Panic In America - Ebola, Hantavirus, Global Warming And The Con Game Of New Age Healing

Felicity Jones was a born worrier.  When she was a little girl she worried that the unusually cold April with its twin frosts would deny Spring; that she would be crippled by polio and spend the rest of her life in an iron lung; that she would be orphaned, and that no man would ever love her. 

Extreme social anxiety is a relatively new psychological disorder.  In the America of earlier times, colonists, settlers, homesteaders, and shopkeepers were too busy to worry about incidentals; and in the days before modern medicine, longevity was a matter for God and Fate.  

In Felicity's day, when prosperity gave people time on their hands, anxiety was epidemic, and the consumption of mood enhancers, tranquilizers, anti-depressants, and emotional boosters followed suit.  America had become the world's most anxious nation and the most doped up, which was a good thing, for suicides maintained their basal level and barely registered in mortality statistics. 

Existential worry - the conviction that the next day might be one's last in a storm of frightful, uncontrollable African viruses, the final scorching incineration of the planet, or the nervous trigger finger setting off nuclear Armageddon - was a new psycho-social phenomenon.  In other words, in addition to personal emotional anxiety, the stock-in-trade of psychotherapy, more and more people were worried about universal disaster. 

Felicity had what had been described in the early months of the disease as 'COVID Panic' - a completely unhinged and terrifying conviction that this was The Big One, an epidemic of Biblical proportion, the plague that would wipe out entire populations.  She was not alone, for the American government with the advice and counsel of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the designated COVID czar, who under the guise of prudence, extreme caution, and heightened vigilance enacted draconian rules of behavior.  Masks and social distancing were mandated, shops, cafes, and restaurants were shuttered, schools were closed, and downtown office work halted. 

In previous influenza epidemics like the Hong Kong flu of 1968 a far more serious disease during which nothing much was changed and life went on, people got sick and died as they always had. Most recovered and the whole episode was filed, archived, and forgotten ('Shit happens', said hippies).  COVID on the other hand was treated like an existential nightmare; so it was not surprising that it sent many people like Felicity Jones over the edge. 

She duck-taped all her windows, retrieved her mail only after it had sat in a disinfection container for three days, scoured and rinsed all canned foods - the only foods she would eat - scrubbed her counters, sinks, and floors twice a day, huddled in an air-purified room, and triple-masked, came out only for bathroom pit stops and a hasty bite to eat. 

Just when the epidemic seemed to be slowing, scientists at the CDC announced new, even more deadly strains of the virus, and Dr. Fauci went on national prime time television to warn Americans not to let their guard down.  'This one is a real killer', he said. 

Just when Felicity thought she could relax and give a sigh of relief, she found herself redoubling her protective efforts.  Her hands were red and raw from scrubbing, she lost weight because of her restrictive diet, and she looked a mess; and now the routine had to be begun again. 

Completely shell-shocked and emotionally spent, she was in no condition to deal with any other such problems, but they seemed to keep on coming - and in fact she stayed glued to the news to hear of any new biological threat.  When Ebola broke out again in eastern Congo and spread like wildfire, she was sure that it was only a matter of weeks before this flesh-eating, alien nightmare would surface on American shores. 

When the hantavirus was reported in Texas, she again became the madwoman of Albemarle Street, a crazed, wild-haired character that children were told to stay away from.  When H2N5 emerged from an open chicken market in Shanghai and spread as far south as Guangdong and as far north as the Tibetan order, she awaited the worst. 

The arrival of the screwworm, a hideous flesh-eating creature that penetrated the skin of live animals and humans, ate their flesh and organs, rendered them mad and then killed them, she completely lost it, went around the bend, hysterical and panicked beyond hope.  If it hadn't been for Axel Burnham, a newly minted psychological advisor, coach, and healer, she would definitely have thrown herself off the Brooklyn Bridge. 

 

Axel had been a bolt-fixer on the still-human assembly line for John Deere farm equipment in Chillicothe, Ohio when he realized that there were far easier ways to make a living.  His family and friends had all gone to him for advice and counsel when they were suffering from the loss of a loved one, dealing with cancer or a troubled child, or just needed a patient listener.  'You should hang out a shingle', his Aunt Mary said. 'Hundreds of people will pay for your help.  Why do it for free?'

So Axel, an enterprising and ambitious man, went online and enrolled in a virtual learning program which would lead to a few months hands-on training and internship after which he could become a bona fide counsellor to the troubled. 

And so it was that a shaken, emotionally distraught, at the end of her rope Felicity Jones sat in Axel Burnham's small, windowless counselling room, dainty handkerchief in hand, dressed simply and as well as she could manage, and looked hopefully at the well-groomed, handsome young man in front of her. 

As new at the game as he was, Axel relied on his old-fashioned, tried and true 'sincere empathy' algorithm, a fancy way of saying listening to people's grief, an approach which had always worked in the past, although the farmers of Chillicothe were never as tightly wound and discombobulated as Felicity.  

He hesitated, wanting to open with, 'Now, what seems to be the problem?', but that sounded too much like General Hospital or the other afternoon soaps his mother watched when he was little, but simply said, 'I'm here to help you'.  

His mix of New Age nostrums, warm water therapy, a here-and-there Freudian reference, and a Whole Earth wellbeing program was just what Felicity needed to calm her nerves; and Axel was indeed a good listener.  She went on forever, banging on about COVID, Ebola, climate change, the Tsetse fly and the suffocating carbon emissions polluting every cubic foot of formerly breathable air. 

Felicity was the perfect patient for Axel to begin his new career, for she was so completely out of control and desperate for any kind of solicitude, that he could try any of the alternate therapies he had learned from The Roberts Advanced Psycho-Counselling Method online course. 

Dr. Phillip Roberts, designer of the course and a seasoned practitioner in alternative psychotherapy, had put together an eclectic mix of meditation, hatha yoga, and the practices of the martyred saints and drew on each when called for. 

Axel was particularly drawn to Roberts' focus on the martyrs.  St. Sebastian, for example, the saint who died a slow and excruciating death, pierced by a thousand arrows, had smiled in heavenly repose, so in control was he of his body and mind and in perfect harmony with the universe. 

'If he could do it, so can you', Axel said to Felicity. 

Slowly but surely, Felicity came out of her tremulous, fearful state and felt human again.  She had been foolish to worry so much about the simple matter of a virus when men and women far more evolved than she had accepted their fate and the world around them and met their maker. 

Axel tried the same deal with his next patient, a woman from the South End who had tried to kill her husband, had been sent to Ottaway for five years where she had become addicted to Fentanyl and as part of the conditions of her parole was sent to Axel.  The parole board couldn't care less about whom she went to, just so that she was out of their hair. 

He tried everything in his grab bag, and not only did nothing work but the woman called him out for 'bald chicanery'.  He was a charlatan, a snake oil salesman, a guttersnipe, and a fool, and if she had to spend one more hour with him, she would break his neck just like she tried to do with her ex-husband. 

Chastened and intimidated, Axel agreed to a compromise.  Pay him, don't bother to come in, and he would give glowing reports to the parole board. 

He felt a bit guilty about this, but he wasn't wedded to some online profession any more than he was bolting struts in the tractor factory. 

It just goes to show you what a great country America is - fucked up for sure, completely wacko on this COVID, Ebola, climate change nonsense, but the generator of entrepreneurs.  Finding a niche was what the enterprise economy was all about, and Axel had found a good one.  Off the wall, inveterate, loose-shunted worriers, gullible true believers and New Age shell game conmen like Axel.  A perfect match as old as the hills. He just had other fish to fry.