After year of pandemic, I’m finally feeling bit of fear about COVID-19

By David McElroy · January 21, 2021

There are only five people who work every day in the building where my office is located. There are four people in the office next door and I’m the only person who’s in our real estate office every business day. Of the five people who work in the building, I’m the only one who hasn’t tested positive for COVID-19 at some point.

Because of changes in how we all work, our broker and agents rarely come into the office these days. I run operations for the company, though, so someone has to manage daily business in the quiet office. That’s me.

Several of our agents have tested positive for COVID-19 over the last few months. At least one of the tenants whose rentals I manage has had it. Another customer who came into the office told us a few days later that she had it. If I expand the circle to friends and family of people I know well, there are quite a few more. Some just disappear — and keep it quiet — for a few weeks so as not to alarm others.

A close friend told me that five men in her father’s Sunday school class have died from it over the last year.

I’m not an alarmist. I never sit around and worry about what I can’t control. But I’m finally starting to feel some fear for my personal safety. And after a year, I wonder how much longer this can go on without serious damage to our mental health.

I could tell you quite a few stories about people I know who’ve dealt with this new coronavirus, but most of the stories are pretty mundane when taken individually. It’s just the sheer number of cases that’s gotten to me lately — cases that have affected those who I personally know.

When it was still a fairly new danger, I listened to stories from nurse and doctor friends who work in hospitals. Their work load was exhausting — and it still is — and they were seeing far more death than was normal even for them. Their stories were overwhelming.

But I could compartmentalize what they were going through, because they were part of the industry which had to deal directly with the worst cases. Today, a tiny bit of the horrors they were dealing with has started bleeding into my life.

I can think of 18 people who I personally know who have had this disease. Nobody I know has died yet, but some have been hospitalized. At least one was near death, but survived.

I have always looked at such dangers around me in a rational and statistical way. I know that some tiny fraction of people who drive a car every day will have an accident. A smaller fraction will experience serious injury. A few will be maimed or killed. I can know that without being terrified to drive.

I’ve looked at the pandemic danger in the same way. I’ve thought that people who were panicking were overreacting compared to the likelihood of it affecting them or their loved ones. I’ve also been puzzled by those who pretended the issue was “fake” or unimportant. The truth was between the two.

I still like my statistical chances. If 400,000 Americans have died, that leaves about 320 million of us who haven’t. Those odds are pretty good.

But I can’t ignore the stories of those I know. I can’t quit thinking about the fact that I’m the only person who works in my building who hasn’t yet been hit by this.

My rational side still understands all the statistics. I understand that I have a decent chance of never contracting this and an even better chance of not being killed by it. But for the first time in the year since this started, I’ve felt some fear this week. And that is very unusual for me.

I have no interest in getting into the politics of the pandemic or the social issues. I’m not angry at anybody who takes any particular position on these matters, even though they’re angry and shouting at one another. All of that seems counterproductive to me.

But I worry about the few people who I really care about. If someone disappears for awhile, I worry what could be wrong. I’m concerned about a lot of unknowns.

Anybody who knows me understands that I’m not a worrier. I understand that life is full of dangers and we can’t do much about them.

But for the first time that I recall, I’m feeling a bit scared — and a bit helpless — about an invisible bug which could kill me or kill someone I love. And what I’m going through isn’t good for my mental health. Or for yours.

I pray that we can make it through this safely. And I pray that the long-term economic and mental health consequences don’t kill us even if we survive this nasty killer bug.

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Tyler Barnes will never be a basketball star. He probably peaked as a star high school player in Louisville, Ky. But for the last four years, he’s been a walk-on player for the University of Alabama. He’s a chemical engineering major with lots of academic honors who rides the bench because he loves being part of a team. He sometimes gets into games with a minute or two to go, but only if Alabama has a big lead. This Saturday, it was senior day for Alabama basketball, so it was his last chance to play in Coleman Coliseum. Alabama Coach Nate Oats says that one of the team starter’s came to him an hour before the game started — and fellow senior Alex Reese asked Oats if Barnes could start in his place for this one game. Even though the game was huge for Alabama, which is ranked No. 6 in the country and trying to wrap up an SEC title, Oats agreed. Barnes started and played the first three minutes, grabbing what was only the fourth rebound of his career and missing his only shot. Barnes has a great future as an engineer, but you’ll never again hear from him as a basketball player. For three shining minutes Saturday, though, he was a starter for a top-10 college basketball team — and his parents were in the stands from Kentucky to see it. There’s a lot of ugliness in college basketball right now, but this story makes me happy.

It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

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