The World Resilience Society

The psychological impact is often more extensive than the direct somatic effects of pandemics.

Researchers on the psychology of conspiracy theories often use the rule-of-thumb that the more people are involved in a conspiracy, the less likely the conspiracy is to be true, because it is more likely that there will be some whistle-blowers amongst a large group of conspiracists.

Similarly, the physical and psychological side effects of the lockdowns – including suicides and deaths from postponed non-Covid-19-related medical consultations and surgeries – seem to be widely accepted without much public outcry – as the bigger picture is saving Life in General.

Prime Minister Johnson referred to a piece of advice from the Behavioural Insight Teams (BIT) that a lockdown early during the pandemic could lead to ‘behavioural fatigue’: if restrictions come into force too early, people could become increasingly uncooperative and less vigilant, before the peak...

Several studies indicate that the more time people spent on following the news or social media, the larger they perceive the risks to be and the more mental health problems they report. Thus, it seems the amount of exposure – or addiction – that predicts the impact. Furthermore, other studies ind...

We cannot control or manage these unknowns; the best we can do is to ‘cope with the unknown’. 

During collective disasters and grief, people can benefit from reconstructing their perception of the world and meaning in life.

Exposure → anxiety + perception of large risk → more exposure -> more anxiety and perception of larger risk -> etc.

A concept related to worldviews is 'meaning of life'. People often speak about the importance of meaning when they are confronted with life's boundaries, such as the threat of chronic or life-threatening disease.

In everyday daily life, we rarely reflect on our body and out health risks. We simply follow our habits.

As Merleau-Ponty (1982) wrote: 'We understand the world from our phenomenological experience of our body.'

Being confronted with the fact that our body can fail and die, which can provoke a feeling of threat and anxiety.

Some individuals may prefer the certainty of illness over the existential uncertainty.

We live under the dictatorship of urgency. Pandemic science is based on statistical risk calculations, not on absolute facts or the results from nationwide experiments.

In sum, PCR tests have been critisiced for the large number of false-positives and false-negatives, and a lack of a gold standard.

In contrast with this lived experience of our body, health risks are abstract, anonymous, and dehumanised

More people may die from the lockdown than from Covid-19, due to psychological stress, lack of physical exercise and social connections, and postponing of non-Covid-19-related medical consultations and surgeries.