I don't read anything mocking or hostile in your tone.
You're calling attention to an obvious contradiction in our emotional response to different kinds of risk.
The using the fear part wasn't well articulated, I had a small person climbing on me, i may not be able to articulate it better now either:
emotions seem to be most productive when we allow them to call attention to something, and perhaps to direct our action in a fast moving situation, but not in a slow moving circumstance like this where we have time to respond rationally. The terrible thing is how often we fail to make that transition from emotion to rational action, instead we stifle the emotion until it cannot be stifled, at which point we let emotion run us.
I see people must be frightened - otherwise why are they buying out the masks and toilet paper?
That hording is happening in private - without an FDR to give us the social license to take more rational action we are doing nothing in public. The only public action people seem to be taking is to withdraw.
Hong Kong, where people are wearing masks and maintaining good hygiene is at only had 108 cases.
Meanwhile on Friday I had colleagues sick at their desks with flu like symptoms, some fresh back from overseas travel, and no-one saying a damn thing to them about it.
If we all wore gloves and masks starting tomorrow, we could put in a booking tomorrow with a struggling bar or restaurant for a corona's over party in two months time.
But that's not going to happen.
So I am frightened that like the person who doesn't stop smoking, drinking, and eating shitty processed bacon-yums, I'm worried we are going to sleepwalk into the horrible moment when we are overwhelmed and driven by fear, and that is a path to an avoidable pandemic.
So that's what I mean by using the fear, recognising it and transitioning to rational action to address the fear.
You've also questioned whether the risk of this virus - even in the worst case - is significant enough to stimulate this level of fear:
I live in an unusual small town on the coast. This is where most of the medical staff from the major hospital in the city 30 minutes away live. Family and friends work in the local emergency ward. This town skews older than most, if feels like half the town are retirees - we have five podiatry clinics. Also on the other side of the wetlands is one of the labs where people are working on the virus.
So this town is more exposed and vulnerable, and may be harder hit that most if there is significant transfer in the community.
However this town is also wealthy, well educated, has serious medical expertise and strong community organisations.
So the people around me should be in a good position to respond collectively - I don't know how those potentials resolve.
I've had dengue fever, had guns pointed and shot at me (missed), fallen off a cliff (improbably caught a tiny ledge as I slid down the ocean cliff) and been quite emotionally unmoved by my own mortality, not through the meditations of marcus aurelius, there wasn't any struggle there to overcome. So I can understand what you mean about 'not bragging' from this context
But not being here to raise my children frightens me. I don't believe stoicism or buddhism offers a convincing way to accept the loss of children, or pain to your children.
I think instead you have to come to terms the vulnerability to your own integrity that your children represent.
While I was unexpectedly comfortable with not existing, the horror of what my getting sick could mean for them is enough to derange me.
So today I'm having a happy day with the kids, we've played legos, and are hanging out in the sun.
I think a lot of people at the moment have a small part of their mind ticking over, looking forward a couple of months, not knowing whether this will pass lightly for them, or whether this is something that will push them to derangement - the fear of fear itself - and we look around for leadership to address this fear rationally, but can't see any model for pragmatic preparation but buying toilet paper.