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The Latest Pandemic: Coronophobia
The experience of fear can be both devastating and life-saving; its intensity can range from mild anxiety to blinding dread. And all
possible levels of fear are being experienced as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Was this fearful reaction unavoidable? After all, early reports of the virus were frightening, with its mysterious spread and virulent effect, particularly on the elderly. In spite of the experts who were unwilling to admit they simply didn’t know what to expect, they reacted by initiating extreme rules and mandates. People were afraid to leave their homes, unwilling to mingle with other people and do some of the most basic errands that had become central to their lives.
Because they were afraid to die. And for many, the fear still dominates their lives.
Dr. Marc Siegel, who is a Clinical Professor of Medicine and a practicing internist at NYU Langone Medical Center, as well as a contributor for Fox News, shared the following about the nature of fear:
I have been studying the massive controlling impact of fear commands on the human brain for many years. When you experience fear, your brain’s amygdala signals the release of powerful stress hormones (fight or flight) which links to a deeply engrained fear memory system. A cycle of fear, once activated, is very hard to break.
Dr. Siegel validates the public’s initial reaction to the pandemic, but also points out the exaggerations that have been promoted:
In fact, throughout the pandemic fear of going maskless has been exaggerated and manipulated by politicians and the media. Though masks clearly have been shown to have a value in preventing spread of this aerosolized airborne virus especially in close quarters, the obsessive focus on masks has led to fear-driven masks of obedience, even though they have often been worn improperly. And now that even the overly cautious CDC has acknowledged that you don’t need to wear a mask in most instances once you have been vaccinated, nevertheless, fears of relinquishing masks persist, and many people describe removing them as feeling ‘naked.’
Even for those who know rationally that Dr. Siegel’s observations are true, many people simply can’t release or work through the crippling fear that has damaged their psyches.
Unfortunately, many people are at a loss about how to move forward in their lives. As a result of this prevalent fear, a new psychological term has entered the lexicon–coronaphobia:
After analyzing nearly 500 studies that addressed the alarm and panic people were feeling during the pandemic, researchers defined coronaphobia as ‘an excessive triggered response of fear of contracting the virus causing COVID-19, leading to accompanied excessive concern over physiological symptoms, significant stress about personal and occupational loss, increased reassurance and safety seeking behaviors, and avoidance of public places and situations, causing marked impairment in daily life functioning.’
Many of us will roll our eyes and grumble about another “flavor-of-the-day” definition that will be used as an excuse for people to refuse to get on with our lives. But for those of us who have lived through periods of great fear, or feel trapped in the anxiety of the coronavirus, it’s no joking matter.
Certainly, there are parts of the population who are experiencing only a low-level anxiety, as a result of keeping up-to-date on the most reliable data, have received their vaccinations, and have returned to a relatively normal life. Others, however, may feel that their fear has elevated to the point where their lives are seriously limited and difficult to manage. Lily Brown, Ph.D., director of the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania, explained extreme anxiety in this way:
Oftentimes, what happens when people have anxiety disorders is their anxiety starts to spill over so that it increasingly becomes more and more challenging to follow through on their obligations and get their needs met.’
Again, most people are feeling anxiety during the pandemic. But if you start noticing that you’re having a hard time meeting your commitments or completing must-do tasks because you’re panicked about catching the virus (or worried that loved ones will get sick), these might be indications that you have coronaphobia—and professional support to help in manage the anxiety could be effective.
* * *
For several reasons, I’ve found that, although I was very worried early on, I wasn’t overly frightened about the virus. At 71, I had some concerns and took precautions until I could receive my vaccination. Now I’m in the process of living life as fully as I can.
But I have a number of concerns about those people who are letting their fear dominate their lives. First, they are imposing their fears on others, making demands, and voicing expectations that they hope will alleviate their own concerns; the likelihood is, they will not feel less fearful and may temporarily feel empowered by attacking others. In particular, mask-wearing has become the cudgel of choice. Whether people have had their vaccinations or not, whether they have been told of the very small possibility that their children may catch the virus, whether the effectiveness of the vaccine on variants has been explained to them—they remain captive to their fear and a rational approach to reassuring them is likely not to work.
