The Virus Itself Doesn’t Scare Me

All you see on social media is Corona Virus, Covid 19, Corona Virus. I get that it should be taken seriously, but that doesn't mean everyone needs to lose their minds. I blame 24/7 news. Not just on this, but how the dumbest things get blown out of proportion constantly. Back in the day, reporters only needed to cover 3 hours of news a day. Now, they're all competing for ratings and every little thing has to be made into a big deal for anyone to pay attention to it, because we are constantly bombarded with over exaggerated "news". There are only 2 things that scare me about all of this.

The number one thing that concerns me is how this started in China, and in about 2 weeks it has spread all over the globe. This tells me that if a serious virus were to pop up, we'd be in A LOT of trouble as a species. Now, maybe this is a good learning experience for us all. Maybe this can teach us a lesson, and we can learn how to quarantine viral infections better. Tom Hanks and his wife have it now for crying out loud. I think things like that cause a bigger sense of panic because if Forrest Gump can get it, anyone can....pretty sure he caught it from Jenny. Which brings me to my next and biggest fear.

People reacting the way they have, is a huge reason for concern in the future. One of my all time biggest fears in a global or nation wide catastrophe has, and always will be, mass hysteria. Like Tommy Lee Jones said in Men in Black, "A person is smart. People are stupid." As individuals, we are reasonable and rational. As a mass population, we are no smarter than cattle. If there really were a catastrophic event, we would tear ourselves apart long before the event itself could.  I am truly terrified of how dumb and helpless we are as a whole. Remember here in the basin when one news story had people with giant tanks rushing to gas pumps for absolutely no reason? The people themselves caused a temporary fuel shortage with their own stupidity. When and how can we as a whole learn from past mistakes, and grow?