Speaking of long.... In all seriousness, people should do what they want to do. I’m not upset by people deciding to isolate. I am pretty upset about governments mandating that businesses shut down, which is probably illegal and economically destructive.
Herewith I’m going to posit some things which I believe to be common sense. If you disagree, well ok then.
1. Had the current state of social media, and specifically twitter and twitter-journalism, existed during events such as H1N1, Y2K, etc. the hysteria over those events would have been worse. I hope we can at least agree so far. I would therefore posit that it is likely that at least a portion of the current magnitude of hysteria is due to the social media echo-chamber.
2. At least some progressives are hoping that this outbreak will be a calamity for the economy and/or Trump (and an economic catastrophe is a catastrophe for Trump) because Trump was otherwise sailing to reelection against a horrific dem field. And, most journos are Trump-hating progressives. Put these facts together, and again, it is at least somewhat likely that some journos have mixed motivation in their reporting and furthering of hysteria.
3. Many of the posters here who are freaking out about this virus were also freaking out about Trump colluding with Russia. One more reason not to invest too heavily in Twitter-journalism, especially when you add a dollop of politics (see above).
4. Most politicians aren’t leaders so much as they are political weathervanes. So a gov shutting down restaurants should never be cited as proof of how serious something is. To a politician, their incentive is never be accused of “not doing enough” for which they would be hammered politically. They won’t be similarly hammered for doing too much because, hey, they were just following recommendations or what other leaders were doing.
5. The chicken littles, whether in government, media, or everyday walks of life, will never admit they overreacted. For three reasons: (1) they’ll always point to the draconian steps that were taken, even if they seriously harm the economy, as the reason for why the death toll didn’t hit the dreadful numbers of those simulations, (2) there’s always going to be a new study, a new tweet, to which they’ll cling, and (3) hey, they were just taking responsible precautions. But sending us into an economic depression is not responsible.
All of these are reasons to be skeptical. All I’m asking is to approach this issue not with disbelief, but with skepticism and perspective. These are things that many journalists have long since abandoned.
