As a therapist, I always say that there's no hierarchy of pain, pain is pain. Suffering shouldn't be ranked, because pain is not a contest. I believe, too, that there's no hierarchy of grief. When we rank our losses, when we validate some and minimize others, many people are left alone to grieve what then become their silent losses. The thinking often goes: You had a miscarriage, but you didn't lose a baby. You had a breakup, but you didn't lose a spouse. It's hard to talk about these silent losses because we fear that other people will find them insignificant and either dismiss them or expect us to "get over them" relatively quickly.
Right now, in addition to the tragic losses of life and health and jobs are the losses experienced by people of all ages: missed graduations and proms, canceled sports seasons and performances, postponed weddings and vacations, separation from family and friends when we need them most. We have also lost the predictability that we take for granted in daily life: that there will be eggs and toilet paper on supermarket shelves, that we can safely touch a door knob with our bare hands, that we can get a haircut and our teeth cleaned or spend a Saturday afternoon at the movies.
So, yes, there is collective anxiety surrounding Covid-19, but there's also collective loss.