There’s something about me that most people don’t know. I hate palm trees. OK, I guess I don’t hate them. It’s more like they give me the willies. I didn’t see one in real life until I was in my mid-twenties but even before then, there was something about them that just freaked me out. I don’t know, maybe I was a monkey in a previous life.
When my sisters were in their late teens, which would have put me in my early teens, they were talking about the different kinds of phobias. If you don’t already know, a phobia is an irrational fear of something. For example, verminophobia is a fear of germs, pathophobia is a fear of disease and agoraphobia is the fear of leaving your own house.
I walked up on their conversation and asked what it’s called when someone has an irrational fear of palm trees. Without missing a beat, my eldest sister looked at me and said, “stupid”.
It probably is. But even looking at palm trees makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. And I’m definitely not going to touch one. Since I live in Southern California, having this affliction can be problematic. But I’ve learned to compensate. There are streets near my house that I literally go out of my way to avoid. If I find myself with no choice but to use a palm-tree-lined street, I keep my eyes forward and don’t look at the trees.
Next week, California is set to lift the mandate that supposedly required people to wear masks pretty much everywhere indoors. Well, technically, the relaxed rules will allow only vacksinated people to stop wearing masks. But we all know what that means. Those of us who remain unvacksinated and haven’t been wearing masks all along will continue to flaunt the rules.
And a large number of vacksinated people will continue to wear masks because they’re too afraid not to. We’re still going to see people jogging and riding bike while masked up. And we’re still going to see people alone in their cars with their faces covered.
Because a whole lot of people are going to be too afraid to breath fresh air even if their government tells them it’s OK to do so. These people have verminophobia, pathophobia and agoraphobia. In other words, they’re afraid to leave their house because they’re afraid of a germ that has a very small chance of giving them a disease they’re afraid of, that has an even smaller chance of harming them.
There’s actually a word we can use to specifically describe their affliction. It’s coronophobia. Yeah. It’s a thing. The term first came to be back in early 2020. But hardly anyone has heard of it. Oh sure, there’s been plenty of talk about “vackseen hesitancy”, but nobody has heard of coronaphobia.
The official definition is, “an irrational fear of contracting COVID-19”. But, taken literally, the definition is broader than that. Coronophobia means you’re afraid of catching a coronavirus. Not just one type of coronavirus, any type of coronavirus. And COVID-19 is just one thing caused by a coronavirus. Another is the common cold.
There are hundreds of millions of people scattered all over the world who have such a fear of catching COVID-19 that they panic whenever they sneeze.
How many times have you heard someone tell of experiencing some minor symptom, and then running out and getting tested for COVID-19. The typical sufferer of coronophobia will have a scratchy throat or the sniffles, then panic until they can take a test that we all know is meaningless. If it wasn’t so sad, it would be amusing.
My wife and I often comment about how so many people have become damaged, broken and intensely afraid of catching COVID-19.
These people weren’t born this way. They became coronaphobic after nearly two years of nonstop nurturing of an irrational fear. In other words, they were groomed by governments and Big Pharma.
This is definitely a case of nature vs. nurture. And, unfortunately, these pitiful, fearful people are passing along that fear to their children by raising them to also be afraid of a virus that poses practically no threat to kids.
I was walking my dog a couple mornings ago down a street that, for the record, definitely didn’t have any palm trees. We happened to catch up to about eight or nine kids on their way to school. They were all walking separately and not bunched up in a group. It was a nice day, sunny with a slight breeze. They were still almost a half mile from school. And they were all wearing masks.
Now, when I was a kid, I mostly listened to what my parents told me. But not always. I was a fairly well-behaved kid, but there was still a defiant streak in me. I can’t count the number of times my mom told me not to go outside without my jacket because I’d catch my death of cold. But I did anyway. And even if I did take my jacket, many is the time that I ditched it as soon as I got around the corner.
That’s what kids do. No matter how afraid they are of punishment, they push the boundaries whenever they can.
Which is why I was so surprised to see all the kids walking around on a brilliant January morning in sunny Southern California, wearing masks. Outdoors. By themselves.
The same pitiful, fearful and broken parents who have become irrationally afraid to breath the air, have instilled that same irrational fear into their children. And in doing so have turned them into pitiful, fearful and broken kids. The kids weren’t born this way, the environment created by their parents have scared them into submission.
This grooming of the population has been two years in the making and the effects aren’t going to disappear overnight. No, it’s going to take years to undo the psychological damage done to hundreds of millions of people. Some people will never, ever be the same.
For many of us, the relaxation of restrictions and mandates isn’t going to matter, because we haven’t been following the rules all along. Others will feel liberated because their government has graciously allowed them to get back to normal. Still others will continue to panic and run out to get tested after every sneeze and sniffle.
Unfortunately, some politicians who still possess that irrational fear will continue to try to pass more ridiculous laws to protect everyone against a disease they’re still afraid of.
What do you call an irrational fear of COVID-19? Well, you can either call it coronaphobia, or you can just call it what I do, “stupid”.
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