‘Humour is better for your immune system than stress’
As Covid-19 spreads around the world, it’s bringing with it a climate of fear and a host of conspiracy theories and misinformation. But one psychologist says we would be much better off looking on the bright side.
With his trademark quirky sense of humour, broadcaster and psychologist Nigel Latta this week called on New Zealand’s Fourth Estate to keep calm, and stop frightening his mother. ‘‘Hey NZ media. You’re scaring my mum with all the sensationalist #coronavirus headlines and scary misleading photos,’’ he posted on Twitter.
‘‘Cut it the f... out! People need you at your best right now, so lift your game. Your job is to inform, not inflame. #dontscaremymum.’’
Latta told the Sunday Star-Times the Tweet was in response to a screaming ‘‘Pandemonium’’ frontpage headline in the Weekend Herald last weekend which referenced panic buying in supermarkets, and was illustrated with a photo of a man in a hazmat suit in Iran.
‘‘It creates its own momentum, ‘‘ says Latta. ‘‘Looking at the picture you think ‘is that happening here’? It plays into our apocalyptic fears based on all the movies we’ve seen.’’
The cumulative effect of breaking news straps, push alerts sent directly to people’s pockets via their mobile phones, and night after night of grim developments on 6pm bulletins can create an overwhelming sense of helplessness.
And the fact is, says Latta, we humans aren’t very good at processing information and analysing risk, especially when we’re afraid.
So he wants everyone to try to put Covid-19 into perspective by getting a few things straight.
For starters, it was always going to arrive in New Zealand.
‘‘It’s a sneaky little virus, containing it is almost impossible, and the reality is a lot of people in New Zealand are going to get coronavirus, and the overwhelming majority will recover.’’
Now that’s it’s gained a foothold in New Zealand, listen to the experts.
Wash your hands, stay home if you’re sick, don’t panic buy, and don’t spread panic.
Talk to older family members or neighbours who might be concerned, reassure them that even if they are unlucky enough to contract Covid-19, their survival chances are very good.
Our built-in survival coping mechanisms are triggered by the incessant coverage from around the world of fresh outbreaks, an increasing death toll and more draconian measures to combat the virus’s spread.
Fear leads to prejudice, and pretty soon, the ‘‘racist stuff’’ bubbles to the surface.
The many examples of racism directed towards people of Asian ethnicity in New Zealand since the outbreak began is often simply a combination of ignorance and stupidity, says Latta.
‘‘Yum cha doesn’t cause coronavirus.’’
And it shows how little we’ve learnt from the mosque shootings of 2019.
‘‘After Christchurch, we said ‘this is not us’, but all it takes is a little bit of panic and all those things rear up again.’’
The economic impact is going to be very real, so support the businesses that need it, as they’re going to be in for a rough time.
‘‘Talking to people in the dairy industry, the farming industry, tourism, these are real people who are facing a very uncertain future.
‘‘Just go out and go to businesses where people are struggling because fearful people have pulled away.’’
The battle to control the flow of accurate information has seen the Ministry of Health director-general of health Ashley Bloomfield conduct near daily briefings with a solemnity befitting the situation.
Jacinda Ardern has also weighed in at times, urging common sense, hygiene and requesting that people not panic buy.
Still, toilet paper, face masks, hand sanitiser
‘‘After Christchurch, we said ‘this is not us’, but all it takes is a little bit of panic and all those things rear up again.’’
Nigel Latta
and some cleaning products have disappeared from shelves, forcing some supermarkets to limit sales. Politics have also played a part in ramping up fears. National’s Hamilton East MP David Bennett this week said people ‘‘should be out there panic buying, you know’’ while criticising the Government’s handling of the outbreak.
‘‘If you’re in government and you’re in Parliament your job is to probably to ease people’s fears and that, but I don’t believe in this case you should. The reality is you should stock up on food,’’ he told FreeFM.
He later tried to walk back the comments, claiming he had been misquoted.
The man posting via Facebook Live sounds out of breath. He’s got only five minutes before he needs to be back to work and the situation has become urgent. Over the next 17 minutes, the married father-oftwo, who the Star-Times has chosen not to name, goes on a diatribe about how the coronavirus Covid-19 outbreak is the work of global elites trying to kill off millions of people.
