German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in isolation today after news that her doctor tested positive for coronavirus. Rand Paul announced yesterday that he has tested positive for the virus, becoming the first US senator to do so. Senators Mitt Romney, Mike Lee, Cory Gardner, and Rick Scott are in self-isolation today. Two members of the House of Representatives have tested positive for the disease.
Yesterday, Dallas County joined eleven other counties, states, and cities to institute shelter-in-place orders for all residents. US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said Sunday that the lockdown affecting large segments of the American public is likely to last ten to twelve weeks. As US News & World Report notes, this is “the biggest change in daily life since World War II.”
Americans are understandably afraid—afraid of the disease, of its impact on our lives, of the unknown. But there are two ways to be afraid.
One is negative and debilitating; the other is positive and transforming.
The wrong way to fear the pandemic
Merriam-Webster defines fear as “an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.”
This is the kind of fear that prompts hoarding of toilet paper and other supplies. It causes us to fall for scams and fake COVID-19 “cures.” It provokes anxiety that is physically debilitating, leading to panic attacks, headaches, breathing problems, fatigue, and depression.
Asian Americans are experiencing prejudice and even hate crimes. Rocks and bottles were thrown at a cruise ship as it docked recently.
Such fear seems more widespread today than in many years, in large part because we are facing an enemy unlike any we have faced in my lifetime. My parents lived in a world where polio was an ever-present threat. Their parents remembered the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed as many as fifty million people and the cholera pandemic that preceded it. And my father…
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