Fear and Loathing on the Internet
As bird flu has spread now to Africa, the tempo of fear among many of those preparing for a pandemic has moved up another notch. The mantra I hear, repeated again and again, is that it would be suicide to leave your home for any reason during a pandemic wave.
While I admit that there is some personal risk to doing so, I have repeatedly argued that we need to fight any pandemic like an invading army. If we allow our fears to force us into hiding, we will be picked off one by one by either the virus or our failed infrastructure. Without power, water, operating sewers, hospitals, and law enforcement, how many of us can really survive for months or possibly years?
With few exceptions, my viewpoint is countered with jeers and catcalls. People resent the idea that some of us might want to consider risking our personal safety to keep hospitals open, the lights on, and food and medicine moving. I guess it’s like the guy who works too hard at the office, and everybody hates him because he makes the rest of the employee’s look bad.
Has our society really been reduced to the level of George Costanza knocking over little old ladies in a nursing home to make it to the exit during a fire drill? Is the concept of personal sacrifice, to save others, really dead? Are our own skins so precious, that it is better not to risk them, even if it means a child next door will starve, or a potential vaccine won’t be delivered?
It’s a depressing thought.
Luckily, there still remain a few that have expressed their desire to help others during a pandemic. Doctors, nurses, cops, respiratory therapists, and a few others. But they can’t do it alone. Without backup, without support personnel, they are doomed to fail.
We need an army, willing to go into battle, even at great personal risk, in order for our society to survive a pandemic. Utility workers, garbage collectors, mortuary removal personnel, cooks and housekeeping personnel in hospitals, correctional officers, truck drivers, and even people who can do little more than walk a security patrol for a neighborhood watch. They all are essential personnel.
Some will fall. Indeed, tragically, some may even bring the virus home with them.
It is a risk that we must take, unless we are willing to standby and watch our infrastructure fail. And with that failure will come more deaths, more despair, and a much longer-term problem than an 18 month pandemic.
I’ve no desire to die in a pandemic. I’m not a hero. This virus scares the hell out of me. But I’d rather go down swinging, fighting the good fight, than barricaded in my home with power the out, my food supplies dwindling, and watching society devolve around me.
Foolish? Perhaps. Maybe even fluicidal. But it’s something I can live with.
