The On-again Off-again Virus Seasons a Challenge for Introverts

You mean I have to take my mask OFF? So ask many folks when the COVID pandemic lets up in 2022. Mass vaccination and lowering infection rates meant losing a lot that we'd come to enjoy, such as privacy and peace and quiet.. Now, hugging would come back. Bad news for introverts. The infections-down bit is great, but the Return Of The Hug … not. 

COVID gave us a blessed escape from near-strangers flinging their arms around us. Then, back to normality, we no longer got to stay far from the madding crowd. It surges up to our doorsteps. And we lose those snaky well-spaced line-ups at stores. Once again people push up behind you and breathe down your neck. Even if it has no COVID germs -- I don't want their breath.

"We want to get back to normal", say extroverts, and people in the media. Oh no we don't, says the introvert. Lockdown meant privacy, working from home, sitting quietly with a good book, escaping the misery of public transport. Freedom.

Remember before COVID when self-appointed media therapist-advisers told us how to "survive the stress" of Christmas, Halloween, Mother's Day, back-to-school and every other normal event in the calendar? These things were treated like major threats to mental health. Then came the Pandemic, and the experts told us how to "survive the stress" of losing all the days we had previously been told were driving us insane. Now we had isolation, mask-wearing, social distancing, peace, quiet, privacy … Oh, wait: to some those are the cure, not the disorder.

In the peace of isolation and privacy we lost resilience to noise, full parking lots, packed shopping malls ... but that's what we got pitched back into when things got 'back to normal'. We no longer have an excuse to avoid things we don't want to do. How many crack under the strain? We've become agoraphobes -- soft, meditative and less combative -- and a new Social Problem looms: People Experiencing Pandemic-Loss. 

A new syndrome the mental health media pundits can tell us how to survive: Post Pandemic-Loss Disorder. 

But wait, introverts, there's a remedy: if you get vaccinated, just say you didn't. Then people will give you a blessedly wide berth. (You'll be not only dangerous but a criminal -- doubly insulated!) It will be almost like old pandemic times.

So that's a way out after all -- hug the plan to yourself.

A mask story:  “Masquerade”, The Writers and Readers Magazine, March-April 2021, p. 114. https://thewritersandreadersmagazine.com/

Is a New Class of "Untouchables" Being Created?

Premier John Horgan of B.C. is suggesting that people who receive COVID vaccines will be rewarded with a certain “flexibility” not available to those who don't choose vaccination. He is “not prepared to speculate” on what limits to civil rights will be placed on the latter.

If there are limits at all as regards access to services, housing, employment and movement, it will create two classes of British Columbians: those with full rights and those without. Government-led ostracism of some will lead to full social ostracism, and a class of Untouchables will be created. A lot of very lonely people will be wandering around, shunned by neighbours. At a time when people are concerned about “marginalization”, Premier Horgan is proposing to create a new marginalized class. Marginalization on the basis of health choices is no better than that on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender identity and so on.

“Security of the person” under the Canadian Constitution includes freedom to choose what substances will be inserted into our bodies. Some people would consider no right more fundamental than that.

We also have the right, under the Personal Information Protection Act, to keep health information private. No one has the right to force anyone else to reveal whether they've been vaccinated or not: this is privileged information.

The Untouchables, under Horgan's proposed policy, will not have the same civil rights as everyone else, despite the fact that the cornerstone of civil rights in Canada is equality.

Where will those who avail themselves of their right to make their own health choices be put when they are barred from social life and public spaces, from earning an income, paying rent and shopping for food? Where will they be housed? In re-education camps?

Once we get post-COVID, let's change the lexicon

Once we've inoculated COVID away

there'll be no need for certain words to stay

Let's stop talking of “isolation”,

“plexiglass”, “meters” and “vaccination”

Don't say “lockdown” or mention a mask,

and whether you're vaccinated I won't ask

Don't say “challenged”, don't say “bubble”,

all reference to “distance” reminds us of trouble

Stop saying “tunnel”, with light at the end of,

or planks or curves we flattened the bend of

Don't say “essential” of services or workers,

or visitors, travel, or virtual shirkers

Don't say “needle” or even “arm”,

it reminds us of horror, it causes alarm

Doctors, don't say “herd immunity”

and talk of “respirators” with impunity

To skip all reference would be wiser,

to Moderna, Astrazeneca and Pfizer

When we hear “pivot”, “variant” and “surge”

covering our ears becomes an overwhelming urge

But if COVID ever ends, these words will melt away,

we'll choose other language, having other things to say

Maybe something eloquent, not said in rhyme,

we can change that too, in another place and … hour

Door Knob Phobia in COVID-time

Psychologists have noticed the emergence of a new mental illness, and wonder why it doesn't get the attention all the others do. People suffering from Door Knob Phobia need help. They need understanding. They lose the ability to work, socialize and make a living. A Foundation has formed to apply for funding to help them.

What door-knob-phobics fear is germs on door handles. As we know, coronavirus can be anywhere. It hangs in the air, it lands on surfaces, it seethes in lobbies, shops and buses … and door handles. Not only should you not touch these, you shouldn't even go near them. Shouldn't even look at them. When you go through doors that open automatically, shut your eyes. The danger though, is that you might bump into someone coming the other way. And they might have coronavirus. And you might die.

So you don't go out.

The sight of door handles is so distressing that you can't even touch the door handles inside your house, those that only you have touched before and that you've scrubbed a hundred times. You know you're being irrational but you can't help it; you're addicted to imagining germs multiplying obscenely on door handles, no matter how often you wash them. In fact, the more you wash them the germ-ier they become.

You're told by experts a hundred times a day to wash your hands (hand-washing is itself no longer obsessive-compulsive -- it's now healthy) but what's the use of washing, if you have to touch a door handle? So you're trapped inside. You have nightmares in which you're desperate to get outside -- you must go outside -- but you can't escape because going out means going through the door. Which you won't do.

People with claustrophobia are especially hard hit by this mental illness, because their knob-phobic desire to stay indoors now has to do battle with their desire to go outdoors, and the stress of keeping their phobias straight can be overwhelming. It can lead to divorce and family breakdown, especially when family members are unsympathetic.

Sufferers however just can't stand being inside and can't stand going through the door. Not if they have to open it. But when they consider not closing it in the first place, they fear being watched. They feel exposed, and then they get agoraphobia. These pan-phobic victims are ripped apart as if by a pack of wolves: claustrophobia, agoraphobia, and doorknobophobia battling across their precarious mental universe.

They are told to join self-help groups -- online of course -- but research has shown that those who fear door handles also come to fear invisible germs on computer keyboards and cellphones. Experts are studying the linkages but research is in its infancy, and is under-funded. Sufferers therefore have appealed to donors to kick-start some crowd-funding, but donors have failed to respond. They suggest sufferers have a door kick-down instead.

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