Panic Is a Luxury
Not everyone can afford to spiral out about the news
I am sitting by the window in my living room, watching the sparse traffic pass by on the usually busy Brooklyn street. My kids are home from school, closed due to COVID-19, also called the novel coronavirus. I have a mild cold.
As I write this, my pantry is crammed full of beans and brownie mix. (Priorities!) I now spend a fair chunk of my mornings wiping down doorknobs and handles and have discovered, to my chagrin, that I touch my face roughly one million times per hour.
Housebound, stir-crazy, and uncertain what the next weeks and months hold, it’s easy — even comforting — to dive in to panic. For many Americans (myself included) this has manifested in anxiety-shopping and toilet-paper-hoarding. It’s easy to imagine the worst-case scenario.
Friends are decamping to country homes. But I’m staying here in the city, panicking about the viral apocalypse. Of course having the means to leave town is a luxury few of us have. But really, neither of these are choices available to everyone. For some people, the concerns of day-to-day life are too pressing for the kind of news-induced spiraling I’ve allowed myself: The people who don’t have the option to take time off of work or work remotely, or who now find themselves out of work. The ones who don’t have…
