The Washington Post - USA (2021-12-25)

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 25 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

bors.”

In Jenkins’s eyes, the outbursts

are fueled by widespread pan-

demic-induced vulnerability and

a desire for purpose that some

people have learned to manipu-

late by building communities

around angry, public resistance

to policies and officials. She said

she thinks that a general lack of

societal trust also contributes

and that the lack of connection

makes arguments out of what

could have been conversations.

The last large-scale pandemic

was similarly divisive. As influen-

za cut a destructive path around

the world in 1918 and 1919, many

businesses refused to enforce

mask mandates and roughly

2,000 members of an “Anti-Mask

League” rallied in San Francisco

to oppose the ordinances. The

coronavirus pandemic has the

complicating factor of a hyperac-

tive social media ecosystem that

overloads people with often-con-

flicting information.

“When people are presented

with situations that seem over-

whelming, they are more apt to

give up in a sense and lock more

tightly to a single perspective and

approach, because the work

that’s necessary to hold on to all

this different information is just

too much,” Morganstein said.

Coronavirus pandemic-era an-

ger also has coalesced around

whether mask and vaccine re-

quirements violate individual lib-

erty — an issue that Morganstein

said tends to animate people.

Many public outbursts have been

from people vehemently express-

ing that no one else can tell them

what to do. The result is an

environment where trust in other

people is severely limited.

That lack of social cohesion

prolongs people’s sense of crisis,

Silver said. In a study of Israelis

who survived years of bombing,

she found that those who fared

well did so in part because they

had a strong sense of community.

Without that sense of national

community in the United States,

people lean on their smaller

tribes of people with similar

worldviews, Silver said.

By June, before the delta and

omicron variants became wide-

spread, levels of anxiety and de-

pression in the United States had

declined from their pandemic

peak but remained higher than in

2019, according to a study pub-

lished by the CDC. And more

than 80 percent of psychologists

told the American Psychological

Association that they had experi-

enced an increase in demand for

anxiety treatment since the pan-

demic began, compared with

74 percent who said the same a

year ago.

Additionally, about 2 in 3 vac-

cinated Americans said they were

“angry at those who are refusing

to get vaccinated against COVID-

19 and are putting the rest of us at

risk,” according to a survey this

fall by the Public Religion Re-

search Institute and the Inter-

faith Youth Core.

For Jennifer Le Zotte, a college

professor in North Carolina, a

challenge of the pandemic’s

ceaselessness has been feeling

disconnected from her personal

communities. She wonders when

she’ll feel comfortable fully reen-

gaging in her pre-pandemic ac-

tivities, and she said she’s con-

stantly recalculating her family’s

risk as the facts of the coronavi-

rus outbreak change.

Le Zotte said that after keeping

her children and elderly parents

safe for nearly two years, she

would feel deeply troubled if she

lowered her defenses now and

one of them contracted the virus.

But being constantly on guard

feels emotionally draining.

“Part of me feels like I have to

finish this,” she said. “But,” she

believes, “there is never going to

be a concise finish.”

[email protected]

ries about the sheer tragedies,”

said Silver, an expert in trauma.

“So it’s both direct exposure and

indirect exposure to the media of

all of these cascading traumas

that have made it so difficult to

cope with it.”

Stress from those cascading

traumas is cumulative, Silver has

found.

Whether it’s the death of a

loved one or the cancellation of a

vacation, the pandemic’s losses

are more likely to linger in peo-

ple’s minds than the positive

experiences, said Stevan Hobfoll,

a researcher and clinician with

expertise in trauma. The human

brain searches gains for hidden

losses, he said, so people are

more likely to think about how

much they miss traveling than

about improving infection num-

bers.

Then there’s the struggle to

maintain hope, which is compli-

cated by the pandemic’s lack of a

clear endpoint. Early in the crisis,

many people identified what they

could control and created rou-

tines, said Joshua Morganstein,

chair of the American Psychiatric

Association’s Committee on the

Psychiatric Dimensions of Disas-

ter. But he said that intentionali-

ty has largely fallen by the way-

side and people have become

more distressed.

In Florida, emotions over

school district policies were boil-

ing over for months before Jen-

kins spoke publicly about the

harassment she said she faced.

