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I'm educated and aware and I can't cope. How can anyone cope?
Have you thought about running it past a therapist? They can help you size up the situation (eg are you anxious, and finding yourself avoiding work?), and think about options, or just help track how things are going.
Take in less information. Prioritize based on what you truly need to know. Augment with things that make you curious rather than stressed.
For me that means cutting out hyperbolic news sources like twitter, Reddit, definitely any cable news network or daily news broadcast of any kind. Apple News is also terrible in this regard; no matter how hard I try to curate, they’re always shoving celebrity gossip and MSNBC or Fox News headlines at me.
So it’s a daily struggle, but on my good days I check the New York Times and Hacker News once in the morning and in the evening. I have a couple of non-news blogs I subscribe to that I check via RSS feed, and then that’s it.
I donate what I can to political and charitable organizations. It’s important to stay informed, but unless you’re a reporter or working in crisis management for a political campaign, I don’t think there’s a purpose served by becoming outraged by every public statement by every dingaling politician or pundit.
I do 100% have a dog in this fight and care deeply about what’s happening in the world right now both in terms of the pandemic and in the shift toward far-right populism, but for me the strategy has to be: keep an eye on the general gist and direction of things and then act accordingly. Who needs help right now? Is there and action you can take?
This is obviously a “your mileage may vary” situation. Some folks are no doubt able to keep one eye on their Twitter feed and stay perfectly sane and productive, and more power to them, but I’m not one of them.
I think everyone feels like they're being hit with too much information at some point. But wanting to hide, and knowing it won't be over sounds really frustrating. Have you thought about running it past a therapist? They can help you size up the situation (eg are you anxious, and finding yourself avoiding work?), and think about options, or just help track how things are going.
Like OP, I'm looking for strategies to help self-cope, as that's the only way forward for many of us for now.
As for the rest, deal with issues in a sequential manner. Don't deal with multiple things at once. Be stubborn: pick one thing, kill it dead, move to another.
And consider adopting a GTD-like system. If you deal with information, you will benefit from having a clear distinction between actionable information (tasks) and non-actionable information (reference). See a task? Put in on a task list. Not a task? File it into notes and forget about it.
My first-line coping strategy is to close my eyes. That seems to help significantly, as if visual processing consumes a limited mental resource that I can free up to apply to structuring my thoughts. I have no idea if there is any science to back that up - but I also don’t care. Coping is about developing useful mental models for dealing with the world around you, not necessarily about being technically correct.
I also careful control my facial expressions when I’m around others and do this. My goal is to have them think that I’m concentrating on something (which, really, I am) and not upset or distressed. This also provides them a cue that usually results in their pausing or slowing down further information for a moment, which helps.
Q: Where's my phone? A: I think it's on the shelf somewhere. Honestly I don't know.
Q: How many tabs do I have open. A: Currently 5 and never more than 10.
Q: How many times do I watch the news on TV. A: Never, I use youtube and I get the news from various sources on the topics that I want to hear.
Q: How many IM apps do I have open. A: Just one, Skype and is reserved for friends only.
Q: How many forums do I go to. A: Just two, HN and Reddit and on Reddit, I only browse the topics that I want to. I almost never go to the front page.
Q: How many social media sites have I joined. A: None. Not on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other apps. Accounts created in the past were for test applications.
Q: How much unread mail do I have. A: None, I have 1 inbox for friends and family and another for spam / anything I opt-into.
It all starts with you. You have control over what you do and don't do. If you reduce your surface area, the number of issues will diminish daily.