As the pandemic continues, society is growing numb to the impact it has had on 2020.
Since this past July, the White House’s actions have indicated that President Trump has hoped to see “Americans growing numb to the escalating death toll.”
“They’re of the belief that people will get over it or if we stop highlighting it, the base will move on and the public will learn to accept 50,000 to 100,000 new cases a day,” a former White House official told The Washington Post.
Elke Weber, a psychology professor at Princeton, spoke up about this press statement. In an interview with the National Public Radio in July, Weber commented on how human psychology adapts to stimuli.
“With any kind of consistent danger, people get used to situations like that,” Weber told NPR. “Our neurons are wired to only respond to change. Any constant state gets washed out.”
As the pandemic has become the ‘new normal,’ it seems to matter less and less to the general population. While state and local restrictions have remained relatively the same, social distancing in public is not nearly as strongly enforced as it was during the beginning of the year.
There is also a growing population of people who choose not to wear a mask while in public, and many of those who wear them fail to do so correctly, often leaving the nose or entire face exposed.
Despite pleas from health officials, the COVID-19 response has been sluggish at best. The numbers of total confirmed cases and mortalities continue to climb. Less social distancing and not wearing masks has been confirmed as a cause of the spread of infection by the Centers for Disease Control.
A vicious cycle has emerged of people who have been lulled into a false sense of security starting to not care, which is followed by either them contracting COVID-19 or convincing others in turn that there is no danger.
With virus statistics continuing to accrue all year, more and more have adopted an attitude of simply ignoring the negativity of the numbers. As the numbers have passed into thousands and even millions, it has become more and more difficult to notice the small positive changes from individual efforts.
Even worse, it is easy at this point for COVID-19 surges to go unnoticed in the number wash. This self-fulfilling prophecy has led many Americans, even some who were once vigilant, to become apathetic to the pandemic.
So, what can be done to stop this cycle?
The CDC still strongly encourages social distancing and wearing masks while in public. Stopping the spread of COVID-19 will reduce the number of cases being diagnosed, which will eventually lead to fewer statistics being thrown at Americans — hopefully curing them of apathy.
Additionally, the science journal, Nature, compared COVID-19 cases with cell phone data records of people’s hourly locations, and concluded that “that there are about 10% of points-of-interest that account for over 80% of all infections, and these are places that are smaller, more crowded and people dwell there longer.”
According to the research, six types of locations being reopened in metro areas have resulted in the largest increase of infections: restaurants, gyms, hotels, cafes and religious organizations.
In his NPR interview, Professor Weber encourages Americans to consider the amount of COVID-19 related deaths the United States has seen.
As of Nov. 12, 248,585 Americans have died from COVID-19. While it is very easy to compare that number to the American population and feel at ease, it is vital to recognize the sheer loss our country has sustained beyond mere statistics.
To put the number of dead Americans into a closer perspective, COVID-19 has completely eradicated the equivalent of the York, Chester, Cherokee, Union, Lancaster, Fairfield and McCormick counties’ populations put together. That is nearly a quarter of the counties in South Carolina.
Weber hopes that putting the totals into perspective for the public will allow them to see that this is not to be taken lightly.
As COVID-19 continues to spread, the United States population must take the pandemic seriously. American lives are literally depending on it.
Photo by Emma Crouch
