For some people, it's important to lean-in to a gnawing sense of low level anxiety; to gain social validation by being the person responsible for issuing the warnings.
During my lifetime, the low-level anxieties have included nuclear annihilation, environmental collapse, economic collapse (multiple times). They eked two entire decades out of terrorism, including several wars that included their own little fear-based ecosystems.
We've had a countless clown parade of flash in the pan internet-based moral panics: Whether it's porn, eating disorders, bullying, incels. Howling at the moon. I've watched four decades of this bullshit, and through it and after it all, the kids have stubbornly been alright.
Chemicals, carcinogens, allergies. There are whole communities on Kangaroo Island of people who have shut themselves off from the outside world because they think they have allergic reactions to everything from touching plastic to smelling ozone from electric motors.
The pandemic has been brilliant for this kind of behavior. You can scold people for wearing masks wrong, for being outside, for enjoying beaches, for missing family members, for being hospitalized in inappropriate ways, for being 6km from home.
We can scold people for not vaccinating (the Djokovic story was a lightning rod for that!) or for vaccinating too much (triple-dose boosters for ye and me before the global south has even had one GIVES US NEW VARIANTS OMG). Lots of people want you to feel bad about both.
The latest disjointed diffuse distant catastrophic fear is the risk of long covid. Mostly based on studies from 2020 before vaccines were available.
We know who have become the masters of it now. We know that the OzSAGE people, Ding, the Burnet people have all been amping up fear, Chicken Littles for klout.
They want you to be prepared by stocking up on plastic sheeting and tape, as if *being able to smell the outside world* is a transmission risk. Can you believe it? Outrageous and absurd, endless platforming of articles of ridicule. abc.net.au/news/2022-01-0… 
Most of it's horseshit. You can tune 100% of it out and live a happier life with no greater or lesser risk than you would have otherwise. Seriously: What difference does it make if you're afraid of long covid? How do you behave differently? How does your risk change? At all? No?
The end of the mythical five stages of grief is "acceptance," where you know the bad thing you don't like is with you forever, and you make peace with it and move on. Once you've done that, your perspective changes, and you can be an outside observer of the fear. And giggle.
If you get stuck in anger or depression, that's not going to end well for you. Pathogens are insensitive to your emotional state, so none of those things make any difference, except that you're angry or depressed.
The only effect the endless anxiety has is to make you feel bad, so maybe think about not doing that. Go outside and play. Enjoy a coffee. Read a book. Do anything but listen to the endless parade of cranks who want you to be afraid all the time. You'll thank me later.
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