In today’s Covid Profile we look at the hardships created by the pandemic. As you’ll see, they vary tremendously from person to person, depending on many factors including:

• Their personal health
• The health of their loved ones
• Their work situation
• How many kids they have at home
• How introverted or extroverted they are
• How strongly they dislike following orders from the government

To make things even more complicated, many people also have other stresses in their lives, which add to the stress of the pandemic. For example, when we talk with Black Americans, many say the combination of the pandemic and fear of police violence is making them extremely stressed.

Most of this does not come across in surveys. On average, most people say they are experiencing moderate hardship. Here’s what they said in our Covid tracking survey:

From the chart you can tell that there’s some diversity of opinion, but you can’t get a sense of how the pandemic feels to most people, and why.

To help you get that feel, here’s what regular people say about the degree of hardship the pandemic is causing them. First, here are people reporting high hardship (a rating of six or seven on the chart above):

Here are people experiencing moderate to low hardship (1-5 on the chart):

The people feeling high stress don’t wear signs. We think it’s best to assume that anyone you interact with, online or in person, might be feeling a lot more pressure (or a lot less) than your realize.

Note: The people in these videos were randomly selected through the UserTesting system, and grouped according to how they rated their level of hardship. They all consented to have their video used in an online report.