Coronavirus: how to fight anxiety, a shrink answers us!

Faced with the coronavirus, the whole world is shivering. A collective and sometimes irrational anxiety deciphered by the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Serge Hefez. Illuminating.Sales of "La Peste", by Albert Camus, which are exploding in bookstores,  "Contagion", Steven Soderbergh's film , released nine years ago, which is a hit in downloads... While cases of coronavirus are increasing in France, an irrational fear seizes the population. While it makes sense to worry and adopt a few essential preventive measures (washing your hands, sneezing into your elbow, etc.), doesn't our anxiety sometimes take on a disproportionate extent? What effect does Covid-19 have on the human psyche? Does our way of reacting say something about today's society? Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Serge Hefez, who has worked on the AIDS epidemic for a long time, answers us.     

SHE. Many of us are very anxious, even if they are not part of the populations at risk, even if they know that the virus is especially dangerous for the elderly and those suffering from respiratory or cardiovascular conditions. How can you explain it?SERGE HEFEZ.The anguish of the epidemic is as old as humanity. In antiquity, there was the famous plague in Athens, the Antonine plague in Rome. Or the Black Death in the Middle Ages or the terrible Spanish flu in 1918. The fear of the epidemic is almost part of our genetic baggage. She wakes up with each new virus. In fact, in an epidemic like the coronavirus, what scares people is not so much the virus itself as the contagion. The question of the disease is a story that we manage with ourselves, generally quite well: how are we going to be treated, what are the risks, will we be in pain, etc. But what really worries is the contagion. The idea that the Other, with whom we coexist peacefully, in transport, at work, in restaurants, can become dangerous, that is what terrifies. The social bond is transformed, poisoned.