Just stop the panic

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door."

Bilbo Baggins offered that advice to his nephew in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And it's good advice, so far as it goes. You never know where leaving your home might take you. You should be aware of where you're going and what you're doing. And of serious threats to your person.

Still, we have to leave our homes. We have to go out and live our lives; it's senseless and probably unhealthy to never leave home. Yet that seems to be the corner we're slowly backing ourselves into with the Corona virus scare.

Of course, you should do all the common sense things the situation requires. Stay home if you're sick, see to your personal cleanliness and hygiene, check on elderly relatives, friends, and neighbors. But all the other stuff? Just stop worrying.

If you are not otherwise in jeopardy, go shopping, eat out, have a pint at the pub. Live your life. Because quite bluntly, all this fear about an infinitesimal chance of contracting let alone dying from the disease is absurd, and borderline insanity. Walking out that door is fraught with all kinds of peril of anyway. You might get shot or hit by a bus, right? But you don't, you can't, let that keep you from life. Reacting to this small threat with paralysis is absolutely not the thing never to do.