As IF Times

source:  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/merck-ceo-on-how-us-can-avoid-coronavirus-outbreak-like-italys.html

We are well into a month since the first signs of the emergence of the Covid 19 flu.  It has since mutated into a full blown global hysteria. Not so much in actual casualties although that number is still climbing, but certainly the social panic has skyrocketed.  I think most can say that they’ve never witnessed such a thing in their lives, at least not in first world countries.  People who have fled from socialist countries are quite familiar with lineups for simple things as toilet paper and bread caused by suspect government policies.  Who would have thought that this could happen in the enlightened first world?

Such behavior can only be described as irrational panic.  There is no shortage of goods.  No one has stopped making toilet paper and food is still being produced.  While this ‘flu is highly infectious according to informed sources, it is not deadlier than numerous other diseases which have had outbreaks in the past.  To date, we know that there have been about 200,000 infections, about 80,000 recoveries and 7900 deaths.   Statistically, it’s less pervasive than pink eye.

We know that previous outbreaks have resulted in elevated mortality rates for Swine Flu, SARS, H1N1, bird flu, MERs and Ebola. None of those much deadlier outbreaks caused the global panic and social hysteria we are seeing today.  This is unquestionably much more of an economic disaster than a humanitarian medical disaster. Why is the reaction so extreme today?

One factor is the ubiquitous reach of social media which didn’t exist during times of previous outbreaks.  In today’s world, narratives literally go viral once they get a head of steam and all the trend followers climb on board.  This extends doubly so to the popular media whose job it seems is to breathlessly sensationalize every event in order to get clicks. We are very much in a culture influenced by social pressure, so that once an issue is identified as being the cause celebre, it can be quite daunting to have opposing views.  Think Global Warming. The divisive nature of politics today means that any given issue can be used as a weapon against opponents whether or not there’s any merit and so people react for the sake of reacting, not wanting to appear ineffective.

It’s beyond logic that an affliction that thus far appears to be a nasty ‘flu, can devastate the entire structure of the global economy virtually overnight. We can say with a certainty that infinitely more people will be hurt as a consequence of this panic pandering than the the virus will ever cause.   It’s difficult to say if many companies and even industries will survive because of the panicked behavior of ‘authorities’.  Jobs will be lost and with them mortgage payments, homes, devastated small businesses and damaged livelihoods. The collateral damage to people financially and psychologically is as devastating as if a war had been declared on the nation.   And it didn’t have to be so.  We expect calm heads to prevail, but instead, the spiral of paranoia is fed daily by those lacking perspective on things but convinced that they are acting in the public good.

Certain things make sense, such as restricting borders into a nation especially from areas known to be sources of the illness: China, Iran and even Italy.  Very conspicuous and strong public advisories are also logical.  Once we move into mandating the closure of businesses and the restriction of people’s free movements, then authorities have overstepped their mandate and instead become the main drivers of the vortex of fear.  They are destroying the economy in the mistaken belief that they are doing good.  It’s not as if Martians had landed and were harvesting people for organs.   Even when people were flying into buildings we didn’t see the world lose its collective mind as they have today.  Rather than somersaulting off the logic ledge like lemmings, we should take in the views of sane minds who know a bit about this.

Many learned minds come to quite different opinions about this virus.  On one side are the doomsday/isolationists who expect an 18 month run on this pandemic, while there are others who think this can be addressed more efficiently by timelier means.    What is not addressed is the cost in terms of things other than just a body count.  A professor of  medicine and epidemiology at Stanford, John Ioannidis makes a very poignant point:

“…One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric. At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making…”

In the end, there will certainly be casualties, but thus far, as in all outbreaks, it will be managed.  People get the ‘flu. They get colds…sometimes multiple times a year. If people knew the exposure they had to nasty bugs in their every day lives, they’d never get out of bed much less use a public restroom.   Now people are obsessed with a sterile environment as if there ever was one and ‘social distancing’ is the new tide pod craze.   The over the top reaction of mandating the shuttering of businesses, schools, events and  restricting people’s movements and associations is like bulldozing an entire neighborhood because someone found a bedbug in their room.  The ongoing paranoia as fed by narratives such as the one linked above will permanently set in people’s minds a fear that is irrational and difficult to eradicate in this generation.  It’s not the ‘flu that’s going to kill us; it’s the fear.