As the pandemic slowly abates, humanity will have to reckon with historical trauma

[marmar]

As the pandemic slowly abates, humanity will have to reckon with historical trauma
History reveals how previous generations coped with comparably traumatic events

By MATTHEW ROZSA
PUBLISHED MAY 30, 2021 10:00AM


(Salon) Last year in May, only a couple months after America entered a state of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I found myself in an interview with Dr. David Reiss. I was wondering even at that time how people would react to the fear of getting sick or dying, to the frustration of not being able to resume their normal lives and to the unhealthiness of so sharply curtailing their social interactions.

"When things are very uncontrolled and uncertain, people who are vulnerable can really fall into an existential type depression," Reiss told me. "And then that kicks off in both serious depression for others who aren't as vulnerable. It just could create a lot of uncertainty, a lot of anger and reactivity."

As vaccines slowly but surely begin to roll back the tide of the pandemic, we are entering a phase in which people undergoing this deeply traumatic experience will now have to rejoin society despite their suffering. While usually trauma victims' experiences are individual, however, here they are far from alone: Just as we need to figure out how to rejoin society, society needs to figure out how to recover from the collective trauma it has endured.

....(snip)....

The question for the COVID-19 era is, what can we expect from the future based on the trauma we have endured since 2020?

One likely change is that it could spawn more hypochondriacs, or at least germophobes. Indeed, the pandemic seems to have more of us worried about our health.

"The pandemic has made everybody concerned about their health. And I think that once the pandemic passes, that concern will continue, which is a good thing rather than a bad thing," Dr. Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, told Salon by email earlier this year. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/05/30/as-the-pandemic-slowly-abates-humanity-will-have-to-reckon-with-historical-trauma/

[Merlot]

1. If the only thing the pandemic taught people is to worry about their health

then we're really beyond caring about anyone but ourselves. What the pandemic should have taught people is that health care is essential for everyone, that as a country we can't just "go it alone," and that our rotting infrastructure is a huge problem. When children can't do distance learning because of lack of internet access, when women have to leave the workforce due to lack of child care, and older people who were pushed out of the workforce but are to young to retire, the cracks in our social safety net have become obvious to everyone who's even slightly paying attention.

As a country we have vaccine that half the country won't take and other countries are literally dying for the vaccine and people don't realize that as long as the rest of the world isn't vaccinated we all aren't safe and the world economy isn't safe.

And lastly (although there are many more lessons to have been learned from the pandemic), climate change will make pandemics more numerous.