Fear And Panic - The Most Dangerous Contagions In History

Everyone loves a good drama. At work, the gossip around who’s dating who is far more interesting than doing your job. Newspapers and media outlets rely on bad news to sell papers or in digital terms create ‘click bait’ so you click on the article. Often, in both cases, the headlines don’t match the actual story because if they did, people wouldn’t read them. It’s far easier to get someone to pay for a paper with the headline “Virus Outbreak! 95 Year old Dead and Infections on the Rise.” Rather than, “55,000 people have already recovered from the Virus many only experienced mild illness.” This is not to understate the issue at hand. Yes it is concerning and yes we need to do something about this to slow and/or stop the spread. However, the impact this has had on outdoor education alone is massive, with countless school cutting all programs, no matter how remote or disconnected they are from the fact that children are not really being affected. The level of perceived risk is through the roof, the level of actual risk for most people remains relatively low.

I saw this again on the news last night. ¾ of the whole news was about the ‘massive’ jump in cases. The ‘sick and elderly dying,’ the panic buying, the dark days ahead and all of this negative crap which gives the average person the impression that the zombie apocalypse is here. For most people, given the popularity of the show, the Walking Dead, they’re reacting as if a zombie virus or Ebola has gotten loose and is wiping out 80-90% of the healthy population. The fact is, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that fear and panic are driving this and hyped up by the media, is driving the world economy into recession.
 
Ironically, like a fine print disclaimer at the bottom of some ludicrous advert, one of the later stories in the news was basically, ‘Oh by the way… if you wash your hands, don’t touch your face and mouth after contacts and don’t have prolonged close contact with an infected person, the risk of catching this is really low. The number of cases of this in the country and around the world are testament to this.
 
Added to this, most people are not dying. They’re experiencing mild ‘flu-like’ conditions and recovering. What’s the problem? The problem is that everyone loves the drama and focuses on the negative side of the drama, rather than looking at the whole problem in context. The world is not going to be completely overrun and shut-down by this virus. It’s not wiping out the next generation of young people and healthy people, but mild viruses which don’t kill lots of people, don’t make good news stories.
 
On 30th Oct 1938, the radio show ‘War of the Worlds’, by Orson Welles first aired. This sparked wide-spread panic, with people thinking they were being attacked by aliens. Now we might laugh at this now, as we know it’s a story, but at the time, that felt so real as it was coming through their airwaves.
 
The media has a lot to answer for in this. They’re far from reporting the facts and this has been so over-editorialised and hyped up that the fear and panic they’ve put into the community could have a really long-term negative effect. This will all blow over given time. However, how many businesses are going to be wiped out? How many fights are going to break out over nothing? How much panic is ok before the media is taken to task over this, which, to be honest, they won’t be.
 
If you look back in history, the world has survived many things. However, fear and panic is so contagious that the impact it has on a mild crisis can and does turn everything into a major catastrophe. We’re experiencing runs on banks, stampedes in stadiums, riots over food and supplies, when the supplies aren’t at risk. The timeless words of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ echo loudly through this current world crisis and we should always remember:

If you can keep your head when all about you  
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,  
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
….
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,  
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

The full poem can be found here:
 
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---
 
It is time for us to take stock and see this for what it is. It is not the world ending pandemic that will turn everyone inside out. It is a virus, which spreads quickly through close contact and poor hygiene and the effects of which are generally mild with most people recovering. Let’s not lose our heads. The world has gone through worse and there will be worse to come, but standing firm when everyone else is losing it, is so important for the world right now. We need more people to have level heads and respond to this current issue accordingly.
 
For some stats on the current virus check out:
 
https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-coronavirus-infographic-datapack/
 
For some crucial tips on surviving a zombie apocalypse check out:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyUbQTEFuss
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