Post Traumatic Lockdown Syndrome and the long tail of COVID
As a psychologist seeing patients on Telehealth through those two years of lockdowns in Melbourne I got to hear stories of COVID casualty first hand. I’m now seeing the long tail of PTLS (Post-Traumatic Lockdown Syndrome), and I wonder if the casualties of COVID might have been ameliorated if governments had applied System 3 Thinking in their decision-making:
What gets measured gets noticed. And the only statistics being reported during the pandemic were case numbers and deaths. In hindsight there were many data points that could have told a more nuanced story. Most of the deaths were occurring in the elderly and in nursing homes due to the failure of government-supervised quarantine controls. Most COVID-related deaths were co-morbid, meaning people were already battling underlying diseases. And most people were recovering from the virus with or without vaccines. This is where the System 3 Thinking dimension of Focus helps to pay attention to what really matters.
The reluctance to construct purpose-built quarantine centres until the tail end of the pandemic is curious given Australia’s 180-year experience quarantining overseas visitors. Who thought hotel rooms with their shared air-conditioning was a better idea? If we don’t learn from the dimension of Life Experience, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
And while Decisiveness is a critical element of managing a pandemic, continuing to make the same decisions isn’t. Each variant of COVID-19 behaved differently. Governments could have learned from the emergent patterns and shifted resources to where they could be most effective. Roping off children’s playgrounds and imposing curfews did nothing to stop the spread of the Delta or Omicron variants.
Emotional Regulation is a critical dimension of System 3 Thinking in times of doubt, dilemma, or disruption. That doesn’t mean shutting down emotions but rather recognising and responding to them. Our leaders too often either stoked fear or presented a leaden-faced stoicism. Some leaders tried to identify with community emotion, but it seemed disingenuous if they themselves were immune from it.
In a country founded on the myth of ‘mateship’ – where communities help each other in times of fire and flood - it was disappointing that the dimension of Compassion wasn’t more forthcoming in this country during the pandemic. Instead, there were glaring examples of a lack of compassion from governments: family members blocked from visiting dying relatives; school children being checked by police each day they crossed state borders to get to school; nursing home residents dying in appalling conditions due to a lack of trained and well-paid staff. We should be judged by our attitude and our actions towards the most vulnerable amongst us.
And finally, there was no recognition or acknowledgement of the diverse cultures in our Australian society. Government orders were often not translated into other languages until too late. Refugees found themselves shut in their housing commission flats without proper explanation, compounding the trauma and grief they had already suffered to get to Australia. Daily TV announcements were made by the same white politicians wearing the same expressions. Where was the dimension of Tolerance for Divergent Values? Where were the cultural leaders of our First Nations, Sudanese, Bangladeshi, Vietnamese, Filipino, Indian, and Chinese communities, to name a few? We need diversity of thinking to face such a disruptive event and avoid a high casualty rate.
What do you think? How could we have avoided the casualties of COVID?
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