Too many covid updates

THE EDITOR: Over the previous 18 months, the covid19 pandemic has proven to be an elephantine uprooter of our daily lives. Globally, people are experiencing continual confrontation with its effects. Many media houses now prominently showcase daily updates on the number of active covid19 cases, as well as the number of people who have succumbed to the virus. With this constant bombardment of figures and statistics it becomes pertinent to ask if these updates are desensitising us to the severity of the pandemic.

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines desensitisation as, “to make emotionally insensitive or callous, specifically: to extinguish an emotional response (as of fear, anxiety, or guilt) to stimuli that formerly induced it.”

Desensitisation through exposure is a technique that has been used in psychology for decades to help patients overcome a source of anxiety for them through repeatedly exposing them to the situation they are anxious about. This may take the form of completing mock exams before a major assessment, or even practice matches before upcoming sport tournaments. The result of this treatment is the patient should experience a reduction in the concerns they previously had regarding the stressor.

In tandem with this it has also been found that it is inherently difficult for people to understand and properly internalise large-number casualties in emergencies and disasters. “This effort assumes that people can understand the resulting numbers and act on them appropriately. However, recent behavioural research casts doubt on this fundamental assumption” (Paul Slovic and Daniel Västfjäll, “The More Who Die, the Less We Care: Psychic Numbing and Genocide,” September 2015).

The authors go further to state this lack of understanding is directly proportional to the lack of emotional attachment one may experience from being informed of the disaster and that this lack of pathos may even affect decision-making.

It is notable, then, that this process seems to be occurring, possibly unknowingly, throughout our public. Publishing and broadcasting, ad nauseum, the statistics of the pandemic is serving as a nationwide exposure to a collective stressor.

Media houses such as the BBC, The Washington Post and The Atlantic have published articles in which they acknowledge the decline in attention and empathy towards covid19 (“A Failure of Empathy Led to 200,000 Deaths. It Has Deep Roots,” Ogla Khazan, 2020;" “What makes people stop caring?” Tiffanie Wen, 2020; “How does a pandemic start winding down? You are looking at it,” Joel Achenbach and Yasmeen Abutaleb, 2021). These serve as an affirmation to the desensitisation.

As we continue to experience a decreasing amount of empathy for the victims of the pandemic, and as we begin to take covid19 less seriously, so too does our behaviour become less conducive to staying healthy. This has already been manifesting itself, globally, in the form of mask-free zones and businesses in the US and, too, in TT with a Taste of Carnival, etc.

While it is important to regularly update the public in times of international crises, an oversaturation of updates has the potential to, at best, lessen our ability to care about the victims of the crises and, at worst, actively encourages us to behave recklessly and endanger more lives.

STEVON JAGGASAR

via e-mail