenly stressed by
the constant presence of their significant other. For better or worse.
Some people got closer, others had a dissolution of their relationship,
(33:43):
So that's not surprising.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Russ is an Idaho. Hi Russ, Welcome to the middle
So I'm.
Speaker 19 (33:48):
A professional biologist and one of the most upsetting things
about COVID was the misinformation and the fact that the
science was not listened to, and it became so politicized
that you know, the country was polarized. And to me,
you know, what is more of a common enemy than
(34:08):
a virus that kills you and your family and your neighbors.
So that was extremely upsetting to me, the misinformation, and
I also think that the form of administration did a
very poor job informing the public and listening to the science.
And you know, probably thousands of people died that really
wouldn't have died had better information been shared with the public.
(34:31):
So that continues today, you know, the lack of listening
to science, not only on this issue, but other issues.
So that that is still very disturbing to me.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Russ, thank you and Richard Friedman. That actually just brings
me to a question I have about the politics of this.
We know that it's made it more difficult for people
to talk to those that they disagree with this pandemic.
It's made our divisions worse.
Speaker 10 (34:55):
Yes, we're a highly polarized country in which you know,
people who have different views than we do are not
just seen as interesting and quirky, and we disagree with them.
But we demonize them. And what Thomas is saying, I
absolutely agree with. You know, if you don't have a
shared reality, it's very hard to communicate with people. And
(35:16):
we all are in our own bubbles, surrounded by information
that we select that agrees with us.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
That's the reason why we have this show the Middle
and so that people in the middle. Were you going
to say something there?
Speaker 9 (35:29):
Oh, yeah, there's actually there's been some research on with
the Bipartisan Policy Institute in Washington and University of Maryland
and on some of the thorniest political issues, from social
security to immigration to the deficit. They've taken people and
of extremes on the political spectrum, put them in a
room and said these are the facts. And so they
(35:51):
have one set of facts and in that room they
get overlap with eighty to ninety percent of the solutions
is we don't get in a room and talk with
each other. We spend too much time talking at each other.
And you know that in this world, in this day,
in this moment, that you know are the issues that
(36:12):
are really tough politically and have become highly politicized, that
that can happen. That gives me hope, but it also means,
you know, spending a lot more time talking to people
as human beings. And I know I spend a lot
of time in my speeches and what I do and
when I'm in public, I spend a lot of time
(36:32):
trying to identify with people as human beings, not just
an economic statistic or not just talking about the stats,
but you know, what is their kids like, what is
their life like? What are they feeling right there? And
try to lean into that moment because that's a shared moment,
and then you know it can be something bigger than
just sort of feeling separated.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Let's go to Nan in Minneapolis. Hi, Nan, Welcome to
the middle. How is COVID directing you?
Speaker 7 (37:00):
Hi?
Speaker 15 (37:01):
It's affecting me greatly. I have the best jobs. I
can't get social Security benefits. That is a big problem.
I've gone to every doctor appointment possible, and it's just
really hard.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
You're looking for Social Security disability benefits or social Security benefits.
Speaker 15 (37:25):
Social Security disability benefits, and it's like nearly impossible because
they don't have you know, I got it right away
and yeah, it's broomed.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, and this is because you had COVID nineteen during
the pandemic.
Speaker 15 (37:44):
And exactly, and I have long haul COVID and because
in the beginning they said, you know, don't come in
unless you have lung issues. And I didn't have lung issues,
but it took it outomy for three months, and you know,
and then I was a makeup artist and I lost
(38:06):
all of that. So because no one was getting married
or having a new social hyhow Yeah, it's tough and
I feel for everyone.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Well, I'm sorry to hear that, nand but thank you
very much for calling in to the show. And let
me go to Mark, who's in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. Hi, Mark,
what about you? Welcome to the Middle howdy.
Speaker 20 (38:30):
So, yeah, I'm a locksmith here and I have this
unique perspective I opened during COVID and I went out
on my own for some reason, right just as the
pandemic started. And I've seen waves in the way people
have changed their habits and everything. You know, what I've
noticed for the last six months or so is that
fire hose that opened up when people first started to,
(38:51):
you know, feel that relief after COVID. It's just sort
of ebbed my events here while they're still going their
local people, the people that were traveling to see things.
There's less of them, and so my business has ebbed
a little bit along with them. You know, costs have
gone out and all that. But I've also seen like
(39:13):
just you know, less out of towners, less folks from
far away, less campers, less let's just folks just traveling
for the stake of traveling. So people's habits of I
won't say return back to normal because I won't say
that that's not quite what it feels like. But people
have definitely changed and gone back to I won't say
it before habits or or new habits. It's an interesting
(39:36):
change to me.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yeah, Mark, thank you for that. Diane Swunk, what do
you make of that? What do you think? Is that
just about people not having as much money in their
pockets now?
Speaker 9 (39:44):
Well, you know, it's kind of interesting because the things
like TSA throughput are running double digits above twenty nineteen levels,
so people are still traveling. But it is interesting is
what's happening is each month, you know, in the employment data,
they actually we know that how many people say they
are not in work that week because they're on vacation,
(40:05):
and that's been hitting still record levels in recent months.
What is also happening though, is parental leave is at
record levels now that was expanded during the pandemic. Other
things that are happening and is people that can't get
to work because of childcare or because of elder care issues.
We're seeing more people who are getting marginalized because of
(40:28):
what's not available to them to be able to have
the support system to be able to work. And I
think those are important things as well. Even down to
something as you know, it used to be sort of
taken for granted, you got a job, you went and
got a car, you drove to your job. Now we're
in big cities, Richard and I can take mass transit,
(40:49):
but if there's not mass transit near you, you need
a car to get your job. Well, a car is
now a luxury purchase. Only the top sort of two
income quintiles can afford to buy a new car, and
car prices alone went from on average thirty eight thousand
to fifty thousand, so you know, if you're going to
get that car, it's you know, only going to be
(41:10):
one car now for a house, and that's going to
limit So there's going to be inequality again across where
you see this. Even though the overall numbers show it.
There's the Devil's always in the details, right, Richard.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
I want to ask you about something that I found
to be very interesting, which is apparently both former President
Trump and President Biden are asking voters if they're better
off now than they were four years ago. Both of
them are doing that, but listen to this from an
Associated Press story. Biden aids say their internal surveys have
shown that voters tend to block out the pandemic from
their memories unless they're reminded of it, and that when
(41:45):
asked about Trump, they tend to think of the pre
pandemic years rather than twenty twenty. What do you think that's.
