Thank you.

Still, what can I say about my concerns? I'm scared. For myself, my wife, our infant, our families. In this island of emptiness in the middle of red dots the Europe is on COVID-19 maps, we're all just nervously waiting for the first real case. Personal protection goods are already gone, people are slowly realizing that maybe it's about time to start stockpiling food. We've stocked ourselves up with ~two weeks worth of long-life consumables. Going to extend it over the weekend to a month's reserve. Our infant already has 2+ months supply. I try to be calm, but it's getting harder.

I don't know what I'm afraid more of at this point - of the virus, or of the quarantines and panic that will follow.

I don't rely on standard personal protection goods.

I'm not really comfortable talking about what I do rely on in public. There's a very long history of people being incredibly ugly to me, outright accusing me of being insane and of making up stories out of a sick need for attention. I've literally been accused of having Munchausen.

Though we don't interact often, you've been uncommonly kind and respectful to me in a sea of what often feels like outright abusive and sadistic behavior.

So if you are interested in talking with me privately about what I do in hopes of expanding your options and trying to protect you and yours, I'm willing to chat and leave it completely up to you whether or not you use any of that information.

Consider it to be an offer of a personal favor. If you don't think I can possibly help you, it's okay. Maybe you honestly don't recall my diagnosis or understand what that's supposed to mean.

I'm sorry you are under so much stress.

I'm writing you an e-mail parallel to this comment. I've been reading your comments on this site for years now - they often stand out as particularly insightful - so I do remember some of the context.

It's important to remember that the big concern with the coronavirus isn't that it's unusually severe, it's that it's unusually transmissible. In particular it becomes contagious before it becomes symptomatic.

So if they fail to contain it, you'll be more likely to get it than to get the flu, but not especially more likely to die if you do get it. And even less likely in either case if you're currently healthy.

There isn't much reason to be concerned about quarantines either. The point of a quarantine is to limit the spread of the virus. When there are only a small number of cases, using extraordinary quarantine measures is justified because there is the potential to stamp it out entirely. If too many people get infected, there is no longer any hope of that and continuing the extraordinary measures is impractical. You shut down an airport when a city is infected, you don't shut down every airport when every city is infected. So if it spreads, you fall back to the ordinary measures. Wash your hands, if you get sick go to the doctor and not to work, get vaccinated once they have a vaccine etc. It's not good but the world doesn't shut down.

Around 10% of people get the flu every year. If this is equally severe but more contagious, maybe it's twice as bad, or five times as bad. It seems pretty implausible that it could be much more than ten times as bad.

An advantage we have here is that February is over. Flu season is ending rather than beginning in the northern hemisphere (and it's still several months off in the southern hemisphere). So if they can keep it somewhat contained as things warm up, it shouldn't spread as fast in the spring.

Don't panic.