It wasn’t men (or COVID ) that gave rise to the term “loneliness epidemic”. This issue is older than you realize. I lived through this, I would say mid 2010s this issue was being discussed (but only occasionally) based on men isolating in the late 00s, early 2010s and/or killing themselves. Deaths of despair & such. “Male loneliness epidemic”, “loneliness epidemic” were solidly PRE-COVID TERMS coined by the researches studying these men. Men were “doing the thing”, it was prevalent enough to get noticed, and they’re like hey, this is weird, this is happening a lot. It’s an epidemic.

This is a 2017 Harvard blog post…article…thing. ‘The power and prevalence of loneliness’. It mainly deals with old people but especially concerns men. While I don’t see the term in the article itself, it popped in a search as: “The epidemic — and health dangers — of loneliness”.

This is a 2018 article from Church Leaders (lol), “The Epidemic of Male Loneliness”. Basically word for word.

Psych Central Dec 2017, epidemic of male loneliness

The Walrus, 2018, epidemic of isolation among young men

Stanford, 2017, Loneliness Epidemic talking about men

April 2018, male loneliness epidemic

March 2017, HuffPost

March 2015

December 2017

Etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc…etc. Just do a web search specifying article dates & you will find a plethora of male loneliness epidemic articles well predating the start of teh covidz.

I think woke mind virus is more modern, probably making the scene during Trump’s first term somehow. I can’t quite remember.

I would argue terms like “epidemic” & “pandemic” are simply building on older terms used to describe social phenomena. Like “fever” has been used in that context forever.