What Concerns You Most for 2021?

[bucktalk]

Among the things I am most hopeful for in 2021 is eventual COVID infections slowing down considerably and the economy picking up it's pace, slowly but surely.

But I do have major concerns with continued political in-fighting and ever growning anti-goverment groups, and other groups causing unrest.

What concerns you most for 2021?

[Thomas Vu]

My intention isn't to start anything. Having said that, my main concern is what other selfish actions/ideas will result from the States culture of embracing individualism.

[stlokc]

What concerns me the most is that we seem to have devolved, as a country, into a place where we can't find a general consensus on what is truth and what is falsehood. It's not just that people look at the same facts and have different opinions on it, that's been happening forever and is healthy. It's that we can't even agree on the same facts. This is leading us into an Orwellian sort of world. Deepfake video and audio that is coming is going to make it even worse.

Even if "two sides" present the same story and both present it with a set of true facts, the two sides will choose different facts to highlight. So I guess that's a media/communication concern.

But it's what real people do with their version of reality that scares me even more. There used to be a limit to what people would say and do. There used to be a realization that there are places that were out of bounds. The gloves now seem to be off.

[SEMIweather]

I'll echo both what bucktalk said about civil unrest, and what stlokc said about the ongoing epistemological crisis in this country. For my own part, I'll add in that we're likely at the very beginning of a long-term countrywide mental health catastrophe. I am relatively optimistic about the pandemic beginning to wind down in the second half of 2021, but it entirely possible that mental health disorders will continue to swell throughout the entire year. We've already had large increases in depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse since the start of the pandemic, and once things settle down a bit and people realize what the toll has been, things could get even worse on the mental health front. It'll be impossible to ever fully quantify the theft of life and everything that makes life worth living that occurred as a result of this country's complete inability to get the virus under even a semblance of control, but it's something that'll be with us long after a sense of normalcy returns.

[ChrisHayes]

The ramifications of all the money printing that has been done this year in an effort to uplift the economy.

[Bill Robertson]

At the risk of sounding like a really naive 62 year old. While the points made in the first couple posts are extremely valid they don't affect my day to day life. And at my age and physical condition that and things that affect that is all I really worry about. I really try to just not watch news and honestly those are things you wouldn't even know about if todays media and it's ability to cover everything in detail didn't exist. In the old print only days we wouldn't know half of that stuff was happening. And sometimes I'm not sure that would be a bad thing. I live day to day as I please pretty much. Local issues like power lines, street light wiring being stolen, pot holes you can lose small children in, weather messes, etc. concern me but not really national or world issues. Like the old saying about knowing the things you can't change and not worrying about them. My adult years have seen 9 presidents and I can't say there have been any (my) world shattering differences between them. I feel almost guilty saying that even COVID has had some positive effects for us. Yes, my wife and I have both had mild cases of twice and it has caused me to not see mom since March. The mom part if which I really hate. But her tons of overtime and my job not being affected at all plus not eating/drinking our 4 to 7 nights a week have led to all our debts except the house being paid off, additional mortgage principal payments and a savings acct which I haven't had in many years.
So my only real concern for 2021 is COVID being contained to a point that I can see mom before she's gone and to a lesser extent we can go out and have someone serve us food again.

[PurpleChicken]

The ramifications of all the money printing that has been done this year in an effort to uplift the economy.

Agreed. My concerns, Runaway inflation and a destroyed economy.

[BoulderSooner]

The ramifications of all the money printing that has been done this year in an effort to uplift the economy.

this is by far my number one concern ..... the market is fully detached from economic reality currently and i fear a giant correction is coming ..

[GoGators]

The US cant even hit the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target. The CPI only increased 1.4% in 2020 even after the trillions of stimulus. There is really no indication that inflation will be a problem for the foreseeable future.

[mugofbeer]

The fed chairman pretty much said that today.

[C_M_25]

Seems like a lot of particular group are bailing on various social media accounts given the censorship that is occurring. I actually think this may help in the long run given social media's role in driving that wedge between people and pushing more to the extremes on both sides (adaptive machine learn algorithms used to characterize people and direct ads at them -> watch social dilemma). Hopefully, if enough people actually do this, we'll all mellow out a bit...one can dream...

I'm going into 2021 trying not to worry as much given 2020 was a really rough year for mental health. However, I worry about 2 things:

1. Major political strife - I'm hoping people settle once our current president is no longer in the spotlight

2. A major mutation that sets us back again with covid.

I really hope none of these emerge and I'm not going to dwell on it; however, these are some areas of concern for me...

[Edmond Hausfrau]

The ramifications to our healthcare system. I think we will see a worsening shortage of nurses, hospital administrations will squeeze more to keep $$ in their (and their investors) pockets, and people will continue to mistrust doctors, leading to a more debilitated population with more chronic illness untreated. I expect the USA to fall beneath even more countries on worldwide health metrics in 2021.