Is the news making us unwell?

Since the start of the pandemic I’ve been observing friends and family and their reactions to the virus. Broadly speaking they fall into two groups; at one end of the spectrum there are the insouciant, apparently unconcerned about a viral threat they think has been exaggerated; at the other are the corona-obsessives who have avidly consumed every scrap of information they can find – of which there has been no shortage. They’ve become minutely informed on everything from T-cells to lateral-flow tests; their lives have been subsumed under a tsunami of technical information.

Of the two groups it is the wilfully ignorant who seem happier. The well-informed, who have become armchair Covid experts, have not found serenity – on the contrary their expertise has made them fearful and unhappy. And I think there’s a general lesson to be drawn: too much news is bad for you.