If You’re Terrified of the Coronavirus, You’re Already Sick
It may come to you, it may not. Let’s not ruin our lives in the meantime by being obsessed by it.
Yesterday one of the cooks here at my B&B, Researcher’s Rest, took me by cab to the bustling local Tanzanian open market to get fresh fruit. In the safety of the nice new van, he asked me about the coronavirus and how scared I was.
He said, correctly, that Africa has its first cases. That’s understandable, given the very close relationship China has with many African countries (and worldwide, given their bridge and road projects). He’s frankly terrified.
While I can understand that, the truth is that for those of us who are healthy, whose immune systems aren’t compromised (that we know of, at least), the chances are very good that we are more likely to be inconvenienced than laid to rest. As with all the more dangerous viruses, that’s not always the case for people who aren’t so healthy, but even so, everything I’ve read — for what it’s worth- doesn’t indicate reason to panic.
This young man, as was the case with the ebola virus scare, has far more to worry about from uninformed and terrified travelers than he does the virus itself. Tourists stay home, work slows down, everyone suffers.
