Panic Is a Luxury

Not everyone can afford to spiral out about the news

Saul Austerlitz
Forge

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Photo: Andreas Solaro/Getty Images

II 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…

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