Speaker 10 (41:51):
About, Well, I think that has to do with the
nature of you know, traumatic memory and forgetting. You know,
what people remember is a biased experience. So if you
ask people, are you better off now than you were
four years ago, they're not thinking of twenty twenty. They're
(42:13):
remembering a nostalgic period where things were better. They're not
remembering the mortality, the social isolation. You know the fact
that we were all on lockdown for sure, But if
you remind them of that, I mean, that is the
reality suddenly they're not thinking that they were so well off.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Let's go to Roca, who's in Saint Louis, Missouri. Roca,
Welcome to the middle Go.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Ahead, Hi there, Yeah, I you know, listening to everything
that you guys we're just talking about. I'm just thinking
about how, you know, four years ago in twenty twenty,
things were hard, obviously, but if you are a person
like me who had COVID and is now suffering from
(42:55):
long COVID, in a lot of ways, things are worse
now than they were four years ago, if not only
because of health issues, but also because a lot of
these social supports for you know, COVID and precautions have
been lifted. So now as a disabled person, I am
more isolated than I ever was because I'm having to
(43:16):
protect myself from infection and I am also now not
really able to work in the same fashion that I
once was.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
And yeah, it's and do you do you do you
wear a mask still when you when you're out?
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Yes, yes, I wear a mask. Everyone that I am
in close contact with also wears a mask whenever they're out.
And even at this point now when I spend time
with my extended family, I'm having to wear a mask,
which is really disheartening. So it's really just my closest
friends that I can spend time with without a mask.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
On what about that, Diane Swok, I'll go to you
on that because you said you had a number of
surgeries during COVID. Yeah, what about the mask wearing? I mean,
how does that will now?
Speaker 9 (44:05):
Well, it's interesting because I don't wear a mask as
much as I did. My husband wears a mask more
than I do, which is kind of interesting. I think
it got used to wearing it around me because I
had to be isolated and I had cancer from being
in the World Trade Center at nine to eleven. So
twenty years later it came back in the middle of
a pandemic. But it was really hard for me. Is
(44:28):
going into the hospital and waking up from a surgery
in a mask and being alone, and all I had
with me was my phone, and I would start texting
or sometimes social media tweeting, not realizing I was you know,
I actually had one of my colleagues saying, someone take
(44:48):
the phone away from her. Well, there was no one
to take the phone away from me, and it was
my only way to communicate. And you know, I'm not
sure that was the best time to tweet about the
economy or whatever as I was coming out of surgery.
But you know, there I was really struck by how
much in the hospital, how much I spent time with
(45:09):
other nurses. And I'm sure you had this experience, Richard,
you know, trying to be as nice as I could,
because they had to deal with people who would rip
their masks off and yell at them and say, we
don't need masks and they had COVID and they say
I don't have COVID, and trying to convince them that
they had COVID, and it was it's really surreal, and
I do, you know, I do. What I appreciate is
(45:31):
when people can get on I have to get on
planes a lot, and I appreciate that people come on,
some wearing masks, some not, and it I don't see
a lot of discord from that anymore. And I like
the fact that people it's okay if they wear a mask.
To me, that's a good thing. I will say. One
of the things we know in the labor market is
(45:52):
also from the disabilities. At first, people were looking at
these numbers and they're like, oh, this is wonderful work.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
From home.
Speaker 9 (45:58):
Is allowed all these people to work. Well, actually, it
was long COVID was forcing many people to only work
a little bit. And now we know that a lot
of the working disabled, which was unusual in the past.
People couldn't always work or actually because of long COVID.
And I'm you know, it's positive you can work a
(46:19):
little bit, but it's not good if you're always isolated
and you can't get out and do the most basic
of human things, which I'm sure Richard, you know you're
very familiar with it in terms of being able to
socialize with people.
Speaker 10 (46:31):
Yeah, Richard, your thoughts, Yes, you know, Diana, that's exactly
what happened in the hospital, what you described. But I
when you were telling me just now about your experience
with social media, it made me think. As much as
we'd loved to rail on about the harms of social media,
and there are many of them, imagine where we would
have been during COVID without it.
Speaker 8 (46:53):
Oh, I know it up.
Speaker 9 (46:54):
It kept me connected.
Speaker 10 (46:55):
Yeah, exactly, it saved us. You know, it is the thing.
It made it possible for us to virtually remain connected
to one another during lockdown. It was remarkable.
Speaker 9 (47:08):
Go ahead, Diane, Oh, I was just going to say,
I mean, at one point in time, Richard and Jeremy,
I was tweeting and I realized everything I've sort of
gotten to me and I'd gotten another diagnosis, and I said,
you know, excuse me, guys, I've got to take a
pause on social media. And I actually just said, having
a rough day, got to take a pause. And the
(47:30):
amount of love that came my way from all these people,
you know, and I was like, this was really a
wonderful thing. And I really appreciated that. And you know,
social media has a lot of downside, but there are
some positives.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Some positives. I don't believe it at that Diane Swan,
chief economist at KPMG at US, and doctor Richard Freeman,
director of the psycho Pharmacology Clinic at wild Cornell Medicine,
thank you both so much for joining us.
Speaker 9 (47:56):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 10 (47:57):
It was a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
And Toliver, the courts are back in the news with
some very significant cases, the Trump trial in New York,
the arguments about presidential immunity at the Supreme Courts. Trust
in the courts is near a low point.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
Yeah, so we'll be asking do you trust the court system?
In this country. You can call us an eight four
four four Middle. That's eight four four four six four
three three five three or right, and then listen to
The Middle dot Com on you there.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Sign up for our newsletter, So do you Trust the Courts?
That's next week and the week after that. We're live
from Saint Louis Public Radio on May the Night, so
don't miss that show. The Middle is brought to you
by Longnook Media, distributed by Illinois Public Media in Arvana, Illinois,
and produced by Joanne Jennings, Harrison Patino, John Barth, and
Danny Alexander. Our technical director today is Steve mork. Our
theme music was composed by Andrew Haig. Thanks also to
(48:39):
Nashville Public Radio, iHeartMedia, and the more than four hundred
and ten public radio stations making it possible for people
across the country to listen to the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Talk to you next week.
The Middle is supported by Journalism Funding Partners, a nonprofit
organization striving to increase the sustainability of local journalism by
building connections between donors and news organizations. More information on
how you can support the Middle at listen to Themiddle
dot com. Welcome to the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson, joined
(00:22):
as always by our house DJ Tolliver. Hey Tolliver, Hi,
I'm doing well and you know, it has been a
little over four years since the world shut down because
of COVID nineteen. Do you remember the moment when you
realized how life changing of a virus this.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Was going to be?
