I had no idea the world had so many amateur epidemiologists. Admittedly, after reading a significant amount of information, I’ve become one of them. What’s frustrating is that you’ll find nearly as much disagreement among professionals, as among us amateurs; an uncharted trek — such as a global pandemic — has no fully qualified Sherpa. There are too many unknowns to know just how bad this is going to get.

And when you don’t know how bad something is going to get, the obvious sensible course of action is to lose your crap and hoard a year’s worth of toilet paper to endure a two- or three-month ordeal, yell at people in the grocery store for scratching their itchy nose and shame others on social media who decided to slip away Friday night to the pizza parlor.

Honestly, what is it we’re supposed to do? Some officials say no more than 50 people at a gathering. Others say no more than 10. Some experts say kids should be in school, because they’re not at a high risk. Others say if you keep them out of school, high-risk grandparents end up watching them, creating unwanted exposure. Some say don’t risk going to the grocery store. Others say it’s fine to go shopping if you take proper precautions. While there’s some consensus over mitigating the spread of coronavirus, the advice discrepancies from the body of national and global experts are legion.

And the virtue signaling has spread much faster than the virus itself. It would be nice if it could just stop already and we could each recognize we’re all trying to navigate this new territory together, that nobody really quite knows how to balance the substantial risks against maintaining our freedom, economy and quality of life. Perhaps we all just need to get a hold on ourselves, make our own informed decisions as individuals, accept the differences and adjust as we move along. Nobody is ever obligated to attend anyone else’s celebration of perceived panic or apathy.

We’re going to get through this. It might be summer or even early fall before things begin to calm down. The economic challenges may reverberate beyond that. What I actually fear is how we allow our response to the coronavirus to create permanent change in society.

Ever consistent, Bernie Sanders used coronavirus as a pretext for socialized medicine. (I’ll concede that Bernie has used everything as a pretext for socialized medicine.) The patchwork of executive action from the nation’s governors and mayors ranges from shutting down all but “essential” businesses, to implementing movement restrictions and commandeering hotels to become temporary medical facilities.

Most of us understand there are exceptional times when governments must act beyond their normal reach, but the temptation will be extreme to make this extraordinary use of power an accepted new normal — long after the threat has passed. Rahm Emanuel famously advocated using serious crises to advance a political agenda. “Never let a serious crisis go to waste,” he said. “... It’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” That attitude should be terrifying to anyone who claims to love liberty.

I’m on board if we want to replace handshakes with fist bumps, or it becomes standard to have hand sanitizer dispensers at every public entrance. Some level of social distancing as the norm actually seems like a decent idea. I truly hope the extra time we’re spending at home renews our appreciation for family and our need to have down time in a usually busy world. Those changes are not what I fear.

I fear that a pandemic in a singular year could permanently morph our relationship with a government staffed by bureaucrats and politicians whose ambitions encroach the boundaries of our liberty and the constraints of the Constitution. I fear that our freedom is viewed as something we must be weaned from, for our own good, all under the banner of saving us.

Associated Press award-winning columnist Neal Larson of Idaho Falls is a conservative talk show host on KID Newsradio 106.3 and 92.1, heard weekday mornings from 6 to 10 a.m. Read more of his work and contact him at www.neallarson.com.