That's a pretty vague question, isn't it? Let me see if I can explain a bit better.

I've always considered myself to be a fairly intelligent and well-reasoned person. I follow both the politics and world news pretty regularly and have always thought I'd done so in a dispassionate way without letting ideology guide my views and opinions.

When Covid hit I was sent out of the office to work from home on March 10 (where I remain). I read plenty of news from all different sources and I could see that even though I wasn't in an epicenter that this was still a pretty serious situation (I'm in Boston for the record and while it hasn't been NYC levels, we've certainly had our share).

I didn't - and still haven't - adjusted well to working from home, but as I read and ingested plenty of news, facts, and commentary it was pretty easy for me accept what was going on and why we were taking the precautions we were. When crazy Uncle Jimmy posted the Plandemic video on Facebook it was pretty easy to cut through the bullshit. When nutty Aunt Alice posted about how nobody could tell her to wear a mask because FREEDOM it was pretty easy to say "Hey, wait a minute. We're doing this because..."

Like I said though, I've always felt myself a level-headed, dispassionate, and objective person. I did not share these opinions, I considered them wrong, but I could kind of sympathize with why someone would buy into them. I didn't have the energy to argue with them but I had no problem stating my own opinion, backing it with facts, and saying "agree to disagree".

Fast-forward a few more weeks and I'm afraid I'm getting beyond the point of merely understanding why someone might want to buy into a counter-factual narrative. I can still call BS when something is obviously BS, but I'm starting to find myself reading a little less critically. I catch myself cherry-picking facts to support the narrative I wish were true rather than the one my intellect tells me is true. I'm not articulating anything, spoken or otherwise, at this point but I'm starting to feel myself rolling my eyes and discounting things that I normally wouldn't. When my immuno-compromised wife says that "looks like restaurants are opening next week, but I think we're going to wait a bit before heading back out" I can feel a myself giving a mental eye-roll and thinking "come on, everything's fine".

The short of it all is that I seem to have lost the mental strength to look at the situation objectively and am instead starting to try and fit things into the narrative I want to see rather than the one that exists. Mostly it's internal, I'm not sharing wacky conspiracy stuff on Facebook and I'm not refusing to wear a mask into the grocery store...but that's today. I'm not sure where I'll be two weeks from now.

I'm hoping this is just Covid fatigue and I'll get over it, but I really feel as if I'm losing my ability to think critically about this situation and instead of cutting through the bullshit I'm starting to let it in and before long I'll be believing it. Whatever it is, I don't like the change I'm seeing in myself.