Image provided by Jon Tyson, written by Kathryn Tyson (no, we’re not related)

Let’s talk about COVID-19 (ugh I know, but go with me on this one).

Flashback two months. My mom called and told me to be extra careful because there was a highly contagious virus going around. Like a lot of us, I shrugged it off. At that point, COVID-19 was a foreign problem—literally and figuratively. It sounded like a brutal flu, and I wasn’t scared of no flu. The thing? The American people didn’t have all the information yet. Most countries hadn’t peaked, and most hospital systems weren’t critical… yet. We were living with our heads in the clouds. Myself included.

Then my sister called and echoed my mom’s sentiments. I feel like boomers can either be super lax or a little doomsday, and my mom tends to lean toward the latter. My sister, on the other hand, is pretty pragmatic. Not irrationally calm but also not hysterical. She told me to stock up on toilet paper. 

“Why?” I asked. She said her Costco was already running low and that she heard toilet paper was hard to find. “Where’d you hear that?” I questioned further. She didn’t know. And so began the snowball effect of “I heard you need to do X, so everyone should go do X.” I’m still not sure what person in what city started the toilet paper rush, but damn you. (In my sister’s defense, TP would prove increasingly difficult to find…)

Then panic.

Eggs, gone. Milk, gone. Dry goods, gone. Rubbing alcohol, gone. Forget toilet paper. And forget hand sanitizer. The general media and every social media account to exist kept echoing the same thing: We’re not on a food (or TP) shortage, you don’t need to panic buy or hoard any one particular item. Chickens are still laying eggs. Trees are still getting cut down to make TP. But it didn’t matter. Everyone everywhere kept panic buying the things they thought they needed. They insisted on creating their own narrative, even though the facts kept telling us it was all a misunderstanding. 

Now, all my siblings have families. So stocking up on certain things makes (and made) sense. But buying a whole pallet of TP or water or beans or milk will never make sense… pretty much ever.

That’s the curious thing about panic. It makes no sense. That seems like a real “duh” thing to say, but apparently it’s not. Because we keep doing it. I watched Marc Maron’s Netflix special, “End Times Fun,” and he talked about how our information sources used to be a lot more limited. Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, we knew what we knew from TV, work, friends, and family. In short, we knew what we heard. There was no fact-checking unless we went to the library or opened up our handy dandy encyclopedias (there’s still something so nostalgic about encyclopedias, no?). 

But we don’t live in that world anymore. We have so much information, it almost drowns us. We can fact-check. Granted we have to cull for quality information, but still. There’s no excuse for acting based on what we hear from our neighbors—or in my case, from my family. We can research it, make sure it’s true, and then make information-backed decisions. We don’t have to let hysteria drive us. There’s no reason to let our fear cage us. We’re better than that—at least I think so.

In the midst of all this panic and hysteria, things got serious. I mean, it was always serious, we just didn’t know to what extent. People kept getting sick and people kept dying—friends, family, friends of friends. This virus knew no bounds. It wasn’t (and isn’t) interested in any particular race, and it didn’t mind crossing country borders. In the blink of an eye, we were no different than China or Italy. And all of a sudden, our lives weren’t in our own hands. Us Americans, so hellbent on the individual, were all of a sudden forced to rely on others. We like to say “there’s no ‘i’ in team,” but how often are we really living that motto? Until now. Now we’re forced to rely on our neighbors, our community, our city, our state, our country, and our government to protect us. We can’t solve this on our own, and that’s not something we digest well. After all, you can just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, right? 

Our individualism is interesting. I certainly tend to rely on myself first and then look to others. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I don’t like relying on others at all. It’s scary, and I have a big fear of being let down. (Feel free to start at my eighth grade diary for more on that complex.) But this pandemic is forcing us to look beyond ourselves. It’s forcing us to consider others. It’s forcing us to need others. Our physical health depends on us casting aside the individual for the sake of the whole. And out of all the absolutely heart-wrenching things happening as a result of this virus, I think that’s a silver lining. 

You might be reading this thinking, “Damn, she’s kind of a biotch.” And I can be. But trust me when I say I’m an over-empathizer. It’s my superpower and my downfall. I watch people singing to each other from their balconies, and my heart truly aches. I read stories of people’s grandparents, parents, teachers, doctors dying, and the loss makes me sick. I’d rather have all the people who’ve lost their lives back with their families than have any kind of silver lining. But here we are, and it kind of feels like all we have left are a few silver linings… and each other.

Our Ad 2 president, Diego, said he heard our reaction to this pandemic has been medieval. We’re reacting rather than acting. Cue panic buying toilet paper and hoarding hand sanitizer. (It’s mid-April and my mom still can’t find TP by the way.) Somewhere we told ourselves that toilet paper and Lysol would get us through this. We didn’t listen to our very large, evolved human brains. Well, I guess we did, but only the primal bit. Not the hello-it’s-2020-look-at-all-the-resources-we-have-around-us bit.

Now, I’m not saying people who panic buy are idiots. Well, that’s not true. I do think they’re idiots. But I get it. Fear is scary. My fear paralyzes me on the daily. I’m constantly letting my fear cage me—I drag my heels on projects I want to start and things I want to write for fear of not being as good as I think I am. I’m no stranger to fear. So for those feeling fearful and scared, I’m with you. But don’t go primal. Stay in the 21st century and know how f@&%ing smart you are. Know you can do better. And then do.

My hope is this crisis can give us perspective, help us realize we’re not better than the people next door and certainly not better than any one country. We might live very different lives from one another, but we all share the same existence. We’re a giant Venn diagram, and we overlap… a lot. We’re a social creature, a pack animal. And we’re better together than we are apart. 

Now, let’s apply this take-no-prisoners attitude and direct it toward the ever-present, increasingly scary SOB: climate change. Still want to act but not sure you can take on climate change right now? No worries. Here are some resources we collected to help you feel more prepared and empowered. Resources like…

• Local organizations that could use our help
• National organizations that could use our help
• Online care packages with recommendations based on how you feel
• Online guides to books, movies, music, podcasts, and workouts
• Free graphics and messaging from Thecureis.US and #StayHomeColorado
• Companies selling fabric masks (some on backorder, but it might not hurt to have for the future!)

Plus lots more…