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Yeah, it was actually after I attended my first Zoom
comedy show, because like, nothing will make you miss people
in a bad Zoom comedy show.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, er, I do remember a lot of things on
a Zoom that. I mean, I didn't even have heard
of Zoom before the pandemic, and then there we were
and here we are. So at this point a lot
of us, of course, would like to forget that the
pandemic happened. But what we want to know from you,
if you're listening, is are you still feeling its effects,
whether that's economic, mental, or physical. Health or in another way.
That is our question this hour, and our number is
(01:06):
eight four four four Middle that is eight four four
four six four three three five three. We're gonna get
to your calls in a moment. But first, last week
we asked whether or not marijuana legalization is working. A
lot of calls from a lot of different sides on
this issue. Take a listen to some of the voicemails
that came in.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
Hi.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
My name is Jane. I live in Adam, Michigan.
Speaker 6 (01:27):
Hi.
Speaker 7 (01:28):
My name is Richard and I'm calling him from Alaska.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Hi.
Speaker 7 (01:31):
My name is Tina from Chicago, Illinois.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Hi. This is Bill and Palmeadow, Florida. I think that,
just like with alcohol, education is the key. I think
we need to be educating our children as far as
alcohol and marijuana usage.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
The marijuana issue in Michigan in schools is out of
control completely. When I spoke to a high school principle recently,
he said he thought about fifty percent of students were
hooked on mostly vaping and.
Speaker 7 (02:04):
Weed pens over the last few years. They legalized it,
specifically Anchorage, and I know multiple growers who quit because
of the legalization. I have crowned disease.
Speaker 8 (02:14):
I'm thrilled to have a legal, safe access to marijuana now.
Speaker 7 (02:20):
It's been a great drug for that disease.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well, thanks to everyone who called and wrote in. So
this hour we're asking how are you still feeling the
effects of COVID nineteen. It has been four years since
once in a century pandemic brought the world to a
stand still. More than a million Americans died. Obviously, schools
and businesses closed, and we were all isolated from one another.
So now four years later, while you may not notice
(02:45):
the acute effects like you used to, we are still
living with many of the after effects. Grocery bills are
more than twenty five percent higher than they were pre pandemic.
Trying to buy a house or renting is much more expensive.
COVID has changed the way we talk and interact with
one another. It has deepened our political divisions, and of
course there are people dealing with long COVID and mental
(03:07):
health challenges as well. So we want to know how
it's playing out in your life. Taliver, how can people
reach us?
Speaker 3 (03:12):
You can call us at eight four four four Middle
that's eight four four four six four three three five three.
You can also email us at Listen to the Middle
dot com.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Let's meet our panel. Diane Swank is chief economist at
KPMGUS and is one of the nation's top economic analysts
and an old friend. She's in Evanston, Illinois. Diane, welcome
to the Middle.
Speaker 9 (03:30):
It's great to be here. It's good to hear you
again too.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Jeremy, it's great to hear you as well. And doctor
Richard Friedman is with us. He's a psychiatrist and director
of the psychopharmacology Clinic at wild Cornell Medicine in New York. Richard,
welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 10 (03:44):
Thank you. It's great to be here well.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
And you co wrote a piece in The Atlantic magazine
about how we all have unprocessed COVID grief. What do
you mean by that?
Speaker 10 (03:55):
What I mean is that we face the life threatening
traumatic event during COVID, in which more than a million
Americans were killed. And though most of us feel right
now that COVID is over psychologically, it takes time to
deal with a threat with a trauma that is represented
by COVID, and many of us are not quite over
(04:17):
it yet. And what we mean by this is there
are many, many Americans who are unhappy and anxious and
depressed and just in a plain funk. Now, and pundits
and economists are scratching their heads trying to understand why
are Americans in such.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
A sour mood.
Speaker 10 (04:35):
Well, one possible explanation is unprocessed grief and traumatic memory
related to COVID.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
And yet we don't want to think about it.
Speaker 10 (04:49):
Well, it's understandable. Nobody wants to pay attention to things
that are painful. It's adaptive to forget things. But on
the other hand, in a sense, if you can't remember them,
you can't forget them.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Diane, back in twenty twenty, you predicted that the economic
impact of COVID nineteen would outlast the outbreak of COVID nineteen.
How do you see that playing out now, Well.
Speaker 9 (05:11):
It's playing out in more ways than I ever wanted
it to play out. That this for sure. You know,
it feels kind of like at the time when COVID hit,
I was reassured by one thing, and that was that
we wouldn't let COVID be the iceberg. We got lifeboats
in the water with supplies to make sure that people
had some way to traverse those COVID tainted waters. And
(05:33):
that was really important. The side effect of that, unfortunately,
was on the other side, as we emerged out of
COVID and we reopened the economy, there was that frictions
upon re entry, and we had a lot of demand,
a lot of pen of demand. We had saved a
lot of money, both from the COVID stimulus and all
the money the government spent to make sure that we
(05:54):
didn't sink in that COVID waters as many sunk in it,
and I think that was important of an economic sense,
but it also left us with this residual inflation that
we're still struggling with today. And you know, in some ways,
you know, we'd all like twenty nineteen prices and twenty
twenty four wages. That's not going to happen. But you know,
(06:15):
the reality is out there. You know that we had
you noted it earlier, fifty percent increase since twenty nineteen
in home values, thirty percent increase in rents. Wages on
average across the country went up seventeen point six percent.
So that disparity, that difference, it can be felt. And
even though we saw increases in savings and wealth and
(06:39):
wages across income strata, in ways that we never had before.
Inequality still intensified even though those increases came. And so
I think there's a real sense too of, you know,
taking a worker that was once considered non essential making
them essential, their wages being leveled up. Remember essential workers,
(06:59):
those frontline workers at the beginning of COVID, Their wages
were leveled up, and they had their moment in the
sun from the shadows of this economy, only to be
burned by inflation. And I think that's what the real
challenge is today.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Well, and Richard, inflation has turned into such a huge
issue in our politics right now that it could be
the deciding thing in this presidential race, which has so
many other things going on. But if you think about
inflation as at its core, whether because of the pandemic
or the response to the pandemic, the pandemic and it's
(07:35):
after effects are what are going to decide maybe this
presidential election.
Speaker 10 (07:39):
Yes, people's emotional response and also, as Diana saying, I mean,
their livid reality of their economic circumstance. If they have
to go out and they realize that their purchasing power
is so much less than it was let's say, one
or two years ago, and yet you know, there's a
(08:01):
disconnect because you know, many people are you know, on
air telling Americans that the economy is really not that bad.
The unemployment rates are low, the wages have gone up,
you know, at least as fast as prices, and so
it's confusing to people because their actual reality and what
(08:23):
they're hearing from experts don't match.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
I think, oh, yeah, go ahead, Diane.
Speaker 9 (08:29):
Well, you know, I just want to dovetail on next.
