Fear Itself
CLAY REYNOLDS
March 17, 2020
“Sometimes human behavior is so stupid that it just makes you want to get into a warm tub and open a fat vein.” Christopher Hitchens
Like millions and millions of Americans, particularly those of us who have crossed the Rubicon Year of age seventy, I find myself these days squatting at home, cautioned against venturing out of doors or certainly out into society where I might encounter the twenty-first century equivalent of Typhoid Mary, or, I guess, COVID-19 Charlie, a witting or unwitting communicant of this dread virus-caused disease that has virtually the entire world in its grip.
Staying at home isn’t such an unusual activity for me, to be honest. As my wife, Judy, and I are fully retired, we spend a good many days, sometimes two or three in a row, without leaving our humble domicile. Even when we do leave, it’s most often to go to a physician’s office for one of our several ordinary medical checkups or problems, none of which is serious. We live in a semi-rural area, roughly five miles from the nearest WalMart, which, in the United States, means we’re “outchonder,” as opposed to “wayouchonder,” as some less fortunate souls who reside another five or ten miles away might be.
If our mercantile needs extend beyond the compendious offerings of what one of my neighbors calls “WallyWorld,” say, to the realm of quality meat or more exotic comestibles than are offered to the plebian tastes of WalMart SuperShoppers, then we must travel between eight and twelve miles for esoteric goods. We are also blessed to have a fairly well-stocked liquor store only three-mile’s distant. Texans are nothing if not priority-aware.
The point is that we are in no dire need of extended travel, no need to go out amongst the potentially diseased masses on a regular basis. We are generously supplied with an array of electronic connections to provide us with casual entertainment, ranging from televised, recorded, and radio programming as well as music, to say nothing of digitally-stored family photos we can peruse at leisure; a lifetime devoted to the world of letters has provided us with a well-stocked library to back up the daily arrival of magazines and newspapers that will keep us smartly up-to-date with yesterday’s news and all the latest sales, as well as real estate offerings in the greater Texas area. Our gym is closed for the duration; but if we need exercise, we can take long walks or bicycle rides around our country-side community. To do so, however, risks potential injury from redneck truckers speeding by, towing all manners of trailers with all kinds of equipment, campers, boats, ATVs, golf carts, heavy machinery, and various building and construction materials, generally gimme-hatted, husky men, hunched over their steering wheels, which they operate with their elbows, furiously sending one text message after another as they race around the serpentine routes winding through our community.
The unfortunate coincidence of heavy and on-going thunderstorms, extending into a fortnight of uncomfortably cool temperatures and heavy downpours, has discouraged outdoor excursions, though. So for the most part, we are housebound, abjured by our adult children from venturing out into society, ostensibly because they are concerned about our health, but more truly because, as my son confessed in a moment of distraction, they don’t have time right now to come here and “sort through all your shit,” in the event of our succumbing to this ailment and biting the proverbial dust.
He advised us to make more profitable use of our time by inventorying anything we might have that could be of real, not sentimental value and discarding the rest. He suggested that an 80-90% reduction in total possession would be a good start. “Why do you need all that junk, anyway?” he asked. “You’re retired.”
I chose to ignore his directive, but it still leaves me and my bride with a great deal of idle time on our hands. I’d go out and do some much needed gardening, but the continuing inundating rain discourages agricultural pursuits; I’ve organized a bit, straightened up my work areas in the garage; and, in spite of my insistence on keeping most of my “shit” intact, have actually discarded some detritus I no longer need or can remember why I kept. The laundry is up to date, housekeeping is up to snuff; I’ve read till my eyes have grown tired, regular television programming no longer amuses, and I’ve planned menus for the next fourteen days.
This last item, though, presents a problem. I occasionally run out of certain items, mostly perishables, that require restocking from an actual supermarket. Fresh fruit and vegetables are at the top of my list, along with a few dairy products. These can be had at WalMart, although the quality of the produce is questionable. I prefer the more exotic climes of Whole Foods, Sprouts, or possibly some other greengrocer of local reputation where freshness and locally grown options are available. So I decided to venture out in spite of the cautions against such foolishness that have come from everyone from TV celebrities and the governor himself all the way down to several of my neighbors who are terrified of this dread disease that is stalking America and refuse even shout at us from the safety of their front lawns if they see us out of doors, braving the rain while we retrieve our emptied garbage cans.
