Ep. 70: Post-Pandemic Psychology with Dr. Steven Taylor

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In October 2019, Dr. Steven Taylor, clinical psychologist and professor at the University of British Columbia, published his eerily timed book, The Psychology of Pandemics, just weeks before the first cases of COVID-19 were discovered in Wuhan. On this week’s episode, Dr. Taylor joins guest host Dr. Jack Muskat, Medcan’s clinical director of mental health, to discuss the lessons we can learn from pandemics and predict what the future of mental health may look like post-COVID. He also explores the potential for an oncoming Roaring ‘20s. 

LINKS

To learn more about Dr. Taylor, head over to his website. 

Find his book, The Psychology of Pandemics: Preparing for the Next Global Outbreak of Infectious Disease, on Amazon. 

Dr. Taylor also co-wrote a recent study in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders, exploring post-traumatic growth in relation to COVID-19.

Read this CTV News article exploring “cave syndrome,” in which Dr. Taylor is quoted. 

And check out this feature in Smithsonian Magazine that studies the end of the 1918 pandemic to consider our post-pandemic existence. 

INSIGHTS

On a psychological level, pandemics are incredibly polarizing and tend to bring out extremes in people. With COVID-19, for example, on one end of the spectrum, we’re seeing highly anxious people who have become extremely sheltered — a.k.a. those with COVID stress syndrome. On the other end, are people who think this pandemic is nothing more than an exaggerated hoax. Most of the research we have is around those who are anxious and suffering with intrusive thoughts and a compulsive need for reassurance. “COVID stress syndrome fits as an adjustment disorder,” Dr. Taylor explains. “That means, when the pandemic is over, many people who have the syndrome [will be] at risk of developing chronic anxiety problems as a result.” [12:12]

People are resilient and are capable of bouncing back, even in the toughest of circumstances. Even better? “There’s also pre-COVID research suggesting that some people will not simply bounce back to where they were, they will grow as human being,” Dr. Taylor explains. Dr. Taylor studied this phenomenon, called post traumatic growth, early on in the pandemic, and found that many people (who hadn’t been infected with COVID) were feeling more resilient and experiencing a greater appreciation for their lives. While this is great news, Taylor has discovered that these feelings of growth can be self-deceptive; the longer the pandemic has gone, the more people have realized that their overall mental health has worsened and they had actually been trying to talk themselves into feeling better. [16:11]

We need to think of COVID like a marathon, according to Dr. Taylor. Often, we view the last third of a marathon as the most difficult, but the hardest part is actually everything leading up to arriving at the starting line. “COVID-19 is getting us to the starting line for the next pandemic. We need to be prepared — we weren’t for this one,” he says. “One thing we have to understand is that pandemics are not a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. There have been 20 pandemics over the past 200 years. And now with growing population, growing mobility, airline travel, climate change and so forth, we can expect to see more pandemics in the decades, or perhaps years, ahead. So this is a wake up call for us.” [19:52]

As for what our post-pandemic lives will look like? Expect a miniature version of the Roaring ‘20s—though it will probably be less exuberant and shorter lived than the original. “Humans are inherently social creatures—that’s etched into our genomes,” says Dr. Taylor. “When all these restrictions are lifted, many people, probably most people, will go back out and resume their social lives.” With that will likely come larger events and increased spending. [24:29]

That said, it’s important to remember that COVID has only acted as a catalyst towards certain things, like less frequent visits to the movie theatre. “COVID [has accelerated] all the trends that were in place beforehand—the trend of working from hone, watching Netflix instead of going to the cinema … the tendency to make your apartment a pleasure palace,” says Dr. Taylor. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the end of movie theatres forever— there’s still a large social aspect to it, of course—while other things, like restaurants, Dr. Taylor believes, will have no problem bouncing back. [23:50]

Right now, it may feel impossible to picture a post-pandemic world, where you’re going to concerts and eating at restaurants again. This is just anchoring bias, or when you rely on current conditions to predict the future. So, for example, if it’s gloomy outside, you may feel bummed out. The same thing has happened during lockdown. But don’t worry, it will pass. “I think people will be surprised at the extent to which they rapidly resume normal, busy social lives,” says Dr. Taylor. [27:31]

