Panic

One of the real measures of people is how they act during a panic.

And that's a measure of a society as well.

And American society isn't holding up well by that standard.  Indeed, there's a lot right now for Americans to be ashamed of.

Contrary to widespread popular belief, the last time the US was faced with a pandemic it was widely reported on by the press.  There's a persistent myth, and that's just what it is, that the 1918/19 Spanish Flu Epidemic was kept a secret.  It certainly was not.

Ultimately various communities imposed quarantines, closing schools, public gatherings and church services. By the time that was done things were really rolling along, which can be used as an argument it was done too late, or it can be used as an argument that there wasn't a premature panic.  What people didn't do is go to the store and buy tons of toilet paper.

Over the past week Americans have been acting shamefully.  They've cleared the shelves out of toilet paper.  Locally they wiped the shelves clean of ramen noodles.  And oddest of all, and not locally, ammunition wholesalers are now out of 9mm ammunition at the wholesale level.

That's just absurd.

This sort of behavior is based on the theory that there's going to be a general quarantine and you'll have to live in your house for a month, defending your supply of toilet paper and ramen noodles. 

That isn't going to happen.

Some people like to panic about stuff and this is their dream come true.  "Preppers" finally have an emergency of the type they've been hoping for for years.  It's a manufactured one, of course.

And to some extent, a person has to question the closing of everything. 

It's also become the fodder of every columnist and pundit going.  CNN had a commentator on the other day virtually screaming at the audience with a general message of panic.  Mona Charen's recent article suggest that due to the election of President Trump there aren't going to be enough hospital beds for the ill.  Both Biden and Sanders, who have no better idea of how to handle this than Trump, are saying they'd "do things much differently".  Maybe they would, but it probably wouldn't be any more competently.

And that's because nobody is willing to approach this from a rational scientific prospective.