“Keep Calm and Carry On”

“Keep Calm and Carry On”  March 22, 2020  Dr. Roger Ray, pastor

To see the video, click here

Brittany Fowler, Business Insider, June 23, 2015

 “In his book, McAlpine breaks down the phrase, further explaining why the British have grown to love it.

There is something quintessential in the way the posters do not say "Don't Panic" or "We Will Prevail"... They say "Keep Calm," and what that means is, "We may be suffering something of an invasion at the moment, but that's no reason to start acting in a rash and hot-headed manner. We may be a subjugated nation — temporarily — but we are not about to start acting like savages."

And what of the "Carry On?"... As a nation, we have been trained to look past the bad behavior of our rudest guests, especially the uninvited ones, and rather than cause a scene, we shall just go about our daily business as if nothing has happened.”

Over the past few years, I have been continually shocked by how many people I encounter who are taking prescription medications for anxiety or panic attacks. And, on top of that, the number of people who regularly use marijuana or other illegal drugs to self-medicate for anxiety or panic attacks. And I have often expressed my confusion about what on earth everyone is so anxious about? Sure, we have challenges but just so much generalized anxiety? I just don’t get it.

Well, my panicking friends, let me apologize if I have not taken your discomfort seriously in the past. Everyone in the world who has any idea of what is going on in the world is now feeling what you have felt. We know that something awful, possibly deadly, is coming down the tracks but we are being bombarded with so much misinformation and contradictory testimony that we are nearly paralyzed with fear.

And so, before we go any further, I just want to share this picture with you.

This is Jettie Mae West, our youngest church member, LeTroy and Camille’s newborn in a milk induced coma. We are being asked to stay out of restaurants, to avoid gathering anywhere where we have to be close to other people, to try to work from home and keep our distance from everyone but I just want to remind you that Jettie Mae don’t know nothin bout no stinkin viruses, and that while our lives are severely truncated for the next few months, the sidewalks are still open, spring is on the way, tulips and butter cups are pushing through the sod, most of us are rich in books we have not read yet, we have movies we have long ago recorded that we never got around to viewing, we have long delayed fix up and repair projects in our yards and houses, e-mails we have been meaning to answer, and old friends we have been meaning to call. And there are babies, ripe with the smell of new skin and milk, there are dogs and cats, and old friends and, folks, as serious as things are right now, this too shall pass.

As the British government advised a population that was about to experience months of bombing and probable invasion just before WWII broke out, “keep calm and carry on.” We are trying to slow the spread of the covid-19 virus but we cannot stop it. 

All of the social distancing, sheltering in place, and even those who are quarantined are going to do much to keep people from getting the virus but these measures are vitally important to slow the spread so that our medical system is not entirely overwhelmed. And that is not a small thing.

Based on the experiences of Asia and Europe, it seems that about 5% of the people who contract the virus will need to be hospitalized. Of those with the worst cases, about half will need to be put on a ventilator. Still, about half of those patients die. On an individual basis, it can feel kind of reassuring, even though most of us will eventually get it, only one in twenty will need to be hospitalized. Only one in 40 will need to be on a ventilator. So, for the most part, we can be somewhat assured that we’re going to see the other side of this crisis.

However, when you look at it from a national plane, the numbers could exceed the casualties we have experienced in major wars. There have been about 10,000 deaths world-wide so far. But, realistically, we’re just getting started.

My now 31-year-old daughter calls most days now. She is working from home in Denver and she is keeping safe but, still, as for most of us, the virus has her stressed out. She has said several times, “I’ve just never been through anything like this,” which is obviously true because no one alive in the world has ever been through anything like this, short of a few 100 year old people who were alive for the Spanish flu but even they were not old enough to remember anything about it.

We’re going through the 21^st century’s version of the Spanish flu and we may get a 21^st century great depression to complicate our anxiety. There is a lovely passage in Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring in which the Hobbit, Frodo, is telling the wizard, Gandalf, that he just wishes these dark days had come in another generation. Gandalf wisely replies:

“So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

None of us would have wished this pandemic on our generation but responding to it is now the task given to us. As we hunker down for the worst of us to wave over us here in the middle of the USA in the next week or two, please allow me to tell you what I think should be done nationally, then in our community, and finally, for us as individuals.

