How did the seemingly incongruous use of masks during this past nary-a-cloud-in-the-sky, mild-as-May Monday affect you? When I first saw a solitary gardener wearing one, it was as unsettling as seeing an ambulance double-parked outside a neighbor’s house.

While a feeling like that is always undesirable, it’s also rational when it’s a creation of the coronavirus.

We’re facing a situation that just two months ago seemed as preposterous as a zombie apocalypse. Even something like a stay-at-home order, for instance, seemed ludicrous merely a month ago.

It’s the time for you stop binge-watching “The Walking Dead” and calmly assess the circumstances. That’s not easy to do, though, when your home now seems more like a foxhole well within mortar fire of the front line.

Monroe County currently ranks number one in the state in per capita coronavirus infection rate. Lehigh and Northampton Counties are second and third.

When I first began writing this, the increase in confirmed cases in those three counties had increased by 97 percent in the last three days.

The ever-present anxiety only augmented by grim statistics like these probably makes you wonder if it’s that important right now to read an article about healthy eating. I know it made me wonder if I should write it.

But that prior reference to wartime is an appropriate analogy for our current situation, and our side needs hardy soldiers. One way for you to get more fighting fit is to give aid to the right side in another war: the ongoing one in your gut.

Every day, good and bad gut bacteria battle for intestinal control. If you want the good bacteria to win, my friend, you can’t abet the bad bacteria and eat the way typical Americans do.

An article that Dr. Phil Maffetone posts on his website, “Got Gut Bugs?,” clearly establishes what happens when the wrong side triumphs.

First, your risk of getting a slew of sicknesses increases, such as irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, ulcers, heartburn, constipation, diarrhea, bloating, excessive gas, and food allergies. Second, whether or not you get any of the aforementioned, you’ll feel fatigued and be more susceptible to cancers, diabetes, and “even the development of body fat.”

But all this really should be expected. After all, your immune system - to keep the war analogy going - is so overwhelmed by the enemy that it retreats.

Now do you see the connection between the war inside your intestines and the one that occurs when you don a mask and dare go outdoors?

Yet despite that mask, washing you hands incessantly, and staying six feet away from other shoppers in grocery stores, medical experts still estimate that in a worst-case scenario 260 million Americans will contract the coronavirus. So along with doing everything possible to reduce your risk of infection, you should be doing everything possible to reduce its effects if you do fall prey to it.

Adhering to the sort of diet so often suggested in this column, does exactly that because it helps promotes good gut health. (I write “sort of” since an optimal diet needs to be based on your unique physiology, a diet which you create through dietary and exercise experimentation that’s based on your specific health and fitness goals.)

For instance, I’ve always warned about the weight gain that inevitably comes from a diet featuring highly processed carbs. Maffetone believes those foods may be “the worst foods for the gut” and eliminating them fixes “many - if not most - gut problems.”

I also advise you to consume an even higher amount of fiber than general food guidelines suggest. One of the reasons why: Good gut bacteria flourish in fiber-rich surroundings.

The Greek yogurt I advise just about everyone to eat is, in essence, a fermented food. Maffetone feels fermented dairy foods, namely yogurt (without added sugar), cheese, sour cream, and kefir - along with other pickled foods like pickles, sauerkraut and kimchi - need to be consumed daily for good gut bacteria to thrive.

In short, I imagine you’re following all the government’s directives in an attempt to avoid contracting the coronavirus. Even so, it’s expected that 40 to 70 percent of Americans will become infected.

So issue your own directive. From this point on, avoid highly processed carbohydrates, increase your ingestion of the complex ones high in fiber, and consume fermented foods as often as you can.

Doing so helps your gut - and your immune system.