In addition, many of those who may be overtaken by their fear are in powerful positions, such as governors, state administrators, and even high-level government bureaucrats; they have rationalized their demands for their constituencies; whether they are determined to impose requirements to demonstrate their power, or whether they can’t get past their own fear, they are terrorizing parts of our population and enraging others.
* * *
Somehow, we have to find a way to get past these debilitating fears that are rampant in our country. We have legitimate, serious problems that we must fight and we can’t expend our energy on meaningless rules and futile practices. Those people, whether our neighbors, colleagues, and friends, who insist on accommodating their fear instead of finding a way to work through it, have the potential for creating even more emotional chaos at every level of society. How will the severe limitations that these folks put on their own lives affect the country as a whole? Will they go back to their jobs? Will they raise children who are overly fearful? Will they isolate themselves in order to feel safe? And what about our leaders who believe that their fears are legitimate, or behave as if they do?
I’m at a loss on how we can move forward. Do we simply hope that people overcome or work through their fear? Is there anything else we can do? What do you think?
[The photo is by Melanie Wasser at unsplash.com.]
Published in Culture
This reaction is totally foreign to me. No one I know was even particularly worried, much less fearful. We came to work maskless and stayed that way. Three people in the office (that we know of) got it, but none were particularly sick. When we went out to lunch, we just wouldn’t go to the restaurants that required masks. Other than that, we barely noticed the pandemic.
I’m reassured by your experience, @randywebster. Maybe the number of people involved are not that great, but their behavior is so extreme that they are making everyone else nuts.
This pretty much mirrors my own experience, out here in
Trump countrythe boondocks. People here worked to protect the elderly and vulnerable (I had an “elderly and vulnerable” family member myself, and although he died at one of the several “heights” of the pandemic, I’m proud to say that “Covid 19” isn’t mentioned anywhere on his death certificate), while the rest of us got on with our lives.If there is any sort of silver lining, if enough people with “eyes to see and ears to hear” remain in this country at this point of the 21-st century, the phobic reaction will point up the “But, Science!” fallacy promulgated by so many on the Left.
Clearly, “Science!” has nothing to do with it. If it did, they’d be following it.
But they’re not.
It’s helpful to remember, too, that once extreme fear is stimulated, it’s very difficult to free one’s self from it. It will take a lot of motivation and commitment to work through it. As I mentioned, anyone who has known great fear in any situation knows that similar situations can trigger the same reaction. It sounds a bit like PTSD.
There are echoes in this post, and the comments, of Kevin Williamson’s most recent National Review post. That post itself reminded me, again, of Mr. She, and his remark one day to our favorite PCP that he thought he’d been able to distill the history of medicine down into a simple two-column T-Chart, in which the objective was to take every medical condition listed in the left-hand column, under the title “Evil Spirits,” and move it over into the right-hand column, titled “Bugs.”
Many folks still seem to be floating around on the “Evil Spirits” side of the equation.
We have a lot of “boomers” on this site who were probably drilled on what to do if the “bomb” fell as school children. I doubt that many were permanently scarred. I think if a person is basically in good mental health to start with, that these things will be taken in stride. There may be some who don’t recover, but I believe that these were already emotionally fragile.
I did a post that I titled Against Coronaphobia more than 14 months ago, on April 24, 2020. I believe that I coined the term independently, though I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else used it before me.
On the PTSD idea, it’s a pretty weird kind of PTSD, if that’s what it is. The TS stands for “traumatic stress.” Most people exhibiting coronaphobia don’t seem to have experienced any trauma themselves.
The solution for a phobia is courage. This is according to Jordan Peterson, though I don’t have a link (it was in one of the dozens of podcasts that I’ve heard from him over the past several years). The general treatment, according to Peterson, is exposure therapy.
Although I’ve heard a few people say how traumatic those drills were, that wasn’t my experience. But then neither teachers nor my parents harped on the nuclear bomb. I’d like to think that I was not emotionally fragile either!
