The Need for Daily COVID-19 Updates Has Become an Addiction

Every day, people tell me that they have to stop watching news about the coronavirus. They tell me they can’t take it. So I tell them to stop watching. They say they can’t. I ask why. They tell me they’re hooked and that it’s all they think about. I tell them to stop thinking about it; meditate and do anti-stress exercises. They say they’re too stressed to do anti-stress exercises. They tell me how weak they are.

Ladies and gentlemen, watching daily updates about coronavirus is the new addiction, and it’s as real as any other addiction. People’s nonstop worrying won’t end this pandemic any sooner than its inevitable end. People don’t have control over most aspects of the pandemic, and most of it certainly isn’t their business.

The people who are hooked are “news junkies.” Ask people who don’t follow pandemic updates how much they know about virus and they might know as much as news junkies do without having spent one-tenth the time following this madness.

What would you tell a friend who sat her children in front of a TV or computer every day to watch only bad news? If a person doesn’t stop this addiction in its tracks, he or she could end up dead, insane, jailed, alone, penniless or broken. They need to pull the plug.

You might think, “Mark, this is different.” (All addicts say that.) Or, “Mark, you don’t understand.” (They also all say that, too.) “I’ll stop. I just need a little more.” There are many ways this virus can damage a person that doesn’t include being infected or losing a job. One is by paying too much attention to it. Let’s say you do die from it. Is this how you want to spend your final few weeks — watching other people get sick before you do?

“Ladies and gentlemen, watching daily updates about coronavirus is the new addiction.”

Like most addictions, the addict is looking for that one shot, snort, hit, drink or news report that will make it all OK. Won’t happen. Hope that one day you’ll turn on the TV and you and your family and friends will be saved? Won’t happen. Like most addictions, what will happen is if COVID-19 doesn’t damage you physically or financially, it might end up corrupting you spiritually. It might remove your center, that part of you that keeps it all together.

The good news is that the odds are you’ll survive. If I’m lucky enough to look back at this event, I don’t want to think I wasted a lot of time  following this tornado of mass destruction. So now I watch little TV or news about the virus. I try to read or write or cook something new every day. I fight the urge to get depressed. I spend time with my family instead of watching the turkeys tell me the same gobble, gobble, over and over. How many days in a row can you watch the numbers go up and not freak out?

My front line is my family. How many ventilators New York or California has isn’t my business. I can’t do anything about it. If I need a ventilator and it’s available, I’ll get it. If it’s not, I won’t. But learning about how many masks and gowns are needed will only drive me nuts. Right now, the most important thing I can do is to stay sane.

If the sun rises tomorrow and this is all over and you have digested 1,700 hours of COVID-19 news, what have you learned? What more helpful information will you have now that you didn’t have two weeks ago? The answer is nothing.

More than ever, people need you and they need you to be well balanced. We all need to be needed. Well, here’s your chance. Don’t blow it watching TV and trolling the web and getting bent out of shape about something that’s out of your control. One way or another, this thing will end one day. Don’t let it take your soul with it.

Mark Schiff is a comedian, actor and writer.