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Coronavirus - the apotheosis of panic

Every day articles appear on Habr on the theme of Coronavirus, a pandemic of grandiose informational scale. At the time of this writing, 616,680 cases of infection and 28,818 deaths have been recorded in the world, and the world's population is 7.5 billion people. In my article, I do not at all try to deny the seriousness of the disease itself, but I want to draw the attention of my colleagues to the excessive pressure on the situation by governments and the media. The story of Coronavirus has already acquired the format of real hysteria, and I am absolutely sure that much more people will die not from the virus itself, but from heart attacks and other diseases provoked by a sharply increased level of stress. The current information flow does not serve as objective information, but to provoke such an emotion as fear. Scenes with armored vehicles in the streets,people sweeping away food and essential goods cause excitement in people who are calm, and it is hard to imagine what effect all this has on old people or impressionable people.

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The pandemic COVID-19, a potentially severe acute respiratory infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (2019-nCoV), has officially been announced in the world. There is a lot of information on Habré on this topic - always remember that it can be both reliable / useful, and vice versa.

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Many governments are taking measures that can be described as super-emergency, as if a nuclear disaster had occurred. Of course, I support measures such as social distance, hygiene, wearing protective masks and even closing cinemas, stadiums, switching to distance education and temporarily closing borders. But to close everything in a row - this means leading to the bankruptcy of thousands of companies and leaving tens of millions of people unemployed and alone with their accounts. In any case, the current World Economic Crisis would have happened without Coronavirus, but why purposefully worsen the already difficult economic situation?

The impact of the virus on the environment is also a rather interesting question. On the one hand, oil consumption and related emissions dropped sharply. But do not you think such a measure as the disinfection of streets and yards is excessive? None of us licks asphalt, which disinfects the sun's rays even without chemicals, but we all breathe vapors after processing with these means. The chemicals used will inevitably fall into the soil, into groundwater and it is difficult for me to imagine the environmental consequences of an attempt to create a sterile urban environment.

Most people are social creatures and any hard quarantine, prolonged stay in a confined space alone or with family, serves to increase stress. Of course, virtual interaction gradually replaces the real one, but for many, the line between home and work is important, remote work and restrictions on movement erase this line, making some things impossible in which people found an outlet from the routine. The ban on visiting parks, beaches, jogging on the streets destroys the lifestyle of many people and I do not think that free premium access to Pornhub is a worthy alternative.

And I want to note that we live in a really interesting time, when large-scale events occur, the significance of which remains to be realized over time. It's hard to say what the world will be like after a pandemic. Probably, there will be much more remote work, home delivery of everything and everything will become even more popular, cash turnover will decrease, or it will be banned. In a word, life will become even more online, which on the one hand will not leave us without work. On the other hand, it's always interesting to be always online, part of the constant information flow, creating the illusion of emotions with hundreds of emoticons or perfectly filtered photos, but the whole digital illusion will never replace live communication and real emotions. And I would not want the world to become a digital concentration camp afterwards, with ubiquitous social rating systems.But in order to find out the real answer to the question “what will happen next?”, And to Cicero’s eternal question “Cui bono?” we must not succumb to panic, but calmly survive the pandemic and economic shocks. I am sure it will be interesting.

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