Forced social isolation causes neural craving similar to hunger
blogs.scientificamerican.com
blogs.scientificamerican.com
Bear in mind I do enjoy social life; when I was living in Spain in my 30s (and single) I had a very active social life, and had a moderate (~30) amount of friends split in 2 groups with which I continuously interacted.
When I left Spain for my place of origin I had only a handful of friends, and then I moved to where I live now and have only one friend, whom I see sporadically.
Nowadays I mostly interact with my partner and daughter, and the people I work with (I've been working remotely for 13 years) and to be honest, I have no cravings for social life (Except that I miss going for a stroll every once in a while at nights).
Even thought we are living in this city because it was the best for her career (She's a professional flamenco "bailaora" and where we lived before her career was dead in the water) she doesn't have a large amount of friends, but boy does she crave for going out.
She is really having a bad time going through this, while I'm surfing the wave without issues.
This is arguably a little irresponsible of me; I have a housemate who is a social worker and not isolating, which makes me a potential link in a transmission chain. But on the other hand, we're spending nearly zero time together in shared spaces (we literally go weeks w/o seeing each other) and I'm very conscientious about what I touch and when in shared spaces. And delivery or random passers-by on walks are my only other form of exposure, so it seems like a managed risk if not absolutely minimized.
I think some who live alone are going to find this kind of quaran-team approach important as we break past the first few miles of the marathon. The trick may be in really doing it thoughtfully in a planned-out conscientious manner rather than waiting until arriving at some breaking point and throwing caution to the wind.
I'd say it isn't irresponsible at all. You've got to do what you need to do to look after your own mental health. One thing I am utterly sick of is the shaming of anyone that breaks "the rules" that seems to have become normalised. Especially when it comes from people who have families and partners at home.
We seem to be obsessed with the idea that you could be somehow responsible for someone's death if they get infected via you, even after several degrees of separation. I guess this idea has some logic to it, but it's such a departure from how we think about things normally.
By the same logic, many of us have probably helped to "kill" a few elderly/vulnerable people in the past by passing on the influenza virus.
I'm not saying we shouldn't all take sensible precautions, like isolating when you have symptoms and hand washing etc. But this shaming needs to stop.
With SIP, everything closed, and ongoing social distancing none of that is possible and you're also cut off from other social circles if you hadn't locked in a core friend group or significant other.
I could really the see value of these areas plummeting much harder than before. Even when thinking of the protests as having some allure for being social, many of the people are from surrounding suburbs coming in for the action, whereas the wealthy transplants have already left indefinitely.
I don't get the impression that those with family are overwhelmingly content. But some have routine at this point and aren't considering the social starving that people in different arrangements may be going through.
I have wondered if there’s an aspect of that in the huge turnouts. People are unemployed and isolated, and joining the protests gives them a chance to feel like part of something.
Obviously it's an incredible complex decision, but have you thought about getting a pet? (If that's within your possibilities)
My closest friends also moved away in part motivated by the situation.
I really don't remember the last time I interacted with another human who wasn't selling me food or through a computer or phone (which helps of course but is no substitute).
There are probably a lot of us out there. If it weren't for a couple of cat monsters I probably would have lost all of my marbles by now.
I think you might be underestimating yourself as a human being. I spend about 8 months with little human contact. I spoke twice with my parents for about 10 minutes each, once for 2 minutes to ask some questions, and maybe 10 seconds each time to the cashier when buying food (however it never deviated from this script; "Would you like bags?" "Yes." "How are you paying?" "Cash." "Have a nice day."). That was it. Nothing else.
I won't say that it was an easy or enjoyable thing to do, but I think given enough time and focus, almost anyone can probably acclimate to a complete lack of human contact without loosing all their marbles.
The hardest part of isolation, though, is the complete inability for somebody who has never experienced it to relate or appreciate the changes it imposes upon people.
Also, I'm curious as to why you have been through this several times?
This. They have no idea.
