When Falls the Coliseum

Fear itself

Posted on May 13th, 2009 by Mark Guerin

Today, I saw my first flu mask. A fellow wearing one stopped next to me on a downtown Boston street corner to wait for the sign to say “Walk.” I’d heard masks were useless against the Swine Flu unless they prevent air from getting in around the sides. His mask didn’t do that. It was too lose fitting. I was tempted to say something, but I just thought, “another victim of bad information.”

After the light changed and we went our separate ways, I was momentarily gripped by doubt. What did he know that I didn’t? Was there an outbreak hereabouts? Should I think about wearing one? Not the inadequate one he was wearing, but a good, close-fitting mask? Maybe, at that very moment I was breathing it in.

Who hasn’t been exposed to it? With Swine Flu case counts headlining the news every night, and new Swine Flu states and countries making geometric progress onto Swine Flu maps, who among you has not started veering away from anyone coughing, sniffling or wielding a tissue? Who hasn’t caught the contagion?

Not the Flu. The Fear!

You know the Fear. Variant of the strain that turned us all into sheep when Bush charged into Iraq after phantom terrorists and WMDs?

Sub-variant of the strain that crashed the stock market last fall? Tanked all our 401(k)s?

Sure there were triggers for these latter fears and their unintended consequences: 9/11, sub-prime mortgages mixed with greed. But was the fear that was caused, and the unimaginable consequences of that fear, proportional to the triggers? How about the current reaction to this flu outbreak?

The flu is real enough, a new strain that evolved as a ‘reassortment’ (or combination) of four distinct influenza strains endemic to humans, birds and swine (credited with two of the strains, which I guess is why the poor animals got nailed with the name).

But tens of thousands of people die from the flu every year — 36,000 in 2003 according to the CDC. And during normal flu seasons, we don’t typically put on masks or read stories of coughing people causing planes to land prematurely, schools to close, or people to get sent home from work.

In Massachusetts, where I live, this is fear at work, not the flu. At last count, there were all of 115 cases of Swine Flu in a state of 6,497,967 people, and where all the behaviors cited above have taken place.

The more fully realized pandemic we are experiencing right now is not this reassortment of influenza strains but rather a reassortment of two ‘mass’ behaviors — mass hysteria and mass media.

The more stories we hear of closings and quarantines, the more the contagion of fear is passed amongst us, reinforcing the behaviors that get written up in these stories, and the whole thing snowballs out of control, just like the the response to 9/11 and the crashing markets.

These fears are as much an affliction as what triggers them, and because, as recent history has proven, the consequences of such fears can be as disastrous as their triggers and more so, we should be as mindful of these fears as we are of their triggers.

If we can create flu vaccines, why can’t we create them for fear?

To inoculate means to “impregnate with the virus or germ of a disease in order to render immune.” In this case, it could simply mean learning from past mistakes.