Page 176 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

levels of underreporting characteristic of gender-based violence.
All told, they total an additional 15 million cases of gender-based

violence for every three months a lockdown continues. [155] It is
hard to predict how domestic violence will evolve in the post-
pandemic era. Conditions of hardship will make it more likely, but
much will depend on how individual countries control the two

pathways through which domestic violence occurs: 1) the
reduction in prevention and protection efforts, social services and
care; and 2) the concomitant increase in the incidence of violence.

This sub-chapter concludes with a point that may seem

anecdotal but that has gained some relevance in an era of
relentless online meetings that could expand in the foreseeable
future: are video conversations and mental well-being bad
bedfellows? During the lockdowns, video conversations were for

many a personal and professional lifesaver, allowing us to
maintain human connections, long-distance relationships and
connections with our colleagues. But they have also generated a
phenomenon of mental exhaustion, popularized as “Zoom

fatigue”: a condition that applies to the use of any video interface.
During the lockdowns, screens and videos were so widely
solicited for communication purposes that this equated to a new
social experiment conducted at scale. The conclusion: our brains

find it difficult and sometimes unsettling to conduct virtual
interactions especially if and when such interactions account for
the quasi-totality of our professional and personal exchanges. We
are social animals for whom the many minor and often nonverbal

cues that normally occur during physical social interactions are
vital in terms of communication and mutual understanding. When
we talk to someone in the flesh, we don’t only concentrate on the
words they are saying but also focus on a multitude of infra-

language signals that help us make sense of the exchange we are
having: is the lower body of the person facing us or turned away?
What are their hands doing? What’s the tone of their general body
language? How is the person breathing? A video conversation

makes the interpretation of these nonverbal cues charged with
subtle meaning impossible, and it forces us to concentrate
exclusively on words and facial expressions sometimes altered by

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