Spreading kindness

Humanity offers hope during this scary moment

The woman who intentionally coughed all over the produce and deli sections of Hanover Township’s Gerrity Supermarket? She’s an outlier.

So are the 90 or so Pennsylvania businesses that are soaking consumers despite the state attorney general’s warning of substantial fines for price-gouging.

The coughers, gougers and other no-goodniks truly seem to be rare. Judging from news coverage of recent days, a strong majority of human beings, facing unprecedented crisis, are opting for thrilling generosity and not-at-all-random acts of kindness. Which side will win?

“Judging from news coverage.” Having used that phrase, it gives me pause. Is the news full of encouraging stories because that’s predominantly the kind of story the public is generating?

Or are journalists trying to strike a balance with all the necessary bad news?

Or are they sensing public hunger for reassurance that, despite great anxiety and fear, most people choose to be kind?

It almost doesn’t matter. Whatever the reason, all the uplifting stories constitute hope for humanity. We want the good to triumph. Our resolve might be strengthened when we consider the cost of each choice — good or bad.

In the case of the cougher, the $35,000 in lost goods is not the end of it. Photos show employees emptying, scrubbing and disinfecting large sections of the grocery store. Managers had to contact authorities, give statements, calm alarmed customers, field media inquiries and locate new stock. More hours would go to restocking, accounting and security. Labor costs would climb far above the trashed merchandise.

Then there’s the perpetrator. She’s reportedly known as a “chronic problem” in the community. If so, this means that — in addition to the health inspector involved in the market sterilization — the taxpayerfunded system has already spent resources on this woman’s care, interventions or arrests over many years, expenses likely to continue.

Consider briefly the commonwealth’s price-gougers. Almost 3,000 people spent money, time and emotional energy dealing with inflated prices and contacting the attorney general, whose staffers then had to investigate, corroborate, communicate and remonstrate. So many “-ates” — and so much waste.

The cost of the bad actors? It ripples far beyond the original act. We live in a universe in which the “multiplier effect” is always in force.

But the multiplier effect impacts good choices as well as bad. For every one person coughing on produce, there are many thousands more who are giving food to pantries and buying food, lots of food, from establishments challenged to stay afloat.

The desire to fight disease and despair is evident everywhere, from local universities donating equipment to hospitals, to volunteers overwhelming nonprofit networks with offers of help.

Some fear-fighting contributions spring from the donors’ great talents. British sports announcer Nick Heath has been delighting millions by posting short, surreptitious videos of strangers in everyday activities and adding hilarious play-by-play commentary.

On Twitter, you can find Lizzo playing flute and Steve Martin sending “banjo balm.” On Facebook, I found balm of a different kind: My own pastor, the Rev. Tom Hall, is suddenly posting brief daily chats that do the heart good.

Speaking of pastors, there is the humbling story of Giuseppe Berardelli, the 72-year-old Italian priest with coronavirus who gave up his respirator for a younger person. He died two weeks ago. The more frequently that more of us make smaller sacrifices, the less likely that the priest’s ultimate sacrifice would be needed.

But good deeds are often done quietly, without fanfare, without police or attorneys general called to the scene, making such deeds harder to uncover. That’s why this paper’s web site has a request to “help us find the helpers.”

We live in a universe where anything is contagious. Probably more often than we know, we get to choose what we spread and what gets caught.