A crisis calls for our national government to open the purse strings and to try to meaningfully respond. When a government starts to spend hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars, the war profiteers show up to find a way to take the lion’s share of the spending. This has always been true but you can look at the number of new millionaires and billionaires created after each of our World Wars, after Vietnam and 9-11 and even after the crash of 2007 and 2008. At the end of every war and crisis, the rich are more rich and the poor are more poor.

This is one of my biggest beefs with the Obama administration that, in 2008, decided to bail out the banks and the car industry rather than to give cash to home owners and car buyers.

It is an age old problem that our Oklahoma philosopher, Will Rogers, opined about during the Great Depression, “The money was all appropriated for the top in hopes it would trickle down to the needy. President Hoover didn’t know that the money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hand.” 

The bail out money in 2008 was used for executive bonuses and stock buy backs while banks still repossessed the houses of the poor. Though progressives have been losing ground in the primaries, the virus and the simultaneous economic crash are revealing the wisdom of immediately instituting Medicare for all, and giving economic stimulus in the form of debt forgiveness for student loans, and a massive infrastructure push that will provide a living wage job for all of the unemployed. Instituting Andrew Yang’s concept of a Universal Basic Income would prove to be one of the smartest things that America’s dumbest president could ever do. 

Again, if I were king, I would immediately offer universal health care, forgive student debt, make state universities tuition free, guarantee a job to anyone who wants one, and I would pay every adult American who makes less than $50,000 a year, a $1000 a month subsidy. And, if I had to cut our military budget by about half to do all of that, then I would do it gleefully and I would accept the Nobel Peace Prize later that year. I’m younger than Bernie, smarter than Trump, and richer than Pete Buttigieg because I have paid off my student loans.

And since we all know how the election will go in Missouri this fall, you may as well write my name in.

Seriously, the federal government will surely do some of these things, at least in piecemeal fashion, to help our nation recover from that ravages of the covid virus. There will be a check for every citizen next month . . . it should be every month forever but next month we’ll get one. And while we won’t get Medicare for all, we will get free testing for the virus and unemployment pay if we get it. And that is a start. 

Community wise, as I was saying last week, we have this moral dividing line between those who think only of themselves and those who are aware that we are all connected. I stood in line this week at a big box store like a Soviet era distribution point to be handed one package of toilet paper and one of paper towels. Thankfully, I was at Sams rather than our Walmart on West Sunshine where a young mother was giving birth to a daughter in the toilet paper aisle at the same time on Thursday but, Springfield almost always gets into the national news for something that happened at one of our Walmarts. Walmart: it’s the petri dish for sociology studies.

Still, I shouldn’t have to wait on a rope line to have an employee ration out supplies to me, but we know when they were not doing that, some people would try to wipe out the store’s whole supply. Look people, this whole thing is going to be over one day, it may be a year or longer, but it will be over, and if you find yourself with a garage full of toilet paper, sanitizing wipes, hand sanitizer, and medical supplies then you are what is wrong with American society. This is a time that calls for nobility, self-sacrifice, and compassion. Make sure that your neighbors are taken care of by taking no more than what you need and saving everything else for your neighbors.

Of course, a great deal of what we need to do as a society is involved in the daily practices we follow of social isolation . . . that slows the spread of the virus and it is the most supportive thing we can do for our medical system that is being overly taxed already. But isolation puts a burden on all of us and none so much as those who are already struggling with various kinds of mental health challenges. 

For the last year I have been continually coming back to the theme of social connection as being the best preventative measure for suicide and the best treatment for addiction, depression, and a host of physical ailments like heart disease, high blood pressure and even diabetes. But now we are telling people to isolate, and since a lot of mentally ill people end up living alone, that is solitary confinement.

While Vice President Mike Pence has famously disputed that cigarettes are either addictive or harmful, the rest of us who are not morons know differently. But take what you know about smoking and apply that to social isolation. Solid research indicates that loneliness is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day because social isolation is stressful to everyone but to the mentally ill, you can multiply that effect. People who were having depression, anxiety or panic attacks before the 24/7 news started screaming at us night and day that the corona virus is going to start the zombie apocalypse are suffering terribly now.

