I think that makes sense psychologically, it expresses the desire to flee from the disease.
Have you ever noticed how elderly patients, suffering from various forms of dementia, often want to “go home”?
I sense/understand their desire, to run from their present nightmare of confusion to a safer and happier place they remember from their past.
Don’t most of us, when confronted with a modern world we do not recognize as normal/orderly, with commonly understood rules, want to go back to a world that made more sense to us? A world where everyone did their human best to measure up to the commonly agreed upon rules of human conduct and relationships?
Don’t most of us feel overwhelmed by the social/moral morass we are presently subjected to daily, and wish we could time-warp back to when there was some semblance of social cohesion?
I certainly would give anything to escape the present, to go back to a more familiar world, where people honored their commitments to those close to them, who honored the accepted values and rules of community behavior, and could feel shame - retreating in disgrace when they had violated community standards.
But, that is no more - is it time for Atlas to “shrug”? I do not know, but sense that it might be coming soon. There is only so much we can take.