Fear of the Unknown

Around the world, governments have responded to the recent coronavirus concerns by instituting more and more stringent controls over who gets to enter their communities, and how people in those communities interact with each other. A cruise ship has been turned away by five countries. Tourists have been stopped at borders and turned away, or sent to quarantines at military bases. Police in China now use cell phone records to track patients down, often in their homes, and bring them to contaminated quarantine sites. And an entire nation of people have been banned from at least half a dozen countries.

I’m no public health expert, so I can only imagine the difficulty of making these decisions. These governments hold in tension the danger of widespread outbreak, and the freedom of movement many of us have taken for granted. We elect them (well, at least most of them) to make hard decisions, and trust them to protect our communities. 

But it’s also times like these that cause us to reflect on how we all respond to fear - for us to see within ourselves whether fear builds barriers, or whether they widen our embrace. The reality is that fear is not always rational - we cannot control our emotional reaction to fearful events, and even if we choose to fight those emotions, they may never dissipate. But in fear - whether rational or not - there is always an opportunity to find within ourselves an ability to love.

Over the past month, I have seen and heard - in person on my travels, in my own community, and on the news - of how our neighbors, communities and government have reacted to what is admittedly a scary, global public health emergency. 

For many of us, we have chosen to limit our exposure by removing ourselves from risky environments. We’ve chosen to minimize contact with those that may have returned from infected areas, chosen not to travel, and perhaps, have chosen to isolate ourselves from large public settings. Many of us have made necessary choices to mitigate risk, but many of us have also had to contend with where we choose to draw the line. Do we minimize contact with the friend-of-a-friend? Do we choose to not patronize establishments frequented by people that may have higher risk - frankly, Chinese people? Do we then avoid communities with high Chinese populations? Or walk the other way when a Chinese person coughs on the subway? For many of us, it’s not the people we fear. What we fear is the unknown, but sadly, too often, people become the unknown that we fear.

When so much is unknown, we become overcome by that fear. That’s a fear I’ve felt too. When I recognize that fear, I’ve also realized how much I’ve hated feeling that way. At the end of the day, we have to make the best decision for us and those around us. And we can’t question that. But in all this, I’m asking myself, and those around me, whether we can widen our embrace at a time when fear seems crippling. So I wonder:

What if we embraced Chinese business owners whose stores and restaurants are hurting because everyone else is just reacting to their own fear of the unknown?

What if we recognized that the Chinese person you see coughing down the street is more likely to know someone that has the flu than the coronavirus? And you might too.

What if we saw that the Chinese person you know whose distant relative is sick or quarantined might need a hug more than anything else - because they too are scared of what will happen?

What if the person you know that traveled to an infected city were more scared of giving the virus to you than you are of getting it from them? And maybe we might trust them to make the best decision for us collectively.

What if, instead of telling others to not be prejudiced against Chinese people, we might instead ask each other why we feel that fear in the first place?

What if we considered that what the people of China need right now are our prayers, and not our condemnation? If you saw the infected patient in Wuhan apologizing to the world for this, you’ll see that people are desperate.

What if we questioned whether our support for open borders, or against government surveillance, seems to wane when we’re worried we ourselves could get infected?

What if we expressed the same outrage toward China rounding up citizens indiscriminately, rather than sharing relief that these actions might contain the outbreak?

What if we questioned whether our governments would react the same way if the virus had originated in Paris or Copenhagen, rather than Wuhan. Or, would we have been as willing to quarantine large groups of Brits, or Germans, or even Texans?

After all, we might wonder about all these things and still decide to make the same decisions we did. I did, and not all of them right. In Japan, I made a point of using a mask much more so when I knew there were other tourists around. I have, as I have for much of my life, privately wondered why Hong Kong would keep its borders with mainland China open. I have stereotyped and othered my own people, and have done so out of a fear of the unknown, so these questions I’m asking are questions that I continue to ask myself and struggle with. But as a global community, these are questions we must continue to ask. 

And if we ask these questions, maybe we might then allow people to enter our borders to receive treatment, instead of driving them away at the door. Maybe we might rise up against an authoritarian government that has further consolidated power during this time. Maybe we might save another immigrant-owned business at the verge of collapse. Maybe we might remind an entire nation and culture of people that they are loved. 

If we ask ourselves these questions, we have at least considered the opportunity to widen our embrace. Indeed, when this fear is so deep and so unknown, that’s probably all we can ask of each other. It’s not our place to question others’ intentions, and it’s up to each of us to question whether our own fear is justified. But when entire communities of people are hurting, maybe there’s an opportunity to ask ourselves whether we might just extend those arms that little bit more.