If you know someone who is frightened, anxious, depressed . . . call them! Talk to them. Encourage them. Tell them funny stories. Look, this stuff is serious but even in the most serious of circumstances, we can inject some levity, can’t we?

I was recently both moved and entertained by the movie, Jojo Rabbit which, makes fun of the anti-Semitism in Germany during the holocaust. It was simultaneously hilarious and deeply insightful into one of history’s worst nightmares. It was similar in that way to the 1997 film, Life is Beautiful, which was set almost entirely in a Nazi death camp but showed how a loving father tried to keep his young son distracted and entertained through the whole experience. It was a Nazi death camp, horrible to be sure, but the character, Guido, brought love, compassion and comedy into that setting to help his son and everyone around them to survive. 

The 18^th century Irish poet, Thomas Moore, said, “The devil...the prowde spirite...cannot endure to be mocked.” The covid-19 virus can tank the stock market and fill our hospital beds, but it cannot take away from us our ability to choose how we are going to react to it. Your family, your neighbors, your pastor, need for you to keep trying to cheer them up and encourage them. That is a debt we owe to one another. 

Finally, I want to say just a few things about survival on the personal level. This pandemic is a respiratory virus. It spreads, primarily through water droplets in the air. That’s why we ask people to stay six feet away from one another. An infected person is giving off the virus through coughing and breathing but most of those water droplets fall to the ground in 3 or 4 feet. In spite of our best efforts at coughing into our elbows, most people end up coughing into their hands . . . that’s why we keep telling people to wash their hands regularly and to stop shaking hands…. Stop shaking hands forever…. We have to come up with a better greeting and frankly, waving or bowing is better even that elbow bumping. 

And, dear friends, I sometimes pull a muscle trying not to scream at people who advocate for homeopathic cures that are based on cartoon quality science but in the midst of this crisis, let’s listen to real scientists and stop spreading rumors and absurd remedies. 

And it is not just Russian bots planting misinformation in social media. A physician friend of mine told me that drinking lemon juice in warm water would keep you from getting a virus. I pointed out to him that citrus juice doesn’t kill viruses and he said, “but it boosts your vitamin C and that helps your immune system,” which might be just the tiniest bit true if you were vitamin C deficient which virtually none of us have ever been. 

And neither menthol nor eucalyptus do the slightest good in clearing up your sinuses. They work the same way wasabi does, they just make your open sinuses burn, nothing more. And the only essential oil is extra virgin olive oil, mix in a little garlic and balsamic vinegar and dip your bread in it. It won’t kill a virus but it will make you feel better. 

I was asking a store clerk when they would be resupplying their sanitizing wipes and the woman in line behind me chimed in, “Oh don’t worry about those things, ammonia kills the corona virus.” I asked, “are you a chemist?” and she said, “No, but I clean houses and I know about these things.” Folks, ammonia does not kill viruses. And having a rabbit’s foot in your pocket does not bring you good luck, just look what it did for the rabbit!

Bleach, folks, bleach kills viruses. The ingredient you are looking for in sanitizing wipes, in sprays, in disinfectants is bleach. So if you can’t find the conveniently mixed items readily available, put about a third of a cup of bleach in a gallon of water and use that to wipe down hard surfaces, your cell phone (which is the dirtiest thing you touch all day), your keyboards, door knobs, steering wheel, faucets, and toilet handles. 

Oh, and if some well-meaning person tells you that bleach doesn’t work in hot water, please allow me to correct them, the opposite is true. Bleach is much more effective in hot water. Whenever you can, use bleach in the hottest water you can. Look, people, this is science. Oh, and one more thing . . . if you are still thinking about that cleaning lady, never, never, never mix ammonia with bleach. The combination creates a lethal gas that will kill you in seconds . . . it would be better to go lick doorknobs in Italy than to mix ammonia with bleach. 

The other most infected thing you touch every day is currency and for that, just wash your hands. And, frankly, if you wouldn’t mind, just take your currency and put it in an envelope and send it to us at the Community Christian Church, 4806 E Farm Road 136, Springfield, MO 65809, or donate through our website at www.spfccc.org, because we very may well not survive the loss of donations we’re experiencing while churches are closed. Help us if you can because I want to still be here for you, yelling at the Trump administration, when this is over. 

And remember friends, wash your hands, use bleach and a towel and just don’t panic.