As usual, it seems easy to divide people in Malta and Gozo into two groups at the moment – those having a complete meltdown over the coronavirus and those who are not quite convinced it is the end of the world.

In any case, due to the rabid panic buying and the Great Siege of Lidl, even those who are not worried about coronavirus – also known as COVID-19 – are being forced to stock up on supplies to avoid being faced with empty shelves.

The way some people are investing in staggering mountains of toilet paper, one would think we are facing a food poisoning epidemic. Perhaps we are going for a historical re-enactment of the black market during World War II.

Across human history, sickness and disease have been our greatest challenges. Between 1918 and 1920 alone, the Spanish flu infected 500 million people, 27 per cent of the world’s population, killing 40 to 50 million people.

However, gone are the days when we should all be afraid of a flu. In this article, I will hopefully allay some of the fears and combat some of the misinformation.

First of all, young children do not seem to be at risk from COVID-19, with no reported fatalities yet.

It affects people more severely the older they get, though fatality rates can still be narrowed down to a percentage of 0.5 per cent outside of China.

A figure doing the rounds in the country right now wisely points out that, according to research published in the European Heart Journal last year, 576 Maltese die every year due to air pollution alone.

Of course, one of humanity’s great weaknesses, once confronted with the challenges of the 21st century, is our inability to fully consider and tangibly experience threats which we cannot see, hear or touch. People are terrified of sharks, and sharks are disproportionately targeted because of it.

This is because they play to our primal fears and they are easily identified as a threat.

There is nothing to freak out about, and it only makes the situation worse in any case

However, according to statistics in the United States, people are more likely to be killed by accidents involving falling coconuts, champagne corks, icicles or vending machines.

What I truly wish is that people would apply the same level of frenzied panic as they are showing towards the coronavirus to things like climate change, which are threatening civilisation itself, if not the continued survival of the human species.

Humans are ill-equipped to face challenges they cannot directly interact with. Since it is harder to make the connection between air pollution and illness, for example, then people are unable to tackle such dangers in a real way.

Having said all that, it does not mean that our government or health officials should take the situation lightly.

While this is not the Black Plague, it does not mean we should be careless or unprepared. The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses has criticised the COVID-19 contingency plans by pointing out that only 14 isolation beds are available.

While conspiracy theorists on the internet whip up panic, our health experts are hard at work focusing on the actual issues which need to be tackled so as to ensure the smoothest possible ride through this global event.

Harvard epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch has been quoted in a wildly popular article doing the rounds on The Atlantic that COVID-19 is likely to reach a wide segment of the world population, and not be containable. Again, this is not a good reason for the breakdown of public order – quite the opposite.

According to the same article, what many epidemiologists are saying is that this outbreak may lead to COVID-19 becoming a fifth ‘endemic’ coronavirus strain.

A vaccine would only be publicly available somewhere between six to 18 months, if not longer, due to the procedures behind making such products safe for the market.

In other words, it will join the ranks of yearly illnesses going around – it will not end civilisation as we know it, unlike climate change. 

If we want even less reason to panic, let us look to what World Health Organisation expert Bruce Aylward is saying – that there is no proof that a lot of cases are going by undetected and that, therefore, the chances of this disease spreading to the world population is actually not guaranteed at all.

Whatever the case, transmission of COVID-19 in Guangdong has already started to subside, with only one in 5,000 people tested at clinics testing positive.

All in all, let us stop freaking out. There is nothing to freak out about and it only makes the situation worse in any case.

Timothy Alden is interim leader of the Democratic Party.