Cultural Components in Response to COVID-19 Alerts among Isu Folks of Eastern Nigeria
Diseases pertain to organic bodily system but they gnaw humans within socio-cultural systems. Any disease therefore has cultural components with folk psychology influencing epidemiology and treatments. The novel corona-virus disease (covid-19) broke out in Wuhan, China in December 2019. By March 2020, it had spread to the width of a pandemic. Swiftly, the World Health Organization alerted the world of the nature, mode and frequency of the infection asserting that there was then no known cure or vaccine. Different societies cultivated diverse attitudes and responses to the disease and its alerts meant to protect their bodies and environments from the virus. The study enquired into the responses to covid-19 alerts by Isu-folks of Eastern Nigeria. Data were obtained from the field by participant observation of the folk in-situ between April to August 2020; unit of analysis was the folk’s patterned conversations with their overt behaviors towards covid-19 alerts. A variant of interpretative ethno-methodology-conversational analysis, and symbolic interactionism were the combined framework for the exposition of the responses and collective psychology to covid-19. The folks were found to have indulged in denials, allegorical insults, intricate bodily ritual semiotics, and parodies. These responses generated feelings of collective immunity and invincibility replacing panic and fear of the pandemic with adaptive emotions.