I think Richard makes a really important point which I'm
always trying to struggle with. You know, we've gone through
now twenty six months, and likely next week we'll see
twenty seven months of unemployment less than four percent, the
longest span since the height of the Vietnam War in
the late nineteen sixties.
Speaker 10 (08:49):
That's great.
Speaker 9 (08:50):
It's great that people have a job. One hundred percent
of people, though, feel inflation. A small percentage, and this
is the sad part of statistics, A small percentage feel
a rise in unemployment. And so I think that's the
reality is that even though on average wages are now
outpacing inflation. Again, that's good news. But we came out
(09:14):
of a decade after the Great Financial Crisis and the
Great Recession, were wages stagnated. So again you get this
sort of sense of relativity that you got a moment
to do. Think you're doing better, and you maybe only
needed one job. Now multiple job holders are a sign
of the economy getting better instead of a sign of
(09:34):
the economy getting worse. In the nineteen nineties, it wasn't
like that you didn't need to have as an economy improved.
We actually had a narrow window in time where inequality
in the United States narrowed in the nineteen nineties, and
people didn't need those multiple jobs. Now you do.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Let's get to Fahima, who's calling from Milton, Massachusetts. Fahima,
welcome to the middle How are you still feeling, COVID?
Speaker 11 (10:00):
I actually feel great me personally, I'm really grateful that
no one I know died or anything really bad to
that happened to them. So I'm feeling grateful. But my son, Nathaniel,
he hates gym class and his gym teacher is really nice.
(10:21):
He's super like just a very friendly guy. And it's like,
why do you hate gym class that your coach is
so nice? You like your coach, You like your teacher.
They call him coach, see I think, and he says,
because people touch me, and you're not supposed to touch strangers
or people you don't know, because they'll get you sick
with germs. And it just hit me how much that
(10:44):
affected him during the worst of the pandemic.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
I have to say, I noticed going back to my
own high school late in the pandemic, maybe a year
ago or so, and how many people there were still
the students were still so concerned that they were wearing masks,
even after many people, many adults, in a lot of
places around the country had stopped doing that. Fahima, thank
(11:09):
you very much for that call, Tolliver. I know that
we're getting comments in online as well.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Becky in Minnesota says, yes, COVID still impacts our lives.
My fourteen year old has been in treatment for long COVID,
which she got in April twenty one. She started treatment
at Mayo and December of twenty one and is still
in treatment every day. It impacts her life. Wow, her
lungs and body have not recovered yet.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
You know, one of the big issues, as we said
in this year's presidential election, could be the higher cost
of everything, the inflation that came out of the pandemic
and the response to the pandemic.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Yeah, and it's not the first time inflation has been
used as a campaign issue. Listen here to Ronald Reagan
as he campaigned against Jimmy Carter in the nineteen eighty election.
Speaker 8 (11:42):
This idea that has been spawned here in our country,
that inflation somehow came upon us like a plague and
therefore it's uncontrollable and no one can do anything about it.
Is entirely spurious, and it's dangerous to say this to
the people. And mister Carter became president. Inflation was four
point eight percent, as you it had been cut in
two by President Gerald Ford. It is now running a
(12:05):
twelve point seven percent.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
And by the way, Tolliver, his slogan in nineteen eighty,
Ronald reagan slogan in nineteen eighty was also make America
grade again. Very interesting, how that inflation make America great again?
The two things that come up again and again. We'll
be right back with more of your calls on the Middle.
This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson. If you're just
tuning in the Middle is a national call in show.
(12:28):
We're focused on elevating voices from the middle geographically, politically, philosophically,
or maybe you just want to meet in the middle.
This hour, we're asking you, are you still feeling the
effects of the COVID pandemic that could be in your health,
your work life, your relationships, anything. Tolliver, what's the number to.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Call in It's eight four four four Middle. That's eight
four four four six four three three five three. You
can also write to us at Listen to the Middle
dot com or on social media.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
I'm joined by Diane swankchief economist at KPMG US and
doctor Richard Friedman, director of the Psychopharmacology Clinic at while
Cornell Medicine. And before we go back to the phones, Diane,
what about what it has done to people's work life?
So many people still working remote in this country, something
that really wasn't happening near on this scale before the pandemic.
(13:14):
And I noticed that.
Speaker 12 (13:17):
When it comes to office occupancy in cities on the
busiest days of the week, they are just sixty two
percent right now of what they were on average in
February twenty twenty, which obviously has a huge impact on
real estate.
Speaker 9 (13:30):
Absolutely, you know, the number of what's really been interesting
Nick Bloom and Steve Davis in univers Chicago Stanford University.
They started they've been studying work from home in hybrid
work kind of schedules four days a week for over
twenty years, and they started in May of twenty twenty
surveying over five thousand Americans on their work. And we've
(13:52):
got this continuous study that's gone on since then in
terms of and it's really just blossomed into a whole
field of understanding all the different time ways people work.
And at first, people when they pivoted online, about a
third of the time that they saved from commuting, they
actually committed to their jobs, and so they were working
more and giving more time to their jobs. The other
(14:15):
two thirds that they weren't commuting, they were spending more
time free, time with their family or walking their dogs,
or being able to run their errands, but being able
to live their life in whatever way they wanted. Now,
what we've seen is we sort of leveled out since
twenty twenty two. We have not seen change in sort
of the hybrid work from home, the number of people
(14:35):
who are not always in the office, maybe in the
office some days. The key is to be in the
office the same time the people you want to see
are in the office. But it's no longer you know
all the time, and there's this sort of leveling off
and it's not shifting, and it's not shifted in two
years now. And I think that's really important to see
(14:56):
because it's made in one way the the labor market
much more open to many more people, particularly for women,
highly educated women with small children who have childcare problems,
and we're in a childcare crisis, a care crisis more
broadly in this country. College educated women drove labor force
participation back to a record high after a twenty year hiatus.
(15:20):
When I was first driving the labor force participation for
women having children to a record high in two thousand,
it took us over twenty years to get there again.
But then on the other side of it, those people
who don't have that flexibility, women are working one hour
less than they were in twenty nineteen. So women of
color and people who have a high school career or
(15:43):
less were penalized by that and are not participating as much.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Let's go to the phones and Joanna, who's in Provo, Utah. Joanna,
welcome to the middle.
Speaker 13 (15:53):
Go ahead, Hi, thanks.
Speaker 7 (15:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 13 (15:55):
So when COVID hit, I had been at university for
a year and a half and I took a break,
and I'm still back at university now, and so the
whole lens of COVID is something that I've seen as
a university student and something that I think we're still experiencing.
