– In which Dorn is just getting tired.
In these days of self-isolation, social distancing, and a greatly reduced number of activities available to pass the time, various forms of fatigue are an ever-present risk. I’ve succumbed to baking fatigue, reading fatigue, TV fatigue, opera fatigue, and writing-blog-post fatigue. (Calling something you have gotten bored with a “fatigue” gives it so much more gravitas, don’t you think? Plus it’s no longer your fault—it’s like a syndrome, which you picked up from working so hard.)
One of the most prevalent characteristics of everything we do these days is caution. It’s no suprise that everywhere, “caution fatigue” is on the rise.
Caution fatigue is defined by Wiktionary as a “desensitization to alarm signals, caused by lengthy or frequent exposure, and resultant slowed or absent responses to new alarms.”
We’re certainly saturated with alarm signals, with levels of sickness and death from covid that seem to break records every day. Nothing of our former lives, it seems, is without danger—not working, playing, visiting friends or family, not even mundane tasks like reading the mail or gassing the car.
I need only to look out the window at our little beach to see the throngs of non-mask-wearing, non-social-distancing swimmers, sunbathers and partiers increase every day. The virus is still here, moreso than ever if one thinks about it, but they’re just tired of thinking about it.
Kathleen told me once of a accident she saw, where a woman pulled out from a stop sign in front of an oncoming car, and was immediately hit. When asked why she pulled out when the approaching auto was clearly visible, she said, “I had been waiting at that stop sign for a break in the traffic for like five minutes. I just got tired of waiting.” That poor woman was suffering bad from caution fatigue.
I can see how caution fatigue could have some evolutionary survival value. If any situation is unavoidable, now matter how depressing or dangerous, perhaps it’s better to be able to step back from it, try your best to function without focusing too hard on the tiger in the room. Maybe it’s a variant of the instinct that is seen in everything from humans to flatworms, that tells you that if something doesn’t work, eventually you’ll have to try something else. Even so, we’re hardly at the point yet where we can’t go on as medical experts say we should. Four months without seeing a movie or eating my favorite Nick’s sausage is annoying, but it’s hardly cause to abandon all common sense, yet.
I am hoping that the country will be hit with a new wave of fatigue soon: “denial fatigue”. It must be hard to continue to deny the evidence of one’s own eyes and ears concerning the seriousness of the pandemic. I’m really hoping that those working so hard at denying it will soon tire of their labors, and start behaving in a way that will make living in a post-covid world safer for me.
Even in parts of the country where the number of cases is still just in the hundreds, and the number of deaths is in the tens (like my own home county), one can’t really avoid seeing the signs everywhere—shops are closed, masks are required in grocery stores, public buildings and parks all literally bear large warning signs.
Sure, it’s easier to deny the evidence when you are surrounded by like-minded people, and you haven’t been personally impacted by the threat. You may be able to dismiss the warnings by as conspiracies by foreigners, or scientists, or worst yet foreign scientists to make you believe something untrue. But not to believe even your own doctor on an issue of your health and safety, what an effort that must take! Surely many covid-deniers must be close to worn out from the hard work of covid-denying!
So that’s how I get through a day when it seems so exhausting to take care not to get infected—I hope for a time over the rainbow, when others are equally tired of denying the need to distance, to wash, to mask. I really think that when everyone does it, being careful will become easier and less fatiguing for all of us, and maybe as an added side benefit, less people will sicken and die!
Here’s hoping!
Dorn
6/28/2020