What do you think is the main epidemic facing us today?

The most common response to that question is generally COVID or omicron. With omicron spreading like a wildfire in high winds, it’s a scary situation.

As we keep hearing stories about friends and neighbors who contacted omicron even though they were fully vaccinated, we worry about getting it, too, especially if we are older or medically compromised.

Now, expects are saying we have something worse than omicron - a fear epidemic.

That fear epidemic is also taking its toll, even if we don’t get the virus.

Many of us are becoming imprisoned by our fears,” said one psychologist. “It’s a prison of our own making.”

Health commentator Dr. Marc Siegel calls it the politics of fear, which is being fueled by another epidemic - that of misinformation.

We could get whiplash from the way recommendations about avoiding COVID keep changing, and it’s so convoluted we don’t known what to believe. Siegel says that’s a big factor in creating an epidemic of fear.

Some readers have written to say I’m one who is caught in the fear epidemic. If that means I’m taking every reasonable precaution against getting COVID then I guess I am.

I won’t fly to see my family, won’t eat in indoor restaurants and I wear an upgraded mask everywhere. If I think I’m sick, I isolate.

It’s a small attempt to protect myself and others.

OK, now it’s time for a personal confession. Somewhere along the line of taking precautions I lost perspective and let my COVID fears consume me.

Because I know my immune system is down due to recent gallbladder surgery, I doubled all precautions.

But that precaution was blown out the window when intense pain was making it impossible to take a normal breath.

My surgery was only three days before that and the surgeon said I might have developed a serious leakage problem. He advised going to the emergency room for a CT scan and other testing.

We have a great local hospital. No matter where one goes in that hospital, everyone from the nursing staff and other professionals to the volunteers are extraordinary.

I had confidence I would find help in the emergency department. And I did - after an impossibly long 11-hour wait.

I had no idea what was happening in hospitals and emergency rooms across the country. Sure I heard hospitals were overrun, but the meaning of that only hit home when I was forced to go to the emergency room for much-needed help.

I saw firsthand how there simply were more people needing help than there was room for their treatment.

Sitting in that emergency room was as scary for me as the pain I was having. While I spent days avoiding people so I wouldn’t get COVID, all that was literally out the window when I had to wait for 11 hours in a filled emergency room. But still the people kept coming.

To make more room, what looked like a sheet was drawn across the end of the room where suspected COVID cases were being screened.

I’ll tell you this, I think every health care professional should be lauded for the way they press on, working under difficult conditions to take care of us.

People were grumbling about the long wait, but when it was our turn we got their full attention.

A male nurse told me he had good news when my CT-scan results came back. My pain was caused by a kidney stone, not a problem with my recent surgery. But it was two long days and nights of unrelenting pain.

When I came down with a sore throat the next day, I worried that I had contacted COVID in that waiting room.

My daughters were sure that’s what it was.

The voice of reason in all that turned out to be my husband, David. He insisted I was living in fear, imprisoned by my own mind. He was right.

If I get a sore throat, I say, oh, no. it’s COVID.

My two daughters are even worse. If I say I’m sick in the stomach, an outcome of the surgery, they say, it’s COVID. They fear omicron so much because it is highly contagious but they did everything to avoid getting it.

It didn’t matter. My daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter all got taken down by omicron, even though they are isolated in Maine.

They are convinced eventually everyone will get omicron.

There appears to be two distinct kind of people when it comes to COVID.

Some are ultraconservative, like me. I’m doing everything to stay safe, even if it means sacrificing social events I long to attend.

Others are strangely sure they will never get it. My hairdresser didn’t get the vaccine and refuses to wear a mask. She says if you think you won’t get it, you never will.

And some take it one step further, insisting “It’s a bunch of baloney. They’re just trying to control us.”

Two guys who believed that are now among the hospitalized patients with COVID.

It still won’t change anyone’s mind.

I never thought something like COVID could be such a divisive issue.

With headlines screaming about the record number of cases, it’s easy to be fearful.

The challenge is to keep fear from overtaking reason.

Contact Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.net.