"Um" -- a gutteral response indicating anxiety?

I notice that people speaking on TV today [3/23/20] are inserting the verbal hesitancy “um” that usually indicates an almost instan- taneous pause to clear one’s mind before speaking, but is now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting a spate of anxiety when the topic is the corona virus.

New York’s Governor Cuomo and ABC’s on-air medical doctor Jen Ashton were flush with “ums” during interviews and talks about the virus, as was an emergency doctor on GMA this morning.

Guests on CNBC — CEOs and money managers et al. — are also using a spate of “ums” when they are talking about the economy and pandemic.

I’ve never heard so many “ums” outside the rabble who resort to the utterance because they get nervous when asked to respond, via speech (orality), when asked to say something, which for them is a nervous response,

Today’s “ums” tell us that people are worried — not just the unwashed masses — about where the pandemic is taking us.

And where might that be? Somewhere presumably short of plague-like sicknesses that took place earlier in humanity’s climb up the evolutionary ladder:

The Prehistoric epidemic of 3000 B.C.

The Plague of Athens in 430 B.C.

The Antonine Plague between 165-180 A.D.

Plague of Cyprian: A.D. 250-271

Plague of Justinian: A.D. 541-542

The Black Death: 1346-1353

Cocoliztli epidemic: 1545-1548

Spanish Flu: 1918-1920

And others:

https://www.livescience.com/worst-epidemics-and-pandemics-in-history.html

Why is this happening? It’s an upheaval in the realm of the gods, not ETs, or natural occurrences but a serious revival of “divine” mischief that is exampled by the UFO phenomenon, which I’ll make a case for upcoming.

RR http://ufocon.blogspot.com – The UFO Iconoclast(s)