NFIB

Scared of the FEARS Virus?
06/ 03/ 2003

by Harvey King

I don't want to alarm you, really, but a dangerous virus has swept the nation. Have you recently had episodes of sweaty, clammy hands? Lethargy? Indecisiveness? Compulsions to watch cable news non-stop?

You could be suffering from FEARS: Frequent Extreme Anxiety Related Syndrome.

The FEARS virus can crash a computer network or human nervous system; stop a pacemaker or coffee grinder, cause hives and memory lapses. Most alarming to small business owners, FEARS can cause customers and employees, even the owners themselves, to lose all rationality when faced with any decisions -- major or minor.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the FEARS virus has been around since the Stone Age. Some scientists even blame the virus for delaying the discovery of fire by centuries when cave-era FEARS sufferers developed phobias related to rubbing sticks together.

Largely eradicated during the early 1990s, the FEARS virus reemerged late in the decade as mass paranoia regarding the ability of the world's technology to withstand the change of date from 1999 to 2000. Soon, the FEARS virus appeared in northern California, striking terror in the wallets of venture capitalists. Within days of the outbreak, investment decision-making slowed to a crawl. What had taken days to decide soon stretched to months. Soon, the FEARS virus caused business decisions in certain industries to disappear altogether. Before long, corporate FEARS sufferers began to justify non-decisions by blaming the FEARS symptom called lack of visibility.

By late 2002, the FEARS virus had spread throughout the general population. Despite living in the safest, healthiest, most economically robust, most sanitary and most advanced country in the history of the world, many American FEARS sufferers began to withdraw from society and cover their homes in duct tape and plastic.

Fortunately, history teaches us that the FEARS virus has a lifecycle that will see it return temporarily to its dormant state. At that point, despite the inevitable and the ever-present encyclopedia of natural and man-made threats and disasters, we will all in unison turn off the 24-hour news channels, stop listening to the experts, and go outside to make a decision.

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This article originally appeared in the June/July 2003 issue of MyBusiness magazine.

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