Irrational Fear

Here in the Midwest, unless you live literally under a rock, you have heard that we are in the midst of a large storm. The news would have you believe that we are running to our grocery stores and ransacking them. They have shown empty store shelves for the last three nights now on the evening news including some stores with lines out front of people waiting to get in.

That is not how the 95% of open space outside of a few large urban areas on the maps behave. Yes there are a couple bare spots of shelves in the grocery store largely due to people not smart enough to understand the irrational fear that is being created and used to attract people to watch a particular news broadcast. Nobody wants to watch a reporter standing in front of a lightly populated store showing shoppers picking groceries from full shelves while telling the viewers that a big storm is on the way and people are just taking the usual precautions. That doesn't sell advertising spots. Instead, they have to hunt around to find a store that does have a bare shelf and keep running that clip with a breathless reporter talking about it over and over, hyping it up and creating panic among the weak minded.

Like in the Covid pandemic and the rush immediately after lockdowns started happening, there might be a bare spot on the shelf at least until the stockers can restock the supplies. Even if they run out of bacon and eggs as one breathless guy I think in Nashville was saying on the news last night, there is enough food in the store to eat, even if you have to substitute your traditional bacon and egg breakfast with pancakes and sausage patties. Unlike the Covid pandemic, this storm will halt things for a couple days at most and not the months that Covid did so supplies of bacon and eggs are literally just a couple days away at worst.

I, like most of my peers and neighbors, look at the television broadcasts and assume they were taken from some alternative timeline planet because none of that applies for us. I haven't been to the grocery store since last Sunday and likely won't go again until midweek when it warms up again. We might not have the ingredients to make any dish we desire but we will certainly not starve or suffer. Perhaps more of a concern than the status of our grocery store shelves is electricity. Freezing to death in such a storm is really where the danger is out, especially with the huge amounts of snow, freezing rain and wind predicted. 

I suppose like most Midwesterners, we have plans for that too and don't get too worked up. Several of my neighbors have generators of some sort that they can fire up if they can start them. I have always chose a simpler less prone to failure approach and just light a fire in my fireplace. In fact I have one going now and we still have full electrical power. I can count the number of times in over five decades I've had to spend the night in laying on a comfortable bed of cushions and blankets in front of the fire to stay warm on a single finger. Even if I didn't have enough fingers on my hand to count, I found it kind of a novelty to do as a family and would welcome doing so again. 

My plan for the day is to spend it reading in front of the fireplace and ignoring the hysteria and panic being created by the media. This is how I strengthen my mind so it isn't so susceptible to such things.