We in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things that children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true

Those ancients sure addressed a lot of modern life without knowing it.  From De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) by Lucretius.  

Nam veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia caecis
in tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus
interdum, nilo quae sunt metuenda magis quam
quae pueri in tenebris pavitant finguntque futura.
hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest
non radii solis neque lucida tela diei
discutiant sed naturae species ratioque.

For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things that children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. This terror, therefore, and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of daylight, but by the aspect and law of nature.

Book II, lines 55–61 (tr. Rouse)

Strangely apt for someone writing 2,100 years ago.  If this is not an excellent description of the fear mongering of our mainstream media and the panic porn of our health institutions, I don't know what is.

And the solution?  The aspect and law of nature (empiricism, logic, reason).  In other words, follow the science.  The fear mongerers and panic porn interests wave their hands and shout about "Follow the Science" but these are just magical incantations for them.  They would not know science if you knocked them up-side the head with a twelve page report on a study conducted on 23 non-randomly selected participants, with no control group and no pre-registration of methodology.  That is what passes for science with them because it throws them an occasional crumb to bolster their theology.

A crumb which dissolves away at the first splash of empiricism, logic, and reason.