Responding to Coronavirus- Appropriately and Inappropriately
Panic is an ugly sight…primarily because it makes those who are otherwise sane do something(s) crazy- like rushing out to a Wal-Mart or a Sam’s Club or a Costco and clearing those stores out of their supplies of bottled water and toilet paper.
Think about this for a moment…bottled water and toilet paper as the result of a respiratory virus advisory! Well, considering the fact that the very thinking which generates such behavior, must come from the specific part of the human anatomy that toilet paper is designed to “service,” one can only marvel at the stupidity and gullibility of people who are driven to bedlam at the urging of the mainstream media.
Now, given that one should always keep abreast of the news, stay informed and remember that bad decisions are made in the midst of a panic, we should always hope and pray for the best, prepare and have a “plan B” for the worst, and in all cases keep calm, even if we have to lower our pants and slide on the ice…
At the beginning of this past week, we published an essay (http://www.drewnickell.com/?p=3056) about the previously unforeseen effects of coronavirus COVID-19 on our schools and places of work, both of which could contain the spread of the contagion by enabling students and employees to attend virtual teacher-led internet-based classrooms and telecommute to their jobs, respectively. With greater frequency, since two presidential addresses (http://www.drewnickell.com/?p=3064) were delivered in the week that followed, both school and workplace closings have taken place, along with university and certain government services across the country. Furthermore, MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS, PGA, NASCAR and NCAA sporting events, including “March Madness,” have either since been cancelled or indefinitely postponed, while theatrical productions and church services have seen similar cancellations.
Essentially, any place where large groups gather has become “empty space,” and with warnings to the elderly- especially those who live with chronic, immunity-deficient medical conditions- to stay in their homes and avoid outside contact, has startled all of us into the sudden awareness that this one is no joke. People really are dying by the hundreds in Italy, and other continental European countries, in Iran and, with what we are permitted to know by their own government, which is not much, in China as well. Here in the United States, just in the last five days, the cases of coronavirus have spread from half a dozen states, to every single state, Hawaii and Alaska, included. More than fifty of us, here in the States, have perished from the virus, twenty of whom lived in a single nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, just outside Seattle. Small numbers perhaps, compared to the yearly onslaught of influenza and its tens of thousands of fatalities, but noteworthy all the same.
The surrounding uncertainty of how virulent this coronavirus will spread (despite the President’s prescient actions to battle this spread), and the extent to which coronavirus will affect the availability of hospital beads and requisite respiratory therapy devices, not to mention how many of the vulnerable segments of our population will fall to the illness, are presumed to be the drivers of Wall Street volatility and consumer unease. Greatly improving the availability of COVID-19 test kits, and broadening the ease of getting tested with “Drive-Through” testing and other such initiatives as “tele-medicine” will go far to ameliorate this uncertainty and unease. After all, knowledge is the enemy of panic, and being informed is the best defense against uncertainty- especially in troubling times.
So, while being constantly aware of changing circumstances- circumstances which seem to be changing every few hours- doing so only seems prudent that we keep a watchful eye on what’s going on… Such is the mark of an intelligent person…as opposed to clearing the entire consumer supply of toilet paper and getting into fisticuffs over a single package…For those same idiots who today respond to a respiratory illness alert by buying up all the toilet paper, will likely respond to an e-coli advisory tomorrow, by buying up all of the Tylenol…
…and so, the ugly face of panic will rear its ugly head, yet again…
In the meantime, keep calm and carry on…the future will take care of itself.
-Drew Nickell, 14 March 2020
© 2020 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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