Many people in the world are presently afraid. The cacophony of violence and destruction seems all-encompassing, and the bickering of our leaders on top of it all makes me angry. Sometimes the best thing for me to calm down is talking with friends. This year, I decided that one of our nation's most pressing issues is the possibility of a pandemic, and the consequences this can have for millions or even billions of people. Unlike a distant act of violence, diseases cannot be dismissed because they are too proximate to be ignored. The insidious nature of a disease is that it is invisible. To make matters worse, lack of understanding and attempts to educate bring about anxiety, panic, and additional chaos.
My mom, who lives in Hong Kong, would not stop pestering me to wear my mask on the long plane ride home last month. So I immediately put on my mask when I entered the airport in (PUT THE CITY YOU ARE FROM HERE). In no time, I realized everyone was staring at me like a fool! No one else was wearing a mark like me! There were no temperature detectors as I expected either, and no one was wearing a mask on the plane... at first. But strangely enough, as the plane got closer to Hong Kong, everyone around me began donning their disease masks. The plane resembled a team of expert surgeons! At this point, I put on my mask too. After landing, the scene in the Hong Kong Airport was totally different; there were mask-wearing officials greeting us with futuristic temperature laser guns and a mandatory health form to fill out in immigration.
The chaos is still fresh in my mind. It amazed me that so many people agreed to have their persons violated by the Hong Kong airport security. What made them acquiesce so easily to the thermometers, prodding, and invasive questioning? The answer is fear. People in Hong Kong still freshly remember the SARS episode when spitting on the street (which, granted, is disgusting) was
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