COVID-19 has left lasting imprints on everyone.

Some lived in fear for three long years of contracting a COVID-19 infection, others lost their jobs as they resisted vaccine mandates, and many reported symptoms of long COVID or suffered vaccine injuries.

People are now looking back on the COVID-19 pandemic as a poorly managed public health crisis—and as we learn to live with the ever-mutating virus, it’s time to reflect on decisions made during the pandemic and their resulting consequences.

Authors of the study suggest that the two polarizing attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccines are influencing behavior toward other public health measures, and that those who approved of the COVID-19 vaccines readily took up the influenza annual vaccine, while those that declined the COVID-19 vaccines also declined subsequent vaccines.

“Safety concerns and mistrust of COVID-19 vaccines or government” may also have been associated factors, the authors wrote.

The pandemic response to COVID-19 saw many changes to public health. For the first time in history, emergency-use products were mandated and heavily promoted by the government and social media with little to no disclosure of possible health risks and informed consent.

Dr. Robert Malone, a biochemist and one of the inventors of the mRNA pharmaceutical platform, said mandating experimental drugs challenged basic bioethics.

It has since resulted in “push back,” against Big Pharma by the public, said CEO of Progenabiome and gastroenterologist Dr. Sabine Hazan.

Despite the continuous “safe and effective” narrative from public health agencies on COVID-19 vaccinations, emerging reports of myocarditis, pericarditis, immunological, and neurological symptoms, as well as an unprecedented increase in vaccine adverse event reports suggest otherwise.

Hazan said that doctors are getting more and more of their patients coming to their clinics, asking why they are falling ill after vaccination, and have had to challenge the safe and effective narrative.

“It’s hard to tell a parent who’s son was an 18-years-old athlete who died 4 days after a shot, that [the death] is not from the shot,” Hazan wrote to The Epoch Times.

For many, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorizing childhood mRNA vaccinations despite data showing questionable clinical efficacy was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

In children aged 6 months to less than 2 years of age, mRNA vaccine effectiveness was 75.5 percent at less than 7 days after the third dose. However, the researchers gave an overall vaccine effectiveness range from negative 370 percent to 99 percent, meaning that the vaccine either reduced transmission by 99 percent or could increase the risk of infection 3.7 times in children.

Prof. Linda Wastila from the University of Maryland, who has an expertise in pharmaceutical safety and policy,  lamented that COVID-19 has normalized fear of contagion. People are coming out of the pandemic being diagnosed with “coronaphobia” and post-traumatic stress disorders.

The mix of COVID-19, RSV, and influenza has been dubbed a “tripledemic,” fueling fears about RSV and influenza seasonal viruses that the public has easily coped with for many years.

“Having that public health emergency for COVID, which we’re still in, fuels those fears,” said Wastila, “People don’t know how to be normal now about viruses.”

Vanessa Steinkamp, a former AP government high school educator for 16 years, and currently a teacher at community colleges and high schools, said that masking requirements have dealt great emotional damage to children.

Compared to adults, children use more of their amygdala—the emotional center of the brain—rather than their prefrontal area, which is used for critical thinking. Steinkamp said that children seeing their peers masked sends the message that other people are a biohazard.

“It creates an anxiety, especially in kids and young teens that is very hard to reverse,” said Steinkamp.

Though masking requirements only remained until last year in her state, Steinkamp still notices that some children freeze up—shocked—when they are surrounded by other children. She is therefore concerned about children from other states who are still receiving warnings of potential masking requirements.

Infectious disease expert and former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. David Bell said that there are always going to be viruses and people need to cope with them.

“Once we’re born, there’s always a risk of dying that comes with being alive. But that doesn’t mean we’re in an emergency because we’re alive,” said Bell.

Epidemiologist Prof. Harvey Risch wrote to The Epoch Times that he no longer trusts the major health agencies and medical journals “for any statements or reviews or policies or scientific results,” since none of them are scientifically objective.

Risch is not alone.

The fervent push for vaccination and pharmaceuticals, despite the lack of transparency in their emergency authorization and health risks, have also impacted the public’s trust.

The loss in trust did not extend to merely public health agencies, but also to scientific research.

Hazan, who has been doing clinical trials for over 30 years said the study was “completely fraudulent.”

Hazan remarked that any doctor who has done clinical trials would know it is impossible: to evaluate over 96,000 people in a month, the study would have needed 1,000 coordinators and easily cost millions.

Board certified internist and nephrologist Dr. Richard Amerling, who volunteered at Bellevue Hospital in New York during the first wave, said that the pandemic revealed that many doctors would follow recommendations from health authorities even though it may harm their patients.

Health authorities across the globe recommended no early treatment for most of the pandemic, only recommending infected patients to admit themselves to the hospital once they could not breathe.

Amerling expressed his disappointment that many doctors “abdicated basic ethical duties to care for patients,” and said they should have researched treatment options for their patients.

He also criticized physicians who went along with the mass vaccination, “one-size-fits-all” strategy without critically evaluating data.

“They irretrievably damaged their brand.”

Labels were given without scientific objectivity, often with the intention to discredit the counter-narrative.

Prasad noted that some of these health professionals were not aware of the science but were quick to use labels of “misinformation,” and “anti-vaxxer,” to shut down valid critiques and questions against vaccinations.

“We need to welcome new questions and invite ongoing, open discussions from medical professionals. If not, we risk poisoning progress,” Prasad wrote.

Fact-checkers, though employed to present factual information, have also dealt similar harms to shut down discussion.

Since fact-checkers follow the narrative of public health officials, in the flip-flopping of narratives, and amid research that becomes increasingly prevalent, they can also get their “facts” wrong.

Division fueled animosity.

The study surveyed over 10,000 people and found that vaccinated people thought of the unvaccinated as free-riders or incompetent, were concerned that the unvaccinated would infect them, and also had a greater level of antipathy toward them.

However, animosity has not been one-sided.

After the lifting of COVID censorship on Twitter in recent months, the voices of the unvaccinated or the skeptics have been amplified.

In light of emerging concerns over vaccine adverse effects, and possibly out of spite for the discrimination they faced, there are also growing concerns about blood donations from the vaccinated and worries about “vaccine shedding” from being in close proximity to a vaccinated individual.

The growth of focus on vaccine adverse effects has also led some people to dismiss the severity of COVID and long COVID.

Long COVID patient Hannah Camp Johnson who was affected by the disease since August 2020 said that some people would leave comments saying her experience is a result of vaccination even though her symptoms of seizures, encephalitis, rapid heart rate, hair loss, fatigue, brain fog, and many more were present prior to her vaccination in November 2021.