Speaker 14 (16:12):
At least in Utah. And from what I've seen is
that the curriculum kind of weekend staling COVID, and understandably so,
as a way to let students know that it was
okay to be struggling, it was okay to be sick,
and things that we're going to be a little bit
easier for a second because everyone was dealing with COVID.
Speaker 7 (16:30):
But I have.
Speaker 15 (16:32):
Picked back up in.
Speaker 14 (16:33):
Terms of speed, in terms of volume of material that
we've been given to study, and it just seems as
though COVID has still been affecting us as far as
the level of education that we're receiving and the expectations
that are on the shoulders of students and professors alike.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Joanna, thank you very much for that. Richard Friedman, you're
obviously on a campus. How do you see this playing
out in education. I tend to think that the people
who were in school at any level during the pandemic
must have had one of the hardest experiences and maybe
are still feeling the effects of it now.
Speaker 10 (17:12):
Oh. I think that the effects on education in the
United States and COVID were profound. I mean, in secondary school,
kids lost and may never retrieve their learning. Kids who
were in you know, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade are
way behind in learning language and mathematics and may never
(17:34):
be able to keep up. I mean, I work in
a medical college, and you know, the impact on education
was really adverse because you know, the social and emotional
environment and learning when you're there in a classroom interacting
with people is really different I think than you know,
virtual learning, where you know you're looking at a tile
(17:57):
and you're talking one on one. You don't have the
same kind of you don't have the kind of social
behive phenomenon, and the social connection is gone in virtual
in virtuon.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
So, if we were to go through another pandemic right now,
Richard Friedman, what would you suggest happen? Should Should the
students just go into the classroom. I mean, there were
obviously real fears about spreading the virus around. But it
seems like what did happen was not a recipe for
the future.
Speaker 10 (18:27):
Well, I think each each one of these kinds of
pandemics has to be taken on its own. I mean,
we did the best we could with the available data
and science we had. I think looking back, hindsight is
always perfect. You can say, you know, we made terrible
decisions because the risk was actually lower than we thought
it was. I mean, the risk for young people was
(18:48):
much much smaller, most of them. Mortality from COVID occurred
in people who are sixty five and older, but we
couldn't have known that at the time, and there were
people who were highly critical in the absence of having
any data whatsoever. So people errate on the side of safety,
which is completely understandable.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
We've got a caller actually with an education background, Leela
in Chicago, joins us, Leela, go ahead.
Speaker 16 (19:14):
Yeah, what I see in my line of work is
we have a lot more students with anxiety, kind of
generalized anxiety. I'm afraid to do things more independently, whether
it's their work or uh work. Yeah, mostly like work
and class work and homework. And we're also seeing younger
(19:38):
kids difficulty with following the group plan and being part
of a group and needing more in wanting more individualized attention.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
How are you dealing with that now four years after
the start of the pandemic.
Speaker 16 (19:54):
Well, I think we just we're trying to provide as
much you know, h social emotional support in the school
as we can, and just you know, working with students
in like a social group kind of curriculum, like how
do we talk, how do we stay together with the plan?
(20:16):
What is our plan? You know, how can we work
together cooperatively and meet uh, meet our needs as a group,
but also work towards individual needs.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Leelah, Thank you, Diane Swank your thoughts on that issue
in the education system, but also probably in the workplace.
There have got to be social differences now versus several
years ago pre pandemic.
Speaker 9 (20:40):
Oh absolutely, And you know the education and the workplace,
you really see we see anxiety in fact, and every
single one of our offices now we actually have mental
health people on staff in on site one because people
need the extra help and the support and we're in
a mental health care which I'm sure Richard could attest to.
(21:02):
But it's really hard for a lot of our people
to get access to the mental health professionals that they
need to get access to. And in fact, when we
saw after the big hiring frenzy that occurred as things
started to slow down and people started to stay in
one place, they started to use their benefits more. And
one of the parts of their benefits that really shot
(21:22):
up was of course, their use of their mental health
care benefits. And it's good that they had those benefits,
but then trying to even find we've actually had to
sort of help them source, to find mental health professionals
to match them up with those people, and that is
a real shift. I mean, I spent a lot of time.
I've got a team that I came into that was hired.
(21:44):
Most of them that came with me knew me in
the office, and then those that I joined are a
team that we're hired all across the country during COVID,
and we've never worked in the same office together. And
so I spent a lot of time talking with them
and supporting them as well. And you know, what does
it mean? You know a lot of times I try
(22:05):
to not spend time on screen as I'm not with
you right now, but I actually get on the phone
because people have forgotten how to use the phone. And
I go and walk with them and talk with them,
and you know, we work on brainstorming together, and you
try to find all these different creative ways to connect
with the person that isn't just with this odd little
box in front of you.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yeah. Actually, I called a friend today and he told
me that I'm the only person besides his mom that
he has voice calls with.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
I just started practicing.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
People are writing in on on social media. What are
they say?
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Yeah, Laura writes, I was in grad school when COVID hit.
I got sick in March twenty twenty, very early in
the pandemic, before testing, way before vaccines. I was very
sick for sixty two days. I missed multiple semesters, and
I'm just now getting back into my research. Yeah, where
I left off that first March. I had to pay
extra money now to retake classes. I already completed four years.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Let's go to Jordan, who's in Lake Forest, Illinois. Welcome
to the middle. How are you still feeling the effects
of COVID.
Speaker 17 (23:05):
So, firstly, I'd just like to acknowledge your unfamiliarity with
voice calls, as a millennial. It's not something that is
in my programming, but I feel like the lasting effects
of COVID for me, at least, I feel as though
I'm constantly exhausted, much earlier in the day than I
(23:27):
normally have been. I feel like I get much less
distance out of a great night's sleep, which I, you know,
am blessed to have fairly frequently. But I think that well, firstly,
I had absolutely no idea how much I touched my
face prior to the pandemic, and so I think that,
you know, that first instance being what I would consider
(23:49):
like a negative consequence, I think that a positive lasting
effect is just I'm much more acutely aware of the
like micro andsions that I have and can have on
my surroundings and my environment, just with the smallest gesture.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
What do you mean by that, Give me an example.
Speaker 17 (24:10):
I just mean like being more aware of how I
am interacting with even the most mundane things like how
I am holding a door open for somebody and making
sure to you know, be sensitive to the fact that
they may have a little bit more rigid understanding of
(24:32):
personal space than the person that you know came before them.
And so I just I find that I'm more aware.
I'm just more dialed in. I guess you would say.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Jordan, thank you for that call. Richard Friedman a lot there.
But one of the things is that obviously Jordan has
actually had COVID and still feeling the health effects of it.
What do we know about the physical and mental effects
of long COVID or people that had it and now
still have effects from the disease.
