The fear of coronavirus is out of proportion to the number of deaths. The facts do not support the fear.
Fear can grip a nation and paralyze it.
This is what the California doctors tried to express before they were suppressed on YouTube.
I will give some examples of how fear can paralyze a body.
1 My stepfather Don was in the Navy during World War II. He was a radio operator. He worked on a support ship out in the South Pacific – the AKA Molina. One day he woke up and could not move his legs. He was paralyzed.
He was taken down to sick bay where the doctor examined him. What’s wrong, the doctor asked. I can’t move my legs, said Don.
The doctor examined my stepfather then said to him: There’s nothing wrong with you. Get up and go back to your post.
My step-father then got up and walked back to his post.
Years later, he was able to see more clearly that the fear and stress generated by war had paralyzed him.
2 I had a friend who was attending jump school in the military. Although he was not a paratrooper, he was required to fulfill a basic amount of training in that area. When it was his turn to jump off the training tower, he froze. He gave a command for his legs to move, but they did not move.
The fear of impending death had paralyzed his body.
3 Years ago, I was working in a clinic in San Antonio. A man was brought in to one of the exam rooms. When I entered the exam room, the man was experiencing what seemed to be a seizure. As he was “seizing” he was conscious and staring at me. I said to him: What’s your name?
He said to me: My-my-my na-na-name is-is-is-is … which he should not have been able to do if he was having a true seizure.
So I looked straight at him and said: Stop that!
And he did. He stopped.
The man was experiencing a pseudo-seizure.
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In all of these cases, the mind was stuck in a reverberating circuit which was paralyzing the body.
Such is the case with the coronavirus.
We have the coronavirus which is real. On top of that we have the coronavirus hype which is created and maintained by the media. Then on top of that we have the coronavirus psychosis which is created by us and our cell phones and social media.
Through our cell phones we are communicating with each other and with our leaders and creating a reverberating circuit which is paralyzing us and preventing us from making rational and responsible decisions.
The smart phone is too much power for our human minds.
We are killing ourselves with this technology.
Through our constant communication with each other, we are heightening the fear to a level not supported by the facts.
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Have you ever seen a person exhibiting mania?
I have.
In the early 1980s I experienced a woman who was brought into a clinic in a manic state. Strapped into a gurney, she was screaming loudly while shaking her head violently from side to side. Her speech was rapid to the point of being unintelligible.
She was not in control of herself. To calm her down she had to be sedated with Thorazine.
This is the state we find ourselves in today.
We are not in control.
Our rational minds are caught in a vicious reverberating loop that paralyzes us.
But there is a way out short of Thorazine.
We must see that the facts do not support the fear.
Currently, as of today we have 140 coronavirus deaths in Hidalgo County. We are being shocked by that number into a state of submission. Yet, if we look at the annual death rate in the United States which as of 2017 was 0.00833 times the population considered, we arrive at a daily death rate in Hidalgo County of 20 deaths per day.
Over the past 100 days of the coronavirus experience here, that would translate to 2,000 expected deaths. When we compare 140 coronavirus deaths to 2,000 expected deaths, one can hardly call that a crisis.
Even if we use the 2014 mortality data for Hidalgo County, we arrive at an expected death count of 1500 deaths over the past 100 days – still not yielding enough deaths by comparison to warrant a panic.
Similarly, the other day, the media remarked over the new daily record of 105 coronavirus deaths in the state of Texas. One would think an apocalypse had occurred. Yet when one multiplies the 2017 annual death rate of 0.00833 times the Texas population of 28 million one arrives at an expected figure of 639 deaths per day.
I ask you then whether an extra 105 deaths per day warrants a panic situation.
I don’t think so even if we choose to disbelieve that the federal government has incentivized the diagnosis of coronavirus.
And should we even panic if the number of deaths does manage to exceed the expected death rate?
Did your ancestors panic during the Civil War? Did your ancestors panic during Antietam?
3,500 died in one day at Antietam, the bloodiest day of the Civil War. 23,000 casualties were incurred.
Wars are brutal, and they must be fought.
What hampers a soldier, and an army, most is fear.
When we are fearful, our fear becomes us.
To escape that fear a dose of reality is necessary.
We must be reminded that our fears are often the product of our wildest imagination.
In the case of my stepfather that reminder was a doctor informing him that, objectively and neurologically, everything was okay.
In the case of my friend at jump school, that reminder was the over-arching reality that he wasn’t going to complete his military training unless he jumped off that tower.
In the case of the seizing man who visited my clinic, the reminder was again an outside force jolting the man back into reality. My command broke through the reverberating circuit and dissolved it.
In the case of the coronavirus, looking at the facts soberly can help.
If we do not, then we will remain entrapped and unable to make responsible decisions.
And that is what is happening in Texas today.
The governor is threatening another lockdown.
He is afraid because we are afraid.
Yet this fear is created and heightened by the media and our use of social media.
The fear is illusory.
The fear is not supported by the facts.
This cycle of reverberating fear must be broken.
Sincerely,
Archer Crosley, MD
Saturday, July 11, 2020
Copyright 2020 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved
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