Ask HN: Are we overreacting to coronavirus?
Overall I would have to say absolutely, yes. The number of infections doesn&#x27;t justify this level of panic, let alone the number of deaths. I realise there is an element of &quot;prevention&quot; here, but far, far more people die of very common things (flu, traffic accidents, smoking-related conditions, being overweight, etc.) in the US alone every year, some of which are also 100% preventable, than have died worldwide of coronavirus. Do we shut down borders because of a flu outbreak? No, it&#x27;s just expected. The same can be said for any of the dozens of leading causes of death that exist in poverty-stricken countries where things like water contamination causing diarrhea kill more people than we could possibly imagine dying in the US.<p>I&#x27;m not saying that there haven&#x27;t been some good things to come out of this situation - people working from home and thereby saving gas, limiting pollution, etc.; increased awareness of basic cleanliness practices, particularly in some countries that are quite noticeably less fastidious than the US generally is; actual tests of some of our response mechanisms (I mean, you don&#x27;t trust your backups unless you&#x27;ve used them...) - but the extraordinary response of basically shutting down Europe is so far and away over the top...<p>I don&#x27;t pretend to understand _why_ people have freaked out like this, but I suspect it&#x27;s pretty much in line with why they freak out about anything: they&#x27;ve been programmed to wait for the &quot;next big thing&quot; that is going to kill us all by news, TV, movies; the news has, as usual, plastered everything across the &quot;front page&quot; on a constant basis, essentially &quot;hyping&quot; it up; and probably that on some deep psychological level we&#x27;ve all gotten a little overwhelmed with technological advances and how quickly the world has become a global market that is &quot;always on&quot;, so we were unintentionally waiting for some way to pull back and deal with ourselves for a while.