EPISODE 70:

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PANDEMICS

WITH DR. STEVEN TAYLOR FINAL

WEB TRANSCRIPT

Christopher Shulgan: Let's start episode 70 with a story of an incredible coincidence. Dr. Steven Taylor, he's a clinical psychologist in Vancouver who became fascinated by the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918 and decided to write a book about it. But not just it, about pandemics in general, and the way humans respond to them. Pandemics aren't just a medical problem, he thought, they're also a psychological one. And by going back and studying many pandemics through the centuries, he explored questions like, what's the best way to communicate risk, and how do fear and conspiracy theories spread through social networks? How to promote adherence to vaccination campaigns and, most pressingly now, how does a population move past a pandemic to whatever's next? Dr. Taylor finished the book, but when he sent the manuscript to his publisher they said, "Sorry, not interested. We just don't think it's timely," they said. Which seems puzzling until you realize that Dr. Taylor finished his book in 2019. He eventually did find a publisher and the book came out in October, 2019, just two months before the first infections were reported in Wuhan.

[00:01:10.17]

Christopher Shulgan: I'm executive producer Christopher Shulgan. And in this episode, Medcan's clinical director of mental health, Dr. Jack Muskat interviews Dr. Steven Taylor about his book, which is called The Psychology of Pandemics: Preparing for the Next Global Outbreak of Infectious Disease. People have been using the Spanish Flu of 1918 as a main comparison for this pandemic, but actually Dr. Taylor argues we're better off studying the Russian flu pandemic of 1889. That was the first pandemic to happen after the development of a mass media of print newspapers and telegraphs, says Dr. Taylor. And another interesting point of comparison? Although it's called the Russian flu, there's speculation the 1889 outbreak may have been caused by a human coronavirus.

[00:01:54.23]

Christopher Shulgan: We all have questions about what's to come. Will people return to downtown office buildings? Cave syndrome sees people not wanting to leave the homes where they've sheltered for the last year. And does that just go away? Will there be an explosion of consumer demand? If Dr. Muskat's conversation with Dr. Steven Taylor is anything to go by, the best way to determine these answers is to study how things have gone during past outbreaks. Here's that conversation.

[00:02:21.06]

Jack Muskat: Hi, I'm Dr. Jack Muskat, clinical director of mental health at Medcan, and I'm here with Dr. Steven Taylor. Dr. Taylor is a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of British Columbia, where his research focuses on anxiety disorders and their related conditions. Thanks for joining us today Dr. Taylor.

[00:02:38.22]

Steven Taylor: Thanks very much, Jack.

[00:02:40.08]

Jack Muskat: So let's start talking about that book, which explores the psychology of pandemics. Can you explain a little bit more about that? And what were some of the most fascinating things you learned about historical pandemics?

[00:02:52.00]

Steven Taylor: Well, I started working on that book back in 2018. And at that time, it was the centenary of the so-called Spanish flu. And there were a lot of interviews in the media with virologists and disease modellers and historians of medicine. And they were talking about the next pandemic, and they were predicting it would be years or decades to come. So I got interested in that. And the more I looked into it, the more I realized that no one had ever put the whole thing together into a single volume. And I realized also that psychology was hugely important in pandemics, that it wasn't just some bug going viral, it was how people behaved, and what they chose to do or chose not to do. So that's why I put it together. But I guess one of the things that surprised me was that I submitted the book to my publisher in early 2019, and he'd published my previous books. And he rejected it. He said, "It's an interesting idea, but nobody's going to want to read this." And I felt really deflated because I thought, well, the psychology of pandemics is usually important. One is coming. I don't know when, but we need to be prepared. So I found another publisher, and the book was published in October 2019. Interestingly, the same year, the United States dismantled their pandemic preparedness program.

[00:04:08.12]

Jack Muskat: Right.

