ROGER KIMBALL: Is the Wuhan Virus a ‘Crisis’ or a Crisis?

Over the past few weeks as the world got used to pronouncing the phrase “coronavirus” and learned new bits of jargon like “social distancing,” I have on a couple of occasions quoted, with approbation, Benjamin Jowett’s observation that “Precautions are always blamed. When they are successful, they are said to be unnecessary.”

Precautions are one thing, a good thing. Panic is another thing, and a bad one. By all means, wash your hands, be careful when coughing or sneezing, take reasonable precautions. But what we are witnessing now is an access of irrational hysteria whose end is less safety than sanctimoniousness.

It also, it is worth noting, plays right into the hands of power-hungry politicians who like nothing better than to forbid whatever it is they have neglected to make mandatory. These are the folks who stand to benefit by the ill wind of the Wuhan virus. Anyone who doubts this should ponder the case of Champaign, Illinois, whose city council just voted itself emergency powers to deal with the crisis, or “crisis.”

My friend David Horowitz likes to say “scratch a liberal and you’ll discover a totalitarian screaming to get out.” The evolution of the reaction and overreaction to the Wuhan flu is a textbook case illustrating the truth of that observation.

Read the whole thing.