Psychological effect vs immune system, raises the pandemic conditions of COVID-19

Develop your immune system. What is the relation between the immune system, psychological stress, and coronavirus?
Many proverbs say, "be clear to opt the right one". Distractions from pandemic situations help to act better! How stress could induce pandemic conditions?

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The pandemic situation of novel coronavirus raised cautiousness to protect ourselves from the infection outbreak. Many questions are breaking everyone's head, what should we do to escape from it. This psychological impact has any relation with pandemic rise?

Psychology

Human psychology is more important to handle any situation wisely. If we are disturbed, we might not act appropriately. 

Every second, we hear about the fatalities because of coronavirus infections. The global pandemic situations are updating lively in many social media. Such constant updates lead everyone to fear, which weakens our thinking ability to choose the better way of precautions. The feeling of powerlessness caused to increase the public anxiety to know more about the pandemic news. The uninterrupted ringing of the pandemic news unknowingly increases the stress for everyone.

Psychology – Immune system

Our immune system is significantly related to our stress level. Segerstrom andMiller confirmed that stress could induce the disparate action of immune functions [1]. Stress can affect directly and indirectly our health system by reducing the immune system and starting bad habits like an unbalanced diet, etc., respectively. For further details, Mcleod [2] explains clearly the stress, illness, and the immune system.

Stress and Illness, Image from Ref. [2]

It is clear; stress could increase the possibilities of health disorders and susceptibility to viral infections. David Ropeik, an expert on risk communication, says, "The more worried we are, the more vulnerable we are to this disease."

What do we need to know?

Obviously, to control the pandemic situations, we need to know certain things.

1. Who are all more and less vulnerable to the disease?
2. How it spreads?
3. How to identify, what are the symptoms?
4. What is the emergency helpline?
5. Where are the nearby medical facilities?

Trusted sources

WHO (World Health Organization), CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and national public health official helplines are continuously updating the citizens. Instead of following vast social media, choose selective standard media updates from Facebook, Twitter, etc.  

"In times of uncertainty, people should strive for emotional balance. Maintain routines. Find someone who can help check fears and concerns. Don't talk frequently to the friend who's in a frenzy about it – fear, experts say, is contagious."  -  LynnBufka, Associate executive director for research and policy at the American Psychological Association, An expert on Anxiety, Stress, and Cultural issues

Personal experience & Outlook

We had a similar kind of experience. As we are living in South Korea, we were in the hotbed during Feb-Mar 2020 because of the COVID outbreak. We have heard about the rapid increase of infected cases from KCDC (Korea Center for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). It completely disturbed our life. To overcome the pandemic situation, we have started a group and routinely discussed the seriousness of the issue, fatalities, etc. As a result of a panic situation, some of them ended with losing the peace in their workplaces, shifting to new and isolated places, taking a wrong decision leading to job fire.

Fortunately, we have left the group, which indirectly increased fear and stress previously. We started to follow the instructions stated in WHO guidelines and listened to social media news twice in a day only. Inevitably, we had reduced our stress level and presently living peacefully without any infection.       

Hence, reducing the stress level is highly recommended in this pandemic situation. If we are calm and serene,

1. We can reduce the stress level
2. We can control the pandemic conditions

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Reference

[1] Psychological Stressand the Human Immune System: A Meta-Analytic Study of 30 Years of Inquiry, SC. Segerstrom and GE. Miller, Psychol Bull. 2004 (130) 601–630.

[2]. Stress, illness andthe immune system. Simply psychology, SA McLeod, 2010.   

Read more:

1. Coronavirus: Why are we so afraid? The psychology of powerlessness, USA Today 
2. Highlights Humans' Psychological Shortcomings In Assessing Danger, Kaiser Health News

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Author(s)

Prabakaran Shankar holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science and is a postdoctoral researcher. As a writer, interested in an analysis of the subject from a different perspective.
Lakshmishri Prabakaran holds a Ph.D. in Nanoscience and Technology and is a scientific researcher interested in exploring, and writing different styles of journals.

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