That sort of thing, I suppose. Perhaps a better spider-related analogy might be: suppose you're terrified of poisonous spiders, and you see a newspaper article talking about a species of spider previously unknown to the UK which has been coming in from abroad in (say) fruit shipments. Now if you're really concerned about poisonous spiders, you'd want to read about this thing so you know how to recognise and avoid one if you see it; but if you avoid the news reports so as not to be scared by them, it sort of implies that you're more concerned with not being scared than you are with (as you might naively expect) not being lethally bitten.

Then, of course, after a month or so someone manages to get through to you that this new species of spider isn't poisonous at all, and you feel silly because you could perfectly well have found that out for yourself...