Over my past twenty years as a dance teacher, a majority of it spent introducing people to partner dancing for the very first time, I have had plenty of experience with how strangely people can behave when they are scared. Some people hide from their fear barricading themselves behind mountains of excuses, some get overly giddy or frenetic, some overcompensate and behave like bullies, some become so stoic and terse as to seem almost statue-like. Once they have overcome the fear their behavior returns to normal and you finally get to meet the real ‘them’ but until then their actions and attitudes can make little to no sense whatsoever.
What we are facing now is on a scale our world has not seen in over a century. That the virus itself does not pose an instantly lethal threat to everyone it has contact with but the velocity of its spread and the percentage of people it does make critically ill is causing a crisis which is severely altering and disrupting the life of every single person on the planet. So how can there still be people who are not taking this crisis seriously, to the point of even being dismissive about it?
The short and simple answer is fear, strange and irrational behavior provoked by fear.
A 2016 study out of the UK has gotten a great deal of mention as of late for its findings that uncertainty is actually more damaging on the emotional health, and physical nervous system, than knowing for certain something bad is going to happen. It is most often referenced in discussions around the stresses and anxieties people are experiencing as a result of the massive disruptions to daily life.
It’s not so much the disruptions themselves causing the emotional damage but the uncertainty of how long they will continue, how much more severe they might become, and how close to a familiar normal will we be able to reclaim once we have come through this. Having a concrete answer to any of those concerns, even a bad one, would be easier for us to grapple with than simply not knowing. Just talk to anyone who has had to sit and wait for potentially…