Sun, October 18, 2020, 11:26 AM EDT
As the Coronavirus Surges, a New Culprit Emerges: Pandemic Fatigue
Diners at a restuarant in Wausau, Wis., Oct. 15, 2020 (Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times)
Excerpts Only Per TOS:
“People are done putting hearts on their windows and teddy bears out for scavenger hunts,” said Katie Rosenberg, the mayor of Wausau, Wisconsin, a city of 38,000 where a hospital has opened an extra unit to treat COVID-19 patients. “They have had enough.”
In parts of the world where the virus is resurging, the outbreaks and a rising sense of apathy are colliding, making for a dangerous combination.
The issue is particularly stark in the United States but a similar phenomenon is setting off alarms across Europe, where researchers from the World Health Organization estimate that about half the population is experiencing “pandemic fatigue.”
If the spring was characterized by horror, the fall has become an odd mix of resignation and heedlessness. People who once would not leave their homes are now considering dining indoors for the first time.
In some parts of the world, behavior has changed, and containment efforts have been tough and effective. Infections have stayed relatively low for months in places like South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and China, where the virus first spread. After a dozen cases were detected in the Chinese city of Qingdao, authorities sought this past week to test all of its 9.5 million residents.
“We have very little backlash here against these types of measures,” said Siddharth Sridhar, an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Hong Kong. “If anything, there’s a lot of pushback against governments for not doing enough to contain the virus.”
The response in the United States and much of Europe has been far different. While residents willingly banded together in the spring, time has given rise to frustration and revolt.
Sick people are telling contact tracers they picked up the virus while trying to return to ordinary life. Beth Martin, a retired school librarian who is working as a contact tracer in Marathon County, Wisconsin, said she interviewed a family that had become sick through what is now a common situation — at a birthday party for a relative in early October.
“Another case said to me, ‘You know what, it’s my adult son’s fault,’” she recalled. “‘He decided to go to a wedding, and now we’re all sick.’”
Mark Harris, county executive for Winnebago County, Wisconsin, said he had been frustrated by the “loud minority” in his county that had been successfully pushing back against any public health measures to be taken against the pandemic.
They have a singular frame of mind, he said: “‘This has been inconveniencing me long enough, and I’m done changing my behavior.’”
In many states, businesses are open and often operating free of restrictions, even as hospitalizations have been driven up by coronavirus patients. This past week in Wisconsin, a field hospital at the state fairgrounds with a 530-bed capacity was reopened for coronavirus patients.
Back then, it was not as hard to figure out where sick patients had contracted the coronavirus. There were outbreaks at meatpacking plants in town, and many cases were tied to them. Now it is more complicated.
“The scary scenario is the number of patients who really just don’t know where they got it,” Landrum said. “That suggests to me that it’s out there spreading very easily.”
“We’re trying to get people to change their behavior back to being more socially distanced and more restrictive with their contacts,” Landrum said. “There’s been a false sense of complacency. And now it’s just a lot harder to do that.”
