Kerre McIvor: Coronavirus panic shows we're healthier - but not wiser

China imposed stringent travel restrictions after the outbreak. Photo / AP

Apologies in advance.

But there's only one story in town – in fact, there's only one story in the world, right now, and that's the coronavirus - or Covid-19 as it's known in the lab.

I think it should be called the Millennial Virus. It doesn't seem to affect children and young adults but it does affect the Boomers. We catch it and cark it.

The kids inherit our overpriced houses and the planet corrects itself, as it is wont to do.

I know deaths are nothing to joke about but, seriously, the flu in all its various guises kills about 500 people in this country every year and we don't see the same hysteria we're seeing now. Nobody's buying up toilet paper and water and stripping the supermarket shelves of hand sanitiser and face masks every June and July, are they?

So where is this febrile over-reaction coming from?

I've had people on talkback abusing me for not taking this virus seriously enough.

I've had callers, the same callers who knew how to re-float the Rena and how to re-enter the Pike River mine, criticising the Government and public health officials and indeed the World Health Organisation for its approach to this virus because they've read something on the internet and they know better.

I've had emailers sending me all sorts of conspiracy theories and I wonder what it must be like to live in a world so full of fear and uncertainty and mistrust.

I'm not going to talk about the mortality rate or the recovery rate or how the contagion rate compares to other flu viruses or, indeed, other diseases. Because commonsense and rational thought have gone completely out the window.

There was a degree of concern about Sars and the swine flu when they surfaced some years ago, and Y2K caused a bit of a global ruckus but this panic within some of our community over corona is next level.

China imposed stringent travel restrictions after the outbreak. Photo / AP

You can be excused for being nervous if you have dicky lungs; if you have breathing issues or if you have loved ones who do.

But then wouldn't you be nervous every winter? What is it about this virus that has everyone losing their collective cool?

Well, not everyone, to be fair, but far too many.

Perhaps it's because it's come out of China. Perhaps because China took such restrictive measures to control the virus within its borders. Perhaps it's because too many of us grew up watching Survivor, the classic from 1975.

The cult TV show portrayed the tattered remnants of the human race trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world after a virus escaped from what looked like a Chinese lab and spread throughout the world via air travellers.

Sound like a virus you know?

Look, I might be wrong. Next week, there may be no column as I lie in bed, sweating and feverish in my self-imposed isolation, praying I haven't passed on the virus to anyone else.

As news of my death circulates, those I decried as alarmists will nod their heads sagely and remind everyone that they told me so, and quite frankly it serves me right for being so dismissive.

And I don't care. We're all going to die, Michael, a particularly Eeyorish caller, told me this week. Quite right, Michael, I said. But chances are you'll die of a stress-related illness before I die of Covid-19.

We have never lived in a safer world. We have never been healthier nor wealthier. And yet we don't seem to have become any wiser.

Sure, get an emergency kit together. The Canterbury quakes showed us the benefit of every household being prepared for a disaster. Have a household plan.

Wash your hands thoroughly and practise the sort of basic hygiene we should all be practising. This hyper-vigilance around hygiene will probably stand us in very good stead this winter when all the other flus and colds arrive.

But remember to accentuate the positive and latch on to the affirmative. Because worrying yourself sick over getting sick makes absolutely no sense at all.