By Pattie Mihalik

We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Those were the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first inaugural address to a nation suffering the worse economic depression ever experienced.

That sentence became the most memorable part of a speech designed to prop up the mental attitude of a nation.

Roosevelt added that “nameless, unjustified terror” gripping the nation was making everything far worse than it needed to be.

Sound familiar?

We certainly have reason to fear the coronavirus. It’s a fear unlike any time in our lives.

But look at the empty grocery shelves in grocery stores and you’ll see the results of fear rising to unreasonable levels.

It’s panic buying that’s causing those empty shelves, not a real shortage of food.

The nation’s grocers are telling us panic buying continues to wipe out food items as fast as shelves are restocked.

When the news about the coronavirus broke, my best friend, who normally never gets overly worried about anything, was close to hysterical.

After she heard older folks with medical issues were most at risk, she kept saying, “I’m going to die.”

Convinced that we needed to protect ourselves by cocooning at home, she took action way before most people.

She rushed to grocery stores to stock up on food because she believed we were all going to be quarantined in our homes.

I thought she went off the deep end when she wanted to buy 15 pounds of beans and was upset to find empty shelves instead of beans.

I reminded her we only had one case of coronavirus in our county and that was a woman who just returned from a long cruise to foreign countries.

I thought we were safe because we lived in a small, rural area.

My friend insisted hundreds of people had it but they weren’t getting tested. With our constant influx of tourists, that makes us extremely vulnerable to the virus, she said.

Well, it turns out that my friend was right to be worried.

So far we are not quarantined in our homes. But forced social isolation is close to it.

Every community event, every social event, every class, all recreation and all our church events are canceled. Stores, restaurants and many businesses are closed. We are told that will help us all get through this. But we are warned it will get worse before it gets better.

I worked hard to keep myself calm through all this and I was succeeding - until I tried to buy groceries.

No bread. No milk. No meat. Just empty shelves all week.

I asked the management of two grocery stores why they were not restocking. Both assured me they restock every night. There is no shortage of anything, they insist, except shortages created by panic buying.

In other words, we are creating the shortage crisis.

I saw one woman checking out of Walmart with her grocery cart filled to the brim with toilet paper. It looked like she was buying enough for an entire housing development.

When I went to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, there were only apples. Again, there was no pasta or beans.

They had a sign that said no one was allowed to buy more than four cans of food. Again, panic buying is creating those shortages.

If you live in the northeast you probably saw that on a much lesser basis every time a major snowfall is predicted. But I never saw people buy all the beans in sight.

My mother lived through the Great Depression when sugar, coffee, meat, fish, butter, eggs and cheese were rationed to prevent hoarding.

Who remembers “oleo” - that was a glob of white with an orange dot in the middle that had to be squeezed?

Because of the lessons learned during the Depression, my mother always kept a pantry area stocked with extra food.

When I got married I continued that tradition, always having extra cans of the food I most used.

That habit causes constant consternation with my husband who is inexplicably fond of empty shelves.

Because he’s never had to prepare meals, he also has a strange idea about how long food should last. When we shopped together for groceries we were finally able to buy 2 pounds of hamburger and a few staples. David announced what little we could find would last six months.

He certainly won’t be one of the hoarders sweeping shelves clear of every item.

As the number of coronavirus cases keeps escalating, what do you do to stay calm?

I keep repeating Roosevelt’s mantra: We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Mental health experts advise us to focus on things you are grateful for.

That’s easy for me because I fall asleep every night thinking of three good things that happened that day.

But I have to keep working to stay calm, reading relevant Scripture to help.

Did you know “fear not” is used at least 80 times in the Bible?

During these turbulent times it’s normal to feel fear creeping to our consciousness. Yes, the coronavirus can kill thousands. Yes, it’s threatening every facet of our lives.

But we survived other catastrophes, and we will survive this.

Stay calm.

Listen to advice from health experts.

Most of all, do all you can to stay safe.

Contact Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.net.