As this week of sadness and madness has dragged on, I have learnt there is plenty in common in the mindsets of some people who voted to leave the European Union and some travellers worrying about the alarming new coronavirus.

In a world as full of evidence as it is of wonders, I detect a distinct disinclination to ask and check.

That became clear through a couple of messages on social media on Thursday morning.

I have gladly spent a lot of the week seeking to persuade anxious travellers to destinations across Asia not to cancel their trips because of a strain known as 2019-nCoV.

Not for a moment do I wish to diminish the tragedies afflicting many families: as I write, the death toll from the Wuhan Coronavirus has reached 170. Yet to put that figure in perspective, it is slightly fewer than the average number of people who sadly die in road accidents in China every six hours.

One message from a concerned mother reads: “My family are planning to travel to Phuket in mid-February. Can you advise what precautions we should take and whether we should travel at all?”

Of course, you should go to this lovely Thai island, I replied. Just be aware of the risks on the roads and in the water, and avoid them pesky mosquitoes.

But she had already concluded that the main danger was a virus centred on a city nearly 2,000 miles away. 

I am not convinced that I managed to convince her otherwise. My attempt to persuade a couple (who had invested thousands in a New Zealand holiday) that changing planes in Hong Kong involved only a negligible risk failed; they cancelled.

People believe what they want to believe, whether about a scary new virus or what one Twitter user called my “scaremongering nonsense”, after I outlined the tough new rules for British travellers to Europe after Brexit.

“If France puts a visa system in, people will go to Turkey. So no visa will be put in place,” he wrote.

Except that, as has been plain for years, France and the rest of the Schengen Area will introduce a visa system from 2022. It is called the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (Etias). British visitors to Europe will pay €7 (£6) for up to three years, assuming they avoid the many scam sites that will be set up to trap the unwary traveller.

The European Union has been planning Etias since before the EU referendum; it is nothing to do with Brexit, but because the UK voted to leave it will now apply to us.

Please check; after all, it would be ridiculous to make an important decision without full command of the facts.

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