There's been a terrible virus going around lately, and it's infected many otherwise, ordinarily rational people with whom I associate-- it's the most dreaded pandemic of all: the fear of Coronavirus virus!

Some of my coworkers-- logical individuals normally-- are almost literally cowering under their beds! I've never seen anything like this in my almost forty years. These people-- most of them American, but some of them Indian as well-- are willing to sacrifice essentially all individual liberty, their sleep, and their well being at the altar of being afraid of the virus-- to the point where they get annoyed if I try to inject a little sanity antidote.

Ever seen the statistics for how many people die in car accidents every day? Or look at how many tens of thousands die from influenza every year, just in America? Or how many people seriously hurt themselves or even die walking down stairs in their houses, or getting out of the bath tub? Or how many people are mugged, assaulted, or even murdered?

Life is positively inundated with daily risks far, far greater than the Coronavirus. Yet people don't hide in their houses, or call for the government to ban driving, bath tubs, or shut down the entire economy so all stairs can be replaced with ramps. Rather, they voluntarily take appropriate precautions-- such as not driving like mad men, like stepping carefully out of the bath tub, and so forth-- and otherwise just get on with their lives without worrying. That's how a reasonable person behaves.

The Coronavirus is much the same: stay mostly at home for a bit to help "flatten the curve", wash your hands, cough into your arm-- and don't think about it otherwise! Life is too short to worry about controlling things you can't control. And it's astonishing to me that otherwise smart people are falling prey to what can only be described as hysteria.

But then again, I guess that's why it's a virus: the fear of virus virus!