Yesterday was peak freak for me with the COVID-19 “Coronavirus.” My daughter told me she was sick but said my 18 y/o granddaughter would take her pre-teen cousins to meet us at our local Friday night pizza place for dinner. Here’s what my mind did:

  • Megan somehow got COVID-19 (even though there’s no evidence it’s in our local area).
  • She infected the girls.
  • They’ll infect me.
  • I’ll die and will never be able to watch “The Big Lebowski” again.

I canceled Friday Night Family Dinner, breaking a streak of many, many weeks.

WTF? Why?

Well, I consume a lot of information and am only a few years away from needing my 401K, so the news over the past 2 weeks has been, uh, unsettling. Plus, I read there was a run on Oat Milk.

Saturday morning I read, The Real Danger of the Coronavirus in Medium. I recommend it. It encourages us to take precautions, but live our lives, noting “the power of fear is a far greater threat than any virus.” It goes on to make what in my mind is the key point, “For the media, whose life-blood is a dramatic story with minute-by-minute developments, the coronavirus is a gift.”

My near constant news feed gave me Coronaparanoia. Of course, to magnify the news itself is the sheer incompetence of Donald Trump and the sycophants surrounding him in the Executive Branch, and the medias gleeful reporting of Trump’s conflicting messages and mismanagement of the crisis.

Yesterday morning, after placing a COVID-19 statement in the header of the online community I’m responsible for, I went out and did normal Saturday errands. Overall, I observed traffic to be a bit lighter than usual, but at some local retailers, the disinfectant wipes seemed to throb with attention grabbing neon as I walked in the door. It is nice some stores offer those wipes at their entrances and I used one every time. In an attempt to battle my Coronaparanoia, last night we went out to dinner.

COVID-19 is dangerous, no doubt and I think it’s going to get much worse before it gets better. If I were older, had a compromised immune system, or was in otherwise poor health, I might be more ultra-cautious. I may still get there depending on the progress (or lack of) managing this outbreak but living in fear is a self-imposed limitation on living.

Now I must wash my hands.