Recent Gallup poll: (note the 4% of Dems that admin pandemic is over)
Americans’ Views of Pandemic in U.S.In your opinion, is the coronavirus pandemic over in the U.S., or not?
@dong, it’s a little hard to read, but I get it: most people think the pandemic is far from over. What would be interesting to know is whether those people live in fear or are taking it in stride–or a mixed response.
You bring up a good point. I’ve always wondered how shell shock (WWI), renamed battle fatigue (WWII), renamed PTSD (Viet Nam) ever became a civilian disorder. By and large civilians don’t have bombs going off around them, or landmines and strafing planes to deal with, or sappers coming in while you sleep. But nowadays everyone seems to be claiming PTSD. I remember one woman who was in a fender bender said she got PTSD from it. And the medical community seems to be encouraging this.
It seems to me that people are just neurotic, and lots of people are neurotic, and they can all by and large live with it. And frankly, all it takes is two or three months of the Press reporting of notable authorities (fauci, Biden, Ariana Grande) smilingly reassuring people that the danger is completely gone, and people would lose their fears (I wouldn’t call them phobias, either) and get back to living normal lives.
I just don’t get the focus on this notion of fear. I’m not certain I have ever experienced what is being described as fear. I am, per my own assessment, a risk averse individual. I recognize and have encountered danger in high risk situations that called for measures to reduce the risk of injury or death. These are the terms I use to describe anything I would do or assess as measures to reduce risks of adverse effects from Covid exposure. Are some people classifying risk-adjusted behaviors as resulting from fear? This may be but not part of my personal experience.
I’m not optimistic that these people are going to be optimistic about any aspect of the virus, or even want people to return to normal lives. I hate to sound conspiratorial, but using fear or their neuroses or whatever you’d like to call it is a powerful way to control the population. I suspect they won’t let go of that power easily or happily. Instead, they will make a point of warning people of the next threat just around the corner.
We already have it: the Delta variant. And there’s always climate change waiting in the wings.
Here is my question for you, @bobthompson: if people are insisting on wearing masks when they have been repeatedly told they aren’t necessary, are putting masks on their kids when even they as parents aren’t wearing them, and demand that other adults wear them, too, what do you think their motivation would be? I don’t disagree with you–they might very well deny that they are afraid, but that they are using “common sense”; how should we respond to their personal assessment?
And even though nearly everyone I’ve read is saying that the Delta variant responds to the current vaccines, people are just waiting for the next variant that doesn’t or won’t.
Thank goodness for climate change!
So here’s another interesting question: if there are people who are experiencing debilitating fear, but they think their fear, although limiting to their lives, is legitimate and responsible, what then? I’m concerned that these people are going to demand, particularly at the local level, that rules and regulations be created as a “responsible” action to the “danger” (even though those actions make them feel better because they are at least doing something). And the rest of us are going to have to go along or fight it. What then?
@susanquinn Are we not already saying that the propaganda has persuaded them? We post about this constantly. I could make a list of other items having nothing whatsoever to do with fear or Covid. This behavior is a manifestation displayed by members of the collective who aspire to be cared for by their betters. I view it as abnormal human behavior.
First off, I have a question for Dr. Siegel. Which “masks clearly have been shown to have a value in preventing spread of this aerosolized airborne virus especially in close quarters”? Does he mean N95 masks? Then I agree. If it’s whatever store bought or designer GAP, etc. cloth masks most people have been wearing (for days or weeks at a time), then I disagree as to their effectiveness to 1) create a seal around the nose and mouth, and 2) block aerosol particles.
The best site I’ve found for tracking mask wearing throughout the pandemic is this Carnegie Mellon University survey that’s been gathering data for almost (if not over) a year now. The date can be toggled in the upper left hand corner to go back as far as February 2021 (don’t know why you can’t go back further) and up to June 27th, 2021. Scroll down and you can see a data map of the USA with the percentage of mask usage for all 50 states. Scroll further down and you can focus on individual states. Difficult to measure fear or correlate government policy to fear, but the states that had/have the most draconian pandemic restrictions also seem to have the slowest declines in mask usage. It would take a very detailed survey, but it would also be interesting to ask media preferences (which networks + shows, newspapers, websites), media viewing/reading habits (hours per day), perceptions of and information about the corona virus, and alterations to daily habits and mask usage.
