The rise of Covid anxiety syndrome. Do you have it?
The anxiety syndrome is characterised by compulsively checking for symptoms of Covid, avoidance of public places, and obsessive cleaning, a pattern of “maladaptive behaviours” adopted when the pandemic started. Now researchers have raised the alarm that the obsessive worrying and threat avoidance, including being unwilling to take public transport or bleaching your home for hours, will not subside easily, even as Covid is controlled.
Guardian
“The concept of “Covid anxiety syndrome” was first theorised by professors last year, when Ana Nikčević, of Kingston University, and Marcantonio Spada, at London South Bank University, noticed people were developing a particular set of traits in response to Covid.”
My layman’s theory is that it is Covid anxiety syndrome is a meme that escaped from the media talking points laboratory and multiplied uncontrollably, eventually turning on its creators.
Most of the afflicted who were studied were “white and university”. The covid anxiety syndrome may prove correlated with the mysterious disease that sent thousands to psychiatrists simply from the knowledge that Donald Trump existed in the world. Since the 2010s people been stalked by nameless fears of vague provenance.
The global world lives in an age of anxiety. We live longer than ever but never more fearfully than now.