The Fear Society
The Coronavirus Pandemic has proliferated a series of emotions in society. The most notable ones are insecurity, impotence and unprotection. But another feeling has become the motto of the new social routine: the fear
SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL — In a period of about two years and four months, the Coronavirus pandemic reached a stage where it was about to enter its childhood. During this time, the Covid-19 was responsible for killing, worldwide, a total of 485.324.712 people, according to the Johns Hopkins University findings. In the Brazilian case, the Single Health System (SUS) counted, in that interval, an amount of 659.241 deaths.
Even with more than 10 billion doses of vaccine applied, a number higher than the global population, which today is about 7.9 billion people, the pandemic is still transforming the people’s routines. One of these modifications is shown by the emotion of fear.
Whether it is the fear of assuming normality from the vaccine or the fear of the contagious disease, this emotion is present in all layers of a global society. As far as behavioural psychology is concerned, fear is an unpleasant emotion that’ll be triggered by a perception of real or imaginary danger.
Because of that, at the same time, from the social isolation disseminated by the public politics to stop the spread of Covid-19, some people have tried to reconcile and restore the emotional neediness in other ways than by the physical contact and some ended up creating a bigger distance.
According to the behavioural psychologist Carolina Montanieri, there are people that choose to extend the distancing because the fear ended up affecting their actions in a way that turns out to be difficult to deal with the reality. “This can happen due to the lack of social ability, of support network or even because some people have a fragile attitude”, explains.
Not by chance, the pandemic highlighted differences in attitudes that were adopted by the individuals. One of them consists in the social isolation motivated by the excesses of fear-filled nowadays by a restricted group of people. He’s characterized by not wanting to go to public places anymore, especially where there is agglomeration.
Another behaviour noted is that where it is possible to assume the normalcy of life while respecting all the protection and security protocols against the virus and its proliferation. However, there is an attitude taken by another social portion that is even more malleable.
This third group may even have a certain consciousness of reality, but live without fear and act as if the virus doesn’t exist. “Good to know that there are people with more consciousness and that feel more empathy from the others, having responsibilities and uniting themselves to benefit the community”, considers the personal friend Renata Cruz.
These social links, which are enforced by the feelings of respect and empathy, are taken by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim as the glue that unites us as a society, but, if she is weakened, the society can collapse. However, in circumstances such as the pandemic, the risks of weakening the social links are large and can result in what he defined as the anomic state, of breaking the rules that built the social life.
However, Durkheim also points out that is rightly in extreme situations, like wars, the social links are reinforced. In that context, it is essential to know the differences between what is a community and what is society, concepts that, in the sociology camp, have different meanings.
As the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies points out, a community is based on a group of people that have proximity relations, being able to share religion, territory, economic activities or even genetic links.
Society, in its turn, is based on a dispersed social grouping, which involves scattered individuals, yet is connected by systems of laws and values. “As the social science now sees as something less homogeneous than Durkheim assumed, as marked not only by cohesion but also by conflicts, I think that the risks of anomie coexist, in situations like the pandemic, with the reinforcement of the bonds of solidarity”, reflects the sociologist Pedro Jaime, a sociology professor from FEI University Center and ESPM. “But remembering, with Karl Marx, another classic author of sociology, that the pandemic highlighted, and even deepened, the class inequalities that marked the society”, he opposes.
Even though it is divided between class inequalities and the coexistence of anomie with solidarity, the fact is that society as a whole was affected by the pandemic. However, it is undeniable that the children built the most reached portion of the population, especially due to the restriction of physical contact.
For the clinic psychologist Patrícia Rivoli Rossi, it is important to talk constantly with children about this and inform them that the physical proximity and the connection with people, including family and friends, are good for health, but the present moment asks that care should be taken to promote the protection against Covid-19. “The young generation is living a proximity restriction in its stage of development, which means, during the period that she’s learning about how the world is”, she explains. “Dropping the conversation can make those little humans understand that the physical proximity is dispensable”, she highlights.
For that the population, in a hypothetical scenario of another pandemic, doesn’t feel affected in the same way that the conflict against Covid-19, the politicians of the nations worldwide will need to show more interest in the care of their people, announce the correct information and follow what was indicated by the official organs.
If that’d be the case, the biomedical Ana Almeida believes that the people will have more access to which precautions are needed and how serious is the disease. “The ideal would be, beyond all the precautions in disseminating the correct information, more television and internet actions could be done, especially by the politicians and people from media, with the intention of passing correct information from just one source”, she idealizes. “In that way, we’d not have so many data mismatches”, concludes.
In the Brazil case, therefore, for the population to reach a good preparation for the fight against another pandemic, it’ll be necessary, first, that the politicians defend the project of an integral, egalitarian and universal health system at the same time committing to its improvement.
According to psychologist Bruno Henrique Cardoso, also will be necessary for critics professionals and searchers, committed to the veracity of information and with an interdisciplinary training model that helps both in the production, the scientific announcement and also in the fight against false information. “At this moment, I don’t feel that we have those requirements, nor that we are prepared for another pandemic”, he observes.
