Fear and Contagion

Good morning. What should I talk about today? The coronavirus, of course. It’s all over the news. Current statistics indicate it’s infected more than 100,000 in 91 countries, and killed more than 3,400 people. It started in China, most of the cases are from there, and it continues to spread.

Reactions range from Elon musk saying “It’s dumb.” to an online comment: “ We’re all doomed. DOOMED, I TELL YA. I THINK IT’S GOING TO BE AS BAD AS THE 1918 Spanish flu.” Now we have states of emergency in many places, including here in Los Angeles.

I hadn’t really gotten hysterical about it. Then I saw a chart with mortality rates by age group....and the biggest rate was for 80 and above: 21%. That’s the most susceptible group, especially with health conditions such as high blood pressure.

I experience high blood pressure. I’m over 80. Is there a target on my back? I needed to do something. “I’ll buy some hand sanitizer at CVS,” I thought, but they were sold out. A lot of products are sold out everywhere.

I got a couple extra bars of soap to have on hand, and I’m working on not touching my face. That’s actually hard, as I get little itches on my face and desperately want to scratch. Social distancing is the other recommendation...so I went to a brunch on Friday with some ladies I hadn’t seen for awhile, and we elbow bumped, instead of hugging or shaking hands.

But aside from that, and staying home a lot, I didn’t find a lot of useful advice out there. The media seems to be driving the hysteria about this much more than I remember from past flu seasons and the H1N1,SARS, and MERS epidemics. With the Ebola panic, I did buy some prepper stuff. But I’ve been healthy.

I saw this comment online: “Last cold season, 2018-2019, 12,469 died from the flu, 10,493 from the common cold, and over 4,000 from texting while driving. Where’s the outrage and sensationalism?” It IS kind of surreal. I’m wondering if this is because the virus is novel, so we have no built up immunity.

But what’s a Religious Scientist to do? I liked these comments from Rev. Ann Rea:

“Thoughts, fears and preparations around the coronavirus are already their own world-wide pandemic. The exponential growth of this energy and these thought forms are a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY for those of us who live, believe and teach the Principles of New Thought to elevate the world’s Consciousness.”

She suggests we enlist in focused work: to know the Truth, speak the Truth, think the Truth and BE the best version of the Truth we can, moment by moment, and not be distracted by effects and conditions.  Let’s apply collectively the principles of Science of Mind and embody the Force for Good to stop and dissolve the virus, seeding Oneness, Loving Kindness, Compassion and Gratitude in its wake.

We could do that through our Center’s Power of Eight prayer groups, by praying to dissolve the virus as well praying for our individual desires. We can join other Religious Science efforts through such mediums as Zoom calls to confront our fears and pray to heal our world physically, mentally, emotionally and gloriously as we know the spiritual Truth of our Being.

And so it is.