Point in case, my friends group starting organising weekly group video calls, to see each other and play scribl.io. After a few weeks it quickly became apparent who was really isolated and who had a partner or even just flat mates. The isolated people were really looking forward to the video chat (also you could tell they were more grumpy / on edge than usual). People who don't live alone, started missing the video chat evenings because video chat is such a poor substitute for actual social contact, it really wasn't bringing them anything.
I'm glad to hear (elsewhere ITT) that isolation is worst the first time you go through it. Because I'm fully expecting a second wave when autumn hits or something. And I fully expect people who do not live alone to continue being oblivious to the mental state of the isolated ones.
But there have been times where I've been there (My partner tends to go on extended vacations with her mother) and, even without quarantine, I've been locked up all by myself only going out a couple of times a week only for grocery shopping.
I enjoy reading an investigating things (And for programming related discoveries, time gets consumed too fast) probably a bit too much, and there are times when even family comes in the way.
Takes a bit of effort and empathy to remember that I'm an outlier and people truly did suffer during lockdown.
I really wonder, how many people are there like me? What's the distribution? You naturally hear mostly from social people and extroverts. Hope there are some studies going on right now.
In fact, the detrimental effects of long term isolation only surrounded by the nuclear family is a common theme in American fiction in particular (American Beauty), or even in horror as in The Shining.
There are literally consecutive days in a row where I spend 0 minutes in a day talking aloud to a living person. Less so now that the restrictions have been lifted, but the last few months were significantly harder for me as a person living on their own who wasn't able to see friends than for my friends who at least could share their experience with someone else.
Not saying people who had families shouldn't feel like they are isolated, but I'd easily take the isolation with the partner experience over isolation with literally zero people experience.
> the researchers had 40 socially-connected healthy human adults spend 10 hours (9am to 7pm) alone, with no social interaction and no other social stimulation (e.g., twitter, email, reading fiction).
I'm not even sure what I could do during the day to avoid social interactions to this extent.
> Participants with higher levels of chronic loneliness at baseline reported less craving for social contact after 10 hours of isolation
Based on what the article states I guess this is similar to people that react differently to fasting; those that are used to loneliness for whatever reason (In my particular case I understand it to be my "natural" state) are better prepared to go through this.
I guess the idea was to be able to _really_ measure the effect of being alone in the least harmful way so they went all in (Not even allowing the participants to read) trying to make the time of the experiment as short as possible.
extroverts get recharged by being with more people.
introverts get recharged by being with fewer people.
You're more like Jamie.
I really get a strong feeling that a lot of people who do not live alone, have no idea what others who live alone actually went through (during lockdown / quarantine). It's hard to explain, it's like being lost at sea, maybe. My mind just started blanking all the time
Here's the best way I can describe it: being an introvert means that social interactions cost you energy. Being an extrovert (since I'm not one) seems to mean that social interactions gain you energy.
I see this in a relative of mine who is clearly an extrovert. Social interactions are her drug. She craves them and gets almost like a high from them and honestly gets really hyper as a result.
Compare this to me. At work I've had these extended work gatherings for several days where it's a lot of team-building, brainstorming and so on. By the end of the day I'm physically exhausted from all these interactions. Some people are not. Some will go to dinner in the evenings then out to a bar to drink and then back to someone's Airbnb for another gathering after that. That's all fine for them but it's just way too much for me.
So it's not like I don't like interacting with these people. It's merely a question of how much mental energy I'm capable of expending before I need to recharge.
So you see these differences really exposed by the forced isolation. I miss some of the interaction (and, to be fair, the food) of being in the office but otherwise I'm fine. You can clearly see that other people are not. While I have a natural excuse to avoid many draining activities, others are clearly being denied their recharging activities.
So yeah, I can totally buy neural cravings here. For some.
I tend to treat even strangers with too much respect to give them less than my full attention and thoughtful responses. That makes it a draining chore.
We are social animals. Literally just existing is stressful at the moment for most of us, because there's a constant urge that is not being satisfied.
Not only for socialisation but simply the low-level stress of constantly having to 'check yourself' when you realise literally everything you'd normally be doing is either disabled or handicapped in some way.
