Living with anxiety during Coronavirus

Yesterday I went to Ximending, Taipei's trendy district popular with young people and foreign tourists (something like Harajuku in Tokyo). It was near empty. Sure, it was Monday noon, so you won't see many Taiwanese students there like during the weekend, but this place is usually packed with tourists, especially those from Japan, Korea and Western countries. I still saw a couple of foreigners who looked like tourists, however a few weeks ago Taiwan passed a general travel ban for all non-residents, and since then tourism is basically dead. High end luxury hotels around the island have cut their rates significantly. I know one such hotel that charges 300 USD or more per night is now offering 100 USD per night. It's probably still mostly empty.

In a way it would be nice, if people could take a break from this virus and enjoy a little vacation. But then you have the problem that you have a lot of people in one place and the virus can start to spread again. I mean, this is ridiculous. This whole thing seems like a dream to me. When I walked around Ximending yesterday I saw fear in people's eyes. And I was afraid, too. Even, if Taiwan didn't yet identify a huge outbreak, there are more and more cases of local infection popping up where they're not able to trace back to the source. And keep in mind that there's always a delay, so this thing might be spreading silently already and we might get a huge amount of cases next week. When I ride the Taipei Metro I don't sit, I stand, and I balance myself, so I don't need to touch anything. I try to avoid the crowded parts of the train, when possible. I was still scared. They have thermal-imaging cameras in some Metro stations, the same ones you see at the airport: A live scan of people walking around checking if they have fever. What a world we're living in. And the fact that Taipei is cold and gloomy these days doesn't help. I feel like I'm stuck in a bad movie. I don't sleep well, my body doesn't feel well, and I keep wondering every day if I got this freaking virus. They said the loss of the sense of smell is a big indicator of that, so I smell things actively every day just to test myself, like taking a whiff of my morning coffee. I mean, what in the world... I'm not sure how I can escape from this, how I can distract my mind: If I stay at home, I open social media, favorite Youtubers, podcasts, everybody is talking about coronavirus. There is no escape from it. If I go out to Taipei I am scared to walk around, and people are scared, too. There's nothing pleasant about being out in a densely packed metro of nearly 6 million people... I don't know what I can do, but I do know that I need some good amount of sleep. I long for the day where I wake up and the threat of this virus is no more. Please let this day be soon.