Fear: Double-edged sword in Covid-19 pandemic

Slides by Tony Ryu

The purpose of this project was to investigate the role of fear in COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. Fear is a fundamental defensive mechanism of the human, which can change people’s behavior during stressful environments. The fear was created and intensified especially by the media, which acted as an inhibitor that caused people to stay at their homes during the lockdown. Fear towards COVID-19 made people to wash their hands more frequently, wear masks in public, and stay at the places where people feel safe. Even though fear brought a positive impact on people’s physical health, fear has caused negative impacts towards people especially women who are more vulnerable to fear. Fear has caused psychological disorders such as insomnia, anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The working class who needed to work to maintain their daily lives were impacted the most by the fear.  As more people feared COVID-19, less people came out to the public. This caused economic downfall and caused many people to lose their jobs. Even though everyone has an equal chance to get infected by the virus, high class people were able to choose to avoid the vulnerability of the virus while working class people do not have a choice but to face the vulnerability. As fear is necessary to maintain a healthier environment during the lockdown, ways to desensitize fear is provided as to decrease the negative impact of the fear in this pandemic.

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