[00:04:09.20]

Steven Taylor: Just before COVID broke out. What all of that suggests to me is how myopic we humans tend to be. We tend to be focusing on what's immediately in front of us.

[00:04:20.19]

Jack Muskat: So Dr. Taylor, your book came out just a month before the pandemic, and then you also lived through the pandemic in its early months. And as eerie as that sounds, can you share with us personally what you were going through and noting that, you know, your book wasn't really going to be that well received because no one thought there was going to be a pandemic. Just take us through what that emotional journey was like, as things unfolded. It must have been quite a mixed bag of feelings.

[00:04:49.24]

Steven Taylor: It was a surreal experience to have spent two years writing about these sorts of things, and then suddenly, to see them unfolding in exactly the same way that I'd read about in research or written about, in fact. It was surreal. It felt unreal. I experienced the pandemic very different from everyone else, because I was witnessing things unfolding almost in a sequence as I'd written.

[00:05:16.21]

Jack Muskat: And your timing was remarkable. So, you know, it's just, again, another example of how perhaps, we don't want to look at evidence in the face of reality. What is the psychological nature of a pandemic in general that is causing the kind of panic and stress and fall out that you then elaborate so clearly in your book and in your talks?

[00:05:40.23]

Steven Taylor: Well, it is complicated. And I mean, the psychological or social fallout from a pandemic depends on a variety of things. Obviously, it depends on how serious the disease is, whether or not it's killing a lot of people, or whether people die in a gruesome way, or whether children are afflicted and so forth. So that's an aspect of it. But a huge component of the psychological reactions to pandemics does have a lot to do with the way the news media or governments or social media report pandemics. And in the past, health authorities and government leaders had tended to downplay the seriousness for fear that they would precipitate mass panic in the community. Now mass panic rarely occurs. It has happened, but it very rarely occurs. In pandemics, the goal is twofold: one to encourage people to do things that are good for managing the pandemic, for example, social distancing, mask wearing, but also another goal is to keep people calm. So you don't want people panicking or highly anxious, so that influences the messaging or some of the social aspects of a pandemic.

[00:06:50.03]

Jack Muskat: You've talked about that. You've talked a lot about the pre-existing mental health concerns that people have had, some of which have gotten worse during the pandemic, and some of which will persist and some of which will get better. Can you briefly talk to those points around how this pandemic is the same as previous pandemics, and how it differs based on where we are in 2021 with social media and also with our greater knowledge of both psychology and social behaviour.

[00:07:20.11]

Steven Taylor: Okay. In many ways, COVID-19 strongly resembles psychological reactions to the Spanish flu, to the Russian flu pandemic that is around 1889, and to the SARS outbreak. But every pandemic or outbreak is different and has its own characteristic signature. If you go back to the 1957 or 1968 influenza pandemics, there was very little anxiety about those things at all. It had to do in part with what was going on socially and culturally, but also the fact that those pandemics weren't as lethal as, say, SARS, and they weren't widely reported in the media. So the media has a huge impact.

[00:08:00.13]

Steven Taylor: The other thing that has a huge impact is social distancing. The moment you start doing lockdowns or social restrictions or start closing down businesses, that has a huge impact on people's mental health. So lockdown or social distancing is a necessary evil for managing pandemics, but it's hugely costly in terms of its impact on people's mental health.

[00:08:23.28]

Steven Taylor: Now that is how COVID resembles the Spanish flu, in that the Spanish flu was the first pandemic in which there was a serious attempt at early lockdown, closing schools, churches, saloons, those sorts of things. But COVID is different in that this is the first pandemic in the era of social media and the 24/7 news cycle. So what it means is all the phenomena we're seeing during COVID-19, such as panic buying or the rise of racism or refusing to wear masks, it's the same phenomena that's happened in past outbreaks, but things are happening more dramatically and quicker because social media is fuelling things.

