In a sense, it would be fitting if I was done in by an Amazon package containing bully sticks for the dogs, but I’m still not leaving it out on the porch for 24 hours.

Let the bears find their own food. If the virus got me that way, at least I wouldn’t be harming anyone else.

I have come to dislike the increasingly popular American corporate and governmental phrase “out of an abundance of caution.” It can mean almost anything and is a perfect cover for avoiding any kind of risk or lawsuit or original thinking.

Politicians and corporations love to appear caring and thoughtful, so they  can do almost anything they please – and be lawsuit proof – if they say they are doing it out of an “abundance of caution.”

The correct term, I often think, would be “out of an abundance of fear and greed,” and a wish not to be sued.

Who, after all, can argue with an abundance of caution? I don’t even really know what it means; I just know I don’t have enough of it.

There is an understandable mob mentality forming around this awful virus; there always is when strange things threaten us. I hate mobs more than anything except hypocrites; warnings give us a chance to be warned and prepared, they also give us a chance to stop thinking and follow the crowd.

Social media is teeming with warnings; people pass them around like popcorn bags at a circus.

A warning can turn into an absolute truth even quicker than a lie can travel around the world.

A group of people on an island in Maine cut a tree down to keep four construction workers from leaving their cabin because they might have come from “New York,” and be carrying the new plague.

They didn’t come from New York, as it happened, and they weren’t sick.

There is much hysteria online this week about wealthy and scheming New Yorkers are fleeing to the heartlands to spread the disease to the locals.

This is the perfect bugaboo for many people.

It’s an even better thing to fear than refugees and immigrants, the arrogant elite dumping their disease on the helpless working people.

That’s the thing about warnings from amateurs. For every person they save, they harm or injure someone else. For me, joining a mob would be a kind of death, and in a crisis like this, it’s very difficult to sort out reality from hysteria.

I read today that thieves are delighted about the package warnings, there are all kinds of Amazon packages waiting for germs to die out there on back porches.

Our national anthem these days is an abundance of caution, and there is undoubtedly good reason for some. The coronavirus demands caution and thoughtfulness from us, unlike any other disaster or trouble I can recall.

But for me, there is always a “going too far” line when the warnings get rolling and start talking to each other online.  I am buried in warnings almost every time I write something. And when acting out of an abundance of caution is a justification for acting, that can make real caution meaningless.

Warnings, unlike nasty messages, are almost always well-meaning and are often grounded in some reality. Dogs can die if you leave them in a hot car, but that ought not to lead to never taking dogs for a drive in the summer, or giving self-righteous extremists the right bust open car windows without thought or accountability.

As a result of so many eager warnings, most people I know with dogs are afraid to take them for rides in the summer; they fear to get their car bashed up by self-righteous fanatics or getting arrested.

That is a terrible loss for dogs and people. One of the sweetest sights to me is a dog sticking his or her head out of a car in a summer breeze.

It is becoming rare. to see that.

I intend to take  Zinnia out with me all year in all weather under 80 degrees and to let her sit in the car with windows open and the automobile in the shade.

I’m not going farther than that.

—

A lot of things can kill me. I can’t avoid all of them.

Walking across the street, driving at night, having a heart attack, an airplane falling out of the sky, cancer, getting run over by a biker or a bus,  a lightning bolt doing me in the pasture. And of course, the coronavirus, the warning lover’s best friend in many years.

I am thinking about this virus; I pay close attention to the warnings and data and regular press conferences and announcements.

This virus is worth some warnings, and as a 72-year-old man with heart disease and diabetes, I warn myself often to stay inside, avoid crowds when I have to go out, and “shelter-in-place,” a new phrase as creepy as “out of an abundance of caution.”

I wrote about how I’m staying inside, letting Maria guide me, doing what Andrew Cuomo and Anthony Fauci tell me to do. I’ve never listened more.

But it’s never enough, of course. There is no limit on warnings.

One blog reader congratulated me for sheltering consciously in place, especially during these critical few weeks. But as I feared, it wasn’t enough. She wrote this on my Facebook Page:

“…but heads up for putting away groceries and opening mail…. safest to let it sit for 24 hours first, and wash hands and kitchen counter after putting away perishables..”

She added there were other things to be careful of, but she couldn’t remember them all. Somebody else will.

