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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
I will not deny that what you describe here is a feature of the public reaction to the Covid pandemic.
This is my view. Responding to danger with the emotion of fear is not helpful in any way. A response to danger can be instinctive or it can be thoughtful, but an emotional response of fear will not deliver what the situation requires. I don’t see fear as having a rational component. I do believe the propaganda deluge delivered by government and media has created an aura of fear but the entire process is laced with irrationality.
Agreed. I’m not sure where that leaves us.
What if “uncertainty” is used instead of “fears”? Is that a phobia?
I had little idea the piece of semi-rural Texas where I live was that different from the country as a whole. I don’t encounter very many people who give much thought to the Wuhan virus. So, as far as my little town is concerned, it’s over.
We have a lot of people who respond to government dicta without evaluation. That has a lot to do with what you are seeing. Many government officials find this very gratifying so they push forward with more. That is where we are.
At some point, I think it is. There’s a marginal degree of uncertainty in many aspects of life–the question is how one reacts. Also, as the number of people being vaccinated increases, data accumulates on safety/efficacy. I understand uncertainty at early stages of the process; my view–admittedly not shared by some others–is that its not really justified now. But again, I don’t question anyone’s right to remain unvaccinated.
It may be that men are less likely to feel afraid.
I don’t want to lead the comment thread down a rabbit hole, but it turns out that there’s a pretty large sex difference in trait neuroticism, one of the Big Five model traits, with women being significantly higher than men in trait neuroticism, on average. I’ve also seen reports that trait neuroticism tends to decrease with age.
That all makes sense to me, and would correlate with my own experience, Jerry. Certainly my “maturity” seems to have resulted in less neurotic ideas on my part! I do find that I am not always very patient with other women who seem to swim in their neuroses, so I don’t think I’m at the higher end of that characteristic!
Unfortunately, much of overcoming the fear requires some ability to assess risk, probably using statistics, which too few people (including in government and in media) have even the vaguest idea of how to use. I noticed from the earliest days of the pandemic that people whose primary thought about the virus is the worst case scenario from catching the virus are generally fearful of any possibility that they could suffer such worst case scenario. But those who took even a cursory look at numbers saw that 1) the probability of catching the virus in a dosage sufficient to lead to physical sickness was quite small (case numbers over population), 2) even if they caught the virus and became sick, the probability that they would get seriously ill (hospitalization) or die was extremely small, especially if they were outside certain fairly small risk groups. My county’s published Covid-19 case numbers have included (and still include) not just hospitalizations and deaths, but also recoveries, so it has been a little easier here for people to see that almost everybody recovered. I have been particularly baffled by the fear exhibited by so many people in their 30s and 40s, for whom the risk of fatality is as near to zero as almost anything. Yes, I know a 19 year old who had Covid, and she felt terrible for a week. But she was confident it would not be fatal. She remains very frustrated at how many restrictions were put on her and her peers despite the low risk of catastrophic results.
Throughout I have found myself recalling a comment by an 83 year old friend (who’s worked in the oil field and raised cattle, so he’s suffered some physical mishaps – he’s not sure how many times he’s been thrown from a horse) that he knows he doesn’t have that much time left on earth, so he doesn’t want to waste any of it cowering in fear.
Love this. Yes, it’s too bad that instead of fearmongering, our government agencies didn’t explain all this rationally. I don’t think we’ll ever know if their motives were insidious, out of fear, or just foolish; I suspect the results may have been a combination.
I’m not big on statistics, but even I could follow the numbers on sites that were deemed reliable, and from the posts here on Ricochet. When I shared those sites with fearful friends, they preferred to rely on the “experts.” Sigh.
In partial explanation of the fear government officials exhibit, their risk / reward situation biases them to exaggerate fear, and to discount or ignore the costs their fear-based orders impose on others. If they don’t push fear, and someone gets sick or dies, many will blame the government official. If they order people to take “precautions,” the government officials can claim they saved everyone who doesn’t get sick, and they don’t have to pay the costs of the “precautions.” Often, they even exempt themselves from compliance with the “precautions.” (It continues to annoy us that New Mexico explicitly exempted government employees from the travel restrictions the state orders imposed on everyone else.)
For media, fear sells, so media pushes fear.
It is PTSD.
https://ricochet.com/942947/healthcare-workers-are-done/
It’s been a while and it’s not exactly the same as your post (which talks about society at large much more than just the healthcare professionals), but I did point out the hallmarks of PTSD. As a society, we meet them. People are currently pretty unhinged and those who really took the Media bait, really are having a hard time getting back to normal.
There are even advisements from the WHO to go back to masking because of the Delta variant.
People are still scared.
How long before people go back to masking? Here in CA, I don’t give it particularly long.
Love, Hate, and Fear are very broad words. I love Wendy’s burgers and I love my school are very different in character let alone strength than I love my children. Same with hate and fear. I fear death is categorically different than I’m afraid I’ll not get to the bank before closing.
