Stepping into the quiet pre-dawn I smiled at the dark sky. The new moon had darkness sneaking into every crack and crevice. Breathing deeply I embraced the beginning of a new week knowing it meant new possibilities, new opportunities and new hope. Setting my tracker I let the blackness engulf me. The stars were bright, beautiful, and wonderful companions in the black ink of the day. Eight solo miles loomed on my horizon and I welcomed the time, the distance and the solitude. My steps were quiet as they danced with the asphalt, periodically kicking a stray stone. Hugging the center line of each road, I celebrated the familiar slope of each section of my route. The yellow and orange of streetlights shined like beacons between shadows and the stoplights welcomed me with their familiar rhythm. The route was a favorite, run hundreds upon hundreds of times. The hills were challenging, but offered brilliant views of the vast night sky.
My mind wandered while keeping time to the music. It was a glorious morning and I was thankful to be running. Last week I had set out on this route, enjoying the morning, the run and the solitude. The music was perfect, the air was warm and the moon was peeking out. Just shy of my half-way mark, another early morning riser felt it necessary to harass me. Forging uphill on one of our main streets it had been quiet. Many times I can run the entire main street with only a car or two to share the morning. Passing through one of the major intersections I noticed headlights coming behind me. Always running against traffic, even when everyone was still sleeping, allowed me time to adjust if people were coming at me in the same lane, and gave me space for people coming behind me in the other lane. Watching the lights bounce off other cars and signs I noticed it was going slowly, almost too slowly for my comfort. Giving up the center I scooted more to the middle of the lane, even with the median. Watching from the corner of my eye a pickup pulled alongside, on the other side of the road, and paced me for blocks. His window was down and I knew he was saying things to me, but I didn't engage. He crept along pacing every step and when the median opened up, he sped up, swerved and stopped in front of me. I sidestepped, hit the sidewalk and continued, aware of his vehicle and what he looked like. I could hear his truck coming again and he paced me for another five blocks before continuing on. My heart spiked and I could remember fear bouncing around in my mind. Despite the desire to be slightly hysterical, I chose to respond without fear. I searched escape routes in my mind, thought of the last place I had seen a police officer. I didn't stop, I didn't engage and I didn't show fear. My heart climbed back down out of my ears to find a normal rhythm as his taillights got further away and a local patrol car drove by. I didn't stop my run, I didn't call for a ride and I got up the very next morning to run again. Fear had no hold on me. I wouldn't allow it.
When I first started running by myself in the early, early morning, fear was a familiar companion. It whispered constantly reminding me of the "what ifs". Being female and running solo in the wee hours of the morning conjured more than a few "what ifs". Eight years ago, I allowed fear to dictate my first few runs. Those around me, that were uncomfortable with me running, added fuel to the fear bonfire. Every shadow had a potential mugger, rapist, kidnapper or murderer. I rode that negative emotion and fear until finally I couldn't take the mental exhaustion. Taking time I researched statistics, numbers and possibilities, not just for runners in general, but crime rates in my area. I learned that while things can and do happen the actual probability of something bad happening during my runs were extremely remote. In fact, I had a better chance of being in a car accident on the way to the grocery store then having something nefarious happen during my run.
Once I conquered that initial fear, my runs became amazing. My mind could enjoy the music, soak up the morning and thrive in quiet solitude. In eight years I have run thousands of times, logging thousands of miles without fear. In all that time and in all of those miles only five runs required me to be more diligent with two of those causing a level of fear. In addition to last week's encounter I had another morning six years ago when I was prompted to outrun a man on foot. Had fear fueled my responses and future actions I would have missed thousands of runs and thousands of stolen moments. I have seen a sky full of falling stars, mountain lions, deer, antelope, raccoons, bats, owls and so much more. I have unraveled numerous issues, watched seasons change, buildings go up and come down, and found myself. I have become part of an unspoken comradery with others as they bustle of to work, recognizing familiar cars, understanding the rhythm of our community. Choosing facts and statistics allowed me to combat the irrationality of my fear and to respond with clear-headed logic when faced with a situation.
My feet flew this morning, excited to be running pain free for the first time in weeks. My achilles was behaving and I was taking full advantage. Enjoying the warm air as it kissed my shoulders, my mind continued to dance with issues of fear and how it has affected our country and my town. Unfortunately, fear has become the driving force recently for decisions being made. Heightened emotion fed by fear has clasped people by the throat, squeezing to force acquiescence. It has prevented intelligent people from dealing logically with issues affecting our town and country, launching them into the land of "what ifs". When the grip of fear is extremely intense and people are submerged in emotion, responses to any given situation are skewed. Like a mother bear with her cubs, any threat, perceived or otherwise, is met full-on with a vicious response and attacks. No thought is given to the resulting damage or the actually validity of the threat.
Our country has been buried in fear and "what if" over the COVID virus since January. The rampant emotion has prompted beliefs that the virus is a death sentence for everyone, an increase in cases is a horrific event and the fear that if we try to resume normal life we are sealing our death sentence. Those that are operating on such high emotion look and fight for validation of their fear. They want everyone else to be cocooned in the same situation, pushing and pushing and pushing to place everyone in the same box of illogical fear. Difficulty arises when they are so underwater they can't step back to see the irrationality. Fear pushes a person to only accept data if it justifies their emotion, losing unbiased and critical evaluation.
