Sleeping in my bed in the morning, my eyes slowly open. I fumble for the remote and click on the news and there it is blaring away, coronavirus! Coronavirus!
What a way to start the day, being totally paranoid, as if the bills weren’t enough.
We are being engulfed day and night. We need a sunshine channel. There used to be a TV channel with nothing but mountain streams and soft music, bring that back, we could use it about now.
Coronavirus is now called COVID-19. They had to change the name, adding numbers to something makes it sound bigger and scarier. Like, it can’t just be explosives, it has to be C-4 explosives, or strontium has to be strontium-90. A gun has to be an AK-47. Oil is WD-40, that makes it a bigger deal. So it has to be COVID-19, it scares people more and makes for more sensationalism. TV runs on it.
There is a point where informing gives way to alarming. You’ll know it when you feel alarmed, which comes after the umpteenth depressing news story.
I don’t want to downplay it, but this malady is minuscule to the high incidents of the flu. Not to ruin your morning, but frequently there are 500,000 fatalities a year from the flu and 250,000 annual casualties from measles. So let’s take it a little easier.
I know it’s serious and people are dying around the world, God bless them. But we should not make it worse by worrying. It’s best to think about mountain streams or walking down the beach at Hapuna.
Another problem is the nervousness in the air. Yesterday, I walked into the Kailua-Kona Post Office and saw everyone standing back away from that long counter, hanging around 4 feet from each other. It looked strange, it was all about the fear of being close to people, which is too bad.
The doctors are informing us about it but it’s a medical alert not a riot. We’ve braved worldwide dilemmas before and
The media uses phrases like “pandemic” and “world-wide disaster” and that it “has a grip on everything.” We just need to get a grip on ourselves.
The disease is spread physically by people, but it’s spread mentally by the evening news. This is important but it’s catching too. Listen carefully but tune it out a bit for your own sake. Trust me, if you miss the coronavirus news tonight, you’ll hear it again tomorrow until it’s gone, and it will be.
I am talking about a symptom we are giving ourselves, fear.
Remember what President Franklin D. Roosevelt said about fear itself and most of the time there really is nothing to be afraid of.
Another saying you might take to heart was by a visitor to the Big Island, Mark Twain.
He wrote, “I am an old man and have known many troubles, most of them never happened.”
My dad used to tell me, “Don’t holler till you’re hurt.” That’s good advice to live by these days. But we send our aloha to those who have been hurt by this.
Go easy folks, this too shall pass.
Dennis Gregory writes a bi-monthly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com