Last week’s column discussed anxiety as a response to a perceived threat. It causes feelings of worry, apprehension, and tension and is driven by uncertainty. Danger or survival is a normal “fight or flight” reaction according to Donnelley et al. The sympathetic nervous system activates the hypothalamus which stimulates the pituitary gland to produce stress
Foss: Normal is coming, and quicker than we think | The Daily Gazette
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This simple query has spawned a surprisingly diverse array of articles and essays.
Some focus on medical experts, and their sense of when the virus will no longer be a threat, allowing society to cast all COVID-19-related caution aside.
Others take a more psychological angle, looking at people who are anxious about the upcoming shift to a post-pandemic society, and what might be done to assuage their fears.
And some offer a more provocative view, that life will never really return to normal, that the pandemic has permanently altered society as we know it. Some even go so far as to suggest that a return to normal isn’t desirable – that we should embrace the changes wrought by COVID-19.