School in my town starts in just over a week and my heart aches for the children as fear has blacked out common sense, statistics, numbers and logic. My senior will attend two days in the classroom, wearing a mask and sitting 6 feet from everyone else with no socializing. Three days he will be relegated to a computer at home. The school has chosen to split secondary students to maintain a "safe environment." Half will attend on Mondays and Wednesdays the other half will attend on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The scheduling doesn't take into account friendships or athletics, simply class schedules. Taking that into account, my son will not be attending with his friends, as his class schedule is much different. The letter from our superintendent didn't address the possibility of moving to a more positive framework with everyone in class five days a week, only addressed the likelihood of reverting to 100% online. There are so many issues that surround our students and their continued quarantine that are more important than the possibility of contracting a virus; suicide, drugs and alcohol.
Masks, social distancing and isolation? Breaking down the numbers, the plan is beyond overkill. My community of 38,880 people, in seven months, has administered 4,200 tests. 85 of those tests were positive, 64 have recovered and we currently have only 21 active cases. Thankfully we have had no deaths. Only 2% of total tests have been positive with a 0% death rate. That means only 0.2% of the total county population has been positive and only .05% of the total population currently active. Cases are declining. Based on these statistics the probability of contracting the disease is very, very slim. In addition the knowledge that the most affected are those 65+ only adds to the overkill when dealing with school age students. Other facts are not taken into consideration. These students social distanced probably the first couple of months. Seven months into it and they have played baseball, softball, volleyball, lifted weights, vacationed with their parents and hung out with friends for the majority of the summer. The vase majority has not worn masks. Our town also sits on a transportation artery. Trucks have been in and out stocking stores across the country since the beginning and through all of this there has not been a drastic increase in numbers. Cases have not increased exponentially despite these situations. The other fact is that people will continue to catch this virus, it doesn't mean isolate the city and everyone in it.
Fear rides through my state as well. 90,962 COVID tests have been submitted state wide with a total of 3,286 positive cases, 30 total deaths with 2,668 recovered and only 588 total active cases. Death is always tragic and never something to minimize, but unsurprisingly 76.7% of the deaths were in people over 65 years of age. 90% had underlying health conditions. Statistics show 3% of all tested were positive with a .03% death rate. When this virus began, speculation was the most impacted would be those 65+ and those with underlying health issues. That speculation has been substantiated again and again. Of course there will always be an outlier, someone who doesn't fit those demographics, but as with everything those are isolated and should not be used to fuel fear. Based on the above numbers over the last seven months it is possible to catch and die from the virus, but the probability is extremely low. So why allow fear to keep our students from going back to class normally? Why allow fear to keep our communities closed and our businesses on the brink of bankruptcy? The virus has not swept through the state via community spread like models indicated over and over again. We haven't even come close to infection rates or death estimates, even considering masks were only made mandatory in many places in the last month.
The run continues to coax thoughts on fear and what is currently happening. The entire country begs for the same analysis as fear is strangling not only towns and states, but the entire country. Is it validated? What do the numbers show?
In the U.S. 71,022,808 COVID tests have been conducted. 5,574,276 were positive with 173,189 deaths. 2,570,780 active cases exist across a country that has over 328 million people. 7.8% tested positive in almost 25% of the country being tested with a 3% death rate. The entire population will not contract COVID. As with every virus and disease, some will and some won't. The demographics of the deaths again show 75% of deaths in the 65+ age range and those with pre-existing conditions. Logically it would make sense to protect the most vulnerable without endangering an entire country, especially based on statistics.
Globally the statistics are in-line with national and local numbers showing very similar trends. There have been 21,914,980 positive cases, 14,639,840 recovered meaning only 7,275,140 active cases with 64,221 listed as critical in a population of over 7.8 billion. The total deaths, as reported, are 775,756, approximately 3.5% of positive cases.
Whenever death is involved it is very sad, but when you break down the numbers does it warrant the current amount of fear? Initially all of this was new, justifying additional levels of caution, but now?
When fear continues to drive decisions, focus is drawn from other disturbing worldwide numbers. Currently there are 845,278,661 malnourished people in the world, almost 11% of the world's population and so far this year 7,029,570 have died of hunger. Over 14,857 people died today of hunger.
1,697,631,990 people are overweight in the world and 763,432,878 are obese. In the U.S. alone over $322 billion has been spent, so far this year, on obesity related diseases.
There are 42,028,426 HIV infected people in the world and so far this year there have been 1,056,628 deaths due to HIV.
Cancer has claimed 5,162,215 people.
3,142,134 deaths have been caused by smoking,
1,572,060 deaths this year are alcohol related.
674,024 people have committed suicided.
848,478 deaths are traffic fatalities.
529,301 deaths are water related diseases and 798,667,995 have no access to safe drinking water.
Fear has the ability to grow horns, create monsters and entice people to act illogically. People will lash out at others who don't carry the same amount of fear. Remember growing up, the fear of monsters under the bed, the fear of learning how to ride a bike without training wheels, learning how to drive? Remember how fear of the dark or staying alone could turn a sweatshirt at the end of the bed into an axe murderer or the slightest sound outside the window was someone coming to take you?
As a parent I have acted out of fear in the guise of protecting my kids. Trying to prevent them from doing things because I was afraid of what might happen. I learned, as most do, there is a price to those fearful decisions. Our fear causes damage when we try to protect and isolate from things that don't pose a large risk. The greatest risk is the perception our fearful parent brains created.
My body rejoices as I enter the final mile. My legs stretch out as the stars cheer me on. My only interruption is to pause and watch a trash panda dive into a drain. Had I allowed fear to control my actions I would have missed this perfect morning and my first run, in a long time, without pain. I will be cautious. I will be aware. I will exercise additional caution when necessary, but I will not allow irrational fear to stop me from living.
*All statistics were current as of the writing of this blog and were obtained from worldometers.info and verified independently on their listed sources.