To me, lockdowns feel like some sort of irrational loss aversion strategy. If you gave me the option in, say, 2017, of halving my mortality rate for a year, but the cost was that I had to endure relatively strong anxiety for that year, there's no way I'd take that bet regardless of my age.
Mucking around with your mental health is not wise. Add on top of that all of the economic effects, the political effects of dividing populations, domestic abuse, "non-essential" healthcare like dentistry, and so on and so forth, and honestly I reckon it's been a net negative.
They're already likely to arbitrarily die - if in 2017 I could reduce that probability by half (coronavirus roughly doubles mortality across all age groups) by having everyone stay inside or perform the various rituals like standing far apart, wearing masks etc I wouldn't do it.
If instead of decreasing life expectancy by less than a year it were something like 10 (and so we went full hazmat, disallowing things like even entering a supermarket in favour of MRE deliveries) then the calculus would be different.
The main inescapable issue, which exists lockdown or not, is visiting elderly or immunocompromised relatives, not because of the absolute risk, but because of the impact that being able to say "my visit probably killed Grandma" would have.
I haven't seen another human other than through zoom since march 15th.
Meanwhile, my extended family, people I love, are ignoring isolation mandates and out and about, hosting gatherings, like normal. Many of them are seniors with chronic conditions that put them at high risk for covid complications / mortality.
I'm depressed as fuck staying home all the time and waiting for the inevitable as covid reaps my loved ones.
but I can definitely go two months without physical human interaction! video conferences, video dates, video for sake of video? CALL OF DUTY: WARZONE? all of those are chores to me.
Even if I got lucky enough that nobody close to me died and I suffered no permanent damage myself, personally I would feel immense anxiety knowing that the virus was likely to affect many of the people I care about (and also that I had limited but non-zero control over this, so I could neither try to ignore it nor bring the odds down far enough to feel optimistic), watching some of them suffer and wondering whether they would make it, possibly suffering myself and wondering how bad it would get and how fully I would recover, and so on. That's aside from the effect of empathising with strangers suffering and dying at a much higher rate than usual, too.
(I'm in Australia, where so far our measures have kept the infection rate very low. Maybe you feel like you've experienced something closer to the worst of both worlds?)
Tasmania: 13 deaths, 228 confirmed cases, zero new cases in the past 24hrs, 33,000 test conducted.
Active cases in Tasmania: 2
The restrictions here have certainly had an impact on our lives, and I can hardly imagine how it would feel to be in an area with many more cases and more strict restrictions.
The difference between growth of 2% and 3% are enormous 50 years down the line, and may very well translate in many more deaths due to poverty and disease, as well as a great quality of life difference for billions of people (among many other effects).
During this period I feel like I have figured a lot of things out, and overall feel more relaxed now than I did before quarantine. I realised that I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to achieve things, and I don't need to - at first I used the pandemic situation as an excuse to myself to not have to do these things, but now I just feel naturally relaxed.
Also as a newish (1 year old) father I found talks by Gabor Maté resonated a lot with me.
(And I've somehow lost 6kg - even though I've been cooking whatever tasty deserts I've found on YouTube - probably from not eating out)
"Also as a newish (1 year old) father I found talks by Gabor Maté resonated a lot with me."
I assume your child (and partner) haven't been 200 miles away for 3 months, inaccessible because taking a train is pseudo-illegal or frowned upon by society at the moment.
I assume you've been cuddling them without thinking that every journey, every interaction point, is some 'vector' bullshit.
If I'm making the wrong assumptions here, and you're actually watching your child's formative years through a video link, I feel for you, but I can't believe that's the case because there's no way that a normal human would claim that were a superior state of affairs.
Come on, man. Please think before posting.
If we keep indoctrinate that, we may miss the real solutions.
Glad to see it's being neurologically researched as well.
Imperial Japanese holdouts after the end of WW2 are the classical example, and to a lesser degree you have hikikomori in modern day. The most extreme example is Christopher Thomas Knight (the North Pond Hermit) with only one claim instance of human interaction in that period; he said, "Hi" to a hiker.
