A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like us.'
– St. Anthony the Great
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around. It's THE END OF THE WORLD. Again. Hit me, baby, one more time. And, like so many ends of the world past and those still to come, it isn't. I'm not yet 60 and I've survived apocalypse after apocalypse that Those Who Know™ predicted would be curtains for us all: Malthusianism, global cooling, global warming, swine flu (H1N1), bird flu (H5N1), SARS, mad cow disease, Legionnaires Disease, Y2K, HIV/AIDS, Ebola virus, West Nile virus, the oil crisis, DDT, nuclear holocaust, the banking crisis, World War III (many instances), the cancelation of Firefly, disco, Ronald Reagan, etc. I and the world are still standing, as I expect will be the case for me for many years to come and for the world many, many years beyond that.
And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet.
– Matthew 24:6
I'm not making light of COVID-19, a.k.a. the Coronavirus (or the Wuhan Virus—if you're a racist, so we're told). It's certainly serious, but the panic being generated is out of all proportion to the threat. The swine flu of 2009-2010 was much more serious. In the US there were more than 60 million infected, hundreds of thousands hospitalized, and more than 12,000 deaths. Worldwide, nearly half a million people died. At that time, there was relatively little panic. Life went on. The NCAA championship (a different March Madness than we're experiencing now) wasn't canceled. Instead, the press was ga-ga over Barack Obama's brackets, which he seemed to care about much more than responding to a pandemic.
Estimates for the 2019-2020 flu season aren't complete, but the US may have seen as many as 51 million infected, 670,000 hospitalized, and 55,000 deaths—and flu is an annual event. Every year results in tens of thousands of deaths. The 2018-2019 flu season had 61,000 estimated deaths. COVID-19 has a long, long way to go to reach those numbers.
Whether swine flu, bird flu, or annual flu, the responses were measured and reasonable. Businesses weren't shut down, public gatherings weren't canceled, travel wasn't forbidden.
Perhaps those measures would have limited the spread, perhaps not, but there was no panic, no insanity. I look at Obama publicising his NCAA brackets while thousands were dying less like Nero fiddling while Rome burned than like Drake finishing his game of bowling after the Armada was sighted. Calm amid the storm is never a bad option (besides, Drake had to wait for the tide anyway). The tendency to panic and then to attack anyone not panicking with you is just crazy.
We must carry on. We need that now, but it's not to be. The press is whipping reasonable concern into frenzied hysteria and the politicians are one-upping each other to be most responsive—or at least to avoid accusations of non-responsiveness—as well as to accuse others of inaction and establish "I told you so" rights in the aftermath. Most of it is pure posturing.
For the first time since the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, public celebration of the Catholic Mass in numerous places around the world has been canceled until further notice. It may turn out to be just a few weeks, but the Seattle Archdiocese, where I live, is scrambling for alternative ways to continue administering the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist, after the governor has banned large gatherings of all kinds, including church attendance.
Panic adds to panic and snowballs from there. One unprecedented response makes people think they need to do more, which leads to further unprecedented responses. Reasonable precautions give way to paranoia like the runs on banks during the Great Depression, a textbook example of people fearing fear itself, which only ever makes a bad situation worse.
Nothing epitomizes the absurdity of the present panic like the run on toilet paper. Toilet paper. At stores all over the US (and in other countries as well) toilet paper is selling out. Instead of the usual cornucopia of absorbent options, the shelves are empty because people are afraid they'll be quarantined with an insufficient amount of bog-roll to get them through. It's silly, but panic like that is infectious and normally sane people start to worry that they better get TP right now rather than wait until they're out because with everyone buying as much as they can, there may not be any left when they need it. Thus, there is none at all.
Travel is in upheaval. My nephew was due to fly to Chile on Monday to start a job teaching ESL. That got canceled because Chile is warning people flying in that they will be quarantined for several weeks on arrival. Friends who've flown in recent days have shared pics of empty airports. No one is traveling, either they've canceled because they're afraid or their destination has canceled on them.
There is also the compulsive need for every business that has your email address in its database to send you unsolicited emails explaining how they're addressing the virus crisis.
So far, all the restaurants and grocery stores are open and crowded, but businesses have made their workers telecommute until the end of March just to be safe. Some retail stores have shut down. I had a new customized Mac that I was to pick up at the Apple store near me on Tuesday. I was just notified that Apple is shutting all its stores outside of China until March 27. I'll have to creep along with my tired old Mac for another few weeks.
I was supposed to start a new job on Monday and left my old one on Thursday. Now the new job start is delayed due to chaos because of the virus. I have a week (or two) to kill before I start getting a paycheck again. People forced into telecommuting are also having to homeschool their kids because all the schools have closed. Microsoft gave telecommuting parents a week of paid leave to sort it all out.
The markets are freaking out, less from the virus than from the havoc of disrupted business. A market downturn could cause a lot of economic hardship for a lot of people if it continues for long. Which brings up the seedy politics of the virus. Some Democrats are eager for the economy to tank so they can unseat the Bad Orange Man and replace him with either a bad-tempered guy who often forgets who he is and what he's doing or a bad-tempered guy who thinks bread lines are fantastic, is offended by the variety of underarm deodorant available in a market economy, and is incredulous that people have bad opinions about Fidel Castro. One is demented, the other is crazy (or evil). That's the best they have to offer.
Maybe it is THE END OF THE WORLD. Given the fear-mongering, mindlessness, and low politicization of a situation that ought to pull us together for the common good, maybe that's for the best. It can only go downhill from here. Whatever comes will come, but for now, I feel fine—frustrated and a bit angry, but fine.
