COVID Stress Syndrome Was and Is the Real Pandemic

In the late fall of 2022, news outlets began to warn about a coming "tripledemic" or "tridemic," which includes COVID, the seasonal flu, and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus). If we step back for a moment and think about life before COVID-19, we used to enter cold and flu season without much hype from the news outlets. COVID changed that because of the misinformation that was fed to the public, causing people to overestimate their chances of dying from COVID by 5000%, which led to a level of fear and catastrophizing that was quite stunning. Indeed, this scenario led level-headed scientists to coin the term "COVID stress syndrome."