The truth is that this whole virus thing has become hilariously tragic. I am truly in wonder at the amount of fear it’s generated. Still, determined to replenish our supply of perishables, I went ahead, and armed with a bottle of hand-sanitizer but sadly bereft of face mask or sanitary gloves, I set off on solo safari to one of the fancier grocery stores in pursuit of our needs, which, I discovered upon checking, also included a five-gallon bottle of water for our dispenser. We’re not that picky about our water, but our tapwater is supplied from a local lake, and at various times of the year—this being one of them, is unpleasantly flavored by garlic-flavored algae. Harmless though we're assured it is, it gives coffee and tea and other concoctions a repulsive taste.
I wheeled by three different markets and two hardware stores, but none had any five-gallon water bottles left. On my last stop, though, I turned to the rest of my list. I noted immediately that there was nothing but bare shelves in the paper goods aisle. People had quite literally cleaned out all the stock of toilet paper and paper towels, including the cheapest of brands, some of which has the texture of #4 sandpaper and will disintegrate if the user so much as mentions the word “moisture.”
A young woman standing next to me staring at the vacant toilet paper shelves asked me what "we" (meaning she) was to do, I suggested using a Sears Catalog. She pointed out that there were no longer any Sears catalogs—or telephone books, for that matter, preempting my next suggestion—so I suggested corn cobs, which were the standard outhouse issue for my mother's family in the Great Depression. (The notion of actually buying paper for no other purpose than covering it with bodily excretions and throwing it down a glory hole was probably not in the realm of reality for them, poor as they were.) My fellow shopper was not amused, but I wasn’t personally worried. I knew that we were well-stocked at home with our usual cheaper variety of bathroom tissue, which is hard on the body but easy on the septic tank and the wallet.
Turning down another aisle, I noticed that the pasta shelves were utterly depleted of both dried pasta and all available sauces, save Prego, which, for obvious reasons, even the desperate eschewed. Tomato sauce was rapidly disappearing, as well. An older gentleman standing there in obvious frustration offered the same rhetorical question with regard to this absent availability of jarred marinara, so I suggested using Wolf Brand Chili, which was a mainstay of my diet when I was an undergraduate. ("Neighbor, how long as it been since you had a big ol' steaming bowl of Wolf Brand Chili? Well, that's too long!") “Just pour it over a plate of spaghetti, throw a slab of processed cheese on it, and you’ve got a meal,” I offered.
I could tell from his look of horrified disgust that he was not enticed to try this time-honored recipe; but out of curiosity, I checked, and the only canned chili the store had left were off-brands, and they all had beans. I recommend against those, since beans in chili is an Abomination before the Lord, and in times of plague and flood, it's probably not a good idea to piss off the Deity.
Similarly vacant shelves were appearing in the dairy aisles, and the fresh meat coolers, and the bread section. Fresh vegetables and fruits, though, remained abundant.
I do forecast, though, that soon this cloud of disease will dissipate, and we can once more look to the fatted calf's slaughter and feasts abounding while vicarious sportsmen cavort in jam-packed stadia and timbrels and flutes play in nightclubs galore. I also predict that there will be a new pandemic of obesity as a result of the shift in the dietary offerings of America’s dinner table and the hiatus of gyms and dance halls. A casual check of chips and dips, snacks and beer revealed more depleted shelves and the bakery bins, normally filled to overflowing with sweetmeats and oven-fresh treats, were devastated.
While standing in the checkout line, I watched with some amusement when a man two customers down the line in front of me became visibly upset with the woman behind him who cleared her throat but failed to cover her face with her elbow and instead just used her fisted hand. He angrily thrust a bottle of sanitizer toward her. Then he turned to his purchases, which did include a number of vegetables and fruit items that, as I’m sure he refuses to use plastic bags in this eco-friendly market that caters to the environmentally and socially conscious, had been transported naked to the elements down the conveyer belt where all manners of juices and watery residue from various meats and other cooling items had created large wet streaks. I watched as he quite casually punched in the buttons on the credit card keypad, all without gloves or hand-sanitizer application, then huffily stormed out of the store, doubtless heading off home to check his temperature.
The throat-clearing customer standing a full three feet away in front of me gave me a helpless look and proceeded to the cashier, who noted that it was a shame about the cancellation of some sports event or other. They agreed it was for the best, hard though it was going to make the weekend to endure. I wasn’t so sure.
