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COVID 19: Denial is a killer.
COVID 19 has become a disease of the mind, and that is where it can win. We must fight back—thoughts from a psychiatrist.
Denial is natural but a barrier to survival.
Denial is a natural defense mechanism against trauma. In most cases, this is not a deep denial, and the person is somewhat aware of the irreconcilable nature of their beliefs with reality. It becomes psychotic in some cases, where the reality is repressed so deeply that a secondary alternative and delusional reality reigns.
When it came to COVID-19 many could not accept the true and horrifying nature of the situation and preferred to succumb to obscure conspiracy theories that presented a more tolerable alternative to real. Ideas such as ‘covid is a hoax’ and ‘it was due to 5G’ were more palatable than an unseen and, at first, the omnipotent virus only ever imagined in movies for most.
The reasons for this were multiple and likely included creating an external enemy; ‘the people controlling the hoax,’ which enabled some level of agency on the part of the person, to which they could rebel, be it not wearing a mask or marching outside of hospitals. Another explanation is that the threat of infection and death was unbearable, that conspiracy was…
