How we can masterourfear of contagion

THESE past few months have been a crash course for all of us in the ways that fear can be used – and misused.

The sudden appearance of a new and lethal virus – which, after initial declines, is re-emerging as a major threat – has been a global test of everyone’s nerves.

Fear is the brain’s best tool for keeping us safe from harm. It helps us learn to avoid danger, or to escape it when avoidance is impossible. Fear is a fast learner which is why, beginning in March, many of us found ourselves newly avoiding doorknobs and handrails, giving unmasked strangers in stores a wide berth and reeling away from the sound of coughing. If you have adopted these habits, your fear has served you well.

But fear is not a discerning learner. It is prone to overgeneralise, to respond to things that loosely resemble real threats.

Avoidance of unmasked shoppers can blur into terror of unmasked neighbours gardening. Healthy avoidance of doorknobs can leave you up all night wondering whether you forgot to sanitise your credit card after swiping it. When fear spirals to the point where unavoidable dangers are perceived to lurk everywhere, disabling anxiety can result.

There are ways to prevent these outcomes. One is to deny the threat – continuing to party or dine or worship with unmasked others, contagion be damned.

I don’t recommend this strategy. Denial may look like courage but it’s not. One reason is that contagions are a unique type of threat. If you fail to avoid a dog and it bites you, only you get hurt. But if you fail to avoid a virus and it infects you, you now become the threat, a vector capable of spreading harm to others.

This makes risking infection not simply a personal choice, but a moral one – and is why, in cultures around the world, practices for avoiding contamination carry strong moral implications.

As basic distancing becomes routine, the fear that drove it will recede. Fear gets bored easily, leading to habituation.

If you don’t feel constant fear around pools and cars it’s because you have learnt to swim and use seat belts to manage the threats they pose. We can come to manage the virus and its threats the same way.

Keep abreast of scientifically vetted recommendations from the World Health Organisation and other reliable sources. Yes, these change sometimes, but this is because scientists are gathering and analysing data and updating their knowledge at unprecedented rates.

We now know, for example, most coronavirus transmission takes place in crowded indoor spaces, particularly when people are forcefully expelling breath by talking, coughing or singing.

There will be (sensible) exposure to the threat. The more we venture back into the world, the more mundane mask-wearing, hand-sanitising and social distancing will seem. Those who work in jobs deemed essential have already learned this. For the rest of us, it will be helpful to keep in mind as the virus is here to stay, and effective treatments or vaccines may be years away. Complete avoidance of risk will not be possible.

This is where courage comes in. True courage is not denial of risk; it is mastery of fear when risk must be judiciously confronted to serve a higher (usually unselfish) goal. It sends firefighters into fires and nurses into sick bays. Courage requires focusing on others rather than on yourself and is, as a bonus, among the best ways to manage fear and enhance wellbeing. Great leaders use these facts to reduce fear and risk. (© Washington Post)