A permanent cure for global panic attacks

Coronavirus, COVID-19! Was it the reptile people conspiring from behind the flat earth? Was it a common virus hoping between species and mutating, as viruses do?

It. Doesn’t. Matter.

There was the thing, and then there was our global reaction to the thing, easily summed up as: panic attack.

Irrational but understandable. The sudden swirl of information was confusing, the incessant schooling on new terminology and expected behavior mind-numbing. The uncertainty was terrifying, the feeling of impending doom, crushing. Maybe you even thought you were going to die.

Ok world: Breathe slowly, let blood return to your brain, flush out adrenaline, take a minute and you can start thinking again.

You, reader, were never in danger from the virus (close to always true, no matter how pessimistic your model, assuming random readership).

How much real damage we all now face because of our collective jump off the cliff is a whole other question. Now, on top of the ever present threat of disease and pandemics we’re faced with likely economic depression and personal oppression.

We’re being sold that this is reality from now on. No. That isn’t a law of physics: it’s a choice.

Yes, we can choose to let the cycle repeat, turning into anxious agoraphobics, cowering in our hovels whenever the virus alert turns yellow, blaming groups we don’t like when the numbers go up, counting on neighbors to shame and report us if we get out of line with a social rule-book that evolves at the speed of RNA mutations.

But there are other choices, even when absent from the menu presented.

The best treatments for panic attacks are therapies that root out and deal with the causes and modify thought patterns and behavior accordingly.

Sticking only to the sanctioned narrative, the story is that our mad dash to shutdown the world was due to the our hospitals and health care institutions not being prepared for handling the surge of eventual cases, leading to deaths that would have been preventable.

Ok, fine. We, the people, had to save the system before it could save the vulnerable in turn and, say it with me, “flatten.the.curve”. Glad to help.

So, how many of these trillions being spent are devoted to not getting caught with our pants down again, on expanding the health care system’s capacity to deal with such surges, and in general preparing for the rare but devastating events we already know come periodically?

There’s tons of money flying around and lots of new stuff being proposed. New powers and laws, new digital currencies, new surveillance tech, new social norms, new immunity passports… somehow all the new stuff is geared towards containing YOU and none of it towards fixing what we’re told was the problem, i.e. building the reserve capacity that would have handled the cases, saved the people, and avoided the rest of this mess in the first place.

While we’re spending trillions left and right, how about dedicating a chunk so the country is at least as ready as your average ‘prepper? We can have big guns if you insist, sure, but also stores of food, emergency medical supplies along with the know-how and capacity to deal with the unexpected. Maybe in a way that doesn’t destroy lives, decades of effort and the very notion of currency as a side effect. That would seem wise.

If the very best the state can offer is “hide in your homes!”, then it is irrelevant and superfluous: we can do that on our own, thank you, go away now.

If, on the other hand, the state is a way for us to collaborate and meet real human needs that the market is incapable of being concerned with, great: lets act collectively and reasonably to help people to be both safe and free, because it’s important to survive but pointless if it means we must stop living.

So tune out and turn off the sirens, meaningless scrolling numbers, and talking heads that turn the world into a cattle chute through which there is only one course. It’s time to stop just reacting and let go of the fear which makes it impossible to think clearly.

We don’t need more ways to make our forced confinement more bearable, or to better target and isolate those despicable deviants carrying dirty dirty germs. We need ways to end the folly and ensure we don’t have to go through this again. The health care system couldn’t handle it? Fine, lets focus on working together to make it ready, as fast as possible, so we can be free now and handle the inevitable recurrences without crushing economies, lives and personal freedom.

No one wants to go through anything like this again. And we don’t have to sacrifice our way of life to avoid it. Let’s take a moment to recall why this happened, address the root problem now, and avoid further willful demolition of the world economy and our freedom.

We have insurance policies for cars and houses. If governments have any role, it’s in providing adequate infrastructure and insurance to cover this type of collective crisis. Let’s make it happen and move on.

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