Relative Something

There is about as much information being blasted into the world right now as there are virus germs and sanitizing spray. It’s all a bit mind-boggling, but the crackpot theories are a particularly fascinating dose of lunacy. I suppose all human conditions tend to amplify in times of global crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic sure has taken attention away from the equally global threatening planet-warming that industry and fossil-fuel dependence has hastened.

The Associated Press provides clean reviews of falsehoods around the virus and politics that serve to expose some of the deviously manipulated claims that then get shared and reshared on social media so many times they gain believability points among the less astute.

Even within the credible reports about which surprisingly common underlying health conditions are making the coronavirus more severe, there is such a vast amount of pertinent detail it gets overwhelming. As much as we assume it’s lungs that are taking the primary hit, evidence reveals the heart is being damaged from within.

As often happens, I find myself thinking about things in another way. As we begin to take a more focused look at how the virus can spread by our actions, it reveals how often we’ve already been sharing. Think about how many contacts we have had without getting incredibly ill. All those sporting events we attended, the concerts and plays, lectures, public transportation, shopping carts, and doorknobs grabbed.

The number of germ-phobic people who hyper-sanitized their way through daily activities was minuscule compared to the majority of us who took our chances and tried to remember to occasionally wash our hands after touching anything publicly shared.

It’s a wonder the time between pandemics was as long as it has been throughout history.

Here’s another way to think about this pandemic. Don’t be gullible to every crazy thing you see or hear. Recognize your emotional response and reasonable fears, and then check and contain them. Seek credible sources of factual information over and above the entertaining drama of wild reports and survival-of-self-above-all-others mentalities.

Participate in and demonstrate actions that are part of the solution to this pandemic and not part of the problems. Don’t become a pawn in the panic-buying dysfunctional human response.

Even though we may not be able to know if undiagnosed people around us are shedding the coronavirus, they still all deserve to be loved just as much as we do.

Yes, even if they believe crackpot theories that have no basis in scientific fact.

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