The Culture of Fear and COVID-19

“Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.” Those words from actress Geena Davis in the 1986 horror film THE FLY, has been ringing in my ears since the COVID-19 task force was formed three months ago, the governors daily medical reports and the tiresome opinions and conflicting reports of pundits and epidemiologists. In previous posts I have written about cultures of Guilt and cultures of Shame. The focus today is the cultures of Fear.

Generally speaking, fear cultures are people who are animistic or spirit worshippers. Africans readily admit that their history of fear is the reason they continue to believe in witchdoctors. Because they are afraid of unseen spirits, which cause sickness, misfortune and death, they tie amulets on their arms or around their neck to ward off evil spirits and sprinkle the blood of animals around their houses for protection. In Tanzania witchdoctors still pay large sums of money for the body parts of albino children, as they feel they have particular power. Fear cultures have a marginal belief in science or medicine, they are moved by superstition and myth.

A quick overview on how people come to a belief system (philosophy, theology or worldview).

For secularists and most Western countries their confidence is in human achievement and science. Their equation for belief follows this pattern: Data + Testing = Fact or Hypothesis.

For theists (Christians, Muslims and Hindus), whose belief is in God, gods/goddesses their equation for belief is Holy Writing + Tradition = Theology.

For animists, historically illiterate with an oral tradition of storytelling, the equation for their belief system is Observation + Imagination = Myth.

Myth is not just an African animist thing, but can be found in every society, culture and people on earth. Follow the equation of animisim in Hinduism. Some guru in India declared that drinking cow urine is a cure or prophylactic for COVID-19 and so millions are trying it. Imagination, by the holy man, observation that some people recovered from the virus after drinking the urine, equals the myth that cow urine is a cure. You can apply that equation to everything from praying to Our Mother Guadalupe to repeating the ninety-nine names of Allah with the tasbih or prayer beads.

Before anyone jumps to conclusions, I am not denying the reality of the virus, its contagion or its potential danger for some portion of the population. However, the novelty of the novel coronavirus around the world is the pandemic of fear which has produced an avalanche of myth associated with the virus and how to defeat disease. The most striking phenomena are people who claim to be sophisticated, intelligent and educated who, in some ways are behaving as the Pokot bush people in Kenya. They say they believe in science but ignore their own data to perpetuate their narrative of fear.

Here are some statistics to consider. I live in the state of Arkansas with a population a bit over 3 million people. As of this writing, over 242,000 have been tested for COVID-19, 94% have come back negative. There have been 224 deaths, which means 0.0075% of our population have succumbed to this virus, fewer people than we will share air with on any given day at Walmart. The average age of those reported to have died of COVID-19 is 77.21 years old, the oldest being 107 years old and the youngest reported 25. People between the ages of 1 – 39 years old have 0.02% chance of dying from this disease; those between the age of 40 – 49 are 0.04% at risk of dying to COVID and those between 50 and 59 years old is 1.3%. In most, if not all cases, the fatalities are because people already have serious health issues.

It’s truly alarming that 224 people have died due to this disease, but did you know that in my state this year twice as many people, 548, have died in car accidents. Should we shut down the highways to protect the lives of further deaths on the road? Get this…there are more people in Arkansas who have died due to falls this year, 290, than COVID. How can we mitigate people who will die due to imbalance?

In spite of these statistics, many people in the world are gripped with the fear of coronavirus, and believe that if you test positive you have less than six weeks to live. Indeed, be afraid, really afraid if you are elderly with other medical issues, or you are obese, diabetic or have some other respiratory problem. But for the average normal person COVID is not a death sentence and if you get it, statistics bear out, you will survive, as you would with the flu.

Franklin D. Roosevelt understood the emotion of fear. In his first inaugural address, in the midst of the Great Depression, he stated, “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR IS...FEAR ITSELF — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

I’m not sure what or who is behind the motivation for fear. Someone hypothesized that after the election the virus will go away. Maybe. In most things follow the money and you will find the answer. Certainly, hospitals, medical researchers are profiting from the fear, but they are just reaping the rewards of fear, not the cause. Is this some kind of judgment from God to an ungodly and evil population? I doubt it, but He certainly can work His sovereign will in the atmosphere of fear. Since the foundational fear is death, Jesus reminds us that we are not to fear that which can kill the body but the One who can destroy the soul (Matthew 28:10), but no one thinks much of that.

How then should we handle this fear of disease? Should we wear a mask, disinfect the surfaces in our home and businesses, wipe off cooties from our mail, stand six feet apart from each other? Since science, at this point, can’t tell us what really works, we follow the equation of the animists…Imagination + Observation = Myth. In the process we are killing our economy, dividing our communities and cower in fear. Since so many have given up on common sense, maybe we should just drink cow urine.