Speaker 10 (25:02):
Well, we know it's a huge problem that affects many
millions of Americans who were infected with COVID, who are
over the acute infection but then have long lasting medical
and neuropsychiatric effects, including things like Jordan is saying, fatigue,
disrupted sleep. And while we have some idea that it
has to do with an overactive immune system that's playing
(25:26):
out in various systems of the body, we don't actually
know really what's going on or how to treat it.
And it's a target of an enormous amount of research
that's being funded to try to understand this. But it's
a huge public health problem.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Let's go to Katie and Saint Louis. Hi, Katie, welcome
to the middle.
Speaker 17 (25:45):
Go ahead, Hi, nice to see you.
Speaker 6 (25:48):
So I am a nurse. I was a nurse during COVID,
I walked beside I took care of COVID patients. Since then,
my career has actually taken me in the past of
virtual care. So the lasting effects that I felt from
COVID is how it has propelled the healthcare system into
really incorporating virtual care and telehealth into maybe not daily activities.
(26:13):
Yet it's still as much as COVID has propelled it forward.
It's still pretty new and evolving. But it's really exciting
to be a part of it. And how virtual nurses
and virtual patient observers in the hospital, but also just
the regular person using telehealth appointments to see their doctors
from home and get prescription resales. It's really interesting to
(26:37):
see it develop and it's really exciting to be a
part of it, and really nerve wracking as well. So
when we start talking about AI use in the workplace,
and you know, what are the pros and cons, and
we have to be really careful about, you know, taking
these steps forward because patient safety is paramounts of course,
and there is a limit to what you can do virtually.
(26:58):
You can't replace you know, an nurse or a doctor's
you know, healing touch on present. So it's a balance
that it's really exciting to get to be a part
of it.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Katie, Thank you. Diane Swank, what do you make of
that the change in the healthcare business and industry, and
I'm sure there are many other industries that have changed
dramatically because of COVID nineteen.
Speaker 9 (27:20):
Yeah, and well, you know, I had my own personal
experience with this because I had thirteen surgeries during COVID,
so I know it only too well, both virtually and
in the hospitals. But I think one of the things
that's really important is healthcare in this country, the demand
for health care, and we talked about it with mental health,
but we're chasing a moving target. We have aging demographics.
(27:42):
We have retired people that are retiring, but with aging
demographics you have more people with aging diseases. We also
have long COVID, and we have millennials twelve thousand a
day turning thirty five, and many of those millennials are
now having families and they're also utilizing the healthalth care system.
And it's really just slammed the healthcare system with demand
(28:04):
at a time when we need to scale up and
so the idea of being able to leverage virtual is
part of the answer, but it really does underscore the
mismatch between the number of healthcare professionals and the demand
for their services. And we talked about it in mental health,
but it really spans a whole spectrum, and it's showing
up in inflation. I mean, you know, medical care costs
(28:26):
are going up, healthcare premiums are going up. We're also
seeing a lot of hospital costs are starting to finally
catch up to those earlier cost pressures that were felt
as a result of COVID, and that's part of the
inflation problem as well. But it's you know, that collision
between or the gap between supply and demand that causes
(28:47):
that heat. And it really is hard because you're seeing
long cues. People can't even get into a doctor, their
regular doctor if they've got a cold. The waiting time
can be enormous, you know, and that those are the
kinds of things you want to see more solutions do,
and I think we are seeing more solutions, but at
the moment, it really is a mismatch. And I'm sure
(29:09):
Richard has seen that, you know more firsthand.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Richard, briefly, your thoughts.
Speaker 10 (29:15):
Oh yeah, I think on the one hand, telehealth was
a godsend and we discovered something that we should have
been doing long long ago. In important not only because
it extends the reach of what we can do, but
there's such a now distribution of resource, especially to mental health.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Tulliver. You know, one way to process grief and the
COVID grief that Richard was talking about is through humor.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Absolutely, yeah, but it can take a while. Here's a
clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail with the
Great Eric Idol telling people to bring out their dead
as he walks along with the Cardiff bodies in the
midst of a plague.
Speaker 10 (29:51):
Bring today, I'm not dead.
Speaker 17 (29:56):
Well, nothing us, but I'm not dead, he says, he's
not dead.
Speaker 8 (30:01):
Yes he is, he isn't.
Speaker 18 (30:03):
Body will be soon, he's very well, No, you're not.
Speaker 15 (30:06):
You'll be stone dead in a moment.
Speaker 8 (30:08):
Oh, can't take him, not that this is against regulations.
I don't want to.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Can't take him.
Speaker 18 (30:15):
I feel fine.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
I am so happy that we were able to play
that Cliff on this show.
Speaker 6 (30:20):
That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I've never heard that.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
You've never seen money Python in The Holy Grail. You
got it. Check that out Tolliver. You've got to check
that out. And by the way, if you do, go
to our website Listen to the Middle dot com. You
can also make a contribution to the Middle, which is
really important to us as we try to do our
shows every single week leading up to the election and
head out on the road. And by the way, we're
going to be in Saint Louis at Saint Louis Public
(30:42):
Radio on May the ninth, We're going to be in
Connecticut in June. We're going to be in Alabama in July.
So we're doing all this stuff and the money really
does help, so any amount tax deductible. Listen to the
Middle dot com and we'll be right back with more
on the Middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
We're asking you this hour, are you still feeling the
effects of the COVID pandemic in your health, your work life, economically,
(31:04):
in your relationships. You can call us at eight four
four four Middle, that's eight four four four six four
three three five three. You can reach out at listen
toothemiddle dot com. We're joined this hour by Diane Swank,
chief economist at KPMG US and doctor Richard Friedman, a
psychiatrist and director of psychopharmacology at Wild Cornell Medicine. And
(31:26):
let's go back to the phones and we'll go to
Louis Thomas in Nashville, Tennessee. Hi Thomas, welcome to the middle.
Speaker 18 (31:36):
Hi, thanks playing my call.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Yeah, go ahead, So uh.
Speaker 18 (31:41):
I, like many people in Nashville, am part of the
live event industry, and as you can imagine, gathering large
numbers of people in one place was one of the
first things to get shut down in one of the
last things to come back. So on top of the
primatize mental image of just not knowing when we can
(32:03):
come back to work. Ever since, COVID just been like
a sprint to catch back up because when venues were
opened backed up, the floodgates were open, and just there
is a massive thirst for live entertainment, which is great,
but so many people left the workplace and we've just
(32:24):
been trying to play catch up ever since.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, and Andre, have you had any success in doing
that at this point? Are you feeling good about it now?
Are things in the right direction?
Speaker 18 (32:36):
Things are certainly moving in the in the right direction.