Although I am no major sports fan, I do lament the cancellation of so many of these events. I understand the necessity—better to err on the side of caution, as they say—but at the same time, such measures seem to be somewhat extreme. The disappointment in the high schoolers’ UIL state championship teams was manifest as they plaintively stared into the news cameras and mouthed the proper acceptances of their fate, knowing that everything they had worked for and hoped for for four years just went up in a cloud of public hysteria. Although I seldom or never watch basketball on television, I lamented the cancellation of the NCAA basketball tournament, also, since I always look forward to its conclusion as a sign that baseball season is starting. Only this year, it appears that baseball is also in jeopardy of failing to commence on the Holiest Date on the Calender, “Opening Day,” otherwise known as April Fool’s Day. But I am confident that the Spirits of the Diamond will find a way, somehow, and that the Show will go on. I’m not sure life will be worth living if it doesn’t.
I am not taking this pandemic lightly. I recognize the seriousness of it, particularly in Italy and France and Spain and elsewhere where it has exploded into massive ailments affecting thousands. But in my view, the measures being taken are an impiously dangerous thing to do in these times of heavenly-expressed displeasure with our choices of behavior, most probably manifest in our political leadership. I do believe that we are receiving celestial signals that it’s time for a change, and I fear we might yet have to endure a plague of locusts if we do not comply and soon. Hopefully, our delay in effecting this until November, at the earliest, won't result in the demise of all first-born children; as I am a first-born, I have a particular stake in that. I don’t subscribe to strict dogma, but as we approach Passover, I am draining my package of thawed lambchops, prepared to smear it on my door jam. Better safe than sorry.
It may well be that all I’m experiencing is a kind of “cabin fever.” Although there is nowhere, now that I am safely returned from the market and have washed my hands and face thoroughly with scalding water and a heavy mixture of raw alcohol and playground sand, where I need or really even want to go. Still, I don’t like the notion that I am being told that I can’t go where I might decide I want to, even though I can’t imagine where that might be, and even though if I was told that I had to go someplace, I’d resent that even more. The point is, I guess, is that even though I have nowhere in particular that I want to or need to go, I don't like the feeling that, because I'm over 70, I am supposedly not supposed to go anywhere I may damn well please, which makes me want to go somewhere, just out of spite and hard-headedness. Maybe that’s a Texas attitude, our notorious independence and suspicion of bullying control. I am becoming convinced that this whole thing may be a government-generated plot to whittle down the number of people eligible for Medicare and Social Security. Don't laugh. Certain factions of our political leadership have been trying to get rid of these things since they were made into law. As they've been unsuccessful in repealing them, then the next best thing is to eliminate the people who receive them. This would not put our older political leaders in jeopardy, though, as they're all richer than Croesus and have no need of such government support; and the very last thing in the world they want to do is to meet the public. What we may wind up with is a senior population of reclusive multi-millionaires, all of whom want to bomb Iran and North Korea and very probably Italy and California out of existence. I fear for the End of Times.
* * *
Again, it’s not that I don’t acknowledge the seriousness of this whole thing, or that I doubt the veracity of the parade of medical experts who line up before every news camera in the country to issue dire warnings of pending doom if we don’t comply and increase our compliance to the extent that we are not only to remain at home, but that we ought to remain in just one room of our homes, preferably inside an hermetically sealed closet and only breathe through a gauze bandage. But it strikes me most is that this whole circus is probably overkill. I mean, how many people in the US are actually dying from this illness?
It seems that the worst thing that will happen is that a person who gets it will experience about three days of chills and moderately high fever, possibly with some coughing and a bit of upper respiratory discomfort. Diarrhea, which is one of the early forecast symptoms, is apparently not typical (making the run on toilet paper all the more curious); and for most, it just means a few days of bed rest and the imbibing of an inordinate amount of liquid other than alcohol. Then it passes and one has immunity from reinfection for an undetermined period of time. Only those with serious previously existing (a phrase no one—especially the media news, which relies heavily on advertising bucks from the healthcare industry—wants to use because of its political implications, so they substitute "underlying") conditions are at risk, mostly older folks confined to nursing homes and cruise ships, and not even all of them are in danger of dying. The passing of some octogenarian who already suffers from a lung disease or heart disease or other ultimately fatal ailment is a sad and tragic thing, but it seems that people already that sick were pretty much knock-knock-knocking on Heaven’s door already. So it’s not a serious risk to the otherwise healthy; most people should be able to endure it and survive it after a few days of discomfort.
As a more fatally-minded gentleman said to me in the out-of-the-way grocery where I did, actually, find a good supply of bottled water, when I offered him my elbow to touch instead of my hand to grip, “Hell, everybody’s got to die of something.” When you reach a certain age—70 may be it—and many of your friends and colleagues have already passed on from this veil of tears, you tend to be more philosophical about these things.
