https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/coronavirus_when_all_else_fails_try_reason.htmlThe most dangerous thing about coronavirus is the hysteria
It is the latest phenomenon to fulfil our weird and growing appetite for doom
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/the-most-dangerous-thing-about-coronavirus-is-the-hysteria/“Coronavirus (Covid-19) is a pretty virulent virus all right, but not in the way you might imagine. It is less our respiratory tracts it has infected than our inner sense of angst. By last Monday there were 79,331 confirmed cases worldwide, all but 2,069 of which were in China. There have been 2,595 deaths in China and 23 elsewhere in the world. And seasonal flu? According to an estimate by the US-based Center for Disease Control and Prevention, it has caused between 291,000 and 646,000 deaths globally a year. To put it another way, if the number of deaths from coronavirus rises a hundredfold in the next few weeks or months, it will only have reached the lower bound of the estimate for existing strains of flu.”
”There is something more to the Covid-19 panic. It is the latest phenomenon to fulfil a weird and growing appetite for doom among the populations of developed countries. We are living in the healthiest, most peaceful time in history, yet we cannot seem to accept it. We constantly have to invent bogeymen, from climate alarmism, nuclear war and financial collapse to deadly diseases. Covid-19 has achieved such traction because it has emerged at just the right time. At the end of January, Brexit had just been completed without incident. The standoff between the US and Iran — which preposterously led the ‘Doomsday Clock’ to be advanced closer to midnight than during the Cuban missile crisis — fizzled into nothing. The Australian bush fires, which caused an explosion in climate doom-mongering (even though the global incidence of wildfires has fallen over the past two decades) had largely gone out. What more was there to worry about?
Then along came a novel strain of disease and the cycle of panic began again. But there are already strong signs that it has peaked. In the seven days before 24 February, the WHO recorded 6,398 new infections in China — down from 13,002 the previous week. On Monday it was 415. Very soon we are going to have to find another thing to agonise about. Asteroids? The next ‘freak’ weather incident, now the storms have died down? Who knows, but we will certainly find something.”