VIRUS: Calm is the key

We live in abnormal times. It has been a century since the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1919. It is normal for disease to sweep through human communities every few years, killing the old, young, weak and unlucky.

Over the past century, we have been so blessed by modern medicine that we have been spared this normality. What is new to us as individuals in our contemporary society is a reality that human beings have lived with since before our earliest settlements more than 10,000 years ago. That perspective gives me some comfort.

Human history also demonstrates that panic is almost always more dangerous than what it is reacting against. In the classic case of fire in a crowded theater, most everyone could easily evacuate by the posted exits. Yet, all too often a communicable panic ensues and sparks a human stampede which needlessly crushes and traps people.

Panic only produces anarchy. We simply cannot adrenalize our blood and “fight or flight” our way out of an epidemic. Whatever we elect to do, we must keep our heads and as Britain’s King George VI famously said at the outset of World War II, “Keep calm and carry on!”

We can keep functioning as reasoning individuals in our institutions, online if needs be. We can resist the seductive temptation to believe that visceral fear reveals truth and can keep us safe. It cannot. We can and must try our best to face what comes with grace, hope, faith, courage and self-control.

RALPH K. GINORIO

Coeur d’Alene