'Everyone is so tired': Ever-changing rules may be causing some Maritimers to tune out of new COVID-19 restrictions

It’s been nearly two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and with fluctuating case counts, constantly changing restrictions and overall information overload, it can be tempting for some to tune out.

“We get used to something, and now we have to adjust to something new,” says psychologist Mary Ann Campbell of the University of New Brunswick.

“We go back to what we had, and now we’re doing something new again – that inconsistency causes people to stop paying attention.”

That means information from public health may be falling on deaf ears as more people become desensitized.

Political scientist at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B., Jamie Gillies, says the challenge now for politicians and other officials, is to be able to cut through the noise.

“Everyone is tired, and so when they hear a change in announcement there are a lot of people who are simply overwhelmed by this,” says Gillies. “And they sort of stop tuning in as focused as we were during the first couple waves of the pandemic.”

With the Omicron variant now present in all four Atlantic provinces, officials say it’s perhaps now more important than ever to pay attention to the latest information.

“The public is done with COVID, but COVID is not done with us,” New Brunswick’s Health Minister Dorothy Shephard says. “I can’t stress that enough.”