The physical symptoms of fatigue due to COVID-19 are now well known. But the mental fatigue due to information overload on COVID is a relatively new phenomenon.
The explosion of COVID information through electronic and print media, journals, social apps, online teaching and learning activities etc. is creating a peculiar numbing of our senses. As professionals, while it is important for us not to miss any new information on COVID, our brains have started to probably subconsciously block out constant bombardment of COVID information.
Is this the so called “COVID fatigue” and does it have adverse consequences for medical professionals?
Will it be similar to the “compassion fatigue of 1970s” when people started losing empathy to human suffering due to a barrage of donation requests for sufferers in famines, floods, earthquakes and wars?