Fear and healthy respect

Things are really getting to me.  The funny thing for me is that my life really hasn't changed that much because of the pandemic.  Before all this started, I went out a little more than I do now, but not much.  My life was mostly spent at home with the people who live in my house, and it still is.  But all the uncertainty has really begun to weigh on my mind.  I find myself doing COVID-19  math with Alabama's numbers and the US numbers -  what percentage has been tested, what percentage of those tested are testing positive, what percentage of those testing positive are dying.  The percentage are relatively small (for Alabama they are 2%, 7%, and 3% respectively), but somehow that still isn't comforting. 

I wish that we could transition from fear (or denial) to a healthy respect for the virus and the situation.  I wish that I knew what activities were actually safe and which weren't.  Is it really okay to get take-out from a restaurant?  Am I really safe if I wear a mask in public and wash or sanitize my hands once I'm out of public?  Does wiping down my groceries really do any good?  But with so little reliable information out there it seems difficult to know, so fear remains the dominant emotion and healthy respect is difficult to achieve. For society as a whole it seems even more difficult, with some groups in total denial of gravity of situation and, as with most things these days, people's opinions being influenced by their political inclinations. 

I know that in general, people just want things to return to normal as quickly as possible, but as my priest said earlier in the pandemic, things won't go back to normal.  There will be a new normal, which is, as of yet, unknown.  Unknown is hard to deal with, at least for me.