And Phobia has become one of these words. Phobia essentially means an irrational fear that changes the way people live and react. It is different from the fear of walking on a high, steep, wet steel roof in leather-soled shoes. I know a woman who has an irrational fear of harmless geckos, which are far more afraid of you than you should be of them. One was walking on the inside of her wind shield, and she almost ran off the road. She managed to pull over and get out of the car. This is an irrational fear.
But when you’re told from every news source for months that the wuhan virus will kill you and everyone you know, the fear is rational at its root. You know that chances are that it will easily kill you, or your children, or your grandmother. This is a fear, but not a phobia.
What is more, it seems that whatever news we get now falls into confirmation bias. If we are naturally strong-willed or contrarian, we believe that the danger is overblown. If we are passive and emotionally or intellectually ductile we believe that the danger is ever present.
And what is more, the information that would remove this fear is coming out in dribs and drabs. The Press is touting a few leaders, governments, and organizations that say we don’t have to wear masks anymore, but at the same time, we are seeing some places stop wearing masks and others continue; and we are hearing Biden whisper Wear Your Mask!; and adults can go maskless but children are still being forced to wear masks and get vaccinated; and we also are being told by some that the virus may get stronger.
In other words the Danger we have been fearing for over a year has not gone away, and there has been no clear, definitive, authoritative source saying that masks are unnecessary. I think that those who currently fear taking off their masks are wrong, but rational. And all it will take is the president and fauci and Jon Stewart saying the long night is finally over.
Thanks, TRN. I appreciate your reminding us of people’s reactions and the reality of PTSD. I think that because some people and their communities appear to be handling things well, they assume that things are going fine elsewhere. I think some of that may be true, but there are others who want to put up a good front. We haven’t talked about those who are fearful and silent.
An excellent comment overall, Flicker. But I won’t hold my breath waiting for the truth from these people.
I feel like there are a lot of people who are fearful and quite forthcoming about it. It seems like either side of the spectrum is well vocalized. At the same time, there are normal people in the middle (since that’s where the norm lies) who are genuinely afraid and with good reason. They’ve been told by every reputable source and every source that has historically been known to be reputable, that this virus kills. And that no one is immune.
After months of death counters and bombardment, hardly anyone is ready for the so-called new normal. Even if they feel fairly good about their chances, they might still feel awkward without a mask since they’ve been dominated into having one handy at all times. They might feel “naked” because they’ve been wearing them everywhere and all the time.
It’s fairly easy to see why people are terrified and why people are completely unhinged by being asked to behave normally in a normal society. What is less easy to see is how we move forward from this. With sweeping government controls, people are being told that we “defeated” the virus or somehow have overcome it (for now). People are being told that similar controls must be given over other epidemics such as: racism, gun violence, drugs, etc. With actual proof it works, the government is using this to push control in other areas of life touting the success of masking orders and immunization.
People are being told that their fears can only be solved by the government taking total control and stomping on rights for the greater good.
The ongoing mood of anxiety must persist for such things to be successful. People must always be on edge and in fear of the loss of control. People must feel that society is out of control and the only people who can control it are the government. As far as that goes, all of this pressure and PTSD has succeeded where years of propaganda couldn’t.
In one and a half years.
And that should frighten everyone.
Ahh. That is the problem. Why in the world would government leaders, government agencies and big corporations give conflicting information and directives?
Technically, coronophobia means “fear of crowns”.
The only way I know to address this is to get on with my life and not wear a mask unless I am required to do so. We do not help people address fears by forcing society to accommodate them. It’s one thing to avoid dining at a rooftop restaurant out of consideration for a friend who has a fear of heights. It’s another thing altogether to ban rooftop restaurants because people have acrophobia. All I can do is shop unmasked, and hope that slowly, those who fear doing so see that others are doing it and begin to question their fear. I live in CA, and 2 weeks after the end of our mask mandate, I’m slowly seeing more people not wearing masks at the local grocery store. I hope the trend continues.
I thought it was fear of beer with lime.
Only in the casino.
I have felt fear – gut wrenching, adrenaline flooding fear. And I have felt blind rage.
On those occasions, I thought later: Good Lord. I thought I’d been afraid (or angry) before. My previously experiences were mosquito bites vs a hammer to the head.
I could have predicted with about 95% accuracy the people who (IMHO) have over reacted. Because I’ve seen them over react before. I had a friend who always thought the ambulance in the distance was heading for her parents’ home. She had her two young daughters so freaked about using public bathrooms it became a problem when they went to school. I have another friend whose daughter was as crazy as a new mom could be before Corona virus: she’s not speaking to an aunt who held her newborn before the aunt had gotten her flu shot, she made her toddler strip out of his clothes on the back porch after attending pre school …
What I’ve noticed is that these people love to inconvenience as many people as possible and make as many people as possible accommodate them. And they love to evangelize their issues.
Whomever said there are a lot of neurotic people, I agree.
Unfortunately for all of us, this past year has fed and justified their neurosis. I swear, they’re living their best lives.
