--- title: Why You Shouldn't Feel Shame for Getting COVID-19 description: Many people feel guilt or shame after testing positive for COVID-19, which affects mental and public health. Here's how to fix it. canonical: https://time.com/6150012/covid-19-shame-guilt/ author: Jamie Ducharme article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-02-22T20:34:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:44.157Z article:section: Health og:title: It's Time to Get Over 'COVID Shame' og:description: If we're going to live with the virus, our perspective and language need to change og:url: https://time.com/6150012/covid-19-shame-guilt/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt851751ef7a5c16ff/698a229d096a9419126ac42d/athomecovidtest.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Pharmacies Receive Government-Supplied Home COVID-19 Tests og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: It's Time to Get Over 'COVID Shame' twitter:description: If we're going to live with the virus, our perspective and language need to change twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt851751ef7a5c16ff/698a229d096a9419126ac42d/athomecovidtest.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # It's Time to Get Over 'COVID Shame' > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: TIME for Kids Sits Down with Dr. Vivek Murthy [Watch (HLS stream): TIME for Kids Sits Down with Dr. Vivek Murthy](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ZJWzXvgf.m3u8) (5:00)  _Published 2022-01-13. TIME for Kids sits down with the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy._  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Feb 22, 2022 8:34 PM UTC  A woman processes a nasal swab in one of the government-issued COVID-19 test kits she received as she self tests while at home in Utah on Feb. 8, 2022. A woman processes a nasal swab in one of the government-issued COVID-19 test kits she received as she self tests while at home in Utah on Feb. 8, 2022. George Frey—Getty Images  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Feb 22, 2022 8:34 PM UTC Maria Venetis got a [breakthrough case of COVID-19](https://time.com/6130704/breakthrough-infections-omicron/) right around New Year’s Eve. When she called friends to cancel plans, she found herself overexplaining how and where she might have caught the virus—until one friend cut her off. “It doesn’t really matter,” Venetis, an associate professor of communication at Rutgers University, remembers her friend saying. In that moment, Venetis realized “there is no reason for me to point a finger about where I may have possibly gotten this.” COVID-19 is such a contagious and widespread disease that feeling guilty for contracting it is, at this point, illogical. But even with [experts predicting that the virus will soon become endemic,](https://time.com/6148424/covid-19-rethink-risk/) the shame of getting it persists. Studies and [anecdotal reports](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2021/12/22/dont-feel-ashamed-for-getting-covid/) show that many people who test positive experience shame and guilt—perhaps because they [regret accidentally exposing others](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7669543/), feel like failures for not doing enough to prevent it, or [experience stigma online](https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-media-social-media-archive-public-health-dd0168e11f7f1ae23a65feaa81cddd92). Liat Hamama, a professor of social work at Tel Aviv University, recently [researched guilt and shame](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10615806.2021.1964073?journalCode=gasc20) among more than 300 people in Israel who tested positive for COVID-19**.** She found that almost 14% of study participants felt strong shame about their diagnosis and about 16% felt a lot of guilt—not the majority, but a sizable minority. Those feelings appear to be more common in the U.S. In late 2020, when Johns Hopkins researchers surveyed approximately 1,500 Americans, [about 25% said they would feel ashamed](https://www.covidinequities.org/post/research-brief-high-levels-of-stigma-and-shame-associated-with-covid-19) if they caught COVID-19. Those feelings have clear consequences for mental health, but they could also be problematic from a public-health standpoint. The Johns Hopkins researchers linked COVID-19 stigma to a person’s reluctance to seek medical care, test, and tell others who might have been exposed. [Another study](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.565845/full), published in 2021, also found that COVID-19 shame was linked to lower compliance with public health guidelines, such as notifying health officials and close contacts. Plenty of health conditions, from [sexually transmitted infections](https://time.com/5381625/std-rates-funding/) to [mental health disorders](https://time.com/5835960/coronavirus-mental-illness-stigma/), carry damaging stigma—but respiratory diseases typically don’t. “How often do people feel ashamed that they got the flu?” says Joe Gieck, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. COVID-19 may be different because it has shaped nearly every aspect of our lives for the past two years. The disease—along with measures used to prevent it—have also become intensely politicized, leading people to assign moral values to what should be benign public health precautions. Masking and getting vaccinated, for example, can be described as either ethical responsibilities or infringements on personal liberties, depending on a person’s perspective. In that emotionally heightened state, people are quick to call out those they perceive as behaving badly, especially on social media. “We have this built-in mechanism of trying to be good citizens, but also ostracize those who aren’t,” Venetis says. Research has repeatedly shown that shaming isn’t a good way to [prompt behavior change](https://time.com/5951755/how-to-convince-people-to-get-vaccinated/), but people do it anyway. Risk communication has likely also contributed to perceptions of the virus. Guidance issued by public health authorities including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has often focused on the actions of individuals, from the “just stay home” days of spring 2020 to more recent [advice about wearing protective respirators like N95s](https://time.com/6139169/n95-best-mask-omicron-covid-19/). “There’s been so much emphasis on prevention and mitigation,” Gieck says. When someone follows all the “right” steps and gets sick anyway, “it can result in a sense of having done something wrong.” Many people are also afraid of COVID-19, and fear can exacerbate negative emotions when someone does test positive, Gieck says. **Read More**:[_COVID-19 Seems to Spare Most Kids From Illness, but Its Effect on Their Mental Health Is Deepening_](https://time.com/5870478/children-mental-health-coronavirus/) Guilt and shame are closely related, but not identical. “Guilt is, ‘I feel bad about what I did,’ and shame is, ‘I _am_ bad because of what I did,’” says Sonya Norman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. While