6 February 2021 | New Scientist | 37restrictions and their enforcement could well
be fuelling a sense of burnout in people asked
to obey them.
In short, if you are forced to surrender your
freedom and make sacrifices for the greater
good, then the people restricting your freedom
had better be doing the same.
According to research published in August
2020, this pact between citizens and the UK
government was severely dented when
Dominic Cummings, a key adviser to the prime
minister, was accused of breaking lockdown
rules by driving his wife 420 kilometres from
their home, even though he suspected she had
covid-19. The episode was directly linked to
a significant drop in confidence in the UK
government’s handling of the crisis and to the
chances of people following the rules. There are
signs that confidence in the UK government
has fallen further with successive lockdowns.
A similar trend has been seen in the US, >“ Burnout is a
major risk
factor for
depression
and anxiety”
it very much comes under the banner of
“cynicism and detachment”.
The Lancet review also concluded that
enforced quarantine is less stressful when
people feel that they are sacrificing their
freedom for the greater good. In the UK,
comparisons have been made with the so-
called Blitz spirit, especially during initial
lockdown. This is the sense that personal
suffering is worth it for the common cause –
and is said to have sustained morale during the
bombing of the UK in the second world war.
According to an August 2020 study
comparing the pandemic and the Blitz,
there are many similarities, including the
fact that a community wide stiff upper lip is
more myth than reality. As with the pandemic,
the bombing had peaks. During a later wave
of attacks, when air aids were faster, quieter
and more deadly, government surveys
recorded that Londoners’ spirits dropped
to an all-time low.
Given the resurgence of the coronavirus
at the end of 2020 in much of the world,
along with the emergence of significantly
more transmissible variants, this
comparison holds up. And there is
already some evidence that second and
third lockdowns are denting morale.
Sara Simblett, a clinical psychologist
at King’s College London, is part of a team
that has been tracking stress-related coping
strategies before and throughout the
pandemic. While data sets from the current
UK lockdown have yet to be fully analysed,
there are early indications that resilience
is waning, with people feeling much less
confident about being able to cope in the
long term compared with the short term,
she says. It remains to be seen whether
this prediction is borne out by the team’s
follow-up data, due to be published soon.
A lot will depend on how people feel about
the high-level decisions being made about our
freedoms. In the workplace, poor or unfair
decisions mandated from above, or unequal
enforcement of those decisions, is a key risk
factor for burnout. Similarly, a sense of
unfairness in government-mandated
Becoming
overwhelmed
by boredom can
also take a tollST
EV
E^ HICKEY
/ALAMY