At Any Speed

"The absolute and complete absence of the potential to come to harm" is a poor definition of "safety." But it seems to be the one that much of our society has settled on. And this unrealistic expectation is now biting society at large, as people attempt to ease their anxieties about the COVID-19 outbreak, through doing something, whether or not they actually understand how efficacious (or not) their actions are.

Fear, as in the feeling of alarm and/or anxiety caused by the anticipation or perception of danger, is adaptive. After all, the utterly fearless are likely to find themselves overmatched, at times with fatal consequences, by certain life circumstances. Lions and tigers and bears have many more natural weapons than we humans do. But fear is neither necessary nor sufficient when it comes to actually taking action to either forestall or alleviate danger.

But fear is motivating, and that is, perhaps, why it is so prevalent in our society. Prompting people to fear has proven itself to be an excellent way of driving change, especially for those people who are insulated from the collateral damage that may also occur. And because the difference between feeling safe and being safe is difficult to discern, responding to fear in a way that removes it often feels like having done something concrete and productive, even if, objectively, nothing is different.

Perhaps a broader understanding of a reasonable level of "safety" would serve to reduce the role of fear in day-to-day life, but that's only a guess. And it may be an impossibility in any event. Because society's fears have bitten it before, yet each time, society manages to forget. Perhaps because "safety" is simply a label that is applied to a sufficiently clement situation, rather than a genuine state that people are motivated to work towards.

Plum Blossoms

So the 2020 Primary election is officially tomorrow, which mainly means just that it's the start of vote counting, since it's a vote-by-mail election, and I wouldn't be surprised if most people who plant to vote have already mailed or dropped off their ballots.

And while the panic buying has calmed down, the local area is still freaking out about COVID-19.

But I'm burning out, so it's flower photo time.

Reasons

People's fears of COVID-19 is, as one might expect, leading to interesting... theories as to how to deal with it. An acquaintance informed me that Purell hand sanitizer was a foolproof defense against the disease. And the reason that it was now in short supply wasn't panic buying (despite what one may have heard or seen with one's own eyes); rather, Purell production had been shut down in order to allow drugmakers to produce a vaccine; one that would then be forced on the public in the name of corporate profits.

As far as conspiracy theories go, it's kind of lame. But it does illustrate something that a lot of these theories have in common; the pitting of different interests against one another; in this case, a trusted brand versus an untrusted industry. Of course, it's not much of a conspiracy without a villain. And these villains point to who people are afraid of, as much as the stories as a whole point to what people are afraid of.

And in this sense, these sorts of conspiracy theories not only provide a sense of order and control, but a sense of importance. The pharmaceutical-industrial complex needs something from the public that the public won't willingly give, and so the government is enlisted to force it from them. Presumably because this is easier than simply raising taxes and cutting someone a check. But conspiracies are emotional, rather than intellectual, constructs. The needs they serve are emotional, and so their composition matches.

Under Control

“This is a dramatic event, therefore a dramatic response is required, so that leads to people throwing money at things in hopes of protecting themselves.”
Coronavirus: The psychology of panic buying

This drama was in full effect over the weekend here in the Seattle area, with people rushing to local stores to buy up bottled water, rice, chicken, toilet paper, face masks, hand sanitizer and, judging from one cart I watched being pushed out of the local Costco, Jack Daniels. It all struck me as more than a little nuts. But if University of British Columbia professor Steven Taylor is correct as I've quoted him above, then it kind of makes sense.

Interestingly, for me, anyway, there didn't seem to me much of a middle ground between "Keep calm, it's not that big a deal" and "Oh my God, we're all going to die." I have several good laughs with store employees, as we wondered together just what all of the fuss was about. There was a consensus that it was too bad that aliens weren't invading; that, at least, would have resulted in an interesting show. To be sure, I live not far from "ground zero" of the local outbreak. The old-age home where residents and staff alike have become ill is only about five or six miles south of where I live.

But there's a part of me that wonders if there isn't something bigger at work in all of this. According to the BBC article I was reading, panic buying, ironically, is something that people do for feel in control. And while the coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak seems tailor-made to trigger people's fears that an out-of-control epidemic is about to sweep through their communities, perhaps there is a greater feeling of being out of control that people are attempting to manage. Of course, panic buying doesn't seem much like being in control, hence the irony, but people cope with things in the ways that make sense to them, not to observers.

I was curious about how much of the food that was being purchased, especially the fresh food, would end up in a landfill when it was all said and done, and the general consensus was "a lot of it." On the other hand, however, I did learn that there are places that will accept returns of unopened nonperishables. Presumably, the once-common fear of food tampering has abated.

Out Of Sight

South, and a bit East, of downtown Seattle, in the International District (sometimes also called Chinatown), Interstate 5 is above ground level, but not by much. There is a parking lot there. And there are tents. The number varies, but there are usually a least a half-dozen. It's one of the smaller of the many encampments that homeless people have created around the city. And this one is particularly visible. There are more tents further south, but they're scattered among the trees along the side of the expressway, and so while they are somewhat visible in the Winter if you look up, when the foliage is out, they're much more hidden.

These tends are out in the open. I don't go to the International District all that often, so I don't know if the residents rotate in an out, or if there are some people who are always there. Their tents are memorable only in the aggregate; I doubt I'd recall one if I saw it again, unless I had a picture, like this one, to compare it to.

We've come to treat homelessness as some sort of intractable problem, which really isn't true. The intractable problem is how to end homelessness, without imposing costs on people who a) don't want to pay them and b) can vote out of office anyone who attempts to make them pay. As a region, there is a desire to have the cake of big employers with well-paid workforces yet eat the cake of having land-use restrictions that prevent housing from scaling as quickly as hiring can. And since those land-use restrictions have resulted in a lot of legacy homeowners being very "house-rich," policies that negatively impact their home equity will be enacted over their dead bodies.

And so there are tents. For the simple reason that more people want to live here than there are homes for. And no-one has found a way to solve the problem that doesn't change one of those things.