Current Affairs

I was watching the news yesterday and saw a piece about the spread of Swine flu in India. There is mass panic in the country; it was the same situation in Mexico as well. This got me thinking about fear. Why does the virus always cause panic and worry wherever it surfaces. What are we so afraid of?

Are we afraid of death? At least three people in any city of the world die everyday, in road accidents. Rape and murder claim more lives than we can count. Still, we aren’t afraid of the road. We aren’t afraid of the hundreds of people we cross in the street.

Are we afraid of the flu? We know what causes the disease. The symptoms are clearly defined. If caught early on it can be cured. In a few months time there will even be a vaccine. Then there are diseases like cancer. We don’t know what causes it, the symptoms are varied and erratic and we may never find a cure to cancer. When we step out of our doors, we don’t even think about the fact that when we come home we may have cancer, or HIV or a hundred other dangerous diseases. So we’re not afraid of the flu, the flu is nothing new. We’re afraid because there is nothing we can do to fight it.

We can however, have faith. Faith in the fact that even as we read these words, smarter and sharper minds than ours are getting closer and closer to finding a cure. There is no point in panicking. There is no point making a hue-cry, because sometimes our fear is only a response to feeling helpless.