#100 - Sam Harris, Ph.D.: COVID-19—Comprehending the crisis and managing our emotions
Sam Harris, neuroscientist and author, joins Peter to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic, comparing it to influenza and analyzing its economic impact. They also explore how to manage stress, anxiety, and fear through mindfulness and communication strategies during this unprecedented crisis.
Deep Dive Analysis
17 Topic Outline
Initial Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic
Predictability of the Pandemic and Societal Short-sightedness
Challenges in Communicating Uncertainty and Risk
Why COVID-19 is Not Like the Flu
Economic Impact vs. Public Health Measures
Why New York Became a COVID-19 Hotspot
Healthcare System Overwhelm and Non-COVID Mortality
Managing Anxiety and Negative Emotions During Crisis
Mindfulness as a Tool for Emotional Resilience
Finding Silver Linings and Rebalancing Life
Talking to Children About the Pandemic
Overcoming Irritability and the Role of a Supportive Partner
The Constructive Role of Shame and Apology
Optimism for the Future: Valuing Expertise and Government Role
Political Polarization and Navigating Complex Truths
Challenges in COVID-19 Vaccine Development
Rethinking Vaccine Risk Communication
3 Key Concepts
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a state of clear attention to present experience, allowing one to witness emotions like anxiety without judgment or reaction. By merely feeling the energy of an emotion without psychological content, its hold on you can be released, drastically shortening its time course.
Illusoriness of Self
This concept suggests that consciousness is an open space where thoughts and emotions appear, rather than being driven by a durable 'self' in the middle. Recognizing this allows one to stand free of emotional reactions, as consciousness is not harmed by negative mind states.
Non-linear Geometric Growth
This describes the rapid, exponential spread of the COVID-19 virus, unlike the predictable wave of influenza. It means that small head starts in infection rates for a city can lead to vastly different outcomes due to the compounding nature of the spread.
6 Questions Answered
Influenza follows a predictable seasonal wave with uniform mortality spread over a year, while COVID-19 exhibits non-linear, geometric growth of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, meaning its full mortality potential is still unknown.
These cities likely experienced a 'bad head start' due to stochastic factors, combined with high population density, active public transport systems (like subways), and a cultural tendency to underestimate the initial risk.
By practicing mindfulness, which involves clear attention to present experience and observing the physiology of anxiety without judgment. This allows one to 'puncture' the emotional state and release it when it no longer serves a useful purpose.
Parents should maintain honesty without necessarily revealing every detail that might cause undue anxiety. For older children, it involves acknowledging the situation and providing age-appropriate tools for understanding probability and risk.
Developing a vaccine for coronaviruses can be technically difficult, similar to RSV viruses, requiring a larger exposure to create immunity and potentially carrying a higher risk of adverse effects from the vaccine itself, making the risk-reward trade-off complex.
While private sector contributions are important, government is essential for crucial functions like monitoring, producing antivirals and vaccines, and coordinating responses. A more decentralized, federalist approach, empowering local cities to plan and procure resources, could be more effective.
15 Actionable Insights
1. Cultivate Emotional Agility with Mindfulness
Practice mindfulness to observe and feel emotions like anxiety without judgment, shortening their duration and reducing their psychological impact. This allows you to disengage from unnecessary mental suffering.
2. Release Unproductive Negative Emotions
Consciously let go of fear, anxiety, or shame once they no longer serve a useful purpose, recognizing that most moments spent in these emotions are unproductive and detract from well-being.
3. Develop Immediate Emotional Control
Cultivate the ability to immediately halt negative emotional reactions or behaviors upon recognition, whether through self-awareness or a cue from a trusted partner. This helps you respond constructively rather than reactively.
4. Address Uncertainty with Action
When faced with uncertainty, actively determine what you believe to be true and what actions you should take; once a decision is made, release the associated anxiety and proceed with your plan.
5. View Missteps as Growth Opportunities
When you make a mistake or feel shame, use it as an opportunity to practice mindfulness, disidentify from the ‘illusion of self,’ and focus on repairing relationships through sincere apologies.
6. Practice Honest & Measured Communication with Children
Be honest with children about difficult situations without oversharing anxiety-inducing details; instead, equip them with ‘adult-grade tools’ for understanding probability and risk.
7. Cultivate a Supportive Partnership
Foster a relationship with your spouse or partner where they understand your emotional regulation practices and can provide timely cues to help you pause and respond constructively in stressful moments.
8. Avoid Unnecessary Physical Risks
During times of crisis or strain on healthcare systems, consciously avoid activities that carry a significant risk of physical injury to prevent needing medical attention and burdening hospitals.
9. Appreciate Nuance and Uncertainty
Embrace the inherent nuance and uncertainty of life, and actively work to develop tools and ways of thinking that help you manage risk and make informed decisions in complex situations.
10. Identify and Appreciate ‘Silver Linings’
Actively look for and take stock of the unexpected positive aspects or ‘silver linings’ that emerge during challenging circumstances, and consider integrating these lessons into your life moving forward.
11. Document Crisis Lessons Learned
For future preparedness, systematically capture and document all lessons learned during a crisis, including what went wrong and what worked, to avoid repeating mistakes.
12. Cultivate Complex Truth-Holding
Practice the mental flexibility to simultaneously hold seemingly incompatible truths or perspectives without resorting to political dogmatism, especially when discussing complex societal issues.
13. Advocate for Preparedness & Decentralized Response
As an informed citizen, advocate for government and institutional preparedness for predictable disasters and support decentralized, city-specific approaches to crisis management.
14. Acknowledge Emotional Biases in Risk
Recognize that personal emotions and superficial differences can distort rational assessments of risk, and strive to make judgments based on objective data and statistics where possible.
15. Hold Countries Accountable for Practices
Advocate for international pressure on countries to cease dangerous cultural practices (e.g., wet markets that house wild species) that pose global health risks.
5 Key Quotes
The moment you can merely feel it without judgment, without reaction, without contraction, without thinking about all the reasons why it's intolerable, or thinking more about the reasons why it's justified, if you just become willing to feel it in the moment, it loses its psychological content.
Sam Harris
Yeah, I mean, you want to feel fear when it's appropriate and useful to feel it, and you want to be able to release it the moment there's no point to it.
Sam Harris
What's happening in the moment is rarely that bad. But what's going on in my mind is often much worse.
Peter Attia
Optimism bias is not a bias I have in, in much quantity, but I have to think that there are certain errors of judgment that will become less common here.
Sam Harris
The real toxicity in all of this is in the duration over which we're caught. If this is all happening quickly, it's fine. If it's taking hours and days and weeks and months to sort out these problems, well, then you have a very unhappy life.
Sam Harris
2 Protocols
Managing Unnecessary Emotional Suffering (Mindfulness)
Sam Harris- Recognize when your wheels begin to spin and you are suffering unnecessarily from anxiety or other negative emotions.
- Witness the emotion as a matter of experience, moment to moment, rather than understanding it neurophysiologically.
- Puncture the emotional state by bringing clear attention (mindfulness) to the present.
- Feel the energy of the emotion in your body without judgment, reaction, or contraction.
- Avoid thinking about why the emotion is intolerable or justified; simply be willing to feel it.
- Observe the emotion losing its psychological content, becoming just a feeling like any other physical sensation.
- Recognize that consciousness is an open space where everything appears, and it is not harmed by the mind state.
- Allow the peripheral physiology of the emotion to dissipate quickly (over seconds) once the spell is broken.
Responding to Personal Missteps and Shame
Sam Harris- Recognize that even when you screw up and feel shame, it is an opportunity to cut through the illusion of self.
- Use the feeling of shame as a signal to repair relationships if damage has been done.
- Offer a sincere apology to the person affected, acknowledging your wrong actions.
- Communicate a commitment to not repeat the behavior.
- Allow the other person (e.g., a child) to internalize that they were right in their judgment of your actions, empowering them.
- Practice mindfulness to shorten the duration of being caught in shame, allowing for quick recovery and constructive action.