It just it's still it's just throttles wide open. It
seems like we can just almost never catch up. I mean, again,
a lot of people took this as kind of an
omen to retire or to move to a different industry,
So there's just a massive labor shortage, just like many
other things. But again, this demand was just it just
(33:00):
came back in such fury that I don't think anyone
was really anticipating that.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Thomas. Thank you Richard Friedman. On that issue of people
deciding to take this moment to retire, there are probably
many other people who also took this moment to get married,
get divorced, take a look at their life and make
a big change because of COVID.
Speaker 10 (33:19):
Nineteen absolutely, I mean one of the effects I think
of COVID was people who ordn'tarily wouldn't have spent as
much time around one another. Spouses were suddenly stressed by
the constant presence of their significant other. For better or worse.
Some people got closer, others had a dissolution of their relationship,
(33:43):
So that's not surprising.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Russ is an Idaho. Hi Russ, Welcome to the middle
So I'm.
Speaker 19 (33:48):
A professional biologist and one of the most upsetting things
about COVID was the misinformation and the fact that the
science was not listened to, and it became so politicized
that you know, the country was polarized. And to me,
you know, what is more of a common enemy than
(34:08):
a virus that kills you and your family and your neighbors.
So that was extremely upsetting to me, the misinformation, and
I also think that the form of administration did a
very poor job informing the public and listening to the science.
And you know, probably thousands of people died that really
wouldn't have died had better information been shared with the public.
(34:31):
So that continues today, you know, the lack of listening
to science, not only on this issue, but other issues.
So that that is still very disturbing to me.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Russ, thank you and Richard Friedman. That actually just brings
me to a question I have about the politics of this.
We know that it's made it more difficult for people
to talk to those that they disagree with this pandemic.
It's made our divisions worse.
Speaker 10 (34:55):
Yes, we're a highly polarized country in which you know,
people who have different views than we do are not
just seen as interesting and quirky, and we disagree with them.
But we demonize them. And what Thomas is saying, I
absolutely agree with. You know, if you don't have a
shared reality, it's very hard to communicate with people. And
(35:16):
we all are in our own bubbles, surrounded by information
that we select that agrees with us.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
That's the reason why we have this show the Middle
and so that people in the middle. Were you going
to say something there?
Speaker 9 (35:29):
Oh, yeah, there's actually there's been some research on with
the Bipartisan Policy Institute in Washington and University of Maryland
and on some of the thorniest political issues, from social
security to immigration to the deficit. They've taken people and
of extremes on the political spectrum, put them in a
room and said these are the facts. And so they
(35:51):
have one set of facts and in that room they
get overlap with eighty to ninety percent of the solutions
is we don't get in a room and talk with
each other. We spend too much time talking at each other.
And you know that in this world, in this day,
in this moment, that you know are the issues that
(36:12):
are really tough politically and have become highly politicized, that
that can happen. That gives me hope, but it also means,
you know, spending a lot more time talking to people
as human beings. And I know I spend a lot
of time in my speeches and what I do and
when I'm in public, I spend a lot of time
(36:32):
trying to identify with people as human beings, not just
an economic statistic or not just talking about the stats,
but you know, what is their kids like, what is
their life like? What are they feeling right there? And
try to lean into that moment because that's a shared moment,
and then you know it can be something bigger than
just sort of feeling separated.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Let's go to Nan in Minneapolis. Hi, Nan, Welcome to
the middle. How is COVID directing you?
Speaker 7 (37:00):
Hi?
Speaker 15 (37:01):
It's affecting me greatly. I have the best jobs. I
can't get social Security benefits. That is a big problem.
I've gone to every doctor appointment possible, and it's just
really hard.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
You're looking for Social Security disability benefits or social Security benefits.
Speaker 15 (37:25):
Social Security disability benefits, and it's like nearly impossible because
they don't have you know, I got it right away
and yeah, it's broomed.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, and this is because you had COVID nineteen during
the pandemic.
Speaker 15 (37:44):
And exactly, and I have long haul COVID and because
in the beginning they said, you know, don't come in
unless you have lung issues. And I didn't have lung issues,
but it took it outomy for three months, and you know,
and then I was a makeup artist and I lost
(38:06):
all of that. So because no one was getting married
or having a new social hyhow Yeah, it's tough and
I feel for everyone.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Well, I'm sorry to hear that, nand but thank you
very much for calling in to the show. And let
me go to Mark, who's in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. Hi, Mark,
what about you? Welcome to the Middle howdy.
Speaker 20 (38:30):
So, yeah, I'm a locksmith here and I have this
unique perspective I opened during COVID and I went out
on my own for some reason, right just as the
pandemic started. And I've seen waves in the way people
have changed their habits and everything. You know, what I've
noticed for the last six months or so is that
fire hose that opened up when people first started to,
(38:51):
you know, feel that relief after COVID. It's just sort
of ebbed my events here while they're still going their
local people, the people that were traveling to see things.
There's less of them, and so my business has ebbed
a little bit along with them. You know, costs have
gone out and all that. But I've also seen like
(39:13):
just you know, less out of towners, less folks from
far away, less campers, less let's just folks just traveling
for the stake of traveling. So people's habits of I
won't say return back to normal because I won't say
that that's not quite what it feels like. But people
have definitely changed and gone back to I won't say
it before habits or or new habits. It's an interesting
(39:36):
change to me.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yeah, Mark, thank you for that. Diane Swunk, what do
you make of that? What do you think? Is that
just about people not having as much money in their
pockets now?
Speaker 9 (39:44):
Well, you know, it's kind of interesting because the things
like TSA throughput are running double digits above twenty nineteen levels,
so people are still traveling. But it is interesting is
what's happening is each month, you know, in the employment data,
they actually we know that how many people say they
are not in work that week because they're on vacation,
(40:05):
and that's been hitting still record levels in recent months.
What is also happening though, is parental leave is at
record levels now that was expanded during the pandemic. Other
things that are happening and is people that can't get
to work because of childcare or because of elder care issues.
We're seeing more people who are getting marginalized because of
(40:28):
what's not available to them to be able to have
the support system to be able to work. And I
think those are important things as well. Even down to
something as you know, it used to be sort of
taken for granted, you got a job, you went and
got a car, you drove to your job. Now we're
in big cities, Richard and I can take mass transit,
(40:49):
but if there's not mass transit near you, you need
a car to get your job. Well, a car is
now a luxury purchase. Only the top sort of two
income quintiles can afford to buy a new car, and
car prices alone went from on average thirty eight thousand
to fifty thousand, so you know, if you're going to
get that car, it's you know, only going to be
(41:10):
one car now for a house, and that's going to
limit So there's going to be inequality again across where
you see this. Even though the overall numbers show it.