Since the Facebook Live post appeared on February 19, it has had close to 100,000 views, been shared 2200 times and attracted 1400 comments and as many reactions such as likes or loves.
Facebook, which claims to be cracking down on the spread of coronavirus misinformation, suggests the video can be watched ‘‘together with friends, or with a group’’.
The man’s central theory can perhaps be boiled down to: mainstream media, governments, the World Health Organisation, Bill Gates, elites and corporations are all in on a grand conspiracy to hide the true extent of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Since then the New Zealander’s multiple daily postings and self-made videos on the coronavirus, sprinkled with biblical references and scripture, have grown more and more hyperbolic.
As well as a large following, the person appears to be actively influencing people’s perceptions about the virus.
One commenter wrote: ‘‘so much love for you bro, you’ve singlehandedly changed my life.’’
The internet has created a bottomless reservoir of rabbit holes to leap down, with mistrust of government, institutions and the media coalescing around online communities.
For many it’s a short leap between conspiracy theories about the coronavirus to the illuminati, chem trails and 9/11.
Mass hysteria researcher Robert Bartholomew, from the University of Auckland’s Department of Psychological Medicine, says uncertainty and ambiguity, as seen around coronavirus reporting, creates breeding grounds for rumours and conspiracy theories, which further perpetuate uncertainty. And with health experts even unsure about the epidemic’s future, unrest causes people to search for possible scenarios.
‘‘The fact that several articles online have noted real-life similarities with the current epidemic, can give films like Contagion a certain legitimacy even though much of it is science fiction and the death rate is much higher than the coronavirus,’’ Bartholomew says.
Social media is a ‘‘collective way of coping with things that frighten us,’’ he says.
‘‘Coronavirus jokes are all the rage online and there are a lot of memes about it on social media. You wouldn’t meme about your uncle who has cancer but jokes that make fun of the coronavirus can be a collective way to release tension among friends or strangers.
‘‘It’s well-known in psychology that the process of talking about traumatic events can help people ‘get it off their chest’ and relieve stress. In the past people tended to cope more individually, but now they go online and can relieve fears by coping together.’’
Dr Samantha Marsh, research fellow at the University of Auckland’s School of Population Health, says during times of great uncertainty, people will often engage in ‘‘information bingeing’’.
That’s where people obsessively go down rabbit holes trying to find out more information about a topic.
‘‘They are unlikely to achieve this given that clickbait is used to encourage people to read articles or posts. This may actually increase their exposure to sensationalised news – rather than information from more reliable sources.’’
Netsafe acting chief executive Sean Lyons likens misinformation online to financial scams.
‘‘To some degree misinformation is information scamming.’’
He says people need to think critically about the information that’s being presented to them, and try to work out the veracity of information.
Ask yourself questions like who is saying this, what’s their experience, what are official agencies saying about this? Stop, breathe and think about what’s being presented to you. Lyons calls on everyone to report dangerous content they came across.
‘‘We need to do the same with misinformation and point out when content is laden with bias or is dangerous in the same way that bullying and harassment is.’’
Latta says it’s almost impossible to break through to social media eco systems where many of these fringe conspiracy theories flourish.
‘‘If you could draw a Venn diagram of stupidity, it would be the people who think fluoride is a government plot to kill us, vaccines are a government plot to kill us, 1080 is a DoC conspiracy to kill us.
‘‘It’s far more contagious than coronavirus,’’ he says. ‘‘Those people are always going to be there. The problem is they get air time.’’
And when scientists can’t immediately come up with all the answers, many will grasp at the simplest explanations.
‘‘Which is often, ‘they’re trying to kill us all’.’’ Latta has his own prescription for fear-like symptoms: levity.
‘‘Humour is better for your immune system than stress. We need to watch for this tone of earnestness around it. Yes people will get sick and it’s bad. But God forbid anyone should make a joke about coronavirus.
‘‘If we all go ‘God this is serious’, it doesn’t create an optimistic view of the futures.’’
His advice is do all those things that the experts tell us to do, and get on with your life.
At least, that’s what he told mum.