You Have Nothing To Fear But The Lack Of Toilet Paper

Thanks to the coronavirus we spent almost the entire two hours of Saturday’s radio show talking about toilet paper.

The coronavirus is dominating the news. It’s dominating social media and personal conversations. It’s on everyone’s mind. Bob and I have talked a lot about it. In fact, last week Bob told me he was going to write a piece about the Coronavirus. I should have known that meant I would end up being the one writing something about it.

Folks are in panic mode! They’re buying up toilet paper and Lysol wipes. Toilet paper I have plenty of, the stuff comes 24 rolls in a pack and I live alone. Part of my Sunday routine is visiting my mother, who insisted on sending me home with an additional eight rolls – and it wasn’t the good stuff.

Lysol wipes, I use often, I wipe down the counter tops in the kitchen every night, I use them to clean the stove top. Now I’m running low on Lysol wipes and can’t buy more because all the stores are out of stock – it’s pissing me off.

Panic is never good! The NCAA canceled March Madness. The NBA has suspended the rest of the season, Major League Baseball canceled spring training and delayed the start of the regular season, the list goes on.

Precaution is fine, but panic is stupid and makes everything worse.

People blame the panic on the news media. I say those people are wrong. The panic is the fault of social media.

The “experts” on social media are driving the narrative that President Donald Trump botched the response. They ignore the fact that Centers for Disease Control (CDC) “established a COVID-19 Incident Management System on January 7, 2020. On January 21, CDC activated its Emergency Operations Center to better provide ongoing support to the COVID-19 response.”

It was the same “experts” on social media who complain Trump isn’t doing enough called him racist in January when he banned all foreign nationals who were in China during the time of the coronavirus outbreak from entering the country. Turns out “health experts have since credited this decision with helping to slow the coronavirus pandemic on American shores.”

I remember 2009 and the Swine Flu. It was all over the news. People exercised caution they did not panic.

According to the New York Times:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified the first case of the virus on April 14, 2009. The Obama administration declared swine flu a public health emergency on April 26.

To his credit President Obama’s administration moved quickly in the beginning of the swine flu, it took 12 days for DHS to declare a public health emergency. President Trump’s administration moved a day faster, it took 11 days for a public health emergency to be declared. (On January 20, 2020, the CDC confirmed that the patient’s nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs tested positive for 2019-nCoV by real-time reverse-transcriptase–polymerase-chain-reaction (rRT-PCR) assay. The national health emergency was declared on January 31.)

Even though swine flu was first identified on April 14, 2009 Obama didn’t declare a national emergency until October 24, 2009 and no one panicked. Trump acted much faster than Obama and declared a national emergency for swine flu on March 13 and folks are hording toilet paper.

My point? All your “expert” friends on social media are causing you to panic. Stop buying into it. Go to the CDC for facts. Click here!

I am no expert, but I do know swine flu was nasty! I remember. Back then I was living with “she who shall remain nameless” and one of her kids got it, then I was infected with Swine Flu. It sucked!

Nobody gave a damn that I had swine flu, not even Bob who was chairman of the Cumberland County Republicans at the time. All he cared about was that I could still do my job. I didn’t tell anyone else and I still did my job – from home.

Some schools did close during the Swine Flu outbreak, but not nearly as many as are closing now for Coronavirus. The school that “she who shall remain nameless” kids went to didn’t close.

People were cautious but not crazy, not like today.

And, here comes the unpopular opinion. This is NOT the media’s fault.

True, the media is hyping the coronavirus. They hyped the swine flu too. And, the media hyped the Bird Flu, MERS and Zika. The media hyped Y2K! The media hypes things because they need ratings to sell advertising. It’s what they do.

The coronavirus panic is not the fault of the media – it is the fault of all your friends on social media.

Swine Flu was bad. As I said, I know, I had it. Swine Flu was all over the news. Swine Flu was not all over social media, not to the extent coronavirus is. And, guess what, swine flu didn’t lead to meetings and sporting events being canceled and/or postponed.

Way back in 2009 MySpace was still popular (it was someone on MySpace who turned me on to Facebook), people were sill using AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Yahoo’s instant message platform and chat rooms. According to a December 2009 PC World article Facebook and MySpace each enjoyed a 30.26% share of the U.S. market, which makes me wonder who had the other 39.48% of the market. I’m guessing AIM and Yahoo’s chat rooms.

Fast forward to 2020 and it’s all about Facebook with 2.45 billion active monthly users and Twitter with 330 million active monthly users. There are others, Instagram comes to mind and now that I know the site has 1 billion average monthly users I might start paying attention to it, but Facebook and Twitter drive everything, and in this case, that everything is panic over the coronavirus.

There’s your difference between swine flu 2009 and coronavirus 2020 – SOCIAL MEDIA.

Thank all your friends who went to Facebook University to become doctors for the hysteria that has led to countless meetings being canceled or postponed. Thank all your Facebook friends for the panic buying and hording of toilet paper. Thank them for the grandparents (many of whom face the most danger from the coronavirus) who now have to babysit, the people losing income and the stock market taking a dive.

To be clear, I do understand precautions should be taken. I’ll tell you exactly what my doctor told me last week: “Wash your hands, don’t cough in someone else’s face, don’t be touching your face, if you don’t feel well stay the hell home” – you know, act like a decent human being should act.

Of course, now that President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency, I’m guessing the panic is going to get worse. Do not let that happen. Former President Barack Obama declared a national emergency in October 2009 because of swine flu and no one panicked. There should be no panic now.

The panic buying is ridiculous! Social media and political attacks are stoking the fear. And, while having suffered swine flu makes me hate to admit it, the threat is real, but responding sensibly should be the goal – not panic.