Witoubou Newmai
There is an apparent cavalier shrug of people in general even though the number of COVID-19 cases is fast rising. This corresponding proclivity of people to be complacent or appear to be so compared to the state of fear the people had experienced when there was a minuscule account of the disease in early 2020 can be due to various reasons.
In fact, the seeming cavalier shrug may not be taken as complacency. Many people are serious about the COVID-19 pandemic. However, lack of definite knowledge on COVID-19 by scientists and the corresponding inconsistency of information about the virus seemed to have also played in. As such, people are not sure what exactly they should do to protect themselves from the pandemic.
Another reason, as this writer had commented last year, could be due to optimism bias. There are some commentaries which attribute the people’s complacency on the COVID-19 issue to this factor.
“Optimism Bias (or the optimistic bias) is a cognitive bias that causes someone to believe that they themselves are less likely to experience a negative event,” Wikipedia explains, adding that it is also known as “unrealistic optimism or comparative optimism.”
Regarding the prevailing trends, as we go for a closer look at the situations, things indicate that there can be varied reasons for the observed cavalier attitude of the people. Aspects of familiarity, urgency, compulsion, insensitivity, etc., etc. can also be included for a deeper look, as much as we do care to rope in the aspect of optimism bias. We need to piece so many aspects together for larger commentaries as to why there is a certain degree of complacency or the apparent complacency of people as situations get tougher with time.
On the aspect of familiarity, it is said that “familiarity breeds contempt”. According to author and ‘collegiate missionary’ Peter Krol, “unexamined familiarity” will prevent people from looking at the Bible. He added that “such familiarity crowds out curiosity, [and] it imperceptibly stiffens necks, hardens hearts, and deafens ears.”
Have the people become too familiar with the COVID-19 issue that they are indifferent and hardened now?
Taking the above situations into account, and even as the definite characters of the virus is still being examined, the concerned authorities and the public must simply act responsibly before pointing fingers at the other. This is to say that demanding too much from each other without giving is hypocrisy.