Angry about decisions around

masks, transgender students and

teaching about race, some par-

ents had threatened her, coughed

in her face and filed false reports

with the Florida Department of

Children and Families, she said.

(The agency did not respond to a

message seeking confirmation of

those reports.)

At a board meeting in October,

Jenkins said she supported par-

ents’ right to protest but would

not stand for credible threats of

violence against her family.

“I reject them following my car

around, I reject them saying that

they’re coming for me and I need

to beg for mercy,” she said. “I

reject that when they are using

their First Amendment rights on

public property, they’re also go-

ing behind my home and bran-

dishing weapons to my neigh-

dant for a decade, said he believes

years of heated rhetoric from

political leaders has riled people

up and encouraged them to de-

fend themselves against the pur-

ported erosion of their rights.

Then the pandemic erupted. The

result, from Andrews’s perspec-

tive, is an epidemic of people

behaving as if rules and social

norms don’t apply to them.

“What we see manifested in

society, you’ll see it happening in

the air, you see it happening in

restaurants, you see it happening

in malls, you see it happening in

school board meetings,” he said.

For a few weeks this summer,

low infection numbers served as

a light at the end of the tunnel for

people eager to move on from the

pandemic. That hopefulness

made it harder for many people

to handle the abrupt about-face

when the delta variant fueled a

new surge, said Wright, with the

American Psychological Associa-

tion.

People are also faced with

constant news about the virus,

making coping even more diffi-

cult, said UC-Irvine’s Silver.

“Even if I personally have not

lost a loved one to covid, I can be

seeing pictures and reading sto-

claims that the federally ap-

proved or authorized vaccines

are dangerous. The Food and

Drug Administration and the

Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention have consistently said

the immunizations are safe and

effective.

“We’re still in danger, we’re

still cooped up in our houses to

some extent, we’re still not free to

move about because of malevo-

lent lies,” said Penso, who lives in

D.C.

On a flight this year, Teddy

Andrews’s colleague walked over

to him on the verge of tears. A

passenger was refusing to wear a

mask and giving her a hard time,

his fellow flight attendant said.

Andrews approached the man,

who called him the n-word and

said, “I don’t have to listen to a

damn thing you say, this is a free

country,” according to Andrews’s

testimony later before a congres-

sional committee.

A tense exchange followed,

with Andrews asking the man to

don a mask to protect his fellow

passengers. Eventually, the man

backed down and put on the face

covering.

Andrews, who has been an

American Airlines flight atten-

to the pandemic, they are gener-

ally in sync on the underlying

issue: The pandemic’s devastat-

ing consequences have spared

almost no one.

Of course, the coronavirus has

hit some people and communi-

ties harder than others. The fami-

lies of more than 800,000 people

in the United States — dispropor-

tionately Black, Latino, Native

American and Alaska Native —

have lost a loved one to the virus.

Others have been hospitalized

and survived. Almost everyone

has sacrificed an important as-

pect of their lives: a job, the

ability to safely gather to mourn a

death or celebrate a marriage, or

any degree of certainty in plan-

ning the future.

It remains unclear when that

suffering will end. Reported in-

fections and hospitalizations in

the United States are surging as

the country finds itself facing a

variant that appears to be more

transmissible and better at evad-

ing protection from approved

vaccines and as holiday gather-

ings provide new opportunities

for viral transmission.

That danger heightens the

feeling of whiplash among peo-

ple tired of the pandemic’s twists

and turns, said Roxane Cohen

Silver, a professor of psychologi-

cal science at the University of

California at Irvine.

“The news about the omicron

variant came right at the time

that many people in the U.S. were

poised to spend the Thanksgiving

holiday with loved ones for the

first time in a long time,” she said.

“It seemed almost cruel that just

when ‘normalcy’ seemed to be on

the horizon, hopes were again

dashed with the latest news.”

Worry about the pandemic,

climate change and other crises

has made Kia Penso, 61, so on

edge that she can’t watch sus-

penseful television shows, and

interactions with her brother

when she is worried about him

have become “10 times more

explosive.” Her past year and a

half has been marked by her

uncle’s death from covid-19 and

persistent worry about the safety

of her elderly mother overseas.

