My elderly father lives with us. He worked in hospitals and during his heyday he had to deal with all sorts of contagious patients. His youth wouldn't have spared him from some of those diseases, but I don't think he worried too much about it.
But now he's 80 and ever since this pandemic started, there's only been fear-inducing news every day.
On one hand, there's the very real fact that the elderly are dropping like flies in Quebec due to poor management of retirement homes (which my dad saw coming years ago because he'd worked in those as well and the situation had only continued to degrade since he'd left).
But on the other hand, you've got all of these auxiliary news reports that only feel like negative reinforcement and has you solely focused on the virus as if it were the only threat out there now. And I think that messes with people's mind.
The day my dad stops being scared of the virus won't be the day the virus is gone, because that'll be in years, if ever. It'll be the day the news stop telling him to be scared.
But either way, my wife and I are fortunate enough to be able to work from home and minimize our outings for a while. I wouldn't expect everyone else to be able to do the same.