It is a quiet Saturday morning. My wife got out of the house at 6AM to hit the grocery stores before the crowds did. She reported that paper products, meat, and cleaning products were totally absent. We laugh about it because there is just the two of us and we feel we’ll do just fine, even if one of us gets the virus.

Now for me getting the virus is, according to the CDC and NIH, a reason for great concern. I am 71 and have heart disease. I am in their “high risk” group. But why am I laughing about all this?

To start with, I am in excellent health. A recent stress test of my heart showed it to be in excellent shape. I survived chicken pox, measles and mumps. Remember, the was no vaccine for those diseases in the 1950s when I got them as a child. The only thing we got, twice, was the vaccine for polio.

In the US Army in 1969, I was stationed in Korea, north of Seoul, in what was an active war zone. At one point we were two hours from a large scale war breaking out. Did this immunize me to certain fears? Maybe.

The CDC estimates that about 50,000 people each year die from the flu or flu-like diseases. I would read into that that they get pneumonia. And there we are. Top doctors have told us that people over 60 being in the high risk group is no different than any flu season. The exact same rules apply. I got my flu shot last fall and got the flu anyway. Medicine is an extremely non-exact science. Much of it is best educated guess.

According to the U.S. Census bureau about 40 million Americans are over 60 years of age. And that is out of about 320 million Americans or about 12.5% of the total population. What all this means is the 40 million Americans over 60 plus those under 60 with what is referred to as “underlying health conditions” need truly to be worried.

The CDC has said that the high end projection of those Americans who could get the virus is about 50% of the total population. But that is just a guesstimate. The reality is that they just don’t know. And it is that “don’t know” portion of the equation that, I believe, has so many Americans in a tizzy.

It is projected that the high end mortality rate will be about 2% of those who contract the virus. But that’s about the same rate as with the annual flu. My wife and I discussed how we stand right now if both of us were to contract the virus and we believe we have enough food and other items to see it through. We have not done any special shopping, no extra sanitizers, no stockpile of toilet paper and paper towels, nothing out of the usual.

What Americans are not doing to sitting down and figuring out just how much toilet paper and towels they use on a daily basis. I believe had they done this, the run on such articles would have been much smaller. Where food is concerned, people can easily make soups and other freezable items that would take them through two weeks. My point being that a little prior planning would greatly reduce this panic buying that is presently going on.

It is my belief that this virus will peak sometime about mid-April in the U.S. and that it will not be anything close to what happened in China. Yes, this disease spreads almost unnervingly easily but we all already have the best protection against it, our immune systems.