“Corona-phobia is affecting every single person,” said Jerusalem-based psychologist Michael Tobin. “I am seeing extreme anxiety in patients from across the spectrum. It is extreme panic.”
“Corona-phobia is affecting every single person,” said Jerusalem-based psychologist Michael Tobin. “I am seeing extreme anxiety in patients from across the spectrum. It is extreme panic.”
Tobin has been a psychologist for 46 years and has lived through social, economic and military conflicts. Rarely, he said, has he seen “the level of anxiety this sky high” as he is seeing from the spread of the coronavirus.
As of Thursday, more than 94,000 people have contracted the virus first detected in December and more than 3,200 deaths have resulted from the disease. In Israel, the government has continued to expand restrictions to protect the population from the lethal disease, known scientifically as COVID-19. By conservative estimates, more than 11,000 people are in home-quarantine in Israel, according to the Ministry of Health.
But Tobin said people are not panicking because of the rapid spread of the virus across the world, but rather because they are wired to fear the unknown. A new epidemic, such as coronavirus, triggers irrational fears in people.
“It is the fear of the unknown,” Tobin said. “It is the idea that my life is being intruded on, that anyone I am with can be suspected of carrying the virus and I am vulnerable.”
Moreover, he admitted that living in an era with high levels of government and media distrust, no one is sure what information they can trust.
“There are so many unknowns and everyone feeds off of everyone else’s fear,” he added. “The fear is more contagious than the virus itself.”
Dr. Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, added another element to why panic might be increasing and that is social media. She said that when the virus first broke out in China, Israelis did not really know about it. That, she explained, is because China has strict social media laws. The government does not let people tweet outside the country. Citizens use different social networks and the government moderates what appears in Google searches.
Tobin, too, said that he thinks the news sometimes sensationalizes the situation simply by constantly reporting on it. He cautioned people to stay calm or calm down.
“We can turn into an OCD [obsessive–compulsive disorder] world if this continues,” Tobin said.
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