On June 21 (Dispatch 87), I wrote: “So, bored, tired, perhaps alone and physically, mentally and emotionally tired, we let things slip away. And the virus wins. “
There is a term for this, pandemic fatigue, and while the second wave hits Europe and the third wave the United States, everyone is talking about it.
“Pandemic fatigue is real and it is spreading.” That’s on tuesday Wall street journal. “Sick of Covid-19? Here’s why you might have pandemic fatigue. “That’s on Conversation.com from Oct. 23.” As coronavirus rises, a new culprit emerges: pandemic fatigue. “That’s from Oct. 17. New York Times.
And on Monday, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, spoke of pandemic fatigue. “Working from home, educating children remotely, not being able to celebrate milestones with friends and family, or not being there to mourn loved ones, is difficult and the fatigue is real,” he said.
The problem has become serious enough that the WHO, in early October, publishes a document entitled “Pandemic Fatigue: Revitalizing the Public to Prevent Covid-19.” In the document, the WHO actually defined pandemic fatigue.
“Pandemic fatigue is … demotivation to follow recommended protective behaviors, gradually emerging over time and affected by a range of emotions, experiences and perceptions,” the document says.
“It is expressed through a growing number of people who do not sufficiently follow the recommendations and restrictions, decrease their effort to stay informed about the pandemic and have lower perceptions of risk related to Covid-19,” the document adds.
It would be nice if Covid fatigue simply involved how people feel; Unfortunately, this also extends to how people behave, and it is the behavior that puts them and others at risk. Worse still, because its behavior is directly related to an increase in infections, governments may be forced to react by imposing restrictions on movement and activities, even a partial blockade (most countries are very reluctant to follow the path of full or hard block again). And when this happens, a population already in the grip of pandemic fatigue is unlikely to listen. That is happening in Europe and the United States, and it is also happening in India.
So what should governments and administrators do? As the WHO Director-General put it on Monday: “We cannot give up … Leaders must balance the disruption of lives and livelihoods with the need to protect health workers and health systems at risk. as intensive care is filled. “
Law enforcement may not work in all cases and may end up being counterproductive.
However, the problem will be familiar to behavioral economists. In 2012, Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, then Executive Editor of Mint, wrote an article titled “How Behavioral Science Can Reduce Deaths on Railroad Tracks.”
In the article, Rajadhyaksha detailed how Final Mile Consulting, a company headed by Biju Dominic that used behavioral economics, cognitive neurology and anthropology to shape people’s behavior, did this in a part of Mumbai: “The team from Final Mile hovered around the deadliest crossovers for several weeks, melting into the crowd, “says Dominic,” like method actors living the character. ”
“They quickly realized that the people crossing the tracks were overconfident, one of the biases that behavioral scientists say is connected to our brains, the same bias that ensures that equity analysts overestimate corporate earnings or that cigarette smokers refuse to believe that they can be attacked down by cancer, ”Rajadhyaksha wrote.
It is the same overconfidence that makes people believe they are unlikely to contract Covid-19, or assume they are safe because most people who do get infected are asymptomatic or experience only mild symptoms.
I won’t tell you how Final Mile solved the railroad crossing problem. You can read it yourself by scanning the QR code with this column.
Actually, the WHO document has some interesting suggestions for managers on how to “allow people to live their lives, but reduce the risk”, as it is the disruption of their lives that is perhaps the biggest contributor to fatigue. pandemic. This implies: differentiating “between lower risk and higher risk activities”; guidelines to “get on with life reducing the risk of transmission”; proactive planning of “end of year celebrations”; avoid canceling all cultural events and finding “creative solutions” to host them; and “avoid judgment and blame.” It is always more difficult to protect people from themselves.
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