Coronavirus, Panic, and the Flu

Last week I had the flu.

Not coronavirus. Just the flu. The I-have-a-fever-and-I-want-to-sleep-all-day-but-I-ache-all-over-and-I-can’t-stop-coughing flu. It was not fun. We had to cancel a long-anticipated trip to visit my daughter’s family in Texas. I stayed in bed for most of the week. My husband took over meals and dishes and now I keep finding utensils in different locations in the kitchen. My daughter called and offered to FaceTime me so I could see my darling 18-month-old granddaughter. I replied, “But then I would have to open my eyes.”

It was not fun. But I never doubted I would recover (well, maybe a little, that first day). I knew it was just the flu, and in a week or so I would be back to normal. Flu happens.

But suddenly now there is this new illness, coronavirus, which is putting the whole world into panic mode. It seems half of China is in quarantine, as well as much of Italy. Borders are closed. Baseball games are playing to empty stadiums. Stock markets around the world are crashing. People are hoarding bottled water and toilet paper as though they expect a hurricane. The Tokyo Summer Olympics may be cancelled. The NBA is telling players not to share “high-fives” with fans. 

But really, what do we know about this new flu? One of the tricky things about it is that for most people it is not a bad illness, not even bad enough to keep you in bed. That is, of course, one reason it spreads so quickly. The carriers don’t even know they could be spreading illness. That is also why it’s hard to pin down the mortality rate. When we are not sure how many people have the disease it’s hard to say what percentage of those who get the illness will die from it. 

Reports of mortality rate that I have seen vary from 4% to .1%. That’s a big distinction. Part of the challenge in figuring the mortality is that we don’t know the total number of infected people to compare with the number of deaths. And the reason we don’t know is that many, maybe most, of those infected have very mild symptoms, so mild they may not even know they are sick. The data from the cruise ship Diamond Princess illustrates this: Of the 3,711 on board, at least 705 tested positive. Of those, more than half had no symptoms. Six deaths occurred, which is a fatality rate of .85T. (See Slate.com “Covid-19 Isn’t as Deadly as We Think”). It’s important to note that all who died were over 70 years old. 

The coronavirus is of course a danger, but should we really be as panicked as we seem to be? Why are we so scared? The answer can probably be found in the “Power of Bad.” We are prone to respond to danger more than to safety, to notice the problem not the status quo. This was a good thing when we needed to run from a saber-tooth tiger and a bad thing when we start dumping all our stocks in response to what may be passing crisis. (See my recent blog post “Things Are Probably Not as Bad as You Think They Are”; Also the book The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It by John Tierney and Roy F. Baumiester).

This is not to say that we need not be careful. Quarantines and other safeguards are probably a good idea. We need to be especially vigilant in protecting older folks. And, as we are told over and over again, let’s wash our hands carefully and stop touching our faces. (Have you been surprised as I have just how long 20 seconds is? That ABC song seems to go on forever! Also, have you noticed how much you touch your face? I feel like I do it all the time, now that I’m noticing.) 

Let’s be wise. Let’s be prudent.

But let’s not panic. Keep calm and wash your hands. 

Is Family Obsolete?

David Brooks recently published an article in The Atlantic, “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.” He points out the extended family model was common for hundreds of years,  multiple generations living and working together, with an economic necessity to be unified. In the mid-20^th century, that model shifted to the nuclear family—a father, a mother, and their children living separately. Now we are seeing a decline of the nuclear family, more single parents, unmarried couples, and more people just living on their own.  Brooks contends that the nuclear family is obsolete, that now, instead, we rely on “forged families’ –groups of people who choose a closeness, who care for each other in ways that families used to, though they are not related.

I generally like what David Brooks has to say, but this time I disagree. Reading the article led me to think about what I have seen of this trend in my own family.