I was essentially unimpressed with this virus from the beginning. Being retired and living my life pretty much the way I have wanted to all of my life, essentially, answering to no one, made me skeptical about all of the precautions. I live in a rural area which is rapidly becoming suburban, but I have sufficient property and the area is rural enough that, other than shopping and going to the doctor’s or dentist’s office, I have little or no need to interact with other people. Nobody I knew got ill, even my son and his acquintainces remained healthy through the early months of the pandemic. Trained as I was in biological sciences and having been a Mountain Rescue paramedic for many years I was well educated in diseases and had a fair understanding of epidemiology. Also, being a conservative/libertarian, I have a pretty high level of skepticism about what the government tells me. All of those elements gave me the distance I needed to assess the situation and my own risk.
I rode my bike just about every day maskless since my knowledge of how viruses spread told me it was highly unlikely, despite all of the early hype, that I would be exposed to sufficient amounts of virus from a passing car or another cyclist to cause an infection. I wore my mask in places that required them because it was simply easier than dealing with stupidity. It cost me nothing, and I could do what I needed to do. When the vaccine was offered at my HMO, I took it, both doses. I have taken lots of vaccines over the years having traveled and been deployed in all sorts of places that Trump referred to as S—holes. I have had a few unpleasant bugs I picked up in those places, but none has killed me. I have been exposed to a pretty wide range of viruses while working in an environment with lots of undocumented aliens. None of them killed me either. I don’t like being sick, mainly because it interrupts my training regimen, but it doesn’t particularly worry me.
Most people I have talked to during this pandemic are phenomenally ignorant. They have little or no knowledge or experience with epidemic disease and accepted blindly whatever the media told them. I would include a few doctors in that since as GPs or internists they had very limited knowledge beyond their normal practice. What I heard and saw was a kind of herd reaction that one would expect from cattle or sheep. Unfortunately, that describes the vast majority of people. Most docs and quacks like Fauci are little better than the herd. They aren’t leaders. They are ungulates who have gained status that gives them some “authority”, but what they lack is integrity and courage. They are as terrified as the rest of the herd, but they refuse to admit it, so they fuel the stampede.
I had about two weeks of Coronaphobia at the beginning, when everything was unclear, the news dire, and unprecedented restrictions and lockdowns were imposed. Going to the grocery store was . . . unreal. Everything was bright and cheery as ever; the produce was abundant; the shelves were bare. As I kept saying, it was like spelunking in Chernobyl. Trips to the deserted office felt like venturing into a poisoned place – you never knew if the HVAC system was pumping in Covidian Miasma from another floor!
Got over that quickly, for several reasons: 1. The more you went out in the world, doing ordinary things like shopping, the less you feared, and 2. It was a miserable way to live, and I didn’t want any part of it.
The first fissure in the Covid-American Community seemed to be outdoor masking: those of us who rejected that ASAP were set apart from the people who belonged to the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Masking. I regarded them as paranoid. They regarded me as a foolish science-denier. Now I go to the store and I still see people masking up as they leave their car, and I wonder if they are comforted by the idea of an unending peril they can overcome with a simple thing, or if they are the equivalent of people flying a flag of a country that no longer exists. But should.
I defied my state lockdown from Day One. I went to my job at a factory every day until I was forced to retire, and only wore a mask at work when demanded to. I said to myself very early on that I was NOT going to get the virus, in spite of my risky age group (same as Susan). I didn’t get the virus, and I did get vaccinated as soon as I could get an appointment. Except for my doctor’s and dentists’ offices, I swear I will never, ever again don a face mask. I have had it with slavery to the Dictator in Olympia.
My experience was not dissimilar from Mr Lilecs. Thanks to my eclectic YouTube choices, we were well stocked. But I did run out of coffee filters. I decided to brave the stores if nothing more than the experience.
Trader Joe’s was my first stop. I casually got in line and immediately became engaged in a convo with a young man who went to high school with sons 2 and 3. The weirdest part was being approached by another customer who barked to me that I was in the wrong line.
When I replied in confusion, she told me that seniors belonged on the other side. God forgive me for the retort I bit back, as it appeared she hadn’t missed a meal in the last couple of decades.
TJs did not have my filters, but Vons did. Though they had little else. Strange to see empty shelves. A first.
By week 2, when we weren’t tripping over bodies and no one was yelling “bring out your dead” , JY and I moved on and life has gone on as normal. I wore a mask when demanded. Saw my children and grandchildren often. We had parties. Everyone was welcome.
Boss got Covid. Gave it to me. I finally watched Golden Girls. And got more than a little annoyed when I realized I’m older now that they were then
The actual virus is the most insignificant – and the least destructive – part of the past 18 months
During this period between Memorial Day and Independence Day I wonder about the flags flying as well as those masked individuals who say to veterans “thank you for your service”. I cannot bring myself to believe there is true understanding there. Of course, in a sense I am just as guilty for chastising those who kneel during the national anthem since that symbol has lost much of its meaning as well. It is really conflicting for me to show the disrespect America deserves in its current state.
Maybe the phobics will realize what a good example you’re setting, @annefy!
I heard yesterday that Insley has declared a “permanent” emergency. I am unsure exactly what that means, but I plan to give it the same amount of attention I have given the rest of his edicts.