Rebuttal Assessment Regarding the Fear Shown Against the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Rebuttal
Fear is a normal experience to many people, and varies from one person to the next. One incident can result in more fear among different groups of people based on the magnitude of the event. Besides, some people are just skeptical about any incidents unless they directly experience it. The COVID-19 pandemic spread a lot of fear among the people. This fear first began with scientists who passed several warnings on how the virus spreads and its ultimate impact on the people. Based on the magnitude of the impact, the virus has created different levels of fear among the people. Therefore, the decisions that people made regarding the pandemic was mainly instigated by fear. However, others made the decisions as a protestation against the generally accepted code of conduct.
Objective Summary
This rebuttal assesses the fear shown in the response against the COVID-19 pandemic. There were several groups of people based on the response to the guidelines provided. There were groups who believed in scientific evidence about the pandemic and followed the guidelines provided correctly. There were also groups who made decisions to base on their political stands. These individuals were bent on disputing anything that the state would say. Finally, there was a group whose decisions were made out of outright fear. Emma Green covers these groups in her article titled “The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown.”
Concessions
The fear expressed towards the pandemic is justified. The Liberals who expressed extreme fear of the disease by protesting against any measures to lift the lockdown made the decision based on the experiences that they had seen or heard about its impact. A study by Mertens et al. assessed the different dimensions of fear for the virus. The dimensions included subjective worry, safety behaviors, and preferential attention. The predictors of this fear were intolerance of uncertainty, worry, and health anxiety. Therefore, the fear expressed by the Liberals as narrated by Emma can be scientifically expressed on the basis of these predictors.
There were groups whose fear was based on subjective worry. Parendes notes that some of the responses against the pandemic were based on the perceive threat, future anxiety, and resilience. Some of the liberals who reacted the way they did was on the basis of the perceived threat of the pandemic and the future anxiety about the effect that the pandemic would leave on them. As Green notes, some prominent individuals’ reactions were justified because they had a first-hand experience of the pandemic and did not wish to take any chances. The experience of certain countries, such as Italy, increased this fear and made the people demand for lockdowns.
These groups whose fear was from subjective worry mainly relied on regular media and social media to take extreme caution. In the study by Dennis and colleagues, several respondents in the study indicated that concerns for the others was their most worry based on whatever they had read online. These findings are confirmed by Green in her article where she report that after Emily Oster argued that families should begin planning to take their kids on trips and to see friends and relatives, she received a backlash from a reader who suggested that she should be promoted to a leadership role in the field of “genocide encouragement.” Such individuals had genuine concerns against the virus and opted to take extreme caution not only on their side but also to safeguard the rest of the people.
A fairly good number had their fear based on the health anxiety. As Dennis, Radnitz and Wheaton note, the virus rapidly spread and became a global pandemic within a few months, leading to a significant health, economic, and social impacts. The outcome of the virus has been so significant that the worry shown by such groups is justified. Prominent individuals such as Antony Fauchi also showed the same level of fear, when he stated that he would not travel or eat at resta...