[00:09:02.29]

Steven Taylor: Now this makes COVID-19 different from past pandemics, but not completely different. If you go back to 1889, the Russian flu pandemic, that was the first pandemic in the era of cheap, mass-produced newspapers, and the era of the telegraph. So suddenly, you could hear about a flu outbreak in St. Petersburg that happened yesterday while sitting in your office in Toronto, for example. And so what that meant is suddenly in that pandemic, people were getting news from around the globe in almost real time, and that fueled people's anxieties. So people were getting anxious hearing about outbreaks in other countries. So in that sense, the Russian flu was similar to COVID-19.

[00:09:46.26]

Steven Taylor: So there are lots of similarities between COVID and past outbreaks. But of course, there are some differences. For example, we have vaccines and we have optimism. I mean, although people might be feeling dysphoric or irritable or depressed or sick of COVID-19, we have an end in sight. If you go back to past plagues or pandemics, you don't see that optimism. If you go back, for example, to the plague of Athens in 430 BC and read some of the descriptions, people just felt hopelessness and despair if they got ill. They knew they were going to die. We don't see that today, which is great.

[00:10:25.08]

Jack Muskat: Right. But what we are seeing—and I'd like you to comment more about it—is this kind of hysteria grip that has taken away from the optimism. I'm trying to understand the social factors that seem to make people more fearful, but also as we've seen recently, more xenophobic, more wary of others. And that seems to be out of step with their normal personalities. These are people that are otherwise quite wonderful people, and suddenly their behaviour has changed dramatically over the last year. And you talk about it in your book and in your talks. I would look forward for you to maybe elaborate a little with a couple of examples of types of responses, and maybe speak to your model of stress syndrome where we have the obsessional thinking, the compulsive behaviours, the increased worry. So if you want to tie that all together, that would be wonderful for us.

[00:11:18.27]

Steven Taylor: I'll try my best, but I think an important point about serious pandemics like COVID-19 is at a psychological level they're polarizing, so they bring out extremes. The extremes are people who are highly anxious about getting infected at one end of the spectrum, and the other end, people who think the whole thing is exaggerated and that it's a hoax. Now it isn't really well known why some people believe that infections like COVID-19 are no big deal, why they disregard social distancing. It probably has a lot to do with personal beliefs, beliefs of personal invulnerability or beliefs in robust health. And of course, there are people who believe in conspiracy theories there as well. More is known about the people who are highly anxious about COVID-19. Now back in early 2020, it was thought that if you got anxious about COVID-19, it was merely something like a specific phobia, it was called Coronaphobia at the time. But there was evidence from past outbreaks, that the situation or the picture was more complex than it is., and that's why we did some more research looking into, for example, the COVID stress syndrome, which is an adjustment disorder. But at the core of it is this fear of getting infected. But there's more to it than that. There's fear of the socioeconomic fallout, there's xenophobia, there is the traumatic stress symptoms, like nightmares or intrusive thoughts. And there's a compulsive checking and reassurance seeking, and spending hours and hours looking at news media to get reassurance.

[00:12:54.06]

Steven Taylor: So it all hangs together as a syndrome. It doesn't fit within any of the other DSM disorders, but it fits as an adjustment disorder. So that means that when this pandemic is over for many people who had the syndrome, the syndrome will abate by itself. But not all people. Some people are at risk for developing chronic anxiety problems as a result of COVID-19.

[00:13:17.13]

Jack Muskat: Can we predict which ones will and won't? Because one of the areas in which I've worked in describing individual types and their responses is what I call maximizers and minimizers. A maximizer is those that tend to be catastrophic in their thinking, the ones we're talking about. The sky's falling, nothing's going to get better. And minimizers are those who are into denial, oppositional personality disorder, if you will. But also just, you know, if I don't think about it, it's not happening. And they operate very, very, very separately. But you're talking about individuals who are predisposed to more chronic or more persistent types of disorders, and that this simply made it worse. As they isolated, they were actually enabling their bad behaviour. You talk at one point about emotionally-focused coping strategies, and I think that's a wonderful phrase. And maybe you could tell us a little bit about that, and how—because we're dealing with it, but I think it captures the challenges that people have been facing in perhaps maladaptive ways.