Of course, no one wants to die; no one even wants discomfort, and the risks are what they are. But is it really necessary to torpedo the national economy and ruin individual lives and incomes over it? I have to wonder how many people will either contemplate holding up 7-11stores or committing suicide when they realize they are now totally bankrupt and face a future of having to remain in a house, shut up with their own children for an indefinite period of time.
At this writing, we have eight cases of this illness diagnosed in Collin County, where I live, out of a population of just under one million people. That's not even a measurable percentage. Even the national figure for those genuinely infected is very low. More people probably are infected with measles or Bari-Bari. It’s very likely that more have malaria. Hysterical comparisons abound; but here’s a fact: This is not the Spanish Flu that attacked the world in 1918. That disease came in three waves and killed somewhere between 20,000,000 and 50,000,000 people world-wide (estimates vary), including about 500,000-700,000 in the US; it could infect an otherwise healthy person and kill within 72 hours, and had the deleterious effect of infecting everyone who came into contact with the ailing individual or even with his or her corpse. Whole communities were seriously reduced in population because of it and in a very short time. It was horrendous, painful, and devastating. But 1918 was in a different era. Hospitals were fewer and farther between; they were also smaller and lacked private rooms, housing the ill in wards with others who were also ill. Physicians were in short supply, with some sizeable communities having fewer than three doctors for a population of thousands. People who became ill were usually told to go to bed at home and recover or die; and they died at home, often in the same bed where they were born. Antiseptic methods were, by today’s standards, primitive, and remedies for fever and respiratory distress were limited. It was hardly the state of “modern medicine” as we have come to know it today. Not that it’s really all that great, even today. Not that it’s often even adequate to the need.
This Corona Virus also is no H1VI, or Ebola, or even AIDS, all of which were potentially deadly on contraction. COVID-19 is not even TB or typhus, yellow fever, smallpox, or cholera, scarlet fever, whooping cough, or even mumps. All of those spread like the proverbial wildfire and killed massive numbers of folks in the past. It's not even West Nile virus that can also kill a healthy individual who contracts it if it’s not properly and immediately treated. Honestly, more people die of the regular influenza than are dying of this thing. It also goes without saying that more people have died in the past week from auto accidents, job-site accidents, fire, drowning, and a myriad of other causes, including warfare, starvation, and natural disasters than have died from this so far. So why the panic?
But panicking we are. We have forgotten Roosevelt’s famous dictum: “You have nothing to fear but fear itself.” From where I sit, I’m becoming more afraid of the fear than I am of the virus. And I remind myself of the old saw, “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” We are still in the tragedy phase of this, I reckon.
***
I went out to the end of my drive to check my mail and was feeling disappointed after finding nothing but catalogues advertising summer wardrobe items for us to wear should we ever be allowed to go on anything like a vacation again, when I was spotted by one of my more fearful neighbors. She was doing the same thing. She gave me a wary look, effectively warning me with her eyes to keep my distance, and shouted, “Have you bought any extra ammunition to deal with this virus thing?”
“No,” I replied. “I’m a more than half-decent shot, but I don’t think I could hit one of those little suckers. They’re too small to see without a microscope.”
She nodded, acknowledging my fatalistic veracity, and toddled off toward her house, a bundle of junk mail and bills tucked under her arm.
I was contemplating the curiosity of this encounter later when I went by a sporting goods store to buy some dumbbells so I could maintain my workout schedule from home, when I spied a sign by the cashier, “Ammunition sales limited to three units per customer.” I supposed that my neighbor might have been onto something. Perhaps we should be readying ourselves for hoards of torch-lit mobs storming our homes in a quest for toilet paper.
I think there's a "herd mentality" at work. Something there is in human nature that loves a good disaster and can’t wait for one to happen somewhere, if it can’t be witnessed or endured firsthand. It’s as if we cannot wait to peer into a network news camera lens and praise God for saving us, in the arrogant assumption that the Deity has nothing better to do than pluck our fat butts out of harm’s way. The point is that we just love this kind of thing, and we desperately want to be a part of it. Therefore, yelling "Fire" in a public place is illegal and not covered under First Amendment Rights. People just cannot wait to trample all over each other in some kind of frenzied terrorized flight or useless action, like uncontrolled screaming, that will make matters worse.
I am reminded of the ridiculous reactions to 9/11, when everyone from Peoria, Illinois to Kit Carson, Colorado to Casper, Wyoming, to Gallup, New Mexico, to God knows where else was convinced that Al Qaeda was about to appear in their massive armada to invade our shores while its vast air force bombed us into the stone age, even though not one in ten of them had ever ridden in any vehicle larger than a compact Toyota pickup and could not conceive of any body of water as large as the Atlantic Ocean.
