Image by Yuan Rong Gong.
We’re over three months out from the official end of the COVID state of emergency, declared in the US on May 11, yet its tremendous social upheaval is only beginning to manifest. It will take us many years to reckon with COVID’s full toll, but its malign effects are already evident. My generation, adrift well before the pandemic, finds itself more unmoored than ever. Preexisting mental health, debt, and underemployment crises have all worsened. The brunt of long COVID, an inflation crisis, astronomical rents, and the turbulence of readjusting to office life after years of fear and social isolation all conspire to render life nearly unbearable for millions of members of my cohort, the millennials.
