The response of amorphous solids to a mechanical perturbation consists of elastic and plastic deformations. The latter are mediated by localized irreversible rearrangements associated with Eshelby-like quadrupolar singularities in the displacement field. It has recently been argued that a density of such singularities leads to an “anomalous” elastic behavior taking the form of screening effects, which goes beyond classical elastic predictions. Here, we reexamine this scenario using general theoretical arguments and a description in terms of an elasto-plastic model, which we compare with atomistic simulations of the canonical Eshelby inclusion geometry. We first discuss the conditions under which a finite, i.e., nonvanishing, density of quadrupolar events is created by an imposed perturbation. We argue that, except when the perturbation is macroscopic, there are many situations in which the density of quadrupolar defects is zero in the thermodynamic limit. Plastically active quadrupoles then emerge in a region whose size generically scales as the spatial extent ℓ of the mechanical perturbation, and conventional elasticity is only recovered beyond this region. Simulations of the elasto-plastic model reproduce the emergence of plastic quadrupoles in a region set by ℓ and the associated renormalization of the effective shear modulus, but they fail to exhibit the dipole-screening signatures reported in atomistic and experimental studies. Our analysis delineates the scale-dependent breakdown of long-wavelength elasticity in amorphous materials and suggests directions for incorporating anomalous screening into mesoscopic modeling frameworks.