On May 13, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced that those of us who have been vaccinated can throw our masks to the wind…almost. After 14 months of tightening, loosening, tightening and loosening restrictions, we’re told that all is well or, at least, better. The guidance is that we can go maskless and get up close and personal with friends and strangers as long as we’re vaccinated. Unvaccinated people should continue to wear masks and keep their distance— as if .

Not so fast, say many of us. We’ve been conditioned to be phobic. If we’ve paid attention to the news over the past year, we know that so many of our neighbors suffered when they let down their guard (and even when they didn’t). Images of people gasping for air in India and elsewhere make it difficult to party like it’s 1999.

The Birth of Coronophobia

Phobias are often defined as excessive, irrational fears. Why some people acquire phobias and others don’t is not clearly understood. According to learning theorists, however, phobias will develop when fear is reinforced. Enter corrnaphobia.

We know from multiple sources that most people have experienced increased anxiety since the pandemic began. The experts somehow distinguish between “normal” anxiety and over-the-top anxiety. One such expert splits hairs by saying “if you’re having difficulty meeting your commitments,” your anxiety has morphed into coronaphobia.

I wonder to what commitments this expert refers. Sitting in front of one’s computer seems pretty low risk. Those who must regularly face the public, however, were required put their fears on the back burner or lose their jobs. Some have chosen the later, especially when health and safety protocols were compromised. During the height of COVID infections, calling this an irrational decision is debatable.

What has made coronaphobia different from other phobias is that large numbers of us became fearful in a short period of time with good reason. A fine line divides a moderate/healthy amount of fear from excessive fear. The presence of uncertainty and mixed messaging also contributed to our fears. Nevertheless, not once were we told by scientists to go about our lives as if nothing happened. Even moderate amounts of fear have disturbed the quality of our lives.

We’ve all needed to acquire new behaviors and abandon old ones quickly. Those of us who have successfully mastered new practices might now find abandoning these habits difficult.

Learned Responses

Over the past year, we’ve been classically conditioned to respond to the stimuli presented by both mass media and social media. For 14 months, the news media has fed us a constant diet of alarming news about the pandemic. (We know that bad news sells.) In addition, we were urged—and sometimes mandated—to mask and keep our distance. In the early days of the pandemic, videos of the proper way to wipe down our groceries were circulated, adding to our worries.

Our learned fear responses worked. The numbers of infections, hospitalizations and deaths have plummeted in the U.S., in part because of our new behaviors and in part due to vaccinations.

From the very beginning, we were told by health experts and politicians that the pandemic would not end in a moment in time; the analogy of a dimmer switch rather than an on/off switch was often used. But, in fact, the opposite happened on May 13. The CDC did not provide a nuanced directive about indoor mask wearing (except on planes, trains and buses). Some of us are looking for that dimmer switch.

Systematic Desensitization

Phobias have one thing in common: they rarely disappear overnight.

As an example, let’s explore one of the most common phobias in the world: acrophobia—fear of heights. Many people can manage this phobia without intervention. Of course, they must avoid certain professions such as window washing, roof repair, tree pruning and cable installation, but that still leaves many other occupations.

If panic attacks occur when even contemplating heights or seeing images of heights, however, systematic desensitization or gradual exposure might be required. Exposure therapy must be individually designed depending on the heights that can be tolerated. Rather than scaling Everest, navigating a steep staircase could be an initial exposure.

Without clear guidelines on how to undo cornonaphobia, we’re each left to design our own exposure therapy and find our own dimmer switches. Perhaps we’ll carry our masks in our pockets ready to whip out when needed. Perhaps we’ll mask up in crowded situations only; perhaps we’ll wear them half-mast (or half-masked, as it were).

I still don my mask outdoors when I approach someone wearing a mask. I don’t want to startle anyone—we all have enough to scare us. I imagine I will continue to mask indoors while shopping and exercising even if my state no longer requires this of me. At some point, I’ll likely feel comfortable going totally maskless indoors, but I’m not there yet.

How about you?

“There’s something about most phobias where there’s a tiny, tiny corner where you think this really actually could happen.”

—Cartoonist Roz Chast