Dear World:
Greetings from Dallas! Since we seem to be top of mind for pretty much everybody on the planet right now, I’d like to share a few facts.
Far-fetched though it might seem, we are not all running through the streets, yodeling in terror and ripping the hair from our scalps. We are not duct-taping doors and windows, we aren’t wearing gas masks to the grocery store, and we’re not stockpiling any more weapons than is usual for these parts.
We are using public transportation, dining in restaurants, sending our kids to school and drinking city water right out of the tap.
We are not unhinged by Ebolaphobia.
Well, most of us aren’t. There are exceptions, such as an unidentified caller who left me a voice mail this week. He expressed a kind of grim satisfaction that all his darkest suspicions about secret government plots and conspiracies are finally being proved.
He let loose with a typhoon of invective against County Judge Clay Jenkins, Mayor Mike Rawlings, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, the president, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, immigrants, Africa, Doctors Without Borders and — his voice conveying icy air quotes — “science.”
“What will it take for you to understand they are lying to us?” he demanded. “Why don’t you get that?”
It’s too bad I don’t know his name, since we might have gotten together for a cup of joe and hashed over lies vs. facts. There’s some crazy stuff floating around out there.
Such as: A family of five in Navarro County have all been stricken with the virus! (Hoax, check Snopes). Presbyterian has six other confirmed cases they’re not telling us about! (Presby foolishly compromised its record for strict accuracy early in this crisis, but there’s no reason for them to hide confirmed cases at this late date). The virus was invented in a secret government lab as a form of population control! (Too crazy to merit discussion). Ebola has “gone airborne” and they don’t want us to know because they’re afraid we’ll panic!
What is this panic “they” fear more than death, contagion, mass graves and bleeding eyeballs? I dunno, but “they’re” not doing a very good job of controlling it. Because in my book, panic includes spreading crazy rumors, scaring the bejeezus out of your neighbors and wallowing in bunker-brained xenophobia. Panic is already way, way out of the barn.
Well, at least for some people, like my poor caller and a few of the more excitable emailers I have heard from. I think there’s a point at which, if people want to believe that the Ebola virus can pass through walls like armor-piercing bullets, there’s no talking them out of it.
So far, the people who were infected by “Patient Zero” Thomas Eric Duncan are the very people who science tells us are most at risk: Selfless front-line health care workers in direct contact with patients who are clearly sick and symptomatic.
We need to do all we can to help the people who are sick.
We could also use something that might serve as an antidote to fear.
One of the best messages I received this week was a suggestion from a worshipper at Wilshire Baptist Church that I review a video of a 20-minute sermon delivered last week by its senior pastor, George Mason.
Duncan’s fiancée, Louise Troh, is a member of Wilshire. Since the beginning of this crisis, Mason’s calm demeanor has been a powerful antidote to panic, both for his church and for anybody else who can use his message. I wish there was a TV channel playing him in a continuous loop.
“Fear is understandable,” Mason told me this week. “We are made with an instinct for survival. That is God-given, and if you are not a spiritual person, we can just say it’s a function of the hypothalamus.”
We are also equipped, he pointed out, with a developed cerebral cortex. That allows us to choose reason and good sense, and to care for one another as dearly as we care for ourselves.
I don’t think I’m unhinged, but I suppose I’m as anxious as the average dude or dudette in this town right now. Hearing George Mason made me feel better.
“Sometimes, we just need to stop and listen to what we’re telling ourselves,” he said. “There are values higher than fear and self-preservation.”
So don’t worry about us. The weather’s beautiful — wish you were here!