Those stresses have been exac-

erbated by her feeling that the

coronavirus’s threat would be

negligible by now if other people

hadn’t fallen victim to false

The public vitriol has made
health and elections officials fear
for their safety. School board
meetings have become such bat-
tlegrounds that Attorney General
Merrick Garland has asked the
Justice Department to investi-
gate what he called a “disturbing
spike” in threats against educa-
tors. Some American shoppers,
long used to getting their way,
have unleashed their worst be-
havior in recent months.
In some of these circum-
stances, it’s unclear whether ag-
gressive behavior has actually
increased this year or whether
the public has simply trained
more focus on it. But mental
health experts said it’s likely that
the worldwide state of perpetual
crisis has truly spurred more
frequent instances of inappropri-
ate and abusive behavior.
Nearly two years into a pan-
demic coexistent with several
national crises, many Americans
are profoundly tense. They’re
snapping at each other more
frequently, suffering from physi-
cal symptoms of stress and seek-
ing methods of self-care. In the
most extreme cases, they’re act-
ing out their anger in public —
bringing their internal struggles
to bear on interactions with
strangers, mental health experts
said.
Some of those behaviors ap-
pear to be the result of living
through a long-lasting public
emergency with no clear end-
point, the experts said. As the
omicron variant of the coronavi-
rus rages across the country, it is
again unclear when the pandem-
ic restrictions will end. For some
people, this kind of catastrophe
strains their coping resources
and causes them to act in ways
that they normally would not.
Layer that onto other recent
national crises — including race-
driven social unrest, an economic
recession, the Jan. 6 attack on the
Capitol and myriad extreme-
weather disasters — and people
can hardly bear the stress.
“We’re just not meant to live
under this level of tension for
such a prolonged period,” said
Vaile Wright, senior director of
health care innovation for the
American Psychological Associa-
tion. “So what that ends up doing
is it really wears on our coping
abilities to the point where we
aren’t able to regulate our emo-
tions as well as we could before.”
That kind of emotional tension
is most relevant to people who
continue to take precautions and
factor the virus into their deci-
sion-making. Much of the coun-
try has long moved on from
tracking the pandemic’s every
turn, with many people instead
living much like they were in
2019.
But research supports the idea
that Americans as a whole are
struggling mentally and emo-
tionally. A study of five Western
countries, including the United
States, published in January
found that 13 percent of people
reported symptoms of post-trau-
matic stress disorder attributable
to actual or potential contact
with the coronavirus, stay-at-
home orders, the inability to
return to a country of residence
or other coronavirus-related fac-
tors. The researchers also found
that anticipating a negative pan-
demic-related event was even
more emotionally painful than
experiencing one.
The coronavirus outbreak had
barely begun when mental health
experts started expressing con-
cern that the crisis would cause
collective trauma, which occurs
when a deeply distressing event
affects an entire community and
creates a shared impact. Al-
though psychologists disagree on
the definition of trauma and
whether the term applies broadly

TRAUMA FROM A

Long pandemic pushes many to near their breaking point

0

50k

100k

150k

200k

250k

300k

7-day avg.

Feb. 29, 2020 Jan. 2021 Dec. 24

0

2k

4k

7-day avg.

Feb. 29, 2020 Jan. 2021 Dec. 24

0

1m

2m

3m

4m

7-day avg.

Feb. 29, 2020 Jan. 2021 Dec. 24

As of 8 p.m. Friday

52,080,

500,222,

811,

189,

1,

1,455,

Total

DEATHS

Total

VACCINE DOSES ADMINISTERED

New coronavirus cases, deaths and

vaccine doses in the U.S., by day

Total

CASES

7-day average

7-day average

7-day average

PHOTOS BY MADELINE GRAY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Leda Hawkins wears ear buds as she walks alone in Long Leaf Park in Wilmington, N.C., on Nov. 9. For more than a year and a half,

Americans have been navigating the coronavirus pandemic without knowing whether a clear end will ever be in sight.

LEFT: Shelby Milliken, 6, left, practices karate with Jon Oshita at Long Leaf Park on Nov. 9. Oshita, who has been offering lessons indoors and outside during the pandemic, says he finds comfort in karate’s
adaptability. RIGHT: Marisela Santiago, left, and Robert Bautista watch a video while lying in a hammock at Long Leaf Park.