flu sanity
I named my blog Legal Sanity because I wanted to be a voice for sanity in an increasingly insane legal world. Although this post is off topic for the legal world, I am writing today as a voice for sanity in our world at large. I just received an automated voice mail from the Superintendent of Schools of where I live updating us on the measures the school is about to take should the Swine Flu strike here in Port Washington, New York. This message, and the emails and letters that followed, spurred me to write this post.
The swine flu panic is insane. Yes, it is a new disease that can kill people but there needs to be PERSPECTIVE because the over the top reactive responses from those in leadership positions will certainly cause more damage than the Swine Flu. So now all after school activities in the State of Texas are cancelled for the remainder of the school year. How tragic! Tens of thousands of teenage kids without a healthy after school activity will be milling about with too much time on their hands. Will they not still commingle with their friends? Does the Swine Flu only hang out at the school track? How many of these kids will be passing the time drinking and getting into trouble? What will their parents do in managing the situation? Are we going to follow in the footsteps of the Mexican government and shut down the economy for a week? How many lives will be destroyed from the additional unemployment?
30,000-40,000 people die each year in the USA alone from the flu. I don’t mean to sound callous, but this is life. There are a host of diseases and dangers that kill tens of thousands of people a day throughout the world.
PANDEMIC. Such a scary word. What a media darling it is because it fuels fear and fear sells. The 1968 Hong Kong flu was the last pandemic. It killed one million people, a tragic number. But let’s get some perspective. Every year, on average, 1.2 million people die from traffic accidents, 2 million from AIDS, 8 million from cancer, 18 million from heart disease, 40 million from malaria. All these numbers are fast rising. The list of global killers far more powerful than the 1968 Hong Kong Flu goes on and on. If you want to cheer up your day, take some time reading through the World Health Organization website. I promise you, by the time you are done, you won’t be so worried about the Swine Flu.
Bottom line is that life is dangerous and the possibility of death looms for us all in any moment. So should we box ourselves in germ free padded bomb shelters? Of course not. Why? Because the chance of dying today or tomorrow or the next day is fairly remote. For most of us, there is a 99.9% percent chance you’ll still be breathing and worrying a week, month and year from now. Of course we need to be vigilant and take reasonable measures to prevent getting sick. However, we need to relax, live our lives and not panic our kids.
With all that is going on the world, it’s not nearly as challenging or dangerous as it was on March 4, 1933, in the height of the Great Depression and World War II. In his inaugural speech, FDR showed brilliant leadership in calming down a nation and a world by helping people move past their fear and paralysis when he so eloquently stated "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself."
This advice is perfect for today. It’s critical that we not let our fear generate actions that cause us more harm than good.
