<
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/covid-pandemic-panic-calm-advice/>
"You might be forgiven for thinking it’s been a very quiet few months for the
Covid-19 pandemic. Besides the rollout of new boosters, the coronavirus has
largely slipped out of the headlines. But the virus is on the move. Viral
levels in wastewater are similar to what they were during the first two waves
of the pandemic. Recent coverage of the so-called Pirola variant, which is
acknowledged to have “an alarming number of mutations,” led with the headline
“Yes, There’s a New Covid Variant. No, You Shouldn’t Panic.”
Even if you haven’t heard much about the new strain of the coronavirus, being
told not to panic might induce déjà vu. In late 2021, as the Omicron variant
was making its way to the United States, Anthony Fauci told the public that it
was “nothing to panic about” and that “we should not be freaking out.” Ashish
Jha, the Biden administration’s former Covid czar, also cautioned against undue
alarm over Omicron BA.1, claiming that there was “absolutely no reason to
panic.” This is a telling claim, given what was to follow—the six weeks of the
Omicron BA.1 wave led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in a matter of weeks,
a mortality event unprecedented in the history of the republic.
Indeed, experts have been offering the public advice about how to feel about
Covid-19 since January 2020, when
New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo
opined, “Panic will hurt us far more than it’ll help.” That same week, Zeke
Emanuel—a former health adviser to the Obama administration, latterly an
adviser to the Biden administration—said Americans should “stop panicking and
being hysterical.… We are having a little too much [sic] histrionics about
this.”
This concern about public panic has been a leitmotif of the Covid-19 pandemic,
even earning itself a name (“elite panic”) among some scholars. But if there’s
one thing we’ve learned, three and a half years into the current crisis, it’s
that—contrary to what the movies taught us—pandemics don’t automatically spawn
terror-stricken stampedes in the streets. Media and public health coverage have
a strong hand in shaping public response and can—under the wrong
circumstances—promote indifference, incaution, and even apathy. A very visible
example of this was the sharp drop in the number of people masking after the
CDC revised its guidelines in 2021, recommending that masking was not necessary
for the vaccinated (from 90 percent in May to 53 percent in September).
As that example suggests, emphasizing the message “don’t panic” puts the cart
before the horse unless tangible measures are being taken to prevent
panic-worthy outcomes. And indeed, these repeated assurances against panic have
arguably also preempted a more vigorous and urgent public health response—as
well as perversely increasing public acceptance of the risks posed by
coronavirus infection and the unchecked transmission of the virus. This “moral
calm”—a sort of manufactured consent—impedes risk mitigation by promoting the
underestimation of a threat. Soothing public messaging during disasters can
often lead to an increased death toll: Tragically, false reassurance
contributed to mortality in both the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
sinking of the
Titanic."
Via Violet Blue’s
Pandemic Roundup: October 19, 2023
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-91266658
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
