So lets take your friend's situation as a prism to understand the wider case.
If my doctor tells me I need surgery, knowing all I do about the medical profession, I'm disinclined to jump on the operating table without a second opinion. If the second doctor says the same thing, then as these are the experts in the field in question, I would begin to give their view considerable weight. Yet surgery is very intrusive, so I would do some googling - not to answer the question myself, but to understand the question better, such that I can intelligently engage with these experts.
I am not an anti-expert person. I am an expert myself in certain fields, and I know a beginner has little hope to comprehend all the complexities of the fields in which I have developed expertise. So I value the opinions and decisions of experts - not to do so is frankly populist stupidity.
So then I would seek further medical expert opinions, if the surgery was significant. How many? That's the big question.
Let's say I was absurdly obstinate, and sought the opinion of 100 medical specialists and doctors. If 99 said I should have surgery, and one said no, who do you think I would believe?
Honestly, to believe and follow the advise of the one who advised against surgery, would have to be classified as insane.
The thought of surgery may cause me considerable fear, but in such a case, I would adopt the challenge of facing that fear, no doubt in comparison to the fear intrinsic to what may happen by avoiding surgery.
I'm saying in this case, it's not the fear, but the number of experts whose advise is sought, is the deciding factor.
If we extend this to all the crises facing the globe, only a few of which I listed earlier, then I tend to follow the same principle. If it a crisis of world food shortage, wars over water, growing ineffectiveness of antibiotics, alienation of youth with politics, growing depression, Global Warming and Climate Change, etc, then I defer to the experts in those respective fields. If the majority say, "Be worried, very worried" then I sit up and take note of my personal exposure. I'd like to be one of the Jews who left Germany in time, instead of staying on in denial, simply because 'something like this hasn't happened before', or 'all my friends say it'll be okay'. If the Fossil Fuel industry say Global Warming is crap, and 99% of scientists in the field say it's real, then I'd have to have my head examined to believe the Fossil Fuel industry. If the gun industry tell me it's safer for everyone to own guns and carry them around, and those who do comparative studies of cultures say it's more lethal to live in a high gun culture than a low one, then it's not too difficult to see profit is behind the gun industry spin. All these things don't take much intelligence to see, that in some cases there are high profit motives pushing a view, while in others there are real differences of expert opinion, not simply a few wild cards carping on from the sidelines.
The big danger with fear is to fall for either an unrealistic general panic or it's opposite partner an unrealistic denial. The second danger is to run from a fearful situation simply because you lack the courage to face it. The third danger is to allow a realistic fear to either incapacitate through panic, or to fall into an equally incapacitating depression.
I have lived long enough to see the world change dramatically around me, and mostly for the worst, for one like me who loves the beauty of the Earth. I have travelled extensively and every time, I see the ugliness of humanity spreading itself uncontrollably. The beauty of old cultures or nature, receding to remote corners. When I travel now, it is becoming harder to get through the sheer traffic just to reach those remaining places which enrich and nourish my soul.
All people who follow the Path naturally seek to extend and refine the tendrils of their senses. But we are facing one of those times in the history of our species, when our sense tendrils recoil in pain from the things they touch. It has become a time, of which Don Juan said, will require our ultimate forbearance.
