I saw an interesting article last week but when I tried to find it again I had no luck so I’m going to end up paraphrasing most of it from memory. Typically my memory can be likened to a well-worn sieve but one line I particularly remember. “We can still make a difference but I’m not seeing enough fear.” I don’t remember the speaker other than it was the medical director of one of the local hospitals. Unfortunately my local has like 30 some hospitals. Well now, I suppose that is more fortunately than un unless you are trying to remember which one of the 30 some hospitals had a medical director quoted in a recent newspaper article. About 30 some of the do so then there’s that too.

For our purposes I doesn’t matter who said it other than it was said by a respected medical authority (unlike the nut case hospital “executive” in the [name withheld to protect the professionalism of the health care team] health center in South Dakota) (See what happens when you let just anybody run a hospital, like a doctor wasn’t good enough.) Anyway, where was I? Oh yes – I’m not seeing enough fear.

That was in reference to mitigating the surge of confirmed new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths attributed to CoViD-19. We could make a difference. We could wear a mask even though some seemingly intelligent people chose to not. We can continue to wash out hands even though many have forgotten the 20 second rule. We could not go to the unofficial fortieth high school reunion even though somebody obvious figured out that if you call something unofficial like maybe a home coming dance the virus won’t know to go there. We could do all those things and that would be a good start but “we” the society aren’t and we aren’t because we aren’t fearing the virus. If we respected it and realized the power it has and the knowledge that we don’t (and unless you are a microbiologist I don’t mean the societal “we,” I mean each every one of we) we would be damn scared of this thing.

I look around and I see even more than the virus that we don’t fear. We don’t fear the nation is being torn apart because people like the virus people don’t realize the power of division and lack the knowledge to make accept outcomes. The American we has polarized more strongly than the hawks and the doves of the 1960s, more than the free states versus the slave states of the 1860s, and more than the federalists versus the centrists in the 1770s. Division and polarization are not the same as party loyalty. Party loyalists address ideals. Polarizers address egoism.

We can still make a difference but I’m not seeing enough fear.

People don’t get to choose facts. Folks who relish in saying “it is what it is” usually have no intention of admitting exactly what it is. Or don’t know. Masks stop the spread of airborne viruses. Voting machines don’t switch votes. Vaccines don’t cause autism. The travel sites Hotel, Hot Wire, Orbitz, Travelocity, and Trivago are owned by Expedia and the sun will always rise in the east. It is what it is. If we choose not to believe in something you may but you can’t argue it.

I’m certain I’ve written the FDR had it wrong. The only thing to fear is not fear itself for only a fool would not fear anything. Fear should be feared. And so should much, much else.

We can still make a difference but I’m not seeing enough fear.