Too Many People Are Comfortable In Their Fear

This rings true to me.  Too many people are comfortable in their fear and in their totalitarian impulses:

Right now, as I try as a science journalist to document the real scope of the COVID-19 epidemic, I am discovering a remarkable phenomenon. No one wants to hear any good news about the virus.

When I reported, at the beginning of this epidemic, that the early data suggested that (at worse) it will have a manageable mortality rate, not much higher than the flu, and like the flu that mortality will mostly be limited to the elderly sick, few people wanted to hear. “It is deadly! We have to extend the lock downs! We have to social distance! We can’t get near each other!”

When I reported, more recently, that this early data has turned out to be mostly right, and that this virus is not the plague that these fear-mongers have claimed, even fewer people wanted to hear. “How dare you minimize the threat!? It is deadly! We need to wear masks! We need to shut down society! We can’t return to normal!”

When I reported that the science of masks is uncertain at best, and quite possibly harmful to the wearer, far too many people continued to have their fingers in their ears. “How dare you disrespect the fears of others?! So you want me to die, do you? How dare you question the authority of those telling you do something!?”

When I reported that the death rate is finally dropping to very reasonable levels even as the number of detected infections skyrocket, which further proves the virus’s low mortality rate while showing its relative harmlessness to almost the entire population, the fingers in the ears seem to get stuffed even tighter. “Quiet! You will make people stop taking this disease seriously! More people will die! Shut up!”

...What I think is happening now is that many people have been emotionally captured by their fear of COVID-19. They have been convinced, on a gut visceral level, that it is very dangerous to everyone, and to reject this conclusion means they have to let go of their fear and resume life with the kind of nonchalant courage that was once taken for granted. We didn’t cringe in fear in our homes over the flu, the measles, the Hong Kong flu, pneumonia, or any number of other infectious diseases that are as dangerous, if not more so. We accepted that risk so that we could live our lives freely and boldly, even if that meant taking on a risk we could not control.

I am finding that too many people simply can’t do this anymore. Their emotional fear controls them, and they can’t let go of it to take a breath and process new data that contradicts that fear...

Fear kills the mind. It makes rational thought impossible. And right now too many Americans are paralyzed with fear, of COVID-19, of Black Lives Matter, of Antifa, of all kinds of bigoted fascist thugs. They have let their fear take control of them.

If we wish to remain “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” we need to let go of that fear. We need to be brave again, in order to be free.