This isn't to say that I think that I'm particularly brave, or reckless; I worried about older members of my family, and I wear a mask when in a store which requires them- heck, I sewed masks for a number of friends, neighbours, and family. I obeyed the social distancing rules even when it meant that I didn't see members of my family for months, and spent Easter alone. But the minute the restrictions were lifted and I could get together with family- and go to church- I did so unhesitatingly. Because staying cooped up in your home, separated from your loved ones, and filled with dread that something bad might happen to the point where you become inert, is no way to live your life. I was talking about this with one of my sisters; she's currently reading some essays by C.S. Lewis and she reminded me of what he said about stressing out over living in the age of the atom bomb. I thought that his words about keeping things in perspective (see below) are very apt for the present time.
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
— “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays