MONTREAL — When a Quebec couple recently travelled to the far reaches of Yukon in a bid to escape the novel coronavirus, only to be turned away, it seemed a textbook case of pandemic-generated panic.
McGill University psychology professor Ross Otto says there is a well-established psychological principle that may explain the couple’s decision to flee to the North. In some cases, that will spur people to flee to remote areas and put others at risk, to hoard toilet paper or behave in other ethically questionable ways. But, Otto said, that distorted judgment can actually help society by facilitating self-isolating behaviour.
“We started to hear more and more about owners from Montreal, of chalets in this area and in Gaspe, who had already come to the regions to isolate themselves from COVID,” Marc Parent, mayor of Rimouski, Que., said in a recent interview. “And we heard of hotels that started receiving travellers from the Montreal area …. It began worrying people.”
Furthermore, she said, unless someone is already living off the land and is self-sufficient, leaving a city to escape a fast-spreading virus may not be the smartest thing to do.
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