A need has a specific meaning; more or less, you will die if you don't have water for more then a week. It doesn't matter how strong willed you are, lack of water will kill you. Lack of social interaction will not universally kill everyone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
> what happens to man's desires when there is plenty of bread and when his belly is chronically filled?
> At once other (and 'higher') needs emerge and these, rather than physiological hungers, dominate the organism. And when these in turn are satisfied, again new (and still 'higher') needs emerge and so on. This is what we mean by saying that the basic human needs are organized into a hierarchy of relative prepotency.
> One main implication of this phrasing is that gratification becomes as important a concept as deprivation in motivation theory, for it releases the organism from the domination of a relatively more physiological need, permitting thereby the emergence of other more social goals. The physiological needs, along with their partial goals, when chronically gratified cease to exist as active determinants or organizers of behavior. They now exist only in a potential fashion in the sense that they may emerge again to dominate the organism if they are thwarted. But a want that is satisfied is no longer a want. The organism is dominated and its behavior organized only by unsatisfied needs. If hunger is satisfied, it becomes unimportant in the current dynamics of the individual.
Basically, Maslow's definition of a "need" is "a human drive that acts as a determinant of behavior" and not purely in the sense of "a physiological requirement for survival".
You may disagree with his framework as presented (I do, but on psychoanalytic grounds, that it's overgeneralized, lacking a few steps in terms of how individuals interact with desire, and therefore only sociologically and not individually useful), but it seems difficult to argue humans lack "psychical needs" of some form beyond pure physiology.
In the case of hikikomori, recall that they spend a lot of time with media, creating "parasocial" relationships, or even on (usually anonymous) social media websites, which do offer a form of social interaction and connectedness. But there is a reason why very few individuals end up as genuine hermits, without any social interaction whatsoever.
My Brother had the bug, had a mild cough for a few days and lost his taste. I'm very jealous.
I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting you will not be able to leave your house for another year. I think everywhere has concrete plans to re-open everything short of mass gatherings pretty soon. That's the cautious countries and the less cautious countries alike.
They’re saying just because non-essential restrictions have been relaxed doesn’t mean you should partake in non-essential activities.
I agree with them, but not everyone will.
The shutdowns were a tactic taken with limited information and imperfect effectiveness. I don’t think it was the wrong thing to do. However, we could have and should have had a more effective, sophisticated, and timely response across the board.
Personal anecdote: I need a biopsy from a specialist surgeon who does not treat respiratory diseases and does not reside in a hospital.
Sorry. That's non-essential. I haven't been able to get it done, and it's been months. I'm also on COBRA, so...clock's ticking.
But if I want to buy a paperback? Well I can't visit my favorite local bookstore which is usually quite empty (non-essential), but I can go to a packed Walmart or order it off Amazon.
Now with more publications, data suggests an IFR of 0.1-0.6%. Which is pretty low and does not worth crashing the economy.
This does not mean vulnerable people has to pay the price no. It is trade off. We have to reopen and go back to normal, while helping vulnerable people.
Even some paper suggest far more infections than we thought.
For 0.1-0.6% to be true, 50-100% of NYC would have to have gotten infected with COVID-19...
IFR in other locations (e.g. small towns in Europe where blood tests show widespread exposure) has also consistently come in at roughly 1%.
You can check this subreddit for publications: https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/
All most all the publications from the past 2 months show an IFR if 0.1-0.6 or at most 0.8%.
So, 0.77-1.25% for this range of estimates.
confirmation bias. Look at the other publications.
And this range of IFR estimates (~0.7-1.1%) is what you tend to see across localities where serological tests result in substantial positive antibody rates. Studies based on low (e.g. <5%) exposure rates aren't that meaningful because false positives can dwarf the true-positives, skewing the results.
When I say you cherrypick, I am talking about this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/g4tqvk/dutch_antib...
And so, so mare which I don’t have time to find one by one right now. Like the study from Finland, or other places.
I don’t have anything to add to this discussion, since this clearly shows you are incapable of research. One other point is there is non negligible amount of people who does not develop antibodies therefore they are not detected in serological tests. I would expect IFR go down.
(You could have find in other publications too:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v...
