Courage and patriotism are best virus defenses

N ow that the basement is full of packages of toilet paper and cases of Spam, the garage is crowded with beer and whiskey bottles, the bathtubs are full of containers of hand sanitizer and bleach, closets are stacked with ammunition boxes, and you’re spending most of your time under the bed brandishing your pistol at the dog when he wants to go outside and risk infecting the whole family, you may have time to reflect on your preparations against what President Trump resentfully called the “foreign virus.”

For example, if the supply chain for toilet paper breaks, won’t that imply problems with the supply chains for food, medicine, gas, and electricity as well? And if someone is homebound and no one is willing to deliver necessities, won’t that imply the disintegration of society, with zombies scavenging everywhere?

In that case there never would be enough ammunition anyway.

Of course every household should stock enough essentials to survive for a few days in an emergency. But hoarding for worse than that is antisocial and generates fear. If serious shortages develop, will people still consider themselves Americans, all in it together, sharing as necessary and helping their government as it tries its best, or will patriotism and civic duty dissolve into every man for himself?

The recent hoarding from the supermarkets suggests the latter.

The virus prompting the hoarding already has damaged the national and world economies, with much production curtailed by quarantines and much demand eliminated by reduced employment and incomes. Emergency subsidies from government may replace some income but not production. If the employees of the toilet paper factory can’t get to work or are afraid to work lest they encounter a contagious colleague, there may be no toilet paper at any price. Because of the internet people who work in offices may be able to work from home, but not factory workers — not the people who actually make and grow the things purchased at the supermarket.

So if the country is not to descend into anarchy, somebody will have to keep going to work in the normal way, protected only by a surgical mask, if one of those can be found at any price these days.

Of course there will be risk in such work, but maybe not quite as much risk as suggested by news organizations and government officials. While much remains to be learned about the virus, it does not cause the instant mass death implied by the hoarding of toilet paper. Most people who contract it seem to suffer only mild symptoms and recover in a week or so. There are already promising experimental treatments for it, and the people most susceptible to it are those who already are most susceptible to ordinary influenza — the elderly and people with weakened immune systems. They must be especially protected, but then they, their families, and their doctors already know how to do that.

The best advice for confronting the virus may have come not from a doctor but a brave journalist of the World War II era, Elmer Davis, who unfortunately has been forgotten by journalism itself.

Davis wrote: “The first and great commandment is: Don’t let them scare you. For the men who are trying to do that to us are scared themselves. They are afraid that what they think will not stand critical examination; they are afraid that the principles on which this republic was founded and has been conducted are wrong. They will tell you that there is a hazard in the freedom of the mind, and of course there is, as in any freedom. In trying to think right you run the risk of thinking wrong. But there is no hazard at all, no uncertainty, in letting somebody else tell you what to think. That is sheer damnation.”

‘The first and great commandment is: Don't let them scare you.'