Villains, Villains Everywhere!

Fear can be a terrible thing and one of the reasons is because it easily creates villains and false enemies. We've all seen it happen. It happened in World War ll with reactions toward Japanese and German American citizens. I remember the hatred toward the Vietnamese and other Asians during our war with Vietnam. Witness 9/11 and other events that followed that quickly created fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims, again including American citizens. Most recently the pot of fear has been stirred relative to South American and Mexican immigrants. They're viewed or presented as evil, bad, criminal, needy and poor. That's some of what fear does. It feeds stories, rumors and prejudice. It makes people suspicious and less tolerant of each other.

But now we are seeing something else. Something caused by an invisible virus. It had its origin in China so Asians are, in some cases, seen as responsible and feared. They became the villains. Then, it moved to our shores on both coasts. NYC has become an epicenter and new fears have arisen and are sometimes stoked. First, because of our fear of the virus, Upstate New Yorkers began pulling down the welcome signs, shooing away tourists and second home owners from NYC. They became the villains. Then rumblings began about keeping our hospitals safe from Covid 19 victims who may have crossed a county border. They became the villains. The same people who had offered open arms to immigrants were now questioning how open their boarders should be to fellow citizens in trouble. We've all traveled and we've all expected that if we got ill in one section of the country, we would be able to get medical help. We never wanted to be villains.

I heard a local hospital administrator recently asked by a member of the press if they were planning on any of their beds (there are only 12) being used for people from other areas of the state. Her answer was that no, they had no plans for that eventuality. I was surprised by both the question and the answer. Governor Cuomo has asked all hospitals to look at doubling their capacity. That's because he and other officials are projecting a shortfall of hospital beds. It seems there may come a time during this crisis when hospital space (beds) will have to be managed to serve a regional or state need. The last thing we need to do is point fingers at this person or that person and question their home address as part of the admittance procedure. You get help in an emergency where you can. A person living outside my county boarder should not be the new villain.

No doubt about it, this virus is scary and it is spreading fear as quickly as it moves among us. We're all scared, every one of us. We don't know if we can leave our house. We don't know where the virus is or how long it has been wherever we are isolating ourselves. Can we get it from the grocer, from the mail carrier, from the pharmacy? All good questions that medical professionals are trying to answer. Each creates another level of fear.

Because of fear there's talk about quarantining travel from NYS, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Florida doesn't want travelers from NY. Rhode Island doesn't want travelers from NY. We New Yorkers have become the latest villain. It seems to me that closing our interior boarders will be difficult. We're already having trouble getting people to understand how important it is to stay where they are and isolate themselves. But that's what we have to do. Let's spend a little less time trying to find the bad guys and the villains. Let's concentrate on physical distancing and looking out for each other.