We're Bigger Than This

Hi.  Remember me?  I haven't written in a while, I know.  Somehow, I just haven't found much to inspire me to write.  I consider myself to be something of an introvert and, as an introvert, I don't tend to speak unless I have something to say.

As I write this, the corona-virus, or COVID-19, is spreading inexorably around the globe, causing a fair degree of angst.  It's not a particularly dangerous virus.  Most people who it has infected have recovered from it after experiencing only modest symptoms of illness.  But it's extremely contagious and it's dangerous to the elderly and the infirm.  Even for the younger and stronger among us, a positive diagnosis means at least two weeks of social isolation.  So people have started to take precautions.  Some are appropriate, such as frequent hand washing, avoidance of unnecessary large gatherings and unnecessary touching such as shaking hands, and some are less appropriate, such as stockpiling and hoarding things such as food, water, cleaning supplies and toilet paper.

COVID-19 itself has not directly caused any shortages of the aforementioned goods; we have done that.  Ordinary people who, out of fear and paranoia, feel the need to stockpile as though the end of the world were at hand. 

Since there is no shortage of goods and supplies, I assume that this is largely driven out of over-cautiousness.  "If I get the virus, I need to quarantine myself for about two weeks, and during that time I can't go out and buy the supplies that I need, so I had better stock up just in case".   While this is a legitimate concern and sounds reasonable at  first blush, I think people are reacting disproportionately.  Look at toilet paper, for example.  If you were forced to isolate yourself, how much toilet paper would you need to last you for two weeks?  How many rolls to you go through in a day?  Two?  (That's probably generous).  Okay, so 14 days times two rolls a day ... you might need 28 rolls of toilet paper.  That's about two twelve packs, plus a bit.  Heck, let's be generous and round it up to three.  But some people have been seen leaving bulk warehouse stores with two and three and more packs of 40 rolls each!  The problem, of course, is that this leaves less for the rest of us.  So you get line-ups, and empty store shelves, and arguments.  At one warehouse store in my vicinity, a fist fight actually broke out over toilet paper according to a recent news report.

The irony is that we are only making it harder on ourselves.  We are taking a small problem and making it into a much bigger one.  We are making a mountain out of  a proverbial molehill, if you'll forgive the cliché.  Much of our misery is self-inflicted.  What worries me is that if a relatively benign problem such as this one brings out the worst in us, causing us to act with no more reason or grace than our simian cousins, then what will we do when we have a real crisis?  What if this virus was truly deadly, like ebola or anthrax?  What happens when global warming causes inevitable shortages of food and water?

I'm reminded of a story I once heard, a modern day parable if you will:  A man dreamed that he was shown the afterlife.  First he was shown hell.  In hell,  there was a long banquet table laden with delicious food of all sorts, but the only utensils available for eating were chopsticks that were three feet long (and if someone tried to eat with their fingers, Satan chopped them off, I suppose).  Everybody at the table wept because the chopsticks were too long.  They couldn't bring the food to their mouths, and  so they went hungry, even as they had to look at all that enticing food sitting right there in front of them.

Then the man was shown heaven.  Strangely enough, there was the same sort of banquet table and everyone had the same three-foot chopsticks for utensils.  But the people in heaven picked up the food with the end of their chopsticks, and offered it to their neighbor across the table, and everyone was satisfied.

This story illustrates beautifully how things can be so much better when we cooperate and work together rather than against each other or think only of ourselves.  We needn't be "picking holes in each others' coats" as Dickens' charwoman so eloquently put it in his immortal novella, "A Christmas Carol".  We're bigger than this.