Foreign Policy: Corona can be fatal but its panic far exceeds its actual risks

"The disease can be fatal, but this global panic far outweighs the actual risks to it," commented the editor of Foreign Policy magazine, on the world’s severe fear of corona virus.

Jonathan Teperman pointed out that warning signs are everywhere and can be seen in the faces of subway passengers when someone coughs, as can be seen in the massive, disproportionate, and self-destructive responses that some societies convey.

The writer criticized the reluctance of the governments of China, the United States, Iran, and Italy to respond, even some of which lie about the outbreak of the virus and punish the whistleblower, and added that at times like these people and their instincts want their governments to protect them with their entire staff based on facts and in a reasonable way, but it seems that the Americans lack one of these Right now, and that's why it looks so scary.

However, Taberman points out that the global response to the virus reveals that something strange is happening and started with the fact that we have survived modern epidemics much worse than we live today without fear, such as HIV, which for many years had a 100% mortality rate, SARS, H1N1 and seasonal influenza. That has killed 80,000 people in 2017 and 2018 in the U.S. alone, more than those who have died so far from the Corona virus.

The writer mentioned that some irrational responses to the virus are beginning to affect our lives and our economy in harmful ways even though they may do nothing to combat the epidemic, and he indicated to the Washington Post that populists are taking advantage of the disease to intensify their attacks on immigration and that more than 10% of the world's population is now in a state A mandatory ban, as Italy abolished church rituals, Japan canceled the annual cherry blossom festival, and Israel imposed a 14-day quarantine on anyone entering it from anywhere.

He believed that such measures will stifle all kinds of important economic activities in the short term and may wreak havoc on global supply in the long run. The author believes that there are three primary reasons that can explain and link all these excesses, many of which challenge medical science and common sense.

The first reason is that a new, invisible and sometimes deadly corona virus is not far from finding a vaccine but we still do not really know what we are facing, meaning the severity of the disease or the number of people already infected, and this latter problem is partly due to the severe shortage of testing equipment in the United States And around the world.

The second is that the Corona virus has proven especially frightening because of the way it embodies and exploits issues that were already causing serious concern around the world, namely globalization, mass migration and interdependence. These are precisely the issues that Trump and other populists have been playing for years, and many voters who feel they are being beaten with powers they do not understand and cannot control have responded to them.

The third reason why the Corona virus strikes this sensitive chord stems from a deep sense of guilt that many of us feel about the way human’s cruel abuse of nature - from centuries of carbon burning to years of overuse of powerful antibiotics - destroyed the Earth’s biosphere with all its components.

After presenting these reasons, the author believes that although all this fear can make people behave in increasingly anomalous ways, it is not all bad news.

The website considered that existential crises are good for clearing the mind, and that they often persuade politicians to carry out deep, painful, but necessary reforms, because they force them to accept that there is no other option, and that if they fail, it will not only be the end of their career, but rather they will condemn their countries to death as well.

Foreign Policy concluded that the Corona virus may be from this type of crisis, and if not, it will be the next or the next, but so far there is no indication that our leaders are drawing the right conclusions by acknowledging the true size of the problem and working together in an open, effective, and coordinated manner, This is the most terrifying part.