guilt can at least motivate people to make more conscientious decisions moving forward, shame is rarely productive, she says. Internalizing shame can be damaging to mental health and is linked to [ depression and low self-esteem](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-scientific-underpinnings-and-impacts-of-shame/). Shame is also associated with poor anger regulation and interpersonal problems, Hamama adds. --- ### More from TIME --- Norman is working on a therapeutic intervention for people who have struggled with COVID-19-related shame based on her previous work treating U.S. veterans. It guides people to recognize why they feel ashamed; addresses “hindsight bias,” or the tendency to judge past decisions based on present knowledge; and finds strategies for releasing guilt and shame in the future. Norman is still studying the program and its efficacy but says she has gotten promising feedback from patients. Not everyone can or will find a therapist to do that kind of one-on-one work, so it’s also important to address COVID-19 shame at a societal level—particularly as we prepare for a near future in which the virus is treated as [an unfortunate but constant part of life](https://time.com/6133110/2022-the-year-we-live-with-covid-19/). “How we talk about everything makes a difference,” Venetis says. In personal relationships, Venetis says messages like the one she got from her friend after testing positive—that it’s okay and no one’s fault—can help normalize the diagnosis. Conversely, overanalyzing where someone got COVID-19 is rarely helpful and can imply that the sick person did something wrong. Public health authorities like the CDC can use similar tactics. Jennifer Manganello, a health communications expert at the University at Albany School of Public Health, says the language used to describe COVID-19 is important. Talking about people “acquiring” or “contracting” COVID-19 is better than saying someone “transmitted” the virus or “infected” someone else, she says, because it takes blame out of the equation. It’s also important to give people actionable public-health advice while emphasizing that some things are beyond their control, Manganello says. While individuals can and should take certain precautions, like getting vaccinated and boosted, the virus continues to mutate and spread due to societal factors like [global vaccine inequality](https://time.com/6124974/omicron-africa-vaccines/). “Individual actions are just one piece of the puzzle,” Manganello says. Health communications may be most effective coming from sources whom people inherently trust, such as pediatricians and community doctors, says Dr. Scott Ratzan, founding editor of the journal _Health Communication: International Perspectives_. The pandemic has caused an erosion of trust in the government and [public health groups like the CDC](https://www.rand.org/pubs/research%5Freports/RRA308-12.html), but most people still trust the health and medical experts they engage with personally, Ratzan says. Those experts should use language that comforts people who test positive and emphasizes that there’s nothing shameful about catching a widely circulating, highly contagious virus, Ratzan says. Social media is a useful tool for widely distributing constructive messages, he adds. Over time, Venetis says, the way we talk about and perceive COVID-19 will likely shift on its own. The Omicron variant may have helped hasten this process, since it continues to [infect even triple-vaccinated people who wear masks](https://time.com/6130704/breakthrough-infections-omicron/)—driving home the message that getting sick is not a moral failing, but a practically unavoidable fact of life as we now know it. ## Transcript Hi, my name is Raonic but I am 12 years old and a kid reporter for time for kids. I am cured with the US Surgeon General. Dr. Vivek Murthy to talk about his recent advisory on mental health is a good time to have this discussion because the pandemic has been hard on kids mental health. In the recent rise. In Omicron cases is causing stress all over again, Rick sample. Some schools. Mine included have decided to go virtual after the holiday break. How dr. Murthy thank you for your time. I am so excited to speak with you conversation as well. Thanks for doing this with me. Thank you, sir. I so should we Jump Right In? Can you please explain what the health advisory is and what your most recent mental health advisory says of 2021. I don't know any Surgeon General advisory is a report issue to the country to call people's attention to an urgent public help, So there's something it's concerning impact, People's Health, in the back way. We want the public to know about it, but we focus this on young people in particular because for a long time now struggling to decide to issue the mental health advisory. Now, people around the world and has promised to address the mental health challenges, the young people experiencing All Over America. Schools are going back to her about learning videos of Omicron for many kids. This is stressful and a setback, the other advice for coping with it. Ended last year. You started a new school and then I was really hard to make friends that I can only imagine in particular, if we were virtual, if you had to and do distance learning during that time and probably even harder. How did you deal with those feelings of not being able to make friends if perhaps experiencing and we started to chat with each other through online? And it made me feel a lot better. And also I had my parents and my family and my brother reaching out to people who care about you is so important during times like that. And that one thing I want to ask for help. Please know that you're not alone. Please know that others experience this to that. Ask for help. That's never a sign of weakness. That's a good question and it looks a bit different for everyone. Always tell from the outside and I assume you're doing, okay? Just that they seem to be gathering with other people or smiling all the time, feeling good about, who you are and comfortable with where you are. The other thing that's important relationships, you have with other people with mental health, involves having good relationships with family and friends. That doesn't mean you need a lot of them. You just need a few and lastly, good know. How is about any able to respond to difficult time, that will come up and all of our lives. These are all part of a big mental health, a relationship with a relationship with other people and our ability to deal with difficult times when they come. All the young people a hard time during this is been a very difficult and struggling. I don't want anyone out there to think that somehow as they're struggling, that when you gone through in this last two years is a very Human Experience, but I also want to remind you if they would we as human beings with extraordinary power and resilience for willing. I should look for a willing to reach for out. Thank you for being an advocate, a champion to help other people. 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