Axe, Briggs and Richards, Regnery, Oct. 2020, 287 pages, 4 of 5 stars

This post could also be called Fourteen Reasons Not to Fear Covid, or, RIP (Read if Panicked). The media wants you to think RIP will be on your tombstone this year if you don’t separate and scrub daily. The three authors of this timely and superb book on Covid are here to tell you there is no reason to panic. 

There are fourteen chapters. To help my readers, I broke them down into fourteen reasons not to panic. The authors didn’t state these items exactly this way, but out of the goodness of my heart, I’m here to make your life easier. If you should be limited with time, read chapter ten. It’s the best in the book.

This list is for pastors who think their churches should cancel services. It is for the driver that wears a mask while alone in the car. It is for those that think lockdowns and ubiquitous masks are a good idea. It is for the fearful and the desperate.

1. We’ll always live in a dangerous world.

In the US alone, 1,700 people die of heart disease every day. In 1968 the Hong Kong flu killed one million people globally, far more than Covid. In 2009 the swine flu may have killed a half million. In neither was their panic or a global lockdown. What is spreading the quickest is not Covid but panic. Nothing spreads like fear. In reality, Covid is a really bad flu strain that can be dangerous especially for the elderly because it leads to pneumonia which then leads to respiratory failure.