Anecdotally, I have a couple examples. I recently drove from Wisconsin back to Vermont. It was like driving back in time. At stops in Indiana and Ohio I didn’t see a single mask. Driving through upstate New York, masks were still required at the tollway rest stops. Going to Hanover, New Hampshire and onto the Dartmouth campus, I saw a woman wearing a mask alone in her car, and the college is requiring all students, faculty, and staff to be vaccinated to access the campus. Even after being vaccinated, you still have to get tested every 30 days…because…just in case the vaccines don’t work?
Last night on TV I watched the Brewers trounce the Cubs 14-4 (fly the “L” hahaha) at American Family Field in Milwaukee. For years there has been a woman season ticket holder who sits in the same spot that is in view behind the plate, so she’s on screen all the time during the game. Last night she was surrounded on all sides by other fans (no spacing, events have returned to full capacity), but wearing a mask while no one around her was. To be honest it annoyed me, and I’d bet money she’s vaccinated too.
I don’t know if their desire “to be cared for” is their motivation; I’m not sure that holds true for Covid. And I agree that their behavior is abnormal; it is. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make their behavior any less disruptive to their own lives, but particularly to their friends, neighbors and communities, when they make demands to be accommodated.
I agree, but people’s thinking is so impressionable that if the authorities wanted to they could calm everyone down virtually overnight.
Maybe it is a simple sense of inadequacy to make risk-assessment decisions themselves as individuals so they yield to the experts.
Great comment, @djej. I have to believe (I’ve followed him for a while) that Dr. Siegel is speaking of the N95 masks. But I can’t be certain. And your comments that I put in bold were especially intriguing. I think some people will never be convinced that they are safe enough. Thanks for weighing in.
And besides, fauci and all have been saying from the beginning that mask don’t prevent infection of the wearer, they just limit transmission away from the infected person.
They did say that–and I’ll bet most people have made their own assessment (science! you know) that they must be protected as well. I doubt that all the people who insist on masks are doing it just for the good of others.
Since we all might have our own understanding of the word, “fear,” I thought I’d add this definition from the Cambridge Dictionary:
“An unpleasant emotion or thought that you have when you are frightened or worried by something dangerous, painful or bad that is happening or might happen.”
Yes, that should about cover it!
Maybe my emotional range is too narrow!
Let’s cast the net a little wider. I don’t believe that anyone should be coerced to take the vaccine, but I regard fears about its value/health effects to be a form of phobia.
You’re making me laugh, Bob! No, that’s not it. It’s just that I think people, particularly men (pardon the sexist comment) are reluctant to say they’re afraid; they equate it with weakness. Also, there are so many dimensions of fear, and it rests on a very large spectrum of emotion.
As an aside–many years ago I went to the doctor because I had developed a dry cough. I was mainly concerned that I coughed when I was giving talks or presenting training programs–just a little distracting! After testing me fully, the doctor said it was “stress”; what he really meant was “anxiety.” I was furious! I exercised, took good care of myself, did meditation–how could it be stress?! Anyway, he put me on an anxiety medication (serotonin uplifter), and my life changed. I was much less reactive (was triggered less), lost my temper less, and just seemed to be more relaxed. I didn’t seem that much different to most people (except my husband, who loved the reduced reactivity), but essentially my response to life was transformed. I still get anxious over stuff, but I also respond differently and recover more quickly. So I can identify with the “neurotic” folk–that’s me, 20 years ago.
Ooh–that’s a tough one. I don’t believe in coercion either, but I tend to agree about the label of “phobia.” If there are long-term effects (which seems to be what most people are worried about), we can hopefully find a way to mitigate them. I’m glad I got vaccinated.