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033357v...
The only required skill required is googling and having open mind.)
“ Iceland, (1st May) reports ten deaths in 1798 patients, CFR. 0.56%. If we assumed 1% of the population (364,000) is infected, then the corresponding IFR would be 10/3640 = 0.3%. Iceland’s test and quarantine measures may have shielded the elderly group, and deaths may still go up as they lag infection by about two weeks.
Iceland’s higher rates of testing, the smaller population, and their ability to ascertain all those with Sars-CoV-2 means they can obtain. an accurate estimate of the CFR and the IFR during the pandemic (most countries will only be able to do this after the pandemic).
Current data from Iceland suggests their IFR is somewhere between 0.3% and 0.56%.” -CEBM
P.S. FYI Iceland has done more test than anybody I think (ratiowise).
I have a suggestion for you: READ MORE!
[1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52837593 [2]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52976580q
There is a decent amount of research beginning to indicate we won't need nearly that level of infection to reach herd immunity. It's not guaranteed but I'd keep an open mind.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.03085 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32209383 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20081893v...
Everyone: if you drink protein powder mixed with water, you are committing a food crime.
(But yes it sucks)
So I'm not sure if I would be jealous of your brother.
I mean, sure, I'm also tired of this, but just thinking that I could potentially never smell coffee again, or taste avocado or not being able to notice the scent of my partner, or lot of other things... it's terryfing.
TBH until I met my wife, I never thought it possible to be comfortable living with someone.
I know I'm an extreme exception, but I'm one of those people who don't feel a craving for human contact.
The subjects chose to spend 10 hours away from all social interaction in order to participate in the study. That's not the same as being forced.
However, the results were striking. Just like choosing to fast from food, choosing to fast from social interaction caused similar cravings in the subjects.
I like aquariums. Most fish are fine in a big enough tank; turtles too. I avoid aquariums with Dolphins or Whales. Considering how much they swim in the while, that seems cruel too.
Off topic, but there's no way that can be true. 600km in a day is 25 km / hour for 24 hours straight. Looking online, it looks like the top swimming speed of a polar bear is closer to 10 km / hour.
That said, I agree about the sadness of zoos.
I would encourage people to see friends at a distance whenever possible. We must remember to balance our mental health (greatly affected by seeing others) with our physical health.
I also notice my urge to buy stuff goes up when I am lonely. Another salve for the pain.
On the day of the isolation session, participants arrived at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT building 46, at 8.15am...Subsequently, participants gave their phones and laptops to the experimenter and were guided to a room containing an armchair, a desk and office chair, and a fridge with a selection of food, snacks and beverages. Participants remained in that room from 9am until 7pm. [1]
It's not clear to me why reading material was withheld. It seems to make it harder to draw conclusions regarding the social isolation aspect.
For the fasting session, they only had to report for the 7pm fMRI session. It strikes me that the type of people with time to participate in an experiment like this likely correlates with people that get up later than 6-7am each morning (as would have been required for the isolation session), but it seems there wasn't any accounting for possible sleep deprivation effects.
[1] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.25.006643v2....
https://globalnews.ca/news/6929793/coronavirus-disability-to...
Being isolated for long periods can lead us to difficulty articulating our thoughts well. The 'gears get rusty'. Not so much for authors I'd guess ... but a fading ability to connect no doubt leaves many increasingly frustrated and feeling even more isolated. I'd guess that, for desert travelers, the word 'oasis' meant a lot more than just water.
Is it really a good idea to send someone to prison for months for a small mistake that many might end up making and getting caught?
Is overusing imprisonment for different types of crimes okay?
A murderer will be fine in a prison since they are harmful for the society but someone stealing food because they couldn't afford any doesn't seem as harmful that they need being locked up.
This is likely a different phenomena. You're burning more fuel by working longer. Especially if it comes with less sleep as well.
The brain is quite a fuel-hungry organ and will crave sugars and carbs when stressed. If you're also sleeping less, you're burning more physical energy as well simply by being active longer.
I regularly lose weight during hard weeks unless I compensate by eating more.