If there is reason for hope that coronavirus fears may mean pro-science beliefs get back to being the norm in modern culture, it is that regular chemicals have disappeared from store shelves in San Francisco while they clamor for vaccines they used to distrust. Meanwhile, there are plenty of organic alternatives and vegan food to be found.

If there is reason for despair it's that 64 percent of British millennials believe the moon landing was fake. Distrust of reality is so endemic that 11 percent of millennials in the country think Tupac Shakur faked his own death and is living in hiding somewhere.

Smoking is in decline to such an extent that there is no longer fear about creating Prohibition-style casual criminals with totalitarian rules or outright bans, so the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is doing the next best thing; mandating graphic warnings on packages.

With coronavirus all over media and politicians looking for ways to leverage concern into votes for their political party this November, a number of parents will want to take their children to a doctor at the first sign of a cough "just to be sure" and doctors say that's a bad idea. It burdens a health system that could be overtaxed if aggressive projections about the impact of COVID-19 come true.

Those parents are not being rational, doctors will note, most kids will not be harmed by it any more than they would a bad cold or flu, and yet the American medical system is overrun by "defensive medicine" that engages in the same behavior.

Though COVID-19 as a disease is rather difficult to get, spreading the coronavirus itself is as easy as spreading influenza viruses. The big risks will be from a sneeze, though COVID-19 doesn't have much sneezing, or a cough, or touching someone's hands who did either and then touching your own face.

Why do people subconsciously touch their face if they felt something weird on their hands? That is a mystery of psychology, but it's why that is the best deterrent to catching coronavirus or spreading it. 

Yet if someone sneezes and you don't touch their hand, how long will the virus in its "aerosol" state hang around?

In 2015 I began to wonder when CDC, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had lost its way. Since I am neither Republican or Democrat, I had to wonder if the Obama administration was the problem, the same way Democrats insist Trump is the problem now.

But where does that end? Did the CDC that mishandled H1N1 in 2009 do so because of Obama? Was SARS 2003 botched because of Bush?  Of course not, the issue is bureaucracy creep due to career government employees inside CDC itself, not temporary political appointees like Dr. Robert Redfield, who has become a political pincushion for Democrats despite three decades of HIV research. Meanwhile, Republicans are claiming liberal media is exaggerating coronavirus to hurt Trump this fall.

Do you want to believe a mom with no credentials who opposes modern agriculture can keep your baby from getting autism?  Do you want to believe fracking will set your tap water on fire or that COVID-19 was caused by 5G cell phone service in Wuhan?

There are prominent Facebook pages for all of those. An osteopath named Joe Mercola will even sell you supplements to prevent getting coronavirus, and he makes $100 million a year leveraging social media to latch onto to anything people are willing to believe.