- White House Health Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci has a 3-word message for anyone who feels overwhelmed by every update of the coronavirus.
- “Don’t Give Up” is what Dr. Fauci said he wants people to take away from a recent interview with him The Washington Post about the latest developments related to the coronavirus pandemic.
- The coronavirus has produced a number of effects on mental health since the pandemic remained in the US for more than six months.
For months, it’s been so easy to get addicted to the constant drip of coronavirus updates and other daily news related to the pandemic – including everything from the horrific death toll (more than 170,000 and counting in the US alone) to the unforgettable rise in the number of new cases around the country. One reason it is so difficult to pull away from the daily news cycle of coronavirus is because of the very real impact it has on daily life right where you live. Turn off the news for a day, for example, and you might miss a word from a restaurant that you love forced to close its doors in some new way that your community is responding to COVID-19.
Meanwhile, there are some hidden effects to having our lives so controlled over the last six months by this virus – effects that public health officials often do not talk enough about. White House health adviser Dr Anthony Fauci addressed this in a new interview (offering a simple but powerful 3-word encouragement: “Do not give up”), as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released in a study on the end of last week. Developed from a survey of more than 5,400 Americans, the study found that “40.9% of respondents reported at least one adverse mental or behavioral health status.”
The findings indicate that 31% of respondents acknowledged suffering from symptoms of anxiety or depression, while 26% reported symptoms of trauma and stress related to the pandemic. Even more worrying, a little over 13% of respondents started using substances such as alcohol to treat stress and emotions related to the pandemic, while nearly 11% had seriously thought about suicide over the previous 30 days.
“Over the course of June 24-30, 2020,” the study found, “U.S. adults reported significantly increased adverse mental health conditions associated with COVID-19. Younger adults, racial / ethnic minorities, essential workers, and unpaid adult caregivers reported that they have experienced disproportionately worse outcomes of mental health, increased substance use and increased suicidal ideation. ”
These can be the kinds of tragic side effects that Drs. Fauci had in mind when he sat down the last few days for an interview with The Washington Post reporter Geoff Edgers. As always, these types of interviews with Drs. Fauci all sorts of news, with one of the headlines from this one to do with the remark of Dr. Fauci to Edgers that Fox News personality Tucker Carlson is adept at triggering “some of the madness in society to threaten me.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci’s focus in this interview also on the stress and despair that people are feeling at the moment, because we are all dealing with effects of the pandemic stemming from the actions of other peoples that we do nothing about. had to make and can ‘. t control – such as the failure of national leaders to contain the virus adequately and to fight it robustly.
Despite that, “this will end,” Fauci Edgers assured. ‘I mean, when you’re in something so stressful, you’re going to have to worry about despair, like’ My God, I’m in a hopeless situation. ‘It is not, it will end. We will get out of here and we will get back to normal. That it really is one of those situations – Do not give up. Do not hesitate, do not throw caution to the wind. We can end this … with public health measures and the scientific advances of vaccines and therapies and contraception, I’ll guarantee you that. “
Andy is a reporter in Memphis who also contributes to outlets such as Fast Company and The Guardian. If he does not write about technology, he can be found protective about his growing collection of vinyl, as well as his Whovianism nursing and binge on a variety of TV shows that you probably will not like.
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