Coronavirus: The Panic that Isn't Happening

You’ve seen it in almost every monster movie ever made. A community, small or large, is being threatened by an unknown enemy. A shark, zombies, Godzilla, the Blob, whatever. A scientist uncovers the threat, and reports it to the authorities. The scientist wants to tell the world, but the authorities want to keep it hush-hush. The mayor/governor/president is worried that if the general public finds out, there will be widespread panic. And then you know what happens when people panic. Car fires, looting, hand-to-hand combat in the streets, cats eating dogs, mules giving birth, infants with laser beams shooting from their eyes.

And most public discussion of coronavirus has been in the same vein. DON’T PANIC, officials say. FOR GOD’S SAKE, STAY CALM. Conservatives throw fuel on this fire by making fun of the overreaction of “liberals.” The mainstream media is freaking out, we hear. Mothers are panicking. Families are digging bomb shelters and stocking enough food for a war. (Yes, I actually did hear this one.)

Of course they are. I’ve seen looting, arson, and cannibalism today. My neighbors just took a delivery of one ton of cinder blocks and four Geiger counters for their new nuclear holocaust-proof basement. On the other side of the street, my other neighbors have bought two giant spools of barbed wire to keep out the zombies. I’m sure you’ve seen it, too.

Back to reality: No one is panicking. People are refusing to shake hands, avoiding close contact, carrying bottles of hand sanitizer around with them. Cancelling trips, avoiding public spaces. Some of them are buying facemasks. And for some inexplicable reason, toilet paper. This is hardly what anyone would call panic. The word for this is anxiety. There is a difference.

This worry about panic is way overblown. Scientific studies have shown that when people are faced with emergent danger, most do not run wild and scream. Most people do the exact opposite — they freeze. When it comes to the human startle reaction, we are not wild monkeys, but instead, deer in headlights.

The people in authority and in the media who fret about public panic have gotten it all wrong. The public will not panic. It will become anxious, which isn’t a good thing in itself, but is hardly a threat to the fabric of society. The people in the media (especially on the political right) seem to me to be more panicky about the skittish public than the public is panicky itself. Not only is this fuss that the public will lose its collective minds incorrect, it is also arrogant and condescending.

My advice to citizens who are anxious about coronavirus is definitely not to calm down. The last time you were anxious and someone told you to calm down, did you do it? Of course not. People don’t relax on command, like trained dogs. If that were possible, there would be no such thing as drug addiction, psychologists, or amusement parks. We could just tell people, “Relax, don’t take drugs,” and "relax, you don't need to kill yourself," and drug addition and suicides would stop. But people aren't like that.

So what is a person with coronavirus anxiety to do? I have a long relationship with anxiety, which accompanied me like a 50 pound weight for every minute of medical school and residency training. I speak from experience. And my experience tells me this: When you are anxious, own it. Anxiety is common and normal. Sometimes it is worse, sometimes better. But most of the time, the worst thing about being anxious is feeling guilty about feeling that way. The thought process goes like this: You get nervous, really nervous, and then start asking yourself why. You feel that you shouldn’t be anxious, that a better person than you wouldn’t be anxious. Only weak people, you tell yourself, are anxious like this.

The solution is to realize that anxiety is normal, that very few people escape it. This doesn’t stop you from from feeling bad, but it does stop you from feeling bad about feeling bad. And that isn’t a small thing. In seeing anxiety this way, you come to see it as what it is — part of you, but not all of you. In this way of thinking, anxiety becomes one of many things in life to negotiate, one problem, but not all problems put together.

For people who are nervous about coronavirus, I say: Be nervous! People get anxious about things that are far more trivial than coronavirus. If coronavirus frightens people into washing hands more, shaking hands less, and hugging less, so what? Even a cancelled trip or a pass on sports tickets is hardly the worst thing that ever happened. And anxiety does not lead to panic, most of the time.

There is enormous pressure from the media to make people conform. The media has an unconscious bias, but it is not political, it is consumerist. Watch the media for awhile and you will see a relentless narrative about buying things and consuming goods. Buy, buy, buy. That’s the American way. Consumption is esteemed and even worshipped as the very soul of the American economy, and nothing terrifies the wealthy like the threat that people will stop buying vast quantities of junk.

The people who are panicking are the members of the ruling class, the politicians and stock market traders and TV hosts whose jobs depend on a vigorous economy. These people are terrified not by coronavirus but instead that Americans might do the most frightening thing of all, stay at home and fail to max out the credit cards. If the bull market dies, and the profits from commercialism dry up because of coronavirus, who really loses? The people with the most to start with.

For the common folks, I repeat the advice: If you are anxious, be anxious. It’s nothing to feel guilty about. Leave the panicking to the top one percent.