The answer, contrary to appearances, is obvious and at the same time quite difficult to accept. People blindly accept information about the virus via the Internet and fuel the spiral of fear themselves. What is its mechanism?
Fear mechanisms
The first type of behavior is denial, that is, failing to notice the problem related to the threat, making fun of others, and downplaying the problem. Another example of behavior is a state of anxiety or panic, the opposite of an attitude associated with denial. We then begin to engage excessively in prevention. States of panic can cause very serious social harm if too many people give in to panic.
Lack of knowledge acquired at school
It can safely be said that people have little understanding of viruses. What they learned at school in biology class has long since evaporated from their minds. This lack of factual knowledge about how the disease works leads to absurd actions and increased fear. This includes excessive shopping and emptying store shelves of dry goods with long shelf lives (pasta, rice, flour), mass purchases of disinfectants, and stockpiling medicines or masks. Some offers on classified-advertisement portals are absurd as well. Someone posted an offer to exchange a box of construction masks for a car or an expensive phone.
The influence and power of worldwide media are so great. Society believes them blindly, while the media create fear of an unknown disease. On this basis, people make irrational decisions.
How does panic harm us?
Let us ask the question: is there anything to fear? Yes, but we must realize that panic harms us personally and socially. Panicked people begin making absurd decisions, which are copied by others, leading to social destabilization. Take banks as an example: if people began withdrawing cash from banks en masse, they would cause the operation of these institutions to become destabilized. This would have a very negative impact on small companies and businesses that survive through daily cash flows. By buying food products in bulk, panicked people cause rational individuals to wait for deliveries or look for food elsewhere, while paying absurd amounts for a packet of pasta.
Panicked people may be aggressive toward those already infected or suspected of being infected. It is not difficult to imagine a situation in which we abandon our own values simply to avoid exposing ourselves to infection.
Therefore, let us ask ourselves: what would I do if I met an infected person who had not been placed in quarantine? How would I behave as an infected person?
It is worth not giving in to social panic and adopting a rational attitude. A fairly difficult period lies ahead of us, so it is worth remaining aware, expanding our knowledge using reliable sources, and not underestimating the problem.
The text was prepared for the istotne.pl portal by psychotherapists from the Polish Psychopedagogical Society: MSc Dawid Kołodziej and MSc Justyna Marcinkowska.