‘You should die’: The plague that is ‘COVID rage’
The voice mail said: You should die."
The target of the death wish would seem an unlikely one, except this is the red-faced new normal, nearly 600 days into the pandemic, when the irksome triggers retaliation beyond any traditional sense of proportionality.
The message was left at the office of the Ancaster Fair.
Fair officials had announced they would close to the public but stay open for those hosting exhibits, and family members of exhibitors, but only if they showed proof of vaccination.
We will strive to make the very best of 2021 while planning for 2022 and our next 171 years," the fair's website read.
You should die.
COVID-shortened fuses are all the rage.
A woman punches a McDonald's server in a Walmart on Upper James Street, after being asked to see a vaccine receipt; a panic button is installed in The Hearty Hooligan restaurant on Ottawa Street North in the event of unruly customers.
A man yells at staff at a downtown pharmacy, because they won't let him inside to buy a birthday card without wearing a mask; a restaurateur argues with a woman about the vaccine mandate on social media and suggests she eat food that will trigger a fatal allergic reaction.
A Hamilton Spectator health reporter receives an email about a COVID story that says her lazy, sleazy, fear-mongering journalism is a disgrace," while another calls the coverage fascist propaganda."
Even short of violence and rhetorical bomb-throwing, there is ample evidence of a palpable tension in the air," as one sociologist calls it.
For some, it's simply a recurring edge to one's mood; all too easily finding little things to be mad about, perhaps manifested in excessive muttering under a mask.
For others, anger has led to violations of what had been the bounds of civility, as the pandemic resurrects primitive instincts of the ID and lays waste to the golden rule of treating others as you would have them treat you.
What happened?
The short answer is the respiratory virus that has led to the deaths of more than 28,000 Canadians and 4.5 million worldwide, and disrupted everything from relationships to economies.
The longer answer is layered in psychology and sociology, and suggests the animosity might not end any time soon.
Psychiatrists say anger is a normal human emotion, but in times of extreme stress, it can stray beyond the realm of efficient coping device.
The anger, I understand it," said Kathleen Leach, a pharmacist and owner of Sutherland's Pharmacy on James Street South. But not the abuse. It's demoralizing."
Leach said at least six or seven times a week a customer displays unreasonable anger" at her staff, over masking, or venting about the vaccine mandate.
They don't want to get the vaccine, and take it out on us. It puts us in an awkward spot. You need to respect us."
There was talk of anger as the dominant cultural force" even pre-pandemic, in 2018.
Back then, U.S. president Donald Trump was frequently blamed for inciting an era of insult-spewing and bad manners, but he was perhaps less a trendsetter than reflecting the well-established, invective-soaked world of social media.
Some suggest that widespread societal anger historically comes in waves, influenced largely by economic disruption. Extended periods of harmony, said a British historian in an article in The Guardian, are instances where we've managed to persuade people to take their foot off other people's throats when they feel secure enough."
In that vein, the COVID-19 pandemic presents a sudden, massive undermining of people's sense of order and security, ranging from fear of illness, to aggravation over mask and vaccine mandates - whether one is annoyed by the rules, or annoyed by those resisting them.
The pandemic compromises an individual's sense of control over their circumstances, and fuels COVID rage,'" said Marisa Young, a sociologist at McMaster University.
She likens the psychological impact to living in a dangerous neighbourhood, where one is bombarded with ambient stressors and threats."
The extent to which a person feels anger from the stress, and acts upon it in damaging ways, varies according to factors including coping resources and personality traits, suggested Randi McCabe, a clinical psychologist and director in the Mental Health and Addictions Program at St. Joseph's Healthcare.
A subset of people may experience psychological reactance' in response to pandemic-related public health restrictions that impact individual freedoms," she wrote in an email to The Spectator.
She said reactance is a negative emotional state where individuals may feel hostility and aggression when facing such restrictions, or when the rules keep shifting or are unevenly applied.
And they may respond by doing the opposite behaviours of those recommended, to the point where they have lost sight of the forest for the trees.'"
She added that everyone is impacted by this pandemic and thus people have less patience and tolerance as the stakes feel high. We see it leading to higher irritability and less ability to manage stress across the board."
In many instances overkill characterizes the reaction: another of the voice mails to the Ancaster Fair likened their policy of following vaccination rules to racial segregation.
When someone tweeted that Hamilton's low vaccination rate was cause for celebration, another cracked-back: I hope your story ends up in an ICU stay, as you plead for the vaccine, not knowing it's too late ... You are a terrible human being."
A business owner angry that The Spectator published a story referencing the vaccine mandate for restaurants - which the provincial government implemented starting Sept. 22 - emailed a Letter to the Editor accusing the Spec of publishing untrue, deceitful words," adding that the reporter should clean up your s---" and issue a correction, or else he would pursue charges for public incitement of hatred."
Journalists covering the pandemic with traditional media outlets like The Spectator, who have relayed depressing and sometimes inconsistent information from public health officials, routinely receive abusive messages.
Social media like Facebook and Twitter, meanwhile, offer a forum for information and debate that runs the gamut from accurate to false and inflammatory.
At its worst, social media can create an anger bandwagon effect, or emotional contagion," and also motivate users to seek only those opinions that reinforce their own.
Young said this constant confirmation bias" can lead to mistrust between those who don't think alike. It builds a level of disengagement and a lack of empathy toward others."
She added that political and moral divides" over such things as vaccination, have led people to question whether their neighbour is who they thought they were."
Perhaps suspicion and hostility will eventually fade along with the virus, and pre-pandemic etiquette and empathy will snap back into place.
Western University sociologist Michael Gardiner offers a more sobering view, arguing that society has always been fractured along lines of class, gender, and race, but the rifts were blurred by ritualistic civility."
By this reckoning, he suggests, the pandemic did not create division, but instead stripped away the veneer and revealed the rot, and might be the veritable good hard look in the mirror we might need."
Clearly one thing the pandemic fallout has illustrated, is that to the extent a vigorous social fabric is maintained, it is not the default or natural state of the human condition.
Rather, it is manufactured, and learned, but also vulnerable when severely tested.
You are a terrible human being.
In the midst of the Spanish flu pandemic in 1919, W.B. Yeats wrote The Second Coming," channeling the gathering darkness in society.
The aftermath of the First World War colours the poem, but so does the pandemic, as Yeats' wife was deathly ill from the virus, and also pregnant.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold," the Irishman wrote of their new normal.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world ... The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity."
Jon Wells is a Hamilton-based reporter and feature writer for The Spectator. Reach him via email: jwells@thespec.com