Dear Annie: You have a lot of common sense, and I am writing to you because I am looking for an outside opinion about my sudden pessimism about current events. Normally, I wouldn’t care what is going on in the world, other than as an observer. But it seems like lately, world events keep changing our lives, and not always for the better. Obviously, the biggest change came from COVID-19 and all the tragic deaths worldwide. But that included lockdowns — a term used in prisons. Then I read about a study from the prestigious Johns Hopkins University in which scientists examined a whole bunch of st…