CoronaPanic in the Age of Internet

I heard from Dr. John Campbell, a YouTube doctor who is commenting and giving news on the coronavirus, that a significant amount of the food that was "panic bought" when the virus was just getting started has gone to waste. That is, people bought bread and milk that they couldn't eat before it spoiled.  I think that we can learn a bit about ourselves when we look at this situation. When it gets down to the wire, instead of changing our habits, we double down on the habits that we already have in place.  We normally buy bread and milk, and so we buy more of it instead of the stuff that actually keeps us going in an apocalyptic situation.  And I think the only reason people are buying so much toilet paper is because everyone else is. I think the presence of social media and its permeation into the environment has allowed a chain reaction to take place. People are buying toilet paper not because they need it but because they fear that they will need it.  An...

According to multiple older adults I have asked, there has never been anything like this coronavirus lockdown in their lifetime. Perhaps 9/11 can equate somewhat, but the lockdown after that incident lasted only about a week. We've been at this for three weeks now. Everything is locking down. The whole world is going crazy.  This is certainly the first major crisis that I've been old enough to understand. I was only four when 9/11 happened, and I wasn't old enough to understand the true meaning of the 2008 financial crisis. Sure, I saw a lot of businesses go under and a lot of for sale signs, and sure my dad tried his best to explain the debt economy to me, but I was too young. Ten years old, maybe eleven.  So this crisis is new to me. I've never experienced anything like it. While my own small town is doing relatively well as far as lockdowns go, I doubt I'll be able to continue my life like it was before the crisis for quite some time.  The scariest thi...

Humor nowadays is always a bit abstract and difficult to grasp if you're not "in" to internet culture. A significant portion of memes make fun of current events and various tidbits about what's happening in the world.  It's no wonder, then that people are making memes about the coronavirus. From jokes about someone playing "Plague Inc" on the Area 51 computer to an updated five second rule, memes about the virus are cropping up everywhere. Some of them are really funny.  I think the current generation's way of dealing with stress is to lampoon it through the joke format that the internet has made possible over the past two decades. Laughing in the face of danger is something that has always been an option, but when it comes to this generation, we laugh in the face of tragedy in a different manner than the generation before us.  Memes are inherently sharable and alterable. Every single person with an image editing program can make a meme ab...

It's probably not a rare thought for people to have in these trying times. What if we give the government all the power in order to save us from this coronavirus? Screw liberty. Screw freedom. We want protection from this monster that is trying to kill us! And this is what I say to that: during these times it's more  important to preserve our own liberty and freedom than outside of times of crisis. Lockdowns may be necessary, but draconian curfews, martial law, and unusual punishment will leave their mark on the conscience of the people and the government. The question is, how much power should we be giving to the government to control our daily lives in service of the "greater good?" (I'm putting that in quotes, but it's obvious that this greater good should be served in some way. This is no fake "greater good.") I am not a political scientist. I know almost nothing about politics besides what filters down to me through the media I consume. Bu...