I have a problem with warnings; I hate them. I think this is my problem. Warnings are just another form of unwanted advice presented with little or no proof. And really, why should I accept warnings from strangers online anyway? If Anthony Fauci or Andrew Cuomo haven’t thought of it, why should I do it?

Let’s think this through.

If you ought to leave packages out for 24 hours, what about dogs and cats, some of the best germ and bacteria carriers on the planet. And what about the person who stacks soup cans in the grocer, or the person who uses the handle on the gas pump ahead of me, or the one who picks the grape or apple, usually in some other country?

I can imagine a country of obsessive and wipers and warning-makers who have little time for anything other than sanitizing.

What about the people who handled the package that’s inside of the Amazon or UPS package? Or who wrote the letter in the mail? Or licked the envelope or dealt with the stamp? Or whose driver sneezed in the back of his truck?

And is it safer right now to get an Amazon package or drive to a mall or hardware or pet store where there are sure to be other people, and if one of them sneezes, you could be toast?  That is not a warning, but according to the CDC, a medical fact.

One woman warned me to keep all the windows closed in the farmhouse, the virus can ride the wind, she said.

There is only one known study of the ability of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, and it suggests the virus could survive on cardboard for up to 24 hours, as reported by the MIT Technology Review.

However, the figure is based on a very small study in preprint, which means it hasn’t been studied yet or peer-reviewed.

But the warnings online are not tentative or qualified; there is no doubt in them.

Packages that come from the Internet have never been sterile.

The CDC  studied the survivability of coronaviruses on surfaces and found there is likely a very low risk of spread of the virus from products or packaging that are shipped over days or weeks at ambient temperatures.

The CDC does not recommend disinfecting packages. It recommends washing your hands frequently and avoiding close contact with groups of people.

In a situation like this, we all have to sort through our fear, phobias, instincts, and neuroses. We all have to choose what feels right for us.

Nobody can guide us through all of it, and there is almost nothing that we can’t be warned about when this virus comes calling.

Still, it’s not my business to tell anybody else what to fear. It is my business to decide that for myself.

I’m not leaving packages out for 24 years until someone in authority and with expertise says it is something I ought to do.

The problems with genuine catastrophes like the coronavirus are that they turn all of us into vast and reactive gossip and warning mobs, lurching from one panic to another, scurrying to terrify each other with our warnings.

That’s why it’s so important for leaders to emerge that we can trust.

Sometimes we scare ourselves, sometimes someone does it for us.

I like to think for myself and make my own mistakes.

But it’s not so simple.

The problem with the coronavirus is that mistakes can be fatal, to me or to someone else.

So I don’t want to make any.

I’ve talked to doctor friends and asked them if I really need to leave my FedEx and Amazon packages out for 24 hours, and if  I need to fear my perishables. Nobody said yes, but one said you should always wash perishable produce, virus or no.

And I e-mailed a doctor on the Q & A page of the state coronavirus website. He said he didn’t leave his packages outside, he simply washed his hands when he opened them.

“It can’t do any harm (leaving them outside for 24 hours),” one doctor friend told me, “but I doubt it will do much good. The virus travels quickly and in many different ways, mostly through the air in wet and chilly places. There is no end to the things you might do to protect yourself, but the end result is that you can end up some fearful and obsessive wreck out of a zombie movie. You will be doing good staying inside, avoiding people, and washing your hands with soap after you come in contact with the outside world. I’ve never seen any evidence that an Amazon package killed those people in the nursing homes, or anyone else.”

And then she added, “but out of an abundance of caution; it can’t hurt to scrub vegetables and leave a package outside.”

And that was it for me.

I want to be cautious, but I don’t wish to live out of an abundance of caution. There is a bar for me when it comes to the virus. Staying inside and avoiding people and washing my hands every time some dog treats arrive is a big step for me. I have no problem with it.

I’ll pass on being afraid of my packages or oranges (and I’ve always washed them (or Maria has) when I bring them home.)

I’m sure this post will get some of our social media watchdogs and warners, but I’m okay with it.

I insist on leaving some small corner of this to my instincts and ideas about life, and how I wish to live.

Sometimes I think it’s all I’ll have left for the next few weeks.

(Photo: Maria and I delivering the daily papers to the Mansion. I was asked to stay in the car.)