That was an eerie time, with schools closing “out of grief,” although not a single student or faculty member I knew had any relative or close friend who died in one of the Twin Towers; most didn’t even know anyone in New York City; some couldn’t have found it on a map. But mourn we did, and lamentingly and with tears and gnashing of teeth; and when I was admonished for playing golf the next day, I could only reply that it was stunning to be so close to DFW and see nary a plane in the sky. “It was kind of peaceful,” I remarked.
I also was reminded of my high school English teacher who told the story of how she was named Civil Defense Officer for our tiny, West Texas community in the week after Pearl Harbor, issued a helmet and binoculars and advised to keep a sharp lookout for Japanese planes planning to bomb us into oblivion, although our community of fewer than 5,000 souls, mostly farmers, was 400 miles from the Gulf Coast and some 1800 from the Pacific.
How we love a great crisis! If a hurricane appears off the coast of Africa, then coastal city supermarkets from Maine to Mexico are quickly emptied of almost everything required in the way of supplies and food; a forecast of icy temperatures causes a run on everything from snow shovels to gasoline generators; even a heavy rain can move people who live at the top of a hill miles from the nearest waterway to hoard sandbags or to go out and buy a jon boat. We are, as a society, remarkably stupid; I think that unbridled terror is a more attractive emotion than any other, including vengeful anger or unbridled lust. The popularity of horror and disaster films would seem to prove it. We just love to be pee-in-our-pants scared out of our minds.
I don’t, though. I never have. When I was a kid and tornadoes were brewing virtually overhead, I’d go out with my parents into the front yard and watch them form. Our neighbors were scrambling for cyclone shelters and cellars, shouting at us to do the same. My mother would look at them sadly and quote, “Oh, ye of little faith.” To me and my brother, she would whisper, “That’s a Methodist for you.” And we’d stand out there until the threat passed or it started raining, whereon we would go inside and have cookies. I’m not sure I share her confidence of faith, and I wouldn’t claim to. But I do think a modicum of commonsense is applicable. So might be homemade cookies.
This disease is serious business, though. I understand that. It’s important to exercise a bit of restraint, a bit of care, a bit of caution. Sure. But there’s no reason to find a hole and pull it in behind us, then stand around and thank the Deity for saving us. I’m fond of reminding some folks who do that kind of thing that while “His eye is on the sparrow,” He rarely does much of anything to keep one from being ravaged by a hungry hawk. I figure that in the greater scheme of things, whether I contract COVID-19 or not isn’t high on the heavenly agenda of matters to attend to. So taking ordinary precautions should be enough.
So for the next few days, anyway, I'll be cooperative, satisfy my children, please Oprah and Ellen, Bill Maher and the governor, and mostly sit this one out, only sallying forth when we run out of fresh fruit or dairy products. It’s easy to do, as I have nowhere I particularly need to want to or plan to go. We have ample stored food, medicine, paper goods, dog and cat comestibles, gasoline for the vehicles, propane and charcoal for the grills, a solid roof overhead, a large library, and a working TV set, and, of course, the Internet. If all else fails, I can start watching porn. So long as I have tobacco, I’m happy. I like to live dangerously.
In the meantime, though I will remain annoyingly amused by this whole panic mentality and hope that it doesn’t turn ugly and that I wish I had laid in some ammunition. I realize that fearmongering by the Media sells massive amounts of insurance policies and pharmaceuticals via advertising on the national news stations, as they give it wall-to-wall coverage and report each of the deaths in our country as if it is another milestone toward Armageddon; at the same time, though, I'd like to know more about other things. How're things going in the presidential primary race, for one thing? What will the stock market do? for another. I'm getting killed on the latter, and for no good reason. What’s going on with immigration? The opioid crisis? Have they buried Kobe Bryant yet? Will we have a baseball season?
As soon as this gets old—and it will—the airlines, hotels, rental car agencies, restaurants, and so forth will all gear up again, pronto, and things will go back to their usual chaotic normal. Then intrepid reporters around the globe can go back to looking for the next disaster to publicize, the next victim to lament, the next survivor to interview, so we can know where to send our thoughts and prayers. But what might it be? What comes after Pestilence? Perhaps a plague of frogs? After all this rain, that's a likely possibility.
Novelist, short-story writer, essayist, literary critic, and pundit CLAY REYNOLDS is a retired professor of Arts and Humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas. He and his wife, Judy, dog and cat live on an acre of rain-soaked prairie in Lowry Crossing, somewhere east of McKinney, TX. His numerous published works can be located and in some part obtained from at least some on-line bookstores, and from his website, www.clayreynolds.info.