There's the Devil's always in the details, right, Richard.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
I want to ask you about something that I found
to be very interesting, which is apparently both former President
Trump and President Biden are asking voters if they're better
off now than they were four years ago. Both of
them are doing that, but listen to this from an
Associated Press story. Biden aids say their internal surveys have
shown that voters tend to block out the pandemic from
their memories unless they're reminded of it, and that when
(41:45):
asked about Trump, they tend to think of the pre
pandemic years rather than twenty twenty. What do you think that's.
Speaker 10 (41:51):
About, Well, I think that has to do with the
nature of you know, traumatic memory and forgetting. You know,
what people remember is a biased experience. So if you
ask people, are you better off now than you were
four years ago, they're not thinking of twenty twenty. They're
(42:13):
remembering a nostalgic period where things were better. They're not
remembering the mortality, the social isolation. You know the fact
that we were all on lockdown for sure, But if
you remind them of that, I mean, that is the
reality suddenly they're not thinking that they were so well off.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Let's go to Roca, who's in Saint Louis, Missouri. Roca,
Welcome to the middle Go.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Ahead, Hi there, Yeah, I you know, listening to everything
that you guys we're just talking about. I'm just thinking
about how, you know, four years ago in twenty twenty,
things were hard, obviously, but if you are a person
like me who had COVID and is now suffering from
(42:55):
long COVID, in a lot of ways, things are worse
now than they were four years ago, if not only
because of health issues, but also because a lot of
these social supports for you know, COVID and precautions have
been lifted. So now as a disabled person, I am
more isolated than I ever was because I'm having to
(43:16):
protect myself from infection and I am also now not
really able to work in the same fashion that I
once was.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
And yeah, it's and do you do you do you
wear a mask still when you when you're out?
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Yes, yes, I wear a mask. Everyone that I am
in close contact with also wears a mask whenever they're out.
And even at this point now when I spend time
with my extended family, I'm having to wear a mask,
which is really disheartening. So it's really just my closest
friends that I can spend time with without a mask.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
On what about that, Diane Swok, I'll go to you
on that because you said you had a number of
surgeries during COVID. Yeah, what about the mask wearing? I mean,
how does that will now?
Speaker 9 (44:05):
Well, it's interesting because I don't wear a mask as
much as I did. My husband wears a mask more
than I do, which is kind of interesting. I think
it got used to wearing it around me because I
had to be isolated and I had cancer from being
in the World Trade Center at nine to eleven. So
twenty years later it came back in the middle of
a pandemic. But it was really hard for me. Is
(44:28):
going into the hospital and waking up from a surgery
in a mask and being alone, and all I had
with me was my phone, and I would start texting
or sometimes social media tweeting, not realizing I was you know,
I actually had one of my colleagues saying, someone take
(44:48):
the phone away from her. Well, there was no one
to take the phone away from me, and it was
my only way to communicate. And you know, I'm not
sure that was the best time to tweet about the
economy or whatever as I was coming out of surgery.
But you know, there I was really struck by how
much in the hospital, how much I spent time with
(45:09):
other nurses. And I'm sure you had this experience, Richard,
you know, trying to be as nice as I could,
because they had to deal with people who would rip
their masks off and yell at them and say, we
don't need masks and they had COVID and they say
I don't have COVID, and trying to convince them that
they had COVID, and it was it's really surreal, and
I do, you know, I do. What I appreciate is
(45:31):
when people can get on I have to get on
planes a lot, and I appreciate that people come on,
some wearing masks, some not, and it I don't see
a lot of discord from that anymore. And I like
the fact that people it's okay if they wear a mask.
To me, that's a good thing. I will say. One
of the things we know in the labor market is
(45:52):
also from the disabilities. At first, people were looking at
these numbers and they're like, oh, this is wonderful work.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
From home.
Speaker 9 (45:58):
Is allowed all these people to work. Well, actually, it
was long COVID was forcing many people to only work
a little bit. And now we know that a lot
of the working disabled, which was unusual in the past.
People couldn't always work or actually because of long COVID.
And I'm you know, it's positive you can work a
(46:19):
little bit, but it's not good if you're always isolated
and you can't get out and do the most basic
of human things, which I'm sure Richard, you know you're
very familiar with it in terms of being able to
socialize with people.
Speaker 10 (46:31):
Yeah, Richard, your thoughts, Yes, you know, Diana, that's exactly
what happened in the hospital, what you described. But I
when you were telling me just now about your experience
with social media, it made me think. As much as
we'd loved to rail on about the harms of social media,
and there are many of them, imagine where we would
have been during COVID without it.
Speaker 8 (46:53):
Oh, I know it up.
Speaker 9 (46:54):
It kept me connected.
Speaker 10 (46:55):
Yeah, exactly, it saved us. You know, it is the thing.
It made it possible for us to virtually remain connected
to one another during lockdown. It was remarkable.
Speaker 9 (47:08):
Go ahead, Diane, Oh, I was just going to say,
I mean, at one point in time, Richard and Jeremy,
I was tweeting and I realized everything I've sort of
gotten to me and I'd gotten another diagnosis, and I said,
you know, excuse me, guys, I've got to take a
pause on social media. And I actually just said, having
a rough day, got to take a pause. And the
(47:30):
amount of love that came my way from all these people,
you know, and I was like, this was really a
wonderful thing. And I really appreciated that. And you know,
social media has a lot of downside, but there are
some positives.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Some positives. I don't believe it at that Diane Swan,
chief economist at KPMG at US, and doctor Richard Freeman,
director of the psycho Pharmacology Clinic at wild Cornell Medicine,
thank you both so much for joining us.
Speaker 9 (47:56):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 10 (47:57):
It was a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
And Toliver, the courts are back in the news with
some very significant cases, the Trump trial in New York,
the arguments about presidential immunity at the Supreme Courts. Trust
in the courts is near a low point.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
Yeah, so we'll be asking do you trust the court system?
In this country. You can call us an eight four
four four Middle. That's eight four four four six four
three three five three or right, and then listen to
The Middle dot Com on you there.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Sign up for our newsletter, So do you Trust the Courts?
That's next week and the week after that. We're live
from Saint Louis Public Radio on May the Night, so
don't miss that show. The Middle is brought to you
by Longnook Media, distributed by Illinois Public Media in Arvana, Illinois,
and produced by Joanne Jennings, Harrison Patino, John Barth, and
Danny Alexander. Our technical director today is Steve mork. Our
theme music was composed by Andrew Haig. Thanks also to
(48:39):
Nashville Public Radio, iHeartMedia, and the more than four hundred
and ten public radio stations making it possible for people
across the country to listen to the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Talk to you next week.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.