[00:14:22.29]

Steven Taylor: That's an important issue. So what we're seeing during COVID is a crop of new onset disorders, or newly worsened disorders. And many of the people who were exceptionally anxious during lockdowns for example, were engaging in emotionally-focused coping. That is coping directed at dampening the negative emotions. So they were doing things like consuming excessive amounts of drugs or alcohol, overeating, overspending, things like that. Things aimed at a short-term relief from boredom or distress, but carry a longer term sort of problem. And we're also finding in our research that for people who've developed serious psychological problems during COVID-19, there tends to be what we're thinking are two major causes. One are events that happened to you during COVID-19. For example, if you get very sick and go on a ventilator or think you're going to die, or if you lose a loved one, or have some financial catastrophe, you lose your home, your marriage, your job, and so forth, there are those sorts of stresses that can produce psychological problems. And of course, there are the pre-morbid things. So for example, we're finding that people who, prior to COVID, tended to worry about their health a lot, who tended to have emotional problems, or who tended to be highly intolerant of uncertainty, those are the people who've had a particularly tough time during COVID-19. Pandemics are full of uncertainties, and so this is why this has been particularly troublesome for those individuals who tend to worry a lot.

[00:16:02.04]

Jack Muskat: Switching gears for a moment, and I want to hear what you have to say about the positive aspects of COVID. Because you mentioned that there was also an increase in people's search for meaning. I've seen a great reset. We talked about spirituality. And there's almost a kind of, as we say, bimodal distribution. You've got some people who are just feeling very low, but others have taken the opportunity to really reevaluate their lives in meaningful ways. What is some of your research telling us about that group, and what we can learn from them?

[00:16:35.22]

Steven Taylor: There are a few interesting findings. So we went into this knowing that people are resilient, that even though people are feeling dysphoric or anxious or depressed right now, most people will bounce back. But there's also pre-COVID research suggesting that some people will not simply bounce back to where they were, they will grow as human beings in the way that you pointed out. And that's called post-traumatic growth. So we've been doing research on that, and we just published a study on this on a sample of about 1,000 adults from Canada and the United States. And these were people who were not infected with COVID-19. And we asked them whether there were any silver linings of this awful pandemic for them. And most of them, about three quarters said, yeah, that there have been some things, along the lines that you mentioned, Jack. Things like feeling that people were more resilient, deeper spirituality, greater sense of connection with people in their community, greater appreciation for the little things in life.

[00:17:31.28]

Steven Taylor: But there are two wrinkles to this thing. For some people, the growth was illusory. So we've been tracking people over time, and for some of these people who said they'd become more stress resilient, actually their anxiety and depression and impairment in functioning had worsened over time. They were telling themselves that they were doing better to try and talk themselves into feeling better, but in reality, their functioning was getting worse and worse and worse.

[00:17:59.19]

Jack Muskat: That's a little discouraging. It may be illusory, but it also may be well, how do I operationalize that good feeling? What can I really do? Could I really leave my job? What can I really do with my family? Can we really—you know, the old problems cropped back. It's sort of like that week that you had at that ashram or yoga retreat where you come back feeling great, and then you realize, you know, you've got the same problems. Talk about the future for us. Tell us what have we learned. You very rightly and almost ruefully have told us—as have others—how not just Canada but other countries have either ignored what we learned from SARS or mismanaged our mask supply, or simply turned a blind eye to these things. What are we going to remember? Are we going to make the same mistakes again? Are we going to make different ones? What are we going to do better? What do you think are going to be some takeaways from both your research and others who are aligned with what we've learned from this COVID? What can we do around school reopenings, around what we can expect as it settles into an epidemic or simply just another virus that we're going to be vaccinated for?

[00:19:07.10]

Steven Taylor: So we really need to get serious about lessons learned from COVID and past pandemics for the future. My big concern is we'll forget about COVID and just move on, that we'll focus on whatever immediate concerns. Climate change, for example, or other things. And that's happened before at a societal level. And this happened if you looked at the media on December New Year's Eve, 2020, there were plenty of media reports about people saying they wanted to forget 2020. And I can understand that. You want to put it behind you and move on as an individual. But as a society, we need to get serious. We need to do something we haven't done in past pandemics, and that is to remember the lessons from COVID, and to set things up to be prepared for the next pandemic.

