The world battles coronavirus as the United States enters near total lockdown.

The Trump administration lays out what the future holds, and Bernie and Biden hit each other

with their walkers. I'm Ben Shapiro. This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Protect your data from prying eyes at

ExpressVPN.com. Well, we're all still here. Guys, it's going to be okay. As I said last Friday, it's going to be okay. We just have to do what we have to do. And that mainly means stay at home. Make sure that your family is taking care of. Here's a few things for you to do today. Here's what I'm going to try and do today anyway, if I'm a good person, when I'm going to try and do a few things.

First, call five friends, find out how they're doing. things for you to do today. Here's what I'm going to try and do today anyway, if I'm a good

person. When I'm going to try and do a few things, first call five friends, find out how they're doing. Social distancing means that we are not allowed as human beings to do all the things that we actually usually do in times of crisis. Usually when there's a time of crisis, you get together with friends, usually get together with your religious community. Now we have this very odd circumstance where we're being encouraged to stay away from all of our friends and family

and from our religious community. Now we have this very odd circumstance where we're being encouraged to stay away from all of our friends and family and from our local community. This does increase loneliness. It does increase feelings of angst. Obviously, everybody's very nervous. This is obviously at the back of everybody's mind. But here are a few things that we can do. First, call five friends. You got a phone. Call a friend. Use FaceTime. Do something to reach out to five people. Just find out how they're doing today. Find out if an elderly neighbor or relative needs any grocery or pharmacy goods and bring them over. If you got somebody in your family who's over the age of 65, make sure that they're actually stocked up. If they're not stocked up and you are young, go buy the groceries for them. Bring them to them. The supply lines are still in place. There may be some temporary shortages of some goods that will alleviate as time goes on. Also, go out to a local store or call a local store. It would be even better. Call a local store and buy a gift card. You know that you're going to use that gift card later. And right now, everybody's in a cash crunch. So many stores are shutting down.

I personally know people who run small businesses, and they are seeing their business basically be destroyed by coronavirus because they're operating on slim margins. They're trying to keep people paid. Well, if you know you're going to buy from the store later, and you just can't go to the store right now because the store is closed, instead, buy a gift card, give gift cards to your friends if you've got the expendable cash to do so,

and just make clear to those businesses that you are going to keep patronizing the business and give them the temporary float of basically paying them up front. Buy a gift card from a local store for later use. It'll help tie them over. And finally, go for a walk. Like seriously, turn off the news, turn off Twitter, go for a walk. Don't hang out with people who are walking with you, social distancing and all that, but get outside, look at the sky, it still exists, look at the sun, it still exists. The temptation is obviously to be sort of stuck in your house. Just because we are supposed to self-isolate sort of does not mean that we can't engage with the world around us, and there is something inherently optimistic about going outside for a walk. So here are a few tips for today. Now, I want to start off today by giving some actual information on coronavirus. We're always, we do this on the show always anyway. We start off with information, and then we get to the opinion of it all, some useful information for you about coronavirus. So right now, one of the biggest problems with

coronavirus is we actually don't know all that much about it. Most people don't know the symptoms. They feel like, okay, if my nose starts to run, if I have a dry cough, does this mean that I have coronavirus? The answer is in all likelihood, no, you probably just have allergies, right? It's the middle of March. The chances are very high. They just have a normal cold or you have allergies. So there's a good article in the New York Times today by a woman named Newval

Shake talking about the differences between coronavirus and allergies and what you should be looking for. And this is good to know because honestly, it's hard not to go to the most paranoid place. You start feeling a little bit ill and you're like, oh my God, I've got coronavirus. And now I've infected the entire planet. My entire family is at risk.

Here are the symptoms that you should be looking for. You have to consider the time of year, according to the New York Times. Allergies and influenza tend to be seasonal. If you have a runny nose in the spring, and this happens every year, allergies are the likeliest culprit you may have noticed last week that I had a bit of a cough. I know it wasn't coronavirus because I get a cough literally this time every single year.

Plus I had fasted, plus I'm not sleeping because of the new baby.

If it's winter and flu is raging in your community, then that is the probable explanation. The flu is far more widespread than coronavirus. If you have flu-like symptoms in warming weather in a place with documented coronavirus transmission, then maybe it's not. The flu influenza does tend to tie back in the summer. We don't know yet whether coronavirus is going to do the same thing,

especially because, as the Times points out, there have been coronavirus infections spreading in

place like Singapore and in the Southern Hemisphere, which are currently experiencing summer

temperatures. Also, consider where the symptoms first started appearing. According to one doctor,

it's usually your nose and eyes where you develop symptoms of seasonal allergies. The seasonal

flu is more likely to affect your whole body, as is the case for many other respiratory viruses,

including coronavirus. So if you have a fever, headache, muscle aches, then you should be considering

whether it's flu or coronavirus. If you're just getting you know runny nose

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