| HN Mirror

For one thing if you are aware of how your national or local government have responded to the crisis you can vote accordingly the next time elections come up. This may or may not affect you personally, depending on if you do or can vote, but it'll definitely be a factor in many elections across the globe.

Additionally if you were paying attention you might have started taking precautions earlier - getting set up for home-office, ensuring you had supplies (obviously I don't mean panic buying 50kg of pasta, but at least a sensible supply of the essentials to see you through a small period of quarantine) and postponed or cancelled trips into affected areas.

In my case if I was a little more informed and a little less flippant I would have not travelled to Austria for a skiing trip when I did. I thankfully isolated myself for 2 weeks when I came back (which I learned from the news was required by law for those returning from Austria). Plus I learned by the news that losing sense of smell and taste was a likely indicator of Covid-19. I got tested and discovered I was positive. Had I not learned this my girlfriend (who had moved out during my 2 week post-trip quarantine) would have returned and I might have infected her, and I might have been less careful in my apartment building and infected my elderly neighbours.

I actually made my decision to go ahead with my Austria trip before ANY European country entered lockdown, including Italy. Official guidance was that travel was fine, even to many parts of Italy. Had I been paying more attention to the news, I might have been more skeptical (I am not sure about this, though).

Yes the news can be overwhelming, you certainly shouldn't binge it and if you're easily spooked you should maybe take it in small doses otherwise you'll get yourself all worked up for nothing. But burying your head in the sand completely is perhaps too far in the other direction.