[00:19:52.12]

Steven Taylor: One of the popular analogies put out by health authorities is the marathon analogy. They're saying, "Okay, we're in the last phase of the marathon. We're looking forward to ending this in September. That the last third of the marathon is the hardest." That's what they're saying. Well, these health authorities have never run marathons. The hardest part of a marathon is getting to the starting line.

[00:20:13.20]

Jack Muskat: Right. Right.

[00:20:15.05]

Steven Taylor: I had run marathons, and I know it's the months or sometimes years of training to get you to the starting line. COVID-19 is getting us to the starting line for the next pandemic. We need to be prepared. We weren't prepared for this one. We did some things okay, some things we really botched up. We haven't got the mental health resources to deal with the post-COVID pandemic world. We need to do that, but we need to get to the starting line for the next pandemic. Because one thing we need to understand is pandemics are not a once in a lifetime phenomenon. There have been 20 pandemics over the past 200 years. And now with the growing population, with the growing mobility, with airline travel and so forth, and with climate change, we can expect to see more pandemics in the decades or perhaps years ahead. So this is a wake-up call for us.

[00:21:08.17]

Jack Muskat: What do you think we should be doing about the return to work? There's the kind of nudging, the social pressure that's nudging people to be vaccinated. But at the same time, what rights do we have? You know, it's this tug of war between individual rights for autonomy and collective rights for health. And I know that we have mandatory vaccinations in schools for kids. Are we going to see that? And is that a good thing? Or do we tell the unvaccinated since most of the cases now are only affecting the unvaccinated, fine, don't be vaccinated, but you can also participate and harm others? So what are your thoughts on that, given what you've seen overall historically? Have there been similar challenges in the return to work? Or were the other pandemics simply people unfortunately died and those that didn't were okay?

[00:22:00.02]

Steven Taylor: It makes comparisons really difficult because there have only been two pandemics where there have been huge degrees of social distancing: COVID-19 and the Spanish flu. The complicating factor with the Spanish flu is all kinds of other things were happening at the same time. There were two other pandemics happening: there was a cholera pandemic and the encephalitis lethargica pandemic, and there was also World War I. And there was also other sorts of infectious diseases. So it does make it difficult. But for employers, I guess at minimum, they need to demonstrate that they're following the Canadian Labour Code with regard to health precautions and so forth.

[00:22:40.09]

Steven Taylor: And I think we should not underestimate the power of nudges or social pressures. All you need to do is to put up a sign at a store and say masks are mandatory, and you get 90 percent adherence. And that's probably good enough adherence, so there's that aspect. Then there's the aspect of should you make vaccination mandatory. Sure, for some occupations that might be useful, but I think the way things have rolled out for COVID-19, the vaccine has become an elusive thing that people are actually chasing to get. And then now they're seeing more and more that the vaccines are safe and effective, so that's created a positive incentive to seek vaccination rather than forcing people. Because the moment you start to force people, you get a phenomenon called psychological reactance happening where people push back and try to assert their freedoms. So I think what we're going to see is more and more people will be picking up the vaccines.

[00:23:39.10]

Steven Taylor: But getting back to the return of work. COVID-19 has served as a catalyst, really. It's accelerated trends that were already in place beforehand, for example, the trend to increasingly work from home. And now more and more of us, whether we liked it or not, have had to adapt to working at home. And some of us have got really good at it and have come to enjoy it. You know, you put on your dress shirt, but you're wearing your workout shorts—as I am right now. And so some of those trends will persist after in the post-pandemic period where there will be more and more working from home. And I guess employers are going to be faced with that, with more and more employees saying that they would prefer to work at home.

[00:24:20.12]

Jack Muskat: What are the expectations we can have for our businesses opening up? We've had nothing but bad news. All of us in our communities have seen thousands of businesses fail. Is there pent-up consumer demand? Are we going to have a Roaring '20s, where everyone is going to go out and spend like mad and prop up the economy? Most of us haven't had anywhere to go. Some of us have some cushions that we can, you know, utilize in spending. Do you see that happening? Did that happen before? Are we being overly optimistic, or should we temper our enthusiasm for that new spending?

[00:24:55.06]

Steven Taylor: Right. I think we are going to see a miniature Roaring '20s. It won't be as exuberant as the original, and it will be shorter lived, but it will be because humans are inherently social creatures. That's etched into our genome. And when all of these restrictions are lifted, many people and probably most people will exuberantly go back out and resume their social lives. And so we will see a miniature hypersocial sociability. But yeah, the Roaring '20s in the 1920s was influenced by all kinds of factors that were going on.

[00:25:27.00]

Steven Taylor: As for consumerism, well, there has been an increase in online shopping during COVID-19. So people have been shopping, and some people actually have been saving money. But the research surveys that I've read suggest that many people are eager to get back and attend large-scale events: sporting events, concerts, and so forth. So I think that will increase, but as to whether consumer spending will increase, I'm not sure. I think people are already doing that online.

[00:25:55.18]

Jack Muskat: So you think people are going to go to the movies now that they've been streaming Netflix for a year and a half, and it's too soon to short Cineplex stock, which is already not doing well? I really would love your thoughts on that.

[00:26:08.03]

Steven Taylor: Well, that's the interesting thing that gets back to the idea that COVID is a catalyst. It's accelerating all the trends that were in place beforehand. The trend to work from home, the trend to watch Netflix instead of going to the cinema, the tendency to dine in at home, the tendency to make your apartment or your home a pleasure palace where you don't need to leave to cope better with say lockdown. And so yes, I think those trends will be in place. Cinema attendance was nosediving before COVID, and I don't think this will kill it because there's a huge social component to going to movie theatres, but it will certainly take a hit. I don't see cinemas bouncing back to where they were in 2019. As for restaurants, well, I think we're already seeing a bounce back with restaurants. Restaurants, it's a huge social component for people, and people have been starved of that over the past 18 months.

[00:27:04.11]

Jack Muskat: Well, it's been delightful talking to you today, Dr. Taylor, and getting not only your views, but the deep insights that you have around not only this pandemic, but others. Is there anything else you'd like to leave our listeners with before we conclude that would be of interest that we haven't touched on?

[00:27:22.04]

Steven Taylor: Yes, there's something called the anchoring bias, and that's a bias to predict the future based on where we are right now. If it's gloomy outside and you're in lockdown, or there are restrictions and you're feeling bummed out or dysphoric, that's going to influence or bias the way you see the future, okay? So many people can't imagine a post-pandemic world where they're going to football games or concerts or so forth. But people will bounce back. We know that. I think people will be surprised at the extent to which they rapidly resume their normal, busy social lives.

[00:27:55.25]

Jack Muskat: I think that's a great spot to end it on. I look forward to your further work. Thanks, Dr. Taylor.

[00:28:01.19]

Steven Taylor: Thanks so much, Jack. Thanks a lot.

[00:28:15.11]

Christopher Shulgan: That was Medcan clinical director of mental heath Dr. Jack Muskat in conversation with the clinical psychologist Dr. Steven Taylor, the author of The Psychology of Pandemics. We'll post a link to that book on this episode's web page at Eatmovethinkpodcast.com, along with links to other articles that have featured Dr. Taylor's research, and a full episode transcript.

Christopher Shulgan: Eat Move Think is produced by Ghost Bureau. I'm executive producer Christopher Shulgan. Senior producer is Russell Gragg. Patricia Karounos is associate producer. Social media support from Emily Mannella and Andrew Imecs. Remember to rate and subscribe to Eat Move Think on your favourite podcast platform. Follow our host Shaun Francis on Twitter and Instagram @Shauncfrancis—that's Shaun with a U—and Medcan @medcanlivewell. We'll be back soon with a new episode examining the latest in health and wellness.

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