My grandmother Leah was raised in a very tight-knit extended family. Her uncles and aunts and cousins lived within blocks of her home, and her grandfather would go out every morning to visit each of his children, carrying a basket with food to share, maybe some eggs or fruit or baked goods. When my grandmother was widowed at age 25, her parents insisted she move back home with them, even though they had to sleep on a cot in the dining room so they could give their room to her and her two little daughters. 

Leah had a degree in stenography, and her parents encouraged her to go to work while her mother watched the little girls. Then, in about six years, when Leah’s father died of cancer, Leah became the main breadwinner for the household, which now included a sister who was critically ill and her two children. When that sister died, Grandma Leah also supported her children. But she had lots of family support: her mother tended the four children while Leah worked, and her sister, just next door, always did the girls’ hair before school. 

My mother, Leah’s oldest daughter, went to college, received a teaching degree, and married a smart handsome young man from just across town, Henry. Henry had also been raised in a large, supportive family. His family was what Brooks called a “corporate family”—the four boys worked the family land, planting, cultivating, harvesting. They never received any wages, but Henry’s father made sure that every child with a desire went to college. 

After Henry and Leah, my parents, graduated and were married, they left their large supportive families and set off alone for California. My dad had a scholarship to study for an MBA at Stanford University. There they were on their own. Soon there was a baby, and that was the beginning of the nuclear family I was raised in—emblematic of the mid-20^th century, as Brooks describes it. Henry worked as an accountant 6 days a week to provide a good life for the family. Leah stayed home to raise the children, honing her skills as a seamstress and homemaker to contribute.  They never returned to their families in Spanish Fork. 

Though they were far from their extended families, this new family was not without support. Wherever they lived, they created communities of friends--“forged family” as Brooks would have it--that provided support. The fellow graduate students in Palo Alto, the church community wherever they lived, all became almost like family. We celebrated holidays with these friends and when my mom had a miscarriage, one of them traveled many miles to care for her.

I’ve also seen “forged families” in my own experience. I had a very close network of friends through 6 years of college and graduate school. When we moved to Canada as newlyweds, we relied on a community of friends there who supported us through loneliness and new parenthood. 

I have experienced all three models: the extended family, the nuclear family, and the forged family. Can the forged family take the place of blood family?

In my experience no. My college friends felt like “family” at the time, but then we moved away and now that close relationship is mostly just Christmas cards, if that. My mom’s close graduate school friends were always happy to see her when she was in the area, but she didn’t go to them for help when she became fragile, she came to me.

Close networks of friends serve a very important purpose, but generally that purpose is limited by space and time. You rely on one another when you are near each other, usually during a time when actual family is unavailable. Dear friends of mine immigrated to the States from Puerto Rico in young adulthood. They formed a tight network with other young immigrants, so tight a bond they call each other “framily.” They became aunts and uncles and cousins to one another for decades. But still, now that the original framily are becoming grandparents, with strong family bonds in their own [now extended] families, the bonds are not quite as tight as they once were. They are relying on their blood relations more than on each other. 

Because this is the thing about a family, a real family. 

It lasts. 

No matter what happens you are still brother, sister, mother, father, grandchild, grandmother. You may move. You may be angry. You perhaps won’t like each other much. 

But you are family. You have a shared experience. You have shared DNA. You have family recipes. 

Even when you don’t like each other, you need to hold onto each other. Because no one can be your family but your family. Of course, there are times when safe boundaries need to be drawn. But still you are family.

I think God made families not only to make life easier—though there is that, as parents care for infants and siblings teach younger ones. 

I think God also created families because living in a family is hard. When you have a fight, you can’t just ignore the former friend, not talk to them, and let the relationship die. Your family is always going to be there, and you need to work through the disagreement, you need to figure out how to forgive, you need to see the other person’s point of view. You need to do the hard work of loving someone.

And that is why I think families can never be obsolete. If families are indeed dwindling, if they are endangered, then we need